The same old story

Distractions . . . They always seem to lead me down a different path than the one I intended to travel.

I had a great time at the knitting retreat this past weekend.  We even had sunshine on Friday and mid-afternoon on Saturday.  Pouring down rain the rest of the time - loud enough to wake everyone that was sleeping upstairs.  That's one perk of being on the planning committee - I got there early enough Friday to claim a lower Swedish bed downstairs. (See the picture on the left half way down the page.)

By the time the retreat committee (me and three others) organized the Friday night potluck, had dinner and recruited people to clean up it was only a couple hours until bedtime.  So I decided to knit awhile on the sock I brought rather than quilt.  Yes - you guessed it.  I enjoyed the knitting so much that I kept at it on Saturday, resulting in a finished sock and a partially done mate.

(This picture makes my foot look HUGE!)

Yep - I didn't touch my quilting all weekend.  And thus I must change my completions for October.  It is definitely too far into November to call anything I do now an October finish - especially when I haven't finished anything yet! 

I did work on applique yesterday, and Donder and Blitzen is finished except for part of one star that  I'll finish today.  My son-in-law has laid claim to this quilt, so I think I'd better finish it so they can use it for decoration this Christmas time.

The first three blocks for the Farmer's Wife quilt have been chosen by our project leader, so I want to start - and finish - those.

I ordered a few more project boxes from Joann's - some are extra large - because I've run out of boxes for all the quilts I'm working on plus my BOM's which need to have all the "parts" kept together.  I'm eagerly awaiting their arrival so I can have an organized sewing room once again.

I also want to finish the mate of the above sock.  I knitted Tuesday, going back to the knitting group that I've not visited in almost two years.  It was really nice seeing people again - many of whom I'd just seen at the knitting retreat.

Lastly, I got up at the crack of dawn yesterday - 6:15 - and went back to Weight Watchers.  All I've done on my own is let the pounds gradually creep back on.  I really want to fit into the clothes I own, and want to return to looking like my profile picture.  So I'm making this public declaration of intentions and will report in every Wednesday after weigh-in.  Being accountable to my readers helped me a lot last time, and hopefully will again.

And now you know the rest of the story . . .  .

October goals

At the beginning of the month I talked about the stretch goals I'd written.  One or two of you thought they might be a little too challenging.  You were right!  I finished five of the 10, though technically two are just "almost finished".  They'll be done by the end of retreat so I'm going to count them.  My goals, my rules LOL!

I will carry the rest into November.  Early next week I'll decide whether or not to add more.  Right now I'm thinking "No."

What's that you say? Knitting? What's that?

Back in February when I got back into blogging action I said I would need to find a way to spread my time over three hobbies.  Here is the post I wrote.

Obviously this has been a dismal failure.  The lure of quilting sucked me in no quickly that I wanted nothing to do with other hobbies.  People who have been following me for some time probably forgot completely that I was going to try to hand spin and knit in addition to quilting.

Last week I attended the Vancouver Handspinners meeting, and my fingers actually remembered what to do!  I spun all afternoon before the meeting so I wouldn't look like an idiot in front of the others.  That is the first time I've touched a spinning project since mid-April!

The retreat I'm attending tomorrow through Sunday is the Fort Vancouver Knitting Guild retreat.  I'm on the retreat committee so I figured I'd better spend at least part of the weekend knitting.  Today I got out my bin of partially finished projects - 11 of them!  I chose two different pairs of socks to work on.  I hope to come home with at least one completed sock.  I picked the two I thought took the least amount of thought - knitting and visiting is a recipe for disaster when knitting a complex pattern.  Here are the two I'm taking:

"Tidelines" by Anne Hanson

"Coquettish Clown" by Melissa Morgan-Oakes

Now that wool sock weather is back I feel the need to have some new socks.  It's a good thing that 10 of my 11 unfinished knitting projects are socks!

I did accomplish something today

It wasn't what I'd hoped - I didn't get any quilts basted - but I cut batting for every small quilt I've finished.  Here you see eight quilts rolled with their battings.  This eliminated the stack of batting pieces that have been filling corners in the sewing room, making it hard to organize them - hooray!
Next week I'll work on cutting backs and basting all of these.  Hopefully the last two will get the applique and embroidery finished this weekend so I can do the same with them.

It will be nice having all these ready to go.  In the meantime I've been quilting away on "Peace on Earth", which is closer and closer to being finished.

Give Away #3

This is a drawing for the "Dash of Spring" quilt pattern that you see in this post.  If you want a chance to win please leave me a comment telling me how you celebrate Halloween (if you do).  If you are "no reply" then please include your email address.  I must be able to contact the winner by email.

Good luck everyone!  I will draw names the second weekend in November.

Give Away #2

This is a drawing for the "Donder and Blitzen" quilt pattern that you see in this post.  If you want a chance to win please leave me a comment telling me your favorite season and why.  If you are "no reply" then please include your email address.  I must be able to contact the winner by email.

Good luck everyone!  I will draw names the second weekend in November.

Giveaway #1

This is a drawing for the "Scarecrow and Sunflowers" quilt pattern that you see in this post.  If you want a chance to win please leave me a comment telling me your favorite quilt designer.  If you are "no reply" then please include your email address.  I must be able to contact the winner by email.

Good luck everyone!  I will draw names the second weekend in November.

Another "almost finished" top

And a top that is actually put together correctly LOL!

All that's left to do is applique the bird by the Christmas tree, the five stars on the top border, and six tiny ultra suede bird legs.  This one will also go with me to the retreat this weekend.

I finished 12 Cracker Box blocks for still another 30's group swap.  They went into the mail today.  I feel very good about that - the deadline isn't until December 2nd!  That's it for swap blocks until the new year.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture before I mailed them.

I've even straightened up the mess in the sewing room.  Tomorrow I'm going to baste a bunch of quilt tops.  At least that's the plan!

Coming up - some new giveaways!

Oops! This time I'm going to live with it just the way it is.

This entire quilt top is together now.  I finished the machine sewing this afternoon.  All that is left is to applique the large sunflower to the right of the scarecrow and embroider all the finishing  touches.

When I took the picture for the blog I realized my mistake.  Take a close look at the quilt top.

Now look at the picture on the front of the pattern.

I would prefer the red-orange star points, but I'm NOT going to rip it apart to change things.  Too many seams sewn with too small stitches.  It isn't awful the way I did it, but I think the colors would balance better if I had done it the way it was designed.  I'll always look at the quilt and think about how it is supposed to be, but I'm going to live with it the way it it.

Two days left in the month and I have many goals I didn't accomplish.  Of course, I didn't plan to be sick.  I also didn't plan to become addicted to the "Candy Crush" game on Facebook.  Anybody else play that?  I started playing about when I got sick, and have spent way too much time doing that.  I'm blaming my lack of posts on the game addiction.  I have it under control now, I think - I hope - time will tell.

I'm not going to do the hand stitching on this right now.  I'm heading out Friday afternoon for a knitting retreat that lasts until Sunday afternoon, and I'm going to take quilting handwork as well as knitting - including this project.  It won't be done by this fall, but certainly by 2014.

Done!

I finished the fourth set of 12" sampler blocks tonight - hooray!  I will mail them in the next couple days to the swap hostess, and then I can cross this off my list.  I'm not going to complete the goal list for this month but am happy with what I have accomplished so far.  Darn virus bug got in my way!

"X Quartet"