be-twix-t a winter and a spring place

 Moderate weather means more outside time!  At first glance, there's not a lot of life out there yet...

...but I'm seeing more signs.

Bean Blossom Bottoms, a 700 acre nature preserve with nearly 3 miles of suspended trails, is only 15 minutes from our house.

Because it's bottom land, and naturally boggy, it's unbearable in the summer:  heat, humidity, and mosquitoes.  Spring, though, is another story.  It's alive with so many frogs, birds, and animals.  The Sycamore Trust, which protects and maintains this and many other properties, set up trail cams and has caught some remarkable things.  I love this short video of a bobcat family!

On our other walks, we're seeing a bit of color...the beautiful purple of bare blackberry bushes...

...and even the greening of moss is a nice harbinger of spring!

A bit of red, too, in the infrequent berries spotted on bare branches of various bushes.

Speaking of red, we recently celebrated Valentine's Day.  I was still feeling unwell, so we had a low-key day at home.  A red velvet recipe that made just four cupcakes was the perfect amount...

...and, for my "gift," I made a punchboard out of plastic cups.  Insert a treat and a terrible pun, cover the opening with crepe paper, and you're magically transported back to your second-grade classroom.

Feeling better means that, besides finally able to get back to work in a meaningful way, I've also been able to work on hobbies.  I hadn't worked on a puzzle in many weeks, but as I slowly improved at the end of January and beginning of February, I got to work on a 2,000 piece puzzle that I absolutely loved.

I also got back into knitting.  I've been working on my Deco cardigan off and on for the past few months, and had nearly finished the body and both sleeves.  I've been woefully unobservant this year, and realized belatedly that I had stitched a child-size sleeve on to the adult-size body...sigh.

Grimly, I ripped the arm back to the shoulder and began again.  I'm nearly halfway through - relief!  I've already picked out my next sweater, and it's one that I've knitted before.  

Shadow sweater, photo courtesy of Brooklyn Tweed:  Wool People

Here it is as a nearly-completed project in 2015:

The problem?  First, I used a silk-blend yarn, and silk has absolutely no stretch.  Neither do cables.  And because I'm a fairly impatient knitter, I didn't bother to knit a gauge swatch.  Most of the time, these swatches are knit in stockinette, or "plain" knitting.  This pattern, however, wanted me to knit a swatch in the cable pattern and then measure it.  I didn't do it and just guessed, and this sweater was WAY too small.  I frogged it last year.

Last week, I broke down and knitted the swatch:

Bingo!  Perfect gauge on size 7 needles, and I also found the perfect yarn.  This is Brooklyn Tweed's Shelter in the Fossil colorway.  Normally it retails for $16/skein, making this a fairly pricey sweater at $128!  I found someone selling it for much cheaper on Ravelry, although it will still be (gulp) $80.  A bitter pill to swallow for someone who still prefers to get clothing from thrift stores...but it's good-quality yarn and I know I'll love wearing this sweater when it's finished.

Skies are increasingly blue here...

...and temperatures are slowly warming.  I'm still feeling well and am cautiously optimistic about continuing this trend.  Looking forward to many adventures as the season progresses!  Even in the garden, which I'm determined to control this year.  I'm talking to YOU, weeds, ticks, and chiggers!

side garden in spring from a year or so ago, pre-weed invasion

Have a great week!

Tactile Textile Pleasure, 2016

A big storm is coming this weekend...well, big for South Carolina.  One to five inches of snow and ice.  This means that I'll spend the weekend outside, taking long walks with my camera and one very excited dog.  That won't leave me much room for my "year-end craft roundup" photos, so here is a supplemental post of last year's gift crafts! 

In 2016, I completed:

- a bulky-weight herringbone cowl
- a quilted wall hanging for the living room
- a pair of fair isle socks
- several pillow covers
- several sample quilt squares
- an embroidered shelf liner for our dining room hutch
- an embroidered sign for Todd's office
- my first vintage skirt
- a pair of mittens
- a lined baby cardigan
- a quilted pillow
- most of a quilt
- most of a shawl
- a set of embroidered napkins
- a cross stitched pin cushion

And, the projects below, kept hidden because they were gifts. First, I embroidered this garden journal cover for a friend, but loved it so much that I made another one for my mother-in-law (size is around 8" x 10").

I love all the little details and had a lot of fun making it.

I also knitted this hot water bottle cover for my mother-in-law.  I LOVE it, especially the pom poms, but it's knitted with fingering-weight yarn and took a little longer to knit than ones I've made in the past with thicker yarns.  Still, POM POMS!

I knitted a few small ornament-sized mittens and made little felt animals for the fronts, to send to a few friends.  I'm looking forward to doing more with felt in 2017!

I knitted this cardigan for our niece.  I made it a little oversized so it could bridge two winters.  I really like it!

I quilted this cheerful table runner for a friend.  It might be one of my favorite projects for 2016.  It was so much fun to make and I think I'm going to do one for our house!

 I knitted these mittens for a friend.  I had a terrible time with them because I made the mistake of using silk yarn (the mustard color) with wool yarn (the rest).  The tension was wonky and I didn't think they looked right at the end.  But, they do fit!

Finally, a failed project for myself.  I got a Kindle Fire mid-December and found an online tutorial for sewing a cute padded case.  A lost afternoon and two too-small attempts later...

...and I realized that my Kindle was possibly a different size than the example given.  Sigh.  I ended up making a padded pouch with a ribbon top.  No pattern, nothing fancy...except I did use one of my sewing machine's fancy stitches across the top.  I originally wanted a button-close top, but my machine ran out of thread mid-buttonhole and it took me 20 minutes to pick out all the thread, and when I surveyed the mangled remains I didn't have the courage to move forward.  I cut off the offending bit, hemmed the top, and inserted the ribbon.  It's perfectly functional!

By the way, am I the only one who can't say "fully functional" without thinking of this Star Trek episode?

So those were my 2016 gift and end-of-year projects.  Looking ahead, I have two embroidery projects I want to try.  Both are stockings.  The first is a plain white stocking embroidered with trees in several shades of green, with bronze beads as accents.  So pretty!

The next is also a stocking, but it's not a seasonal one.  I think it's so interesting and will enjoy seeing it up all year long!

Finally, my brother surprised me with this quilt kit, everything included.  It's folk art and not normally my style, but I love cats and, although it's hard to tell from the picture, the kit contains beautiful soft flannel fabrics in lovely earth tones. 

Here is January:

My goal is to quilt/embroider one square per month.  I need to pick up some interfacing at the store before getting started on this one.  Hooray for cats! 

I received this book for Christmas:

It contains the pattern for the dress that sparked my interest in vintage dressmaking:

Here's another variation:

It's a huge book and I anticipate that it will take me several months to get through it, going slowly and carefully, but I want to make this dress for next winter, to wear with a cardigan and tights.  Red plaid, like the fabric of my Kindle case.   So those are three projects, and I also have other knitting projects (I'm in the middle of a pair of socks and a shawl right now), and other craft projects in general, not to mention finishing my "butterflies and snails" quilt from last year.  It's hard to find time, so I've scheduled out 30 to 120 minute blocks of time throughout the week to keep me on task. 

Phew!  That's a lot, but I love to do it and my hands are always busy, even when I'm watching T.V., so I find little moments to get things done.  

Here's to another year of tactile textile pleasure!  :) 

Foxglove Love

First, let me get this out of the way.  BEAVER BABIES!

All right, now that I've got that out of my system, I can move on to the main event:  I finished my cardigan.

The pattern is FOXGLOVE by Kate Davies.  It's knitted in the round, bottom up, until you get to the armpit.  Then you put those stitches on hold while you knit up the arms and attach.  Finally, you knit some connecting rows and begin the chart for the foxgloves. Then the neck, and finally, the steek.  Steeking, remember, is where you reinforce stitches on either side of a center stitch so that you can cut through the fabric without any ends unraveling.  That's the theory, anyway!

Here's the cardigan pre-steek:

There are many ways to steek a sweater, but I chose a crochet steek.  Basically, I found the center stitch (not easy in that sea of maroon), and crocheted up one side and down the other, securing the right stitch leg and then the left stitch leg of the center stitch with the leg of the neighboring stitch on either side.  It's not pretty, but it doesn't have to be - it will never be seen. 

Basically the steek pulls the stitch apart and reveals the ladder center.  This is where you cut.

My steek held, except for two places that started to unravel.  I quickly reinforced them with matching thread and they held nicely.  How exactly does it work?  I'm not sure.  It seems impossible that one crochet stitch would hold in all of those tiny unraveling threads.  It does, though!

 After the frightening experience of the steek, you move on to the relatively easy creation of the button band.  You pick up and knit X number of stitches along the front edge (well in from the steek) and do a simple ribbed stitch for 12 rows.  Repeat on the other side.

The steek edge naturally folds under and is hidden.

Then all you have to do is sew on buttons, weave in ends, and block.  I was a nervous wreck about the fit.  The 2 sweaters I knitted earlier this year are both poor-fitting.  One has wonky shoulders and a fiddly, unraveling v-neck, and the other is just too small.

This sweater, though, fits pretty well!

Here's some detail of the yoke:

I'd prefer it to be slightly more fitted, but I guess it will be perfect to layer with this winter.  I think it will be a long time before I knit another sweater out of such fine yarn, but I'm looking forward to making another one soon, but with thicker yarn.  I have been drooling over Stonecutter, and it's knitted, thankfully, with pleasingly thick worsted weight.

After having lost a total of 5 trees and many branches and limbs, the work here is about finished.  Our tree guys have been amazing and regularly put in 12 - 14 hour days.  I made them some cookies to thank them for their hard work.  Since we're out of all chips and I only had peanut butter in the house, I decided to make Averie Cooks' Big Soft and Chewy Peanut Butter Crinkle Cookies.  They're huge - only 6 per cookie sheet!  They bake up crisp on the edges and soft in the middle.  Nice peanut butter taste.  Beautifully crinkled tops.  I worried that the centers would be too raw, so baked each batch for 12 minutes.  Next time I would go down to 11 minutes.  I prefer the less crisp version.

Have a great week!