adnohr blog

Possibilities?

Possibilities?, a photo by adnohrg on Flickr.

Playing around with possible color layouts. Not sure if I’ll do this block or not.

More on the hexies

So, I mentioned that I got sucked into the hexagon thing.

Really, I’m loving it so far, and have just started hand quilting the hexies in the doll bed I’m making for my daughter with the .75 in hexagons.  Figuring out the hand quilting has been a trip though.

They (hand quilters) have this magic rocking thing they do to make perfect stitches.  Me, not so perfect.

I tried it, and realized quick that I needed a thimble so went back to the store for a couple of different types and settled on a nice clover coin thimble.  It’s mostly working well, except that first stitch in a set is a doozy.

I did a search on youtube to find some examples of hand quilting in action, just so I could get the rhythm.  What I found was so much fun!  At first there were just a few videos of old women chatting and not very closeup videos of their hands.  Few more clicks, and a little better, then I found this woman’s vlog.  From what I can tell, she’s an 80ish year old woman who is just finishing up a quilt that she started with the leftovers from her 6 previous quilts, something that she has done 3 times before.  And not a little throw either, but a huge at least queen size.  And she set it up on her frame and hand quilted the whole thing.   All the while videoing herself, editing them quite nicely and adding music etc.  (She probably has a mac!)  And what an interesting woman!  I’ve subscribed to her stream and plan to go back and find out more about her.  I hope I’m as witty and insightful when I’m her age.

Anyway, I’ve backed my hexie quilt with some white Kona muslin and am working my way around the thing and maybe it will be done for Christmas.  La La has seen it, so its not a surprise, but she doesn’t know what it is.

Meanwhile, I’ve been laid off from my job (outsourced, really) so I’ve been working on Christmas presents for the kids.  Y and M’s mom mentioned that the dolls I made for them last year are still very  much played with, and that the kids would love some more clothes.  So that’s what I’m making – lots of clothes.  A & B’s mom gave me some hints too, so they are also getting more clothes, but someone might be getting an American Girl doll from Santa, so really instead of 5 dolls’ worth of clothes, I’m making 6.  A’s clothes will be half for the new doll and half for the old.  Maybe a couple of matching outfits for both, if I can hack it.  So far, I’ve made some pretty adorable flannel jammies, a purple outfit for one doll, 2 pair of overalls for the boy dolls, and one pair of jeans.  Next up will be some t-shirts, which should be interesting, since I’ve not really sewn knits before, at least not successfully!  But since I knew that, I bought plenty of extra yardage of the knits, just in case.  I don’t think I’ll have to wait til after Christmas to post photos, but I haven’t taken any yet.  I don’t think the kids read my blog yet ;-/

When I have a few completed outfits, I’ll post.  Sadly, I don’t have an AG doll to try out those outfits, so I’ll only be able to have a model for the Wee Wonderfuls dolls.

The cult of the hexagon

I’m done with the flat part of my hexagon doll bed fabric, and now I have to figure out how to get nice curves on the ends to make sort of a boat shape.

Pentagons?

I’m going to try some pentagons joined to the hexagons.  I think it will be a gentle enough curve to be perfect for what I need.  I’m going to play in white for now to see how it goes and if it works, I’ll decide whether to just join the white to my fabric or to make more in the scrappy fabric I’m already using.  I’m having fun with this!

I’m already thinking about my next project.

I have a friend with a Cricut.  I have Adobe Illustrator (but Visio will also work).  I created an .svg file of hexagons and sent it to my friend, then I brought her a new pack of blades and a stack of cardstock.  About 30 pages, with 28 hexagons per page.  That’s over 800 hexagons, for the cost of a trip to JoAnn’s for some blades.

Hey Ya!

Big ole' piles of 1 inch hexagons

I got some charm squares to be a little less scrappy this go-around.   Cut in 4, they are perfect for 1″ hexies.

Me & My Sister Favorites Charm Pack

Some solids too.  Not sure if I’m going to use them for this project or not, but I have time to decide.

Connecting Threads Charm Packs: Warm, Cool, and Bold.

La La’s Birthday Quilt

So, a few months ago, I ordered this great stack of fabric from PurlSoho, which is local to me, even though the actual store is in NYC.  If you want to see more of the fabric, it’s page is here on the freespirit site.

California Dreamin' by Jenean Morrison for FreeSpirit

I also ordered this pattern from Carolina Patchworks.  It only calls for five fabrics (for the piecing).  I had 16.

{mini} Modern Rose Garden quilt pattern from Carolina Patchworks

I also have EQ7.

I mapped it out with my fabrics

So, I loaded up the fabric images from the FreeSpirit site and laid it out so I could get a good balance of color.  The scale is completely off and I didn’t bother to figure that out, I just wanted to get a harmonious layout, and I think I achieved that.

Ta Dot Lagoon by Michael Miller

I chose a fun polka dot binding that went well with the other colors on the fabric.   I found a shot cotton for the sashing – I think it’s Kaffe Fassett’s ‘Sprout’ color, but I forgot to check the label on that one.  Finally when we went on our field trip to Michael Levine, I found the backing – a turquoise Minky Dot.

La La relaxes with her new quilt.

It took me a while to find the right thread for the top and back, but I finally did find a good variegated top thread that went from orange to yellow to green.  And the bobbin thread was a perfect match for the minky, and I was on my way!

It's good for tumbling on.

I basted the heck out of it because I’d heard that the Minky stretches a lot. I didn’t actually have trouble with it stretching, but it sort of gripped my quilting table and it was hard to work with. Luckilly for me, I was at the LAMQG weekend sew and the Quilt Engineer was there with all of her tools and gadgets.  She loaned me her SewSlip II, which is a silicon pad that you put around the plate and over the quilt table to make a continuous slick surface.  This particular one has a rectangular hole so that the feed dogs can stay up for using the walking foot.   It was like night and day!  She also let me try her June Tailor Shape Cut ruler, and clued me into this binding foot.

Let me fluff it up a bit.

When I got home that night, I ordered the SewSlip II, a binding foot, a teflon foot, and a pintuck foot, because I hope I can finally make those last doll dresses where I got stuck on the pintucks.  Maybe.  I will probably buy the Shape Cut, because it took me about 3 minutes to cut my binding strips and they came out perfect.

I spent just over two days on the piecing and quilting, and a few hours on the basting and I am really happy with the result.

It's comfy.

More importantly, La La loves it, and calls it her Muno blanket, because she has a Muno made of Minky Dot.  I think it looks more like Toodee though.

You can almost see it all.

I put a label on the back that reads “For [La La] on her second birthday made with love by Mommy 2010″. I used printable fabric and my inkjet to print on the corner of a page, then sewed it into a corner of the binding. I even remembered to put it on before I sewed the binding! I did forget to attach it before I quilted it though.

I’ve been sucked into the cult of the hexagon and have been working away on a 3/4″ hexagon project that I hope will become a doll bed for La La.  When I started it was with some scraps that I got from a Japanese fabric shop, momen+. (They are on facebook, but don’t have their own website yet.)  I wanted to see how I like it, and I do, so next up will be a 1″ hexagon something, plus an 8″ hexagon throw.  I’ve used all the hexagons in the pack of 100 3/4″, and am still working out the geometry of making the flat surface into a moses-basket-shaped doll bed.  I think I might need some pentagons, so I might create those this weekend and try that out.

Moving house

I’ve moved to a new web host in the hopes of getting this thing going again.  You’ll notice that all the links to photos are bad, this is just temporary until I get everything moved over from the old host.  Please hold on!

Mommy’s little cupcake

I finally caught a smile “on film”. Lala has been smiling for about a week and a half whenever I talk to her, or have little conversations with her in her language.

She’s not used to the camera yet, but I’m hoping to catch her a few times a week so she’ll smile for the camera as well as mummy.

Finished Object? Not a chance!

I know, it’s been 9 months since I last posted. I’m not even sure if anyone’s out there anymore, and that’s ok, that’s fair, since there hasn’t been anything to read.
A lot can happen in nine months, and for me, a whole lot did! In fact, on August 31, I had a daughter!
Here she is:

I won’t be posting her name/etc. here for obvious reasons, but those of you that I know in real life will be getting an announcement soon enough. They just arrived today, in time for her one month birthday!
Around here she goes by an assortment of names:
Wiggles, Giggles McWiggles, Pooparella, Poopenstein and LaLa (this is my favorite, when she wants to eat, she screams La! La!) are just a few that we seem to use a lot. I’ll probably refer to her as LaLa when I post here.
So far, she’s been just wonderful. I had an easy pregnancy until the very last day, and so far she’s just awesome. I was afraid to have a girl, considering the kind of relationship I have with my own mother, but I can’t imagine any other baby and I can’t wait to see what she becomes!

Wild Barty

I finished a pair of socks this weekend, and here is my husband modelling them for you. He and I have the same size feet, if you can believe it, and it’s hard to photograph one’s own feet, so I asked him to be the foot model.
The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in the color Wild Cherry, and they were knit on size 2.25 KnitPicks circular needles. I used one Harmony and one Nickel which was a great way of avioding the thing that I do at least once per sock, which is to pick up the wrong needle end while knitting and then end up with a silly twisted mess. I really liked using both needles .
I used the Harmony for the top textured side, and the nickel for the bottom smooth side, and that worked nicely! Well actually, I did the first sock only on the nickel needles, but after our local Stitch ‘n Bitch Xmas party, I had a collection of the tiny sizes of Harmony needles, so I wanted to use them right away and so I did, for the second sock.
The pattern comes from Cat Bordhi’s book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters, Book one. The pattern is called Bartholemew’s Tantalizing Socks. Since my yarn was called Wild Cherry, the socks are now dubbed Wild Barty.

Do you know who Jim Steinman is? He had at least one solo album that I know of, but is most famous for writing the lyrics to Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell albums. He’s also written a number of hits, such as Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart“, Air Supply’s “Making Love out of Nothing at All“, and Celine Dion’s “It’s all Coming Back to Me Now“. When a Jim Steinman song comes on the radio, I can spot it by the end of the first verse. If you notice what these songs have in common, you’ll catch my drift.
I have friends as far back as high school (Suzanne), college (Karlanne) and real life (Bill) who can attest to my hatred of Jim Steinman songs. They all loved Bat out of Hell, and I always hated the songs. They are just… too… wordy! He (Mr. Steinman) crams too many words into his songs.
I’m no George Orwell, I appreciate good description and good narrative, but Great Maker! He uses too many words. And I’ll bet that anyone who has an opinion about Jim Steinman songs either loves or hates them, I don’t know how anyone could be indifferent.
Anyway, the reason for this little digression is to give context to the patterns in Cat Bordhi’s new book. The woman uses too many words! Socks are not that complicated. These socks are not that different than the socks we’ve all been knitting for years.

The increases are positioned in a different place and the rate of increase is 1/3 instead of 1/2 for most socks. But following the pattern is difficult. You have to jump back and forth between several different sections of the book just to get the whole pattern. (Kinda sucks if, like me, you like to photocopy the pages you need and leave the book at home, so if you do that, be sure to read the whole pattern before walking away from the photocopier.)
She has her own language – LaLinc and LaRinc, stories about hairdressers and necklaces. It’s just silly. It’s like a combination of a children’s story (young children) and a knitting pattern. Maybe that’s what she was going for, I don’t know. It’s not what I was looking for though. Some of the socks look interesting, I just wanted to know how to make the interesting ones.
And maybe I am just taking out my general frustration on Ms. Bordhi. I am a bit tired of the whole dumbing down of the world I see around me. I am no expert – you may recall the last pair of socks I made took me 5 socks to get the pair, but I do think that we adults just don’t need to have everything spelled out for us! We are raising a generation of bubble-wrapped children with no critical thinking skills or ability to figure things out themselves, and it seems everything around us is coming down to the same level. It’s like Harrison Bergeron.
And the thing is, the very first knitting book I bought was Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles: a Manual of Elegant Knitting Techniques and Patterns and it wasn’t as wordy and strange as this new one. I haven’t looked at any of her other patterns because I didn’t think the mobius thing was interesting, although one of my fellow S’nB women did. I’ll have to ask her if those patterns were weird.
I think going forward, I will read the whole pattern, copy the relevant information onto an index card (because it would fit on an index card, really) and leave the book for reading at home, like a novel or a bedtime story.

The socks themselves are very comfortable, and I will likely make another pair in the same pattern “family”, called Sky. Next, I’ll try a “Fountain” sock. I’m actually thinking that 2008 will be the “Year of the Sock” for the nodster, I’ve got way too much sock yarn and this year I am going to use it. A lot of it. I had even skeined up some yarn for dyeing, but never got around to mixing up the dyes. I want to do that this year too. I guess that’s my only resolution for 2008, more socks!
Happy new year!

ETA: Link to the project on Ravelry

picking out colors

So I’ve placed all my heathered 2-ply out on the bed to try and figure out how to place the colors.
Generally I’d go for light, medium and dark colors, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out which category a color falls into.
I’d heard you can use a black and white photo to take the emotion out of the decision, to base it on the shade of the color instead of the value. My first try was pretty close:

After that, I rearranged again and came up with this:

It’s a litle disappointing that the KnitPicks yarn has only two light shades. Al the rest are more medium shades. It will be harder to make obvious fore/background combinations, but with the solids and the other colors I can fill in the blanks. Now I can get started on a swatch, or maybe a swatch of the pattern.
Meanwhile, I soaked and dried my shawl, but now I need to pin out the points and steam it to be all lovely. I’ll try and do that this week and post a photo, but it may not happen til Friday, since I have that day off from work.

Do you ever get all girly?

There are a few things that get me all girly, and one of them is Hello Kitty. What is it about her? Ever since I saw her for the first time, back in middle school, I was in love.
That’s why, when I saw this book at Kinokuniya, I had to pick it up. I flipped through, and thought, “nah, it’s crochet, and I don’t do that very well”, and I put it down. I looked through some of the knitting books, and kept returning to Ms. K. Finally, I just had to make the purchase.
It doesn’t matter that I can’t read the instructions. I just dug out some cotton (Paton’s Glace, in white) and an appropriate hook (3.5mm) and started on my very own Hello Kitty crocheted…doll? I have no idea what I’ll do with it, maybe give it to my niece, but I just had to do it.
The other thing I just had to do was buy myself a new toy. I’ve been thinking about it for so long, even went to the Apple store twice and chickened out on the hefty price tag, but finally, last week, I bought my first Mac. It’s the super-duper MacBookPro. It’s a beautiful thing, and I am a bit lost, having been working with some form of Windows for over 20 years, but I am making my way. (The last time I used a mac, it had a black and white screen and a floppy drive.) I am having so much fun playing with iTunes and iPhoto, I haven’t even checked out any of the other iStuff.
My mimosa shawl is coming along nicely – I have one more row of beads to place, and my math is terribly off, so I am going to try and figure out what I did wrong and make adjustments. How hard can it be, it’s just a shawl?