No Progress on Anything

Well, hardly anything.

My peripheral neuropathy (numbness/tingling/reduced motor control) in my fingers (from the chemotherapy) was so bad for a while that I wasn’t able to knit. Thus, the red sweater for Brian is still in the “first sleeve ON” stage.

I finished the quilting on the Irish Chain quilt, and got the binding all pinned on, to discover that there was a 1″ gap between the two ends, instead of overlapping enough to finish off the binding. I cut an extra piece of fabric to add on to the length, but haven’t dealt with it yet because right then . . .

I started the Quiltmaking II class, and then went on vacation, then started back at work. I’ve completed 3 out of 12 blocks, but got behind, and missed a couple classes because of being exhausted from being back at work. I have been doing a lot of reading because of not having the energy to quilt or knit.

So that’s where I’m at with crafting right now – pretty much nowhere.

More FOs and UFOs

I haven’t been able to get as much done as I would like recently, due to peripheral neuropathy from the chemo (this is numbness, tingling, and motor dysfunction in one’s extremities, in my case specifically in both my hands, all 10 fingers). Even knitting, which is pretty much second nature to me, where I often don’t have to watch closely what I’m doing, is difficult.

But I have been getting some stuff done.

I frogged the cabled pillowcase because of the pattern errata that called out the wrong size yarn so that I had just enough to do half the project. I also steamed and re-skeined the yarn so now it’s all pretty and waiting in my stash for a new project to crop up for which it is the perfect yarn.

I started and finished the Vortex hat from Knitty.com’s Winter line-up:

Vortex hat

Instead of weaving in all the ends from the shortrow work at the point of the hat, I braided them on the outside, so in addition to having the pointy part, it also has a funky tail. I used Paton’s Lacette and Allure to make the different color stripes – had to double the lacette to get the right gauge.

Then I started working on this WIP:

Brian's red sweater

This is a very basic sweater – I’m making it to the measurements of a sweater that Brian really likes, out of Lion Brand Homespun in Candy Apple Red. It’s just K1/P1 ribbing and stockinette with drop shoulder sleeves. When I pulled it out, I had the back done, and about 1/3 of the front. After shaping the neck, I realized that I’d completely bound off the back, when I was supposed to have left the shoulder-seam stitches on holders so that I can do a three-needle bind-off. Perhaps that’s why I set it aside, although it shouldn’t be too big a deal to undo the bind-off and the last row. I am about halfway done with the first sleeve, but because of the peripheral neuropathy, I’m finding it hard to knit for any length of time without getting frustrated at the lack of mobility in my hands. Even though I’m using size 11 needles, that doesn’t seem to help.

And finally, I was looking in a basket down by my recliner for a pair of scissors, and discovered this all folded up at the bottom:

Trellis shawl

Trellis shawl - detail

This is made with Lion Brand Trellis yarn, in the Pastel Garden variegated colorway. I had long ago finished knitting the shawl and cutting the fringe for it, but adding fringe is just about as bad as doing I-cord, so it sat in its mostly complete state for who knows how long! I spent about 2-1/2 or 3 hours adding fringe, and voila – it is done. Yet one more UFO off the list ;-}

The Irish Chain quilt has been sitting for quite a while because my sewing set-up isn’t really suitable for quilting, although it works fine for piecing. I have to sit higher to quilt than to piece, so we have to rig up a special platform for my foot pedal to be raised; we have to bring my office chair downstairs; and there’s a support board under the dining room table that prevents me from sitting close enough to the machine, so my neck, arms, and shoulders get very painful after just a little bit of quilting. Nevertheless, I’m slightly over halfway done with it, and am persevering with it, since that’s one of the things I can do that the peripheral neuropathy doesn’t affect so much. Of course, I’m starting my next quilting class (the one planned exception to my stash diet year) in a week, which means I really want to get this one done so I can show it off. I’m a little disappointed in how the quilting looks – I’m doing a curvy stitch (one of the built-in machine stitches, not free-motion), and it varies in length, probably because I’m not preventing the weight of the quilt from dragging on the needle. I am getting better at it though. Good thing it’s for us!

After I finish the Brian sweater and get *that* UFO off the list, I’m planning on starting a new knitting project instead of picking up another WIP – I’m actually running low on knitting WIPs, and I hope to keep it that way. Right now I’m trying to decide which yarn I should use, and from there, I’ll figure out what pattern. Hopefully, the further away I get from my last chemo, the better the PN symptoms will get, and I’ll be able to focus more on the knitting.

Oh yeah – I finished the top-down sweater way long ago (sometime in March), but we got an e-mail from the niece whose son I made it for, and she’s going to be here this weekend, so instead of mailing it, I get to give it to her in person – yay!

Stash Diet

I really am on a stash diet – this time for sure!

I’ve been telling myself for months that I really need to quit buying new materials and starting new projects. Each time, I would finish up a project or two, but then there is always something new that calls my name. Not even quiet little whispers – it’s like constant yelling.

But this time, I mean it. I sat down this weekend and started wading through all the yarn, beads, and fabric I have (not to mention all the partially done projects), and decided that I have at *least* one year’s worth of projects of various kinds to make. The first part of the plan is to finish up the following:

1. Topdown sweater (gift for April birthday; status: done but making hood cord, sewing hood for cord, washing/blocking, wrapping, mailing (OK, sounds a lot worse than it is – I’m nearly done with the cord))

Sweater - entire

Sweater - detail

2. Crib quilt (gift, originally due in late December; status: pin-basted, ready to quilt, nervous about quilting it)

Crib Quilt update

3. Knit hat (for chemo suite general stock at my oncologist’s; status: still needs about 9″ of ribbing, 3″ of decrease) – I’m trying to make one of these a month using Lion Brand Homespun. The first one actually went to Brian, because I could see him eyeing it lustfully as I was finishing the ends, and he *just happened* to mention that his old watch cap was too short to cover his ears twice.

Oncology hat

4. Orange/black Irish Chain quilt (for quilting class ending this Thursday; status: top pieced, back pieced, need to pin-baste, pin basting on my living room floor kills my back and knees, need to get over to quilt store to use their wall, unless:

Irish Chain Quilt update

4. a. I can get this “wall” finished. Brian and I got the chipboard home, but we had a piece of soundboard that we were going to glue to it that had a transportation disaster on the way home. We obviously didn’t do a very good job of tying it down. But the soundboard seems as if it will be a perfect solution to stick T-pins in to hold the backing and batting in place, while one pins the top; so I hope to get another piece (we’ll probably have Home Depot cut it in half so we can transport it *in* the car) this weekend, maybe get the gluing done too.

Pinning wall pieces

5. Cabled pillow cover (for us; status: started it, hate doing the cables, but hope that perseverance will get past the really annoying part of it – I’ve cabled plenty before, so I think it’s just the width of the cables plus I may be working too tight. May frog it and start over, but modify the cables, making them more slender but adding another one in or something…)

Cabled Pillow cover - Jo Sharp pattern

6. Zigzag bead necklace (for me; status: need to add some more fringe, may add a strand with some fringe wrapped around the herringbone tube, need to add cones and clasp.)

ZigZag necklace w/o findings

ZigZag necklace - bead and fringe detail

7. Painted Hummingbird quilt wall hangings (for us; status: one top pieced, need to piece second top, etc.)

Painted hummingbird quilted wall-hangings

Now, don’t get me wrong – this is not by any means a complete listing of every project I have started, but this is a good representation. There’s the Brian sweater, the cougar cross-stitch (oh, boy, is *that* one ancient! but I really love it, and really want to finish it, but it keeps getting shuffled down the list), the half-finished socks (half meaning one sock less some Kitchener is done), the anniversary “Love is. . .” cross-stitch (hey, I figure I can have that one done in time for our fifteenth anniversary), the needlepoint chair covers to replace the upholstery on Granny’s dining room table chairs and the piano chair, and, well, you get the idea.

I’m not going to limit myself to simply finishing existing projects, however, because that would probably make me break my resolution a lot sooner than might otherwise happen. I’m also going to make new projects, as long as they come from my stash. If I find I need just one little thing to make something using mostly stuff from my stash, then I may go ahead and buy that one little thing, but generally it is going to be stash-only. Most of the new projects will be gifts, although I may have to be more creative about who gets what based on what I already have. I have already identified a couple projects that I want to start later this year that will require some new knitting needles – I don’t have any circulars long enough. I will be giving Brian my “particular” gift list for birthday, etc., so hopefully he will buy some of those items ;-}

The year started as of January 1 – even though I started the quilting class in mid-January, I already had all the materials (fabric, batting, thread, etc.) for that quilt, and I’d already started cutting strips when I first started taking the class in 9/07; so technically, it was already a WIP.

And here I am, I’ve already finished one hat, nearly done with the sweater, and cranking out the next hat; the Irish Chain quilt is probably going to be fairly easy to quilt, once I get the pin-basting done. So I’m encouraged at already making progress; and seeing all the sorting I did, getting projects together, I’m going to be able to pick and choose what to work on next very easily.

We’re almost two months into it, so I’m 1/6th of the way through the year without buying more materials – still plenty of potential, but I’m feeling pretty firm about sticking to this diet.

Crib Quilt Progress

Wow – I had no clue I hadn’t posted this! This was written on 12/27/08.

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I finished the top of the crib quilt yesterday, and pieced the backing together.

Pieced, ready for quilting

Now all I have to do is figure out what sort of quilting I want to do on it. I was considering just a basic cross-hatch, but I’d really like to do something a little more complex. For the border, I’ve come up with a simple pattern of “braided” wavy lines; but because of the pattern of squares and number of rows being irregular, I’m having difficulty with the body.

BTW, I had to figure out for myself (with huge amounts of help from Brian) how to do the half-rectangles. The website that I’d found was *WRONG*! Guess that’s what I get for believing what I read on the internets ;-} Fortunately, I had extra material that I could play around with. I’m going to write up the method I used (probably isn’t the only way, but it works without having to have any special rulers). The only thing is, because I used batiks, there was no right-side/wrong-side issue with the fabrics. I will have to experiment with some one-sided fabric to make sure I cover both types of fabric; and also the orientation aspect (which direction the angle goes).

So I’m off to go searching through my quilting books to see if I can decide on a quilting pattern for the body – if not, I may actually have to drag out a pencil and see if I can draw something I like (and believe me, drawing freehand is not one of my talents. . .).

Starting out

I’ll start with my current projects, the first one of which is a quilt.

The quilt is a crib-quilt for a niece’s baby due in December, and is my own design. It’s very simple, 4-patch diagonals interspersed with diagonals of single blocks, using some rich batik fabrics I picked up from The Quilt House in Gardnerville, NV on vacation this August. It really goes very quickly, and in spite of some fears that I wasn’t going to have enough of a couple fabrics (I mailed swatches to The Quilt House, and bought some extra of each, although now I think I won’t need it, so there’s some for my stash), I surprised myself by having done a good job of estimating what I needed. On a couple fabrics, I liked them so much I bought extra for my stash.

Quilt on design wall - cut but not sewn yet

My only tools for the design process were pencil and paper, a yardstick, and the calculator on my cell phone – although we do have running water and an indoor toilet (at least for two-thirds of the year), and electricity and a phone, there’s no computer (horrors! what does a techno-junkie like me do for a 10 days without a computer?!?). I plotted out the basic design, calculated the amount of fabric needed, and had a generic idea about colors I wanted to use (a rough approximation of ROYGBIV), using batik fabrics. We drove into town, and I selected the fabrics, but because there wasn’t anything I could really do with them at that point

(and because I was working on a knitted baby afghan for another niece’s baby),

they got stashed in my suitcase, and I didn’t pull them out until the second week in October. I’m in the midst of my radiation treatments, so with an appointment every weekday morning, and working full time, I haven’t had a lot of time to work on it. My friend and neighbor Sharon, who took the same first quilting class with me (and hasn’t looked back since – she is a quilting fiend!), came over to look over my cutting plan, and to help me figure out one tricky little half-rectangle cutting/sewing problem. I have a book, “The Joy of Quilting” that shows you how to do half-rectangles, but only using a Bi-rangle, and the same two fabrics – and doesn’t include any information on how to do it without the special tool – I finally found some directions online for cutting half-rectangle blocks down to size, rather than being able to cut them like half-squares and just sew them together – argh!

So I’ve been sewing the center block strips, but now I have to put everything away for our annual Games Party that is coming up this Saturday night.

I believe that I will have this done in plenty of time, so that it is actually done before the baby is born (that’ll be a first for me ;-} ).

I’m thinking about what I want to do for quilting though. Stitch-in-the-ditch would be the easiest, but I’d really like to have some sort of pattern, at least on the border, if not elsewhere. Hmmm.

Next up is the loomwork bracelet that is facing a new life as a choker. . .