A couple of years ago someone who knew that I did a lot of charity knitting asked if she could do an interview for a local magazine. She said blithely, "I'll be in touch after Thanksgiving to set up a date. Oh, and we'll want to take pictures of some of y."ur work." She was completely outdone when I answered, "That's not got going to work. It will all be gone by then." To date the interview has not been done.

This is the time of year when I distribute all the things I have been working on all year. Some churches have an "ingathering" in the fall to gather together all the projects various mission groups have been working on. I have an "outgoing."

Today I did the first drop-off of 44 hats for the Knitting for Noggins project at Arkansas Children's Hospital (http://www.archildrens.org/volunteer/Knitting_for_Noggins.asp). I take my hat to a very special yarn shop in Arkadelphia that serves as a gathering point for lots of charity projects and sells fair trade goods. Knit Unto Others ( http://www.knituntoothers.com/) has lots of great yarn, but more than that, is a place that invites you to have a seat at the table and just hang out and knit for a while.

Today I was smarter than usual, and determined that my visit to the shop was my only goal for the day. That meant I could spend all the time I wanted, without a need to rush off to some other place. Let's just say I went in with two bags of hats and came out with two bags of yarn. I'm on my way to well-stocked for Christmas knitting.

Tomorrow I'm off to Little Rock for the second drop-off. This one is a church-wide effort to create layette kits for newborns. The hard part of the kits, at least in the warm climate where we live, is the little sweater; they simply can't be bought around here for less than $20.00. So I promised the church that I would provide sweaters for the kits they create. This year they outdid themselves; I was prepared to knit 20 sweaters, and ended up needing 30. Amy helped by sending me 3 from her stash, so we were able in the end to complete 28 kits, with a few things left over for next year. In addition, 8 of our kits went out with handmade blankets in them. One of my parishioners loves to crochet baby blankets, and we love for her to do it.

I love watching the hats and sweaters pile up in my yarn through the room. A kitty litter pail full and labeled makes my heart feel good. But even better is the process of emptying them all at the end of the year. It means that all those stitches are on their way to the people that need them, which was the point in the first place. And of course, they go with my prayers. Whether for the child patients at Arkansas Children's or the tiny newborns that go home wrapped in one of Diane's blankets, lots of prayers go with the garments.

Maybe, when all is said and done, it's the prayers that are really the point.

Today was a good quilting day. I worked on the double wedding ring for about an hour while the cats took advantage of being allowed into otherwise forbidden territory.

Then after lunch I took out the slanted stars UFO and put the blocks up on the design wall. I did a little bit of rearranging, but didn't get too obsessive about it. I decided to tackle it by color group, so worked a bit on the lime greens, since they seem to pop out in this picture. Tomorrow I'll work on the turquoise blues, getting them more evenly spread out. Other than that, I'm just going to try not to get two blocks from the same fabric too close together, but otherwise try not to overthink it too much.

Because it was my Sabbath day, I didn't work at cleaning. The one thing I did do was put a finished top and its backing fabric back into the drawer of finished tops. I had taken it out and pressed it thinking I might give it as a gift this Christmas, but I've realized I'm not going to work on it anytime soon, so putting it away removed one bit of clutter from the back of a chair. Tomorrow I'll work at clearing the seat of the chair. One step at a time.

Then I spent several hours working on the current project, a Christmas gift in the making. I'm not going to show any pictures of anything resembling finished product, but here's a picture of the sewing table. If you can figure out what I'm making from this picture, please don't tell and spoil the surprise.

In the middle of all this Diane came by, so she got to see the studio for the first time. She remarked on the flamingos, which I guess I've gotten used to. She made me appreciate them all over again; I even got the lighted ones turned on for the first time in a long time.

There won't be much time for sewing tomorrow, as it's a pretty full work day. The Circle will be meeting here in the morning, so I have to put the DWR away, at least into the music room and tidy up the dining room. Cleaning up seems the best way to use a small bit of time, so that's what I'll focus on.

Today we changed the clocks back to Standard Time. It's not a traditional day for making resolutions, or charting a different course for the future. But it is a day that marks a transition from thinking about the world in summer terms to thinking in winter terms. So it seemed as good a day as any to think about quilting goals.

It's also a good time because I am nearly to the end of my charity knitting projects for the year. I have one baby sweater that needs buttons, and another that needs sleeves, and they will be the last of those for the year. Next week I will deliver the hats to the shop that collects them for the Knitting for Noggins project, and so however many I have done by then, that will be the end of those for the year. What knitting I do between now and the end of 2010 will be Christmas gifts and things that I myself need for the coming cold weather, but that's not the kind of production knitting I do the rest of the year.

So I'm thinking about quilts, and specifically, setting goals for what I want to accomplish between now and next spring's return to Daylight Savings Time. I have thought up six categories as a way to organize the work.

The first category is anything that relates to the studio remodel. This got stalled out in the early fall when I went to Canada and everything came to a screeching halt. There are still things sitting in the middle of the floor that need some other place to live. And the next "project" is to sort through the pattern books and get them more organized. I need to set aside a block of time regularly to work on this.

Category 2 is old quilts, or UFO's. I really do feel overwhelmed by these at times. I feel like I can't start anything new until I've finished some of the old projects, but then I don't really want to just work on old stuff either. I think if I designate some time to work on those but allow time for new work too, that will help.

Related to #2 is #3, which is stashbusting. In the process of sorting scrap bins I've actually added more to my unsorted scraps, and those bins are now overflowing. I need to work on cat quilts or something to just use up some of those pieces that are too small to save, but too big to throw away.

Category 4 is new quilts. This will include some Christmas things, but also the double wedding rings that are in production. And I won't eliminate the possibility of starting something brand new if the muse gives me the urge to get creative.

The last 2 categories are technique oriented rather than project oriented. The part of quiltmaking that I enjoy the most is hand-quilting. So category 5 is to keep making forward progress on some hand-quilting project. Right now it's James' and Crystal's DWR; if that gets finished before spring, there are plenty of tops in the drawer all basted and ready to go. Especially now that there's more light in the morning, the dining room is a pleasant place to work, so I will work hand-work time into the morning hours.

And finally, I want to spend the time to be more proficient with my sewing machine. Now that I've had the thing for 10 years, I realize I've never done the kind of systematic working out of the decorative stitches and features that I need to do to be really comfortable with anything but straight sewing. The only way it will get done will be if I block out time when that is the priority.

The hand-work category is one that I need to work on daily. Right now I don't have the callouses on my fingers to work at quilting for long stretches of time, so short stints work best. This week I've been listening to new podcasts as I stitch, and I find one podcast - about 45 minutes to an hour - is as much as I can do. So that's the goal - to quilt daily for at least that long.

Some of these are things that I don't want to do every day. Who wants to organize and clean every day? Nor do I want to do scrapbusting or machine practice for long periods of time. So these will get worked into the days when my work schedule is busiest. I'll do what I can accomplish in the time I have - 30 minutes at least - and consider it time well spent, then move on.

The days when I have more time to spend I'll work on the categories that result in quilts getting finished, the old and new quilt categories. Until Christmas, most of the new stuff will be gift related, so it will need to get the lion's share of the time. But just to be able to show some progress at the end of the week, I'll work on older stuff at least one day. I can think of one quilt that is ready to go up on the design wall, and right now the design wall is empty, so that's a good candidate for this week; it won't require putting other things away, other than making space on the sewing table, and that's not hard.

Okay - that's the plan. At least from now until March 13th, when we return to Daylight Savings time. Tomorrow is my Sabbath, which means I can spend most of the day sewing if I choose. I think I'll get those blocks out and start slapping them up on the design wall so I can play with their placement for a while. Then I'll work on the current gifty project. That and an hour or so of hand quilting should pretty well fill up the day.

Sandy, host of the podcast "Quilting for the Rest of Us," recently did a podcast on quilt documentation (http://quilter.podbean.com/2010/10/28/episode-27-in-which-we-document-our-quilts-10-28-2010/#comments). I am showing here the documentation portfolio I set up about 10 years ago. I will also confess that the most recent entries are from 2001. I think when I made the switch from film to digital photography, I quit making a paper record. And frankly, I went through a long spell where I finished nothing. Sandy has encouraged me to do better, and I'm going to spend some time thinking about how to update this system.

I started the portfolio around the time I was being encouraged to think of myself as an artist, not just someone who twiddles with fabric as a hobby. Having a portfolio is something artists do, so I chose that format rather than some sort of notebook.

The idea was to have a standard page of information about the quilt, at least one photograph,

and anything else that seemed important about the quilt. In one case I included a smaller version of the block that made up a table runner. In a couple of cases, I included a printout of the schematic I made in EQ software. The information included a completion date (but not a starting date :-) ), the name of the block or blocks used, the type of quilting used, and anything that was special about the quilt (made for a raffle, etc.). These pictures aren't the best because the vinyl cover on the pages wants to reflect light, so I had to take them without flash, but they give a general idea of what an entry for a given quilt might look like. Every entry was to be no more than the front and back of one page in the portfolio, but since they are oversized pages, that actually is quite a bit of room.

This is what the printed information page looks like. I had a template in the computer, that I could modify as needed.

The entry for this Christmas runner included 2 photographs and samples of the fabrics used, mounted together on a separate piece of paper.

This was the one where I made a small version of the block and included it in the entry.

This is an example of the EQ layout from another quilt.

When I pulled out the portfolio to take these pictures, I found a bonus in the back - several sets of Stack and Slash blocks in various stages of completion, neatly interleaved between blank pages. Evidently I did a workshop on this technique for my local guild, and these were the class samples. There are 24 blocks all together, so here is the beginning of another quilt (or yet another UFO, but I'm trying not to think about that right now). These fabrics are mostly leftovers from the quilt I made for my dad in the mid-80's, a quilt I sleep under now that the weather has turned cool enough for a quilt on the bed. Not sure where the finished quilt will end up going, but it looks like an easy finish, so it might get done next year.

As for what I am actually sewing on right now, it's a Christmas present for somebody, so I can't talk about it.

Favorite Things Friday

Since the UPS man just drove up with the fabric that I ordered from Equilter.com so I would have enough for Theresa's quilt, right now my favorite thing is a Big Brown Truck. When you live in Small Town America, you have to depend on the postal service and the other parcel carriers to bring you the things you want and need. The mail truck is always a welcome sight, even when all the carrier leaves is bills and catalogs; I'll put up with those for the days when the truck also brings me treasure.

Today the treasure is fabric. The kind folks at Equilter.com called to tell me they didn't have a 10 yard piece, but had one that was nearly, and two other small pieces, a total of about 15 yards. I bought it all. Now I know that there is no more to be had in the world, and one way or another I will have to make it work.

I still have a little sewing to do before I'm ready to take a picture of the center section. I'll try to get that posted tomorrow.

This is what the very center of the quilt looks like. You can begin to see how complete circles weave together at the intersections. It will be clearer when the melons are added to the outer edge, but even now it's starting to come together.

I've learned a couple of things so far. One is that this background fabric is not printed symmetrically, so it's hard to cut all the pieces indentically. I'm doing the best I can and going for overall effect rather than absolute identity. Another is that there is a LOT of waste in the cutting. Fortunately www.equilter.com had more yardage, so I've ordered another 10 yards just to be sure I have enough. I've tried a couple of different layouts and they all seem to leave about the same amount of waste, although this one with the light center at least lets me get 2 pieces out of a width of fabric. I've also decided I may vary the layout from the center to the outer edge, enhancing the light-to-dark shading effect.

In the piecing, I've had to make two modifications from the way I did James and Crystal's quilt. One was to make marking templates so I can mark off where the cornerstone seam would be if there was one, since the end of the melon background lines up with that, and so I can mark the center of the arc, since it's not the center of the piece of fabric. I've also had to clip the fabric at the cornerstone seam when I sew the arc pieces together for ease.

In some ways the sewing seems slower than it should be, but I keep forgetting that I'm not doing the tedious paper piecing of the arcs. So If the cutting and marking takes more time, I think I'm still coming out ahead. The main thing is to keep everything labeled and right side up. Thank goodness for sticky notes, highlighting tape, and a good seam ripper.

The plan is now final. Even with the fabrics I bought last week, I wasn't sure that I had what I really wanted, so I went rooting through a box of fabrics I had pulled for a set of crazy blocks. Lo and behold, I found exactly what I was looking for, and since I only need one ring of each of these lights, a fat quarter is enough. One of the pieces had been cut into, so I did some tracing of templates to be sure I had enough of that fabric, and I do, so we're good to go.

So here's the plan. The fabrics on the left are the lights, and they will go in the center of the quilt. The ones in the middle are the mediums, and they will encircle the lights. Then on the right are the darks, and they will form the outer ring. The one thing I realized as I was drawing the working diagram is that I need another set for the arcs that will intersect the outer edge of those dark rings. But I have a good quantity of blacks that can be pressed into service; I'm not going to worry about those right now.

The basic plan is the same as before, but it has a lot more tones of teal in it. It will still shade from light to dark from the center out. I'm not bothering to redo my colored pencil sketch, because it shows what I really need it to. The most important diagram right now is this one:

It has every block labeled by row and column and every arc labeled by fabric. When I start to sew I need to know that I am working on block C3 and the arc at the top has fabric L1 and M2 in it. This is the chart that keeps the fabric labels straight:

And to be extra sure I don't get them mixed up I have each fabric labeled as well.

Tomorrow I should be able to start cutting fabric. I'll do the first block with fabric I have plenty of in case I need to adjust the templates. Before the weekend is over I should at least have something sewn together.

I finally have a plan for Theresa's double wedding ring. I've had a picture in my mind of what I wanted for at least six months, but couldn't figure out how to make it, or even get it down on paper. Of course, in all this time I didn't actually sit down with paper or pencils, I just fussed about it. Finally, last night, it started to come together.

It started with a lovely light turquoise and gray print that just seemed to say Theresa to me. Because she is young and hip and graphic, I thought about doing the rings in shades of gray. So I started collecting gray fabrics. And I wanted to have whole rings, not pieced ones, that would intersect with each other across the quilt.

So here's the rough sketch of what I'm going to do:

When I put a template on the background fabric I realized that this too needs to be made in 24-inch rings, the same size as Crystal's. That helps. Once I knew that I could lay out a 6x6 grid and start putting in colors. Of course the grays all look alike in the picture, and the blue shading i put in the center doesn't show up much, but this is the general idea. The center of the quilt will be lighter than the edges, and there is a definite way each of these rings intersects. And each arc will be a single piece of fabric, rather than 7 as in Crystal's quilt.

These are the fabrics I have as of now:

The red/coral will be a sort of "surprise" in the construction, appearing at random places. But something seemed to come alive in the mix when I added it, and I think in a very small amount it will work wonders.

I also bought this lovely shaded turquoise fabric on one of my buying trips. It too seems to add something, but it's not quite the right shade. And I'm not sure what to do with it. So for now, it's on the table waiting for its chance to tell me what it needs to be.

The problem is that all the grays are pretty much the same value. There's some difference, but not a lot. But I just haven't seen any lighter ones that really do the job.

So there will be more fabric shopping in the near future. But I have something to work with. And that's farther along than I've been so far.

Vacation is well and truly over. Downloading the pictures from the camera makes it official. It was a great week and a half, and of course it was much too short.

The main event was a trip to Iowa to spend time with my friend Amy working on the double wedding ring. It was a day and a half on the road to get there, even without exploring interesting places along the way. I always knew there was a place on this earth where I would fit right in:

On the way home I stopped here to get gas. I got to see the Peculiar Bank and the Peculiar Lion's Club and the Peculiar Pharmacy. Clearly these people are proud of the place they call home. The countryside in Iowa was very green. It reminded me a lot of Alberta except for the terracing of the slopes. Mostly it was planted in corn and beans, just like home. But one thing they do have, that we don't have here, is barn quilts. I saw three or four different ones in our rambles around the countryside. Makes me wish I had a barn.

The best part was getting to spend time with Amy and work on the quilt. It seems like we hardly made a dent in it in the 5 days we had, but it was great fun. There were visits to quilt shops, and routine checks for sale yarn. There was good cooking and good eating. And lots and lots of talking. You'd think we never talk to each other.

Now I'm back home and have to rely on the quilting assistants here. Princess is doing a good job of keeping the quilt from lifting off the table while I work on it. Bart patrols the floor in case orange yarn drops from the sky or a ball of mohair strays from the drawer mohair lives in. I wish one or the other of them would learn to use a thimble and help with the stitching. But meanwhile they do what they do very well. You take what you can get.

The good news is that the studio storage wall has gone from looking like this:

to looking like this:

Yes, it's a shelf piled high with boxes, but the boxes are all similar in size and shape, and they are LABELLED. The labels are even somewhat color-coded, although I ran out of one color and had to switch. Projects that were lurking in other places have been pulled out of hiding and are now assigned to a storage box. The scrap bins have found another place to live. And I pretty much know what everything is.

The bad news is that every one of those plastic boxes represents an unfinished quilt. Some have completed tops and are just waiting to be quilted. Others have a block or two completed. And I wish I could say that's the lot of them, but I can't. There are other projects I don't have boxes for at the moment, and they are just being shuffled off to a corner for the time being.

Still, it's progress. The shelf got dusted as the boxes got taken down. A couple of projects were declared abandoned and the fabrics put back in stash. A couple of others have moved up the ladder to completion, since it doesn't seem like it will take a lot to finish them. And in the process I've created enough new storage space that I don't think I'm going to have to move in extra shelves after all, although I haven't completely resolved the problem of where to store my dying equipment.

Next to tackle the notions and embellishments.

The baby is at the longarmers to be basted. The house feels kind of empty, like when one of the kitties is at the vet or something. A being that should be here isn't. But then very soon Baby will be leaving for good, so I guess this is a good time to get used to the idea.

I really need a name for this quilt, other than "The DWR" or "The Baby." I need a name that says it is this particular DWR, not just any one. It's going to James and Crystal, but it's not really "James and Crystal's DWR." I need a name that describes the unique beauty of this quilt. Something to ponder during the quilting phase.

Meanwhile I am giving the studio a major makeover. At least in terms of pulling stuff out of cubbyholes and seeing what space can be used for what. Right now it's the UFO's in various stages that have me scratching my head. These are the kinds I have identified so far:

1. There are fabric collections and scraps from finished tops. I know as soon as I put them back in stash and use them up I'll want them for something, so they need to stick together until the label goes on the quilt, or at least until the binding goes on. But maybe if they have their own storage area I can more easily monitor those tops and move them along toward being quilted.

2. There are tops in progress. These have at least one block sewn. I'm including in here collections of blocks I've received in swaps, even though I haven't really figured out what to do with them. This group has blocks, fabrics, scraps, and hopefully a pattern. Again, having them all together might help keep this group from getting any larger than it is.

3. There are quilts that haven't been started yet, but for which fabrics have been collected. Some of these are just a collection of fabrics that need to go together into a quilt, without even a design yet. Those right now are living on the narrow shelves under my main fabric storage. There's room enough for everything and I can see what's there. I'm also putting fabrics that have sufficient yardage for backing there.

4. And there are scrapbuster projects. These have no completion goal, they are just things I work on whenever I want to just sew without thinking. There are pieces cut to size, some finished blocks, maybe some directions. These need to live together so they don't get mixed up with other projects that I really do have a completion date in mind for.

I started with putting projects in plastic storage boxes on the shelf over the fabric storage. But I've run out of room, and the boxes are rather untidily stacked, and I just need for it to feel like more of a system. Labels will help. Maybe color-coded labels?

I'm pondering on all of this while I'm finishing up the Sprout quilt. I finished the machine quilting yesterday, and today I will sew on the binding. Just a few more hearts for handquilting, and it will be ready to send off to the new baby.

The assembly of the double wedding ring has begun. The first "block" was a bit scary, but I eventually figured out that it was the same kind of seaming that I had been doing in the construction of the individual blocks, the only new element being the seam through the middle of the 4-patch (yellow in the photo above). At this point 6 of the 9 blocks are sewn together, and I'm in the process of creating the extra "melon" pieces I will need for the left and bottom edges.

That and trying to make the blocks lie a little flatter. Since I'm going to be taking it to a long-armer for basting I don't want any major bumps or bubbles in it. Today I decided to try giving the block a good spritzing with water, letting it sit for a minute or two to "relax" the fibers, then pressing the seams well and letting it come to nearly dry on the ironing table. I will then let the blocks lie flat overnight to finish drying. It seems to be helping a lot; as I suspected, I did a fair amount of stretching of the fabric as I sewed, and this is giving all that a chance to relax back into shape. I also changed the direction I pressed the seams partway through (when I went back and reread the directions in John Flynn's book). so am correcting that as much as I can as I go.

Still meditating on how to quilt the large background areas. I'm saying to myself over and over again "Keep it simple, stupid. Keep it simple." It's not just a matter of time; I don't want to do anything that's going to compete with that lovely pattern. Some is needed for the sake of keeping the batting from going wonky. But I'm thinking as little as possible. I even read the instructions on the batting package yesterday; it says 2-4 inches. There's still time to think about that, and Amy may have a good idea too.

Last week I decided it was time for a change of scenery, so took advantage of the slow holiday week and took off for the Ozarks. In order to have an objective for the trip other than just getting out of Dodge I planned a quilt shop hop. Arkansas Quilters Guild had done a mammoth shop hop at the end of April and their list of shops was still posted on their web site, so I was able to look at that list and a map, and plan a trip that was reasonably sensible. I left right after the Memorial Day service at the cemetary on Monday and got home by suppertime on Wednesday. Between Tuesday morning and noon on Wednesday I visited 9 shops, and came home with some lovely fabric and a few other treasures to play with over the coming weeks.

Visiting those shops gave me an opportunity to reflect on what makes a quilt shop worth traveling out of your way to visit. For me at least, the first criterion is fabric selection. I want enormous variety. It's why I visited Kay's shop in Vicksburg even when the stuff was so crammed you could hardly move and the lighting was terrible; she has the bolts, and no one else aroun here does. (And her new store is lovely, and I hope she's proud of what her hard work has accomplished.) And of all the shops I visited, The Country Corner in Harrison, AR definitely had the fabric. I had to resist the temptation to spend all my money there and go home. I did, but I still left with 2 bags full.

The second reason I would put a quilt shop on my "Visit Again" list is atmosphere. Some shops have an ambiance all their own. Whether it's the way things are displayed, or the selection of merchandise, it's clear that the shop owner has a vision and isn't trying to do everything, just what she or he can do well. Remember Me in Mountain Home, and Quilted Heart in Horseshoe Bend were two that fit this category. They were the kind of shop that is fun to poke around in, because you know you are likely to find something that not every shop has.

The third reason is the staff. I will visit a shop with a spectacular inventory even if the staff are indifferent, but a competent and friendly staff will make me revisit a shop that has even a humdrum inventory. Quilter's Corner Fabric in Heber Springs is definitely in this group. Their collection of fabric is small (although the bargain prices help make it attractive), but I had a lovely time chatting with the owner. And at the end of my visit, she presented me with a tote bag from the guild shop hop; it was that personal touch that put that shop on the "Visit Again" list.

So, a lovely ramble through the hills, in spite of the heat. Met some interesting people, saw some interesting places, and came home with toys to keep me occupied for a little while. And 4 shops out of 9 that are worth going back to. Pretty shop hop, I say.

I can finally show the picture of the first quilt I've finished this year:


I made it as a birthday present for my friend Amy, so of course I couldn't show it until she had seen it, since she does pop in here once in a while. I bought the fabric on my last trip to the Ozarks about 5 years ago, and found it when I was going through scrap bins looking for fabrics for the Sprout Quilt. I had a great time working out the setting. And the fabric for the backing is just fabulous:
Amy likes it, and I'm pleased with it, even if some of the points aren't quite perfect and the quilting isn't professional quality.

I've started the quilting on the Sprout Quilt, but have temporarily put it aside until I can get to Monroe and buy more lime green cotton thread. I decided to work a feather stitch over the seams between the blocks and the sashings, and that takes a good deal of thread. I'm working on a list; I know I will need more battings soon as well.

While I had the surfaces cleared I decided to go ahead and baste another top that will work for a young child's quilt. Can't get a picture until the basting is done, and I'm waiting on an order of tatting thread to do that.

So with everything else stalled out, it's back to the Double Wedding Ring. Blocks are getting assembled. I can count how many of each type of piece I need. It's a number less than infinity. This is progress.

I'm not sure why it is, but this time of year seems to be a particularly creative one for me. I'm working at a furious pace in the studio right now, and remembering that it was about a year ago that I was doing exactly the same thing. Not sure why that should be, but I'm not going to insist that the muse follow the calendar. I'll take inspiration whenever it comes.

Maybe it was the announcement that the next honorary grandchild is to be a girl. It made me rush to the shelves and start pulling out lime green and pink fabrics and dig through the scrap drawer for the more "girly" kiddie prints. This was the result:

Right now it's about midway through the basting process. I took another picture of it this morning on the table:

This photo shows the colors better since I used my "real" camera with the flash instead of the iphone. It also shows that I'm trying to learn the technique Sharon Schamber uses for basting quilts. The test will be when the back comes out smooth with no puckers.

Right now I am in a basting and quilting mode. I had to clear off a lot of surfaces to get there. The ironing table needed to be cleared so I could iron whole quilts and backs. The cutting table had to be cleared to hold the quilt being basted. The sewing table had to be mostly cleared so I could scoot a quilt around under the machine arm and not send things crashing to the floor. As long as I'm set up, it makes sense to keep going. There are at least 2 more quilts ready for basting. And I'm learning that if I do a little bit at a time I don't get pains in my back or blisters on my needle-pulling fingers. So switching off between the basting and the quilting makes sense.

But in the mean time --- My friend Amy just finished a quilt that she started sometime back in the 80's, and one of her friends has just pulled out one of her antique projects and is giving it aother look. That made me think of a project that's been lurking in the dim dark recesses of my studio. And this morning I decided it would need to come out and play.I've been planning a quick get-away for next week to do a self-directed shop hop, and it occurred to me that this would make a fun project to work on in the evenings. So out it came:

I'm not really sure when I started this quilt, but I know it was in the 80's. For a long time it was a travel project; I have memories of working on it on trips to the mountains or to visit relatives. It's entirely hand-pieced. The hexagons measure 3 1/2 inches across. There are 32 full blocks, and I think each one has a different blue and a different cream floral print.

Two bits of good news. One is that the layout is done, and each block is labeled. If I can sew 1A to 1B, I'll be okay. The other is that all the fabrics used are in the box. I know I will need some partial blocks at some point, and there is plenty of fabric to create them. For now, I'll just see if I can get what I have sewn together.

Looking at the difference between those fabrics - which I was inordinately proud of at the time - and the ones I use today makes me wonder what I will be working with 20 years from now. Part of the evolution I know is that there is so much more variety available now than there was in the 80's, and that was a vast improvement over what had been available 10 years earlier. I just want fabulous colors and lots of choices.

And in the spirit of finishing projects that have been hanging around forever - I finally made the last 2 wire cubbies to finish out this fabric storage wall.

I've had the kit for at least 2 years, but there just didn't seem to be any rush to get it done. On the other hand, it makes me ridiculously happy that it is finally done. I even had enough pieces left over to create a small free-standing unit with 2 more cubbies. Not sure where it's going yet, but for now it's holding the stuff I needed to move off the ironing table - just standing in the middle of the floor. I wonder how long it will take me to move it from there. Meanwhile, the yellows looks quite happy to have a home of their own, separated from the oranges. And clearly they need more playmates.

I can't believe it's been over three months since I updated my blog. What I really can't believe is how much of a difference having DSL makes to being able to upload pictures. What used to take hours now is done in less time than it takes to eat a hot dog. So maybe this will happen more often.

It's also true that I couldn't show or talk about most of what I was knitting during November and December since it was destined for gifts. The Canadian bunch all got scarves and wraps -about 60 feet worth of scarves and wraps. It was a lot of knitting in a short time, but it made me happy to do it, and the smiles and hugs were definitely worth a few late nights.

But now it's January, and I'm off on new adventures. At least new variations on old themes. Because it's winter, I'm working on hats for the Arkansas Children's Hospital, with a goal of cranking out one a week. I'm also working through old acrylic stash because I'm tired of looking at it; by the end of the year I'd like for all of it to be gone and replaced with newer, better quality yarns. Hat number 1 for the year is this one: It's the basic 80-stitch watch cap, but partway through I began to 1)worry about running out of yarn, and 2) think this was terribly dull for a young person. So I threw in some purled stripes. That got me thinking that it would be fun to see how many variations on the 80-stitch watch cap I could come up with in the course of a year without using lacy stitches.

Hat #2 came out like this:

It started out as a kind of diamond pattern, but I didn't like the points, so decided to hide them behind bobbles. These bobbles are a bit large, but I decided to just leave them alone and try something different on the next hat. In the process I learned how to knit backwards so I didn't have to turn the work while I was making the bobbles, and that was totally cool. So I'll play with this idea for a bit and see what happens.

My other new adventure for the year has to do with knitting socks. This is my last pair made from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks book. I have loved working from this book, and this pair, made from a blend of merino wool and possum, are among my favorites. I worked them toe-up with a short-row heel and they fit my feet perfectly.

But of course, having achieved perfection, now I have to try something different. Last summer I found Cat Bordhi and her innovative ways of shaping socks. At the time I didn't want to think new thoughts about making socks, so I put the book away. But as the new year approached, and other knitters talked about spending a year with Elizabeth Zimmerman or other designers who provide challenges, I decided 2010 would be the year of Cat Bordhi for me. I dug out New Pathways for Sock Knitters and sat down to patiently read through all the instructions. I even followed the suggestion of knitting a "learning sock" to get the basic idea of the architecture before starting in on an adult sized pair. This is my first learning sock.

I didn't follow the instructions about being careful about gauge, and so this sock will not fit any normal human foot, but I fell in love with the way the increases are made at the top of the arch and the back of the foot just wraps around to make the heel.

The next challenge was to measure my own feet and develop "magic numbers" that would translate into a pattern that would fit my feet. I did that this week, and started a pair of grown-up socks in this pattern. I only have a couple of inches done, but I slid it onto my ankle yesterday just to prove that I had done it right - and I have! I can hardly wait to get to the arch and the heel.

So I'm off and running for 2010. Lots of plans for the year. There are babies to be born and weddings in the works, and my feet still love handmade wool socks on a chilly day.