Thanksgiving Wishes

Wishing you all a joyful and peaceful Thanksgiving.

Very 'Revealing' Stockings!

Recently I participated in a stocking swap hosted by Andrea over at Indigo Blue. The only requirements were to make a Christmas stocking and put a card with it to send to our swap partners. Now that the swap is over, I can FINALLY reveal what I sent and what I received.





First- this is what I received from Molly over at 'Crocheting My Best With My Worsted': It's a felt stocking embellished with different stitches from her sewing machine. It's sooooooooooo pretty! She also included a little Christmas tree cut out done in the same fashion. Also included with the lovely stocking is a crochet pattern book of baby ripple afghans. It's all so great. I will definitely use the pattern book. I love to do ripples when I crochet. Many, many thank yous to Molly for such lovely gifts.

What makes these gifts so special is that Molly has MS and is also dealing with multiple eye surgeries. She has her good days and some not so good days. But she most definitely manages to stay busy with her crafting and crocheting and does such beautiful work. No amount of thank yous will ever be enough to let Molly know how much I appreciate her efforts and her gifts.





Next- This is what I made for Molly: I did red work embroidery on bleached muslin and trimmed it with red and white striped fabric for heel, toe, and cuff. This was great fun to make. I love to embroider when I can and this just seemed like the thing to do with this stocking for Molly.



Doing this swap helped me get into the holiday spirit and has me wanting to do other projects for Christmas. It has gotten fairly cold here in New England, even though we still have some warmer days here and there. But this seasonal weather has helped boost the want for doing holiday projects as well.

Again, very many thanks to Molly for the lovely gifts and also to Andrea for hosting the swap. I hope to participate in more swaps of various kinds in the future. This was soooooooooo much fun.

Have a knit pickin' good day y'all!

Happy Halloween!

Just a boo and trick and a treat for you! Happy Halloween to all you ghosts and goblins too! Be safe. Have fun. And hope you get lots of goodies...WOO HOO!

A Sneak Peek

This is a tiny 'sneak peek' at what's happening on the Christmas Stocking Swap front. This has been so much fun to do. I get to work on it a little at a time as time allows...and as I feel like it. I was put on some new meds this past week and OH BROTHER...have they made me sick! But each day gets a little better and all should be fine in a couple of weeks.



But anyway, in the mean time, I do a little here and there and mainly I've been working on Molly's stocking. I love to make Christmas stockings. I made them for all of my six children...and for all of my eight grand children. And I've made a gazillion others through the years for various reasons. They are just fun to do mainly because there are sooooooooo many different ways they can be made. The possibilities are endless. So it never gets old and each one is like doing a stocking for the very first time.

I can't divulge more than this today as this is a surprise for Molly, but a little teaser isn't a bad thing either!


I hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was quiet and mostly spent under the quilts on the bed as it was cold and wet outside. But really perfect weather for staying snuggled up and still while trying to adjust to new medication. Sometimes things really do work out for the best - even if it does involve crappy weather.

Have a knit pickin good day y'all!

Some Reflectin', Some Quiltin', and Some Knittin'

I've been on a sabbatical for some time now while I've tried to figure things out where my life is concerned. I took time off from writing and pretty much everything else. I've functioned in a most repetitive, robotical, mechanical kind of way for a few weeks now. But seems the time has come to snap out of the funk and get on with things. That's a good thing, BELIEVE ME.

My heartfelt thanks to all those who wrote to me expressing concern and sending me well wishes. They were (and YOU ARE) appreciated more than you know!



While things are still not back to 100% in some areas of my life, I have been doing what I know best...in the creativity department at least. I've been sewing, and quilting, and knitting. It's been excellent therapy except for the fact that I'm soooooooooo slow and don't turn out the projects as fast as I'd like. And I've had Christmas as inspiration to create the determination to get some things done. So, as the Christmas deadline is ALREADY looming (gees, where did the time go this year?!), I've cranked it up a few notches and have two quilts, two knitted afghans, and various other small projects in the works.



I would have preferred to be singing with the band and staying busy on that front, but it just hasn't made itself available to me for a while now as I've had no gumption in that aspect of my creativity. My music has ALWAYS been the best medicine for whatever ails my soul, but even this, my real love of all things that I love, hasn't been the fix I've needed. But what I have done is listen to an awful lot of it whilst working on other said projects...with a few bottles of wine to keep it all company.



So the wine days are behind me now...at least in bottle form. Maybe a glass of it here and there. It's nice to have it in front of the fire in the evenings...now that's it's cool enough to have a fire in the evenings. (I can't believe we're already facing winter and sub freezing temps and snow...LOTS of snow - UUGGHH).



But anyway, the quilting has been great. And the knitting has been great. Along the way, I've discovered some great places to shop for fabric and yarn in Providence, RI and Fairhaven, MA. I've come up with some fab deals in those areas to keep me going on this front. The inspiration has been tremendous and it constantly fuels the want to finish all these projects.

Some peeks here at what's OTN and in the quilt frame. Can't divulge too much cuz it spoils surprises ya know!



Here again...I'm STILL without a decent camera to take pics good enough to do them justice here. My phone is all I have and seems the more I use it, the worse the picture quality gets. But it's all I have for now and will have to do...still! Renovating a house and just trying to make ends meet these days leaves money for little else...and the camera thing is definitely considered a "luxury" at this point.

This past week I joined a 'Christmas Stocking Swap' that Andrea over at Indigo Blue is hosting. This should be lots of fun. I've not participated in a swap before and I loooooooooooove to make Christmas Stockings. My swap partner is Molly from sewquiltwhatever and crochetingmyworsted. (Sorry, but even after all these months of blogging, I STILL don't know how to create a link within my own blog. I CANNOT figure it out!!!) You can catch their blogs <------- over to the side here in my blog list. But this stocking swap thing should be lots of fun and am going to get started on that this week.

It's good to be back and am hoping to get back here to post more often. There's lots going on in the way of beautiful fall scenery here in New England and the critters in the house are always entertaining and I'm busy, busy, busy with the projects.

Have a knit pickin' good day ya'll!

Sunny Daze

It's been a while since I've been here to post anything. A lot going on and I've been busy.

As the the temperatures start to fall and sure signs of Autumn are making their presence known here in New England signaling the end of summer and a new new season upon us, so do the winds of change blow in my own life.

When I started this blog back in the spring, it was with great enthusiasm and hope of all things new and exciting. I mainly classified my blog as a knitting blog, but knew it would be more than that in the creativity department. I do lots of things and knew I would want to talk about those other crafty things too. But I've also talked about personal issues and opinions. I've lamented about some not so happy things that have happened at some point in my life and in my head. I've talked about fun things and silly things too.

These days, I deal with a lot of personal internal struggle about the direction(s) my life should go. I try to stay busy with the knitting and sewing and quilting to keep that aspect of my life alive and ongoing. But sometimes it isn't enough to overcome overwhelming feelings of stress, depression, dread, fear and uncertainty. Suffice it to say, I'm still here and am still breathing and am still trying to figure things out. To say the very least, it has kept me away from the blogger as I've not had much enthusiasm about projects I'm working on, nor have I had the true desire to sit here and type for the words just don't come easily and readily the last few weeks.

All the while, I've kept reading your blogs and have enjoyed watching your summers unfold with all your great projects and food and activities and families and friends.

As of this moment, I just don't know how often I'll get back here to write. I'm hoping the blogging mojo will kick in again soon and I can cheerily chatter on about my projects a few times a week like I once did not so very long ago. In the meantime, I'm just kind of in a fog...or a daze, if you will, and know not what to do...or what to say...to anyone...about anything.

On an up note, I did manage to hit a few yard sales this summer and found a few things that definitely made improvements in my life - i.e. - a sewing machine! A nice one that works great and does everything I need it to do. Because of that nifty little purchase, I've been able to get back to the quilting I sooooooo longed for. Am currently working on a quilt of the small people kind: something for a grandbaby. I pieced the top last week and now have it in the frame doing the quilting (by hand of course). So in addition to the what seems like 47 different knitting projects I have under way, so do I now have the quilt projects up and running too. YAY!!!! I'll post photos at some point of the current quilt project and the one that will follow immediately after (2 quilts in the works). I can't really post pics now as it would spoil surprises for the intended. And I know the mama of the recipient(s) reads this blog!

I hope you all had a fabulous summer. I hope the Autumn will bring even greater joys to you all. Fall is my favotite time of year and I live in the perfect place for such a season. Fall in New England is truly spectacular - just like what you see in magazines, books and TV. This particular Autumn I think will be new beginnings for me and I hope to lavish in all it's autumnal beauty and splendor while trying to figure things out.

Hope to see you all soon!

Man The Life Boats!

It rained yesterday...and rained, and rained, and rained. Here in the Southcoast region of Massachusetts we got a storm system from the west that converged with the remnants of tropical storm Danny. It dumped a LOT of rain overnight Friday and ALL DAY Saturday.

I was dumb enough to get out in all the rain yesterday afternoon and go to the grocery store. My sweetie called me while I was on my wet little jaunt to make sure I was OK. We were under flood warnings...and I did have to cross a couple of partially flooded streets to get to my destination and back again.

During this phone call, sweetie said he'd been down in the basement to see if there was water coming in to a place that's prone to leakage when it rains a lot. At that particular time he said it was damp, which is normal. It all checked out OK and he went on his merry way.

An hour later when I got home and dried out some, I went to the basement to get a load of wash from the dryer. At the top of the stairs I flipped the light on and started to take a step but STOPPED! dead. in. my. tracks. - for lo and behold, at the bottom of the stairs was water. LOTS of water. I hollered to sweetie to COME HERE NOW!!! We both ventured down to find the whole basement with about 2 inches of water...and the sump pump in the frech drain WAS NOT WORKING!!

Nearest we could figure after about 20 minutes of investigating was that the city storm drain system was flooded to the point of backing up into our property and caused the french drain to clog and the sump pump couldn't function. All this happened in about 90 minutes time - from the time he'd been down to check just prior to the phone call until the grim discovery at the top of the stairs just minutes later.


Sweetie did some digging into the drain and surmised that the valve inside had slammed shut from all the water. He fixed it and got it to working again. It was slow to drain, but it WAS draining! He got the shop vac and started to clean up. I got the big push broom and was pulling water away from the washer and dryer. We did this periodically all evening and he worked some into the night. This morning it was mostly dry save for a big area rug that's in front of the washer and dryer. It's gonna have to be thrown out. The de-humidifier has been working over time for sure.

All the while when were cleaning up I kept thinking "where's the the rubber duckies and the little toy boats when you need them?" It was a little kids paradise for sure!

In all the commotion of trying to figure where the water was coming from and the subsequent clean up, I didn't think to take pictures of our first flood. Maybe next time....and I'm sure there will be a next time. It's just part of life here.

So goes the life of living on the coast in southern New England. But I wouldn't have it any other way!!

Another Fun Give A Way!

Quilt n Quilt Things is having a cool give away to celebrate her blogaversary. The stuff she's giving away is all quilt related and if you want to check it all out and get in on it, go here: www.quiltfever3.blogspot.com

Good Luck!

Knit Pickin' - Catching Up

A few weeks ago I posted about some knitted throw pillows I was working on. I finished them recently but am just now getting around to showing you the finished product.


Whilst working on these, I got side tracked with making pincushions...aaaand working on a couple of other knitted projects...aaaand keeping up with every day life. I get all scattered like that very often as I think of new projects I want to take on while I'm working on something else. I have a hard time waiting to start something new, so the current project gets put to the side until I've done enough on the new project to warrant guilt for dropping the previous project in favor of the new one.


So...

It takes me a while to complete said projects - but I do get them completed...eventually.




So, these nifty little striped knitted throw pillow were fun to do. They were absolutely mindless in the knitting. I wanted something simple in design and technique. It was about having fun with the colors.

Normally I knit with nice wools...usually Merino wool - and the softer the better! But when searching for yarn to do accent pillows, the colors I came up with in the various wools available to me fell quite short of what I was looking for. I found nothing that would even begin to coordinate with what I have going in my living room. I don't usually use acrylics of any kind, but I saw this stuff in A.C. Moore and knew it was what I needed to do the job.


These yarns are from the Vanna White Collection by Lion Brand yarns. They're very soft without being fuzzy, so little chance of pilling with wear and tear. They're nice and springy and form quite nicely to whatever gauge I need for the project. And it was really quite nice to work with. I enjoyed it very much...and still am!

So now I have cool little colorful pillows that will please for a long time to come. There are more of these little gems in the hopper; same colors but different patterns. Will end up with about ten pillows by the time it's all said and done. I LOVE throw pillows...and the more the better!


So now I'm off to work some on the one I currently have on the needles before I get summoned to do something else that will take me away from it till who knows when!


Have a knit pickin' good day ya'll!

Quilting - It's A Family Thing

I was born into and grew up with very talented and creative women in my family. My family lineage is steeped in generations of seamstresses, knitters, crocheters, tatters, quilters, and needle crafters to no end. For as long as I can remember, these things have been going on all around me.

I don't know much about my dad's family. I was taken away from them at a very young age and they were never talked about in our house. So I don't know whether or not there were creatively talented women in the Daniel family. In my adult years, it's something I've never researched. I've preferred to keep that distance my mother set for us early on. But I think I'm getting close to wanting to know more about where I come from, for I know there are TWO sides to a family and those two sides make up the whole of who I am genetically. It will be worth looking into someday. But all I've heard about my whole life is my mother's family and the rich heritage it offers it abundant ways.



Even my step dad's family offers quite a lot in the way of sewing, quilting, and creating through the generations. My mother found old quilts dating back to the late 1700's stored away in my step grandparents dairy barn in Arkansas. They were traced back to my step dad's mother's family in Ohio and Pennsylvania and were quite the treasures indeed. My mother was so taken with one of the quilts she found that she meticulously studied the pattern and the fabrics it was made of in order to make one herself. She recreated the pattern and searched far and wide until she found the exact same fabrics. It was beautiful when she finished. And it was pure pure joy for her to recreate this wondrous work of art.

A great aunt of mine in Texas is a nationally known quilter: Minnie Ola 'Olie' Perryman of Gatesville, Texas. She took that same pattern to make the same quilt for herself. A picture of her with that quilt with an article about the history of the Prickly Pear quilt are featured in the book 'Lone Stars: A Legacy Of Texas Quilts 1936-1986.'



My younger sister and I have been sewing and quilting since we were 'knee high to a grasshopper'. In the same tradition my grandmother learned to quilt from her mother, so did my sister and I learn the craft. My grandmother could recall being three years old and sitting next to her mother at the quilt frame with needle and thread quilting right along. My grandmother did the same thing with my sister and I when we were very young. We both learned to sew on her mother's old Singer treadle sewing machine. I was six and my sister was around five I think. We were the same ages sitting next to her at the quilt frame with needle in hand quilting right along also. My grandmother had my youngest daughter sitting beside her at the age of three showing her how to push the needle along in whatever quilt she had in the frame at the time.

I've spent all my life quilting. I've spent that life with my mothers family as deep inspiration for keeping the craft alive. My sister does the same thing. We both do quilting by hand as has been passed down in our family. The hand quilting is a preference. We know machine quilting seems to be THE thing to do these days. It's evident in monthly quilt publications as they advertise elaborate, expensive quilting machines and the quilts that have been produced by these machines. More and more quilters and their elaborately machined quilts are featured. Granted these quilts are beautiful, but they don't have the same look, feel, aesthetic quality, or artistic value as a hand quilted quilt has. Long gone is the simplicity that hand quilting offers.

These days I don't quilt so much. I have a sewing machine that is in non working order and don't have a quilt frame to my name any longer. I am also poor as a church mouse and not capable of changing these particular statuses at this time. I don't know when I will be able to change it. Not in the foreseeable future for sure. So to make up for it, I knit and crochet like crazy, preferring to knit. My sister on the other hand does have her sewing machine which is in working order and a quilt frame in hand and keeps them both busy.


My sister Rosanne, who lives in San Antonio, Texas spends a lot of time sitting at her quilt frame hand stitching along. Her 'significant other' gave her a Grace quilt frame for Christmas and she's had something going in it ever since. But she's been quilting for far longer than that.


She is a stay at home mom with a seven year old still in tow. She has a 22 year old who is still living at home also while she works and goes to school. But she's working to get her married off ASAP! In the midst of taking care of all that needs taking care of while wrangling kids, managing a household, taking care of 'significant other', and doing the daily 'must do's', she manages to find the time to sit at the frame and quilt some most every day...even in the horrendous heat Texas is currently experiencing - 105 degrees in San Antonio every day for the past two weeks for sure. And one of the air conditioners in her house conked out a while ago, so she is definitely feeling the heat in her house! But she marches right along on the quilt no matter what. I admire her tenacity.


I remember long after I married, left home and was living in Colorado, getting a letter in the mail from my grandmother in Texas bragging about my little sister and her first quilt. She was of junior high age at the time and had been working with my grandmother and great aunt Olie to make a beautiful Fan quilt. It was done in different shades of blue with white lace edging the fans. It was beautiful indeed. She's been quilting ever since. She's has always managed to stay in practice with quilting no matter her situation and how many times she's moved over the years.

<
Her current project is what you see in photos here. She says it's kind of a hodge podge of stuff in piecing and quilting. She sends me pictures of the progress and I'm always impressed with the ideas she comes up with as she goes along. She's doing lots of different quilting designs as she goes: so far there are little birds, and butterflies, and triangles. She has other ideas swirling around in her head about what to do next. It's so cool that she can do this and it just works as it goes. I can hardly wait to see the finished product.


She and I talk often, pretty much every day. We text all day long. (It's a good thing we each have unlimited texting on our phone plans!) We talk about everything and the conversations always turn to the quilting and the knitting. We talk about our family traditions in this regard. We are each adamant about pursuing the family heritage and traditions in the ways of crafting - especially quilting. We are determined to keep the craft of hand quilting alive, no matter how small that impact may be on the quilting community as a whole.

We see for ourselves at craft fairs, and quilt shows, and monthly quilt
publications, and advertising of all sorts in the world of quilting that hand quilting is falling by the way side. Even the Grace Quilt Frame company has branched out and created frames that will accommodate quilting machines. It's a sad fact. We live in world of needing instant gratification which is what machine quilting offers. No one wants to take the time to preserve history in newly made quilts. Quilting has become as commercial as everything else in this world. It's all about mass production and money. An art form that was formed out of necessity hundreds of years ago is rapidly becoming a lost art. That's a horribly sad fact also.


No matter how busy our lives get, me and mine will always make the time to sit at a quilt frame and plug along one hand stitch at a time until we've created the work of art we desire. There's not much family left on my mother's side. Most are gone now, including my mother and grandmother. My sister and I hope they can see what she and I do today and are proud that we keep at least family tradition alive.

Happy quilting...and happy day!