finished to flimsy

As planned I finished up my "Tons of Black" Challenge piece yesterday afternoon.  I'm pleased with how it turned out.  Good size.  May work for a guy as I don't think the grayish green looks girl-y though it is a vine print.

I spent part of  last evening knitting---making some progress on this latest hat, playing with the double point needles.  Ordinarily I would not worry so much about capping the tips but I am still afraid the stitches might slip off the back end of the needle.  I just move them as I knit around and around.   I've got an inch or so to go before I begin the decrease.  I'm doing to try it on the circulars next, practicing what I picked up on the video links I posted recently.  Like the blue color??  Uh, make that "shaded dusk"

Today was Bama Belles day---the weather was kind of miserable--cold and wet but thankfully the rain seemed to slow down to that misty stuff when we had to haul things in from the car.  I'll report on that later as we had a bunch of quilts turned in at the meeting.  I did a little bit of sewing on the Criss Cross  pro bono top I had been working on at the Friendship Quilters sew-in.  Initially I had planned on putting the binding on my Christmas Patience Corner but I didn't want to be hauling that around in the rain.  It was already in the car, the car is NOT the pampered princess that gets to sit in the covered car port, not worth getting it wet when I can do it here at home.

Aline will have one for me to quilt but it was short backing fabric when the girls pinned it today.  Once that is straightened out, she'll bring it by.

So stay tuned---pics in a day or two!  You know where to find me----------

playing---edited

As much as I like the Trip Around the World (medallion) arrangement of the Mock Trip block, it is fun to play in EQ to find other ways of setting it.

Don'r get me wrong----any of the four examples in the Quilting Assistant file would work.  I just finished drawing up the "Many Trips Variation" and am about to attempt the Streak of Lighting variation too.

How about a straight furrows?  As they say in the pattern---"This simple block can arranged many way--because of the diagonal line.  In other words, any way that you can arrange a faux log cabin block or log cabin block will work for this block.

OHHH I like the flying geese arrangement on the examples of that website.  I should be sewing---and I was---row 5 is done but I stopped to play, LOL.  They say 4 blocks, 6 rows (24) or any even number.  Perfect!
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Okay---here are a couple more!

Streak of Lightening but oriented horizontally

Whatever this is!  It looks even better if you back up---like thumbnail it

Now I am seriously off to finish sewing this top---as soon as I give Skyler his treat bite and switch the laundry over, LOL.

And sew it goes-----------

Tons of Black Challenge

Half done with the "Tons of Black" Challenge piece----bottom half will be a mirror image of this.  I am liking how it is turning out though I keep having to flip seams.  It might have been easier to not press them in the first place but that would have made squaring them up a little harder, I guess.

And look who has to test out the pieces!   Actually he has been trying to get me away from the sewing machine to come play/chase him around the house.  He is NOT a cat that entertains himself very often.

I'll finish this up tomorrow---and then plan on putting the binding on my Christmas quilt for several days of hand work.

And sew it goes----------

and this!

and then there is this   DPNs vs two circulars vs something called Magic Loop  from Knitpicks.  Thanks, Paula the quilter---who knits.

Here is what I needed!

knitting ahead

My early Christmas present arrived today---woohoo! 15 different sizes of US 0 to US 15  2mm to 10 mm bamboo 8 inch long double points--5 in each size.

I had decided to try knitting this next hat on double points to avoid the seaming.  I probably need to set this up on 4 needles instead of 3 but that is how I  learned to do double points for mittens.  Of course mittens are way smaller in diameter than 72 stitches for a hat and one's head.  In the meantime I had put the tip protectors on either end to keep from dropping stitches which I had done a time or two while working on the ribbing. 

These can be found at http://www.StitchBerry.com but I found this set of them at amazon.com for 40 bucks off.  I've not tried bamboo needles before but I'll see how they work soon enough.

Well, back to sewing for me.  I had gotten a suggestion for re-sizing my pictures from Linda in KS and my lefthanded quilter pals so got myself side tracked doing that on the new "old" blog here and a few posts on the archived site.  It will be time consuming but should help the storage issues in the end.  The only way I know to be sure that I am not deleting an image I need too----no watermark.

Pokey today but no one ever said that I had to break the land speed record with this piecing. 

More blog content?

Now that I archived the older material to a 2nd blog  I need to get some material up here, on the original location!!  http://catsnqlts2archive.blogspot.com/ in case you need to book mark it.  Guess that means I better get busy doing something.

What prompted the move?  I had hit the maximum amount of storage for pictures.  Norma had done this with her blog and started another one rather than start paying for more.   It is working for her but I don't think it is going to do the trick for me.

The rates are like 2.50 or 5 bucks a month.  I think it is a bit of a rip off.  You know how sometimes you cannot get a picture to show up so you load it again-----all those dupes are stored and goes against your account, whether you could use them or not.   My left handed quilter friend suggested re-sizing the pictures.  Do they click bigger so you can actually see what you are looking at??    I suppose I could and hit the dupes at the same time?  When I can make some time to just fiddle on the computer.

I moved the posts to the archived blog.   I deleted the posts from this blog to start over.  Those posts exist but elsewhere but they still are labeled as being from the original location.  It appears that I lost a few pictures but that might be because I deleted some from picassa web.  Some I could replace fairly easily---others, not sure I have the pictures anymore due to computer crash in early 08.  The ones I deleted were in older titled blog albums that no longer exist but apparently the folder names do not change???   Some they won't let me delete.  I keep checking to see if the number of pictures is actually a true measure of what is going on but unless something magically happens in the next 8 hrs, IIWII. 

BTW too---the capacity measures google drive that I don't really use, google mail which I do use and picassa..  Anyway, deleting some other photo albums and some I should have kept, in retrospect,  dropped my capacity down to about 94% and bought me a little more time.  I honestly do not want to lose my old content as I refer to it often but may revisit that idea.  977 posts since March 2006---some could go, yeah but do the pictures go with it?

Okay, enough about that.  I've got some sewing to do today.  I pulled out Lois' mom Singer Stylist to sew with on Wednesday.  If you have the machines, you need to keep them working, after all.   It has a nice stitch and one of those holes where you can screw in a seam guide.  None of the bells and whistles, like the knee lift and automatic needle threader but it works great.  I am working on my "Tons of Black" Challenge using the Mock Trip Around the World pattern from Quilting assistant.   I have long admired some of the quilts that my friend Pat from Bell Creek Quilts has made from this pattern and took my inspiration from one of her quilts.  They look good in about any color way!

I am using a black and white print that I got from my mom as the light and a Jinny Beyer vine print in a dusty blue shade that Cindy shared with me.  There is plenty left to back the quilt or make another, LOL. The dusty gray tone and tone that I have been calling black (but isn't) is the challenge fabric.  It is a simple block but doesn't it look more complicated when you put it together?  I am going with the basic set appearance of the Trip Around the World---7.5 inch finished blocks set 6 x 8.  The size will finish closer to the WTIL target range.    She shows a cool many trips version that would have worked with smaller blocks and 8 x 10---maybe some day but this time it all came together to do what I ultimately decided on.   Other fabric choices may influence other repeats.

Thanksgiving Day itself was quiet as most holidays are when you are far away from family.  Just DJ, Skyler and me.  To be honest, even if we were back in Illinois, Thanksgiving was a "catch as catch" can proposition.  When I was still practicing nursing there were three others in the medical field in some capacity so that means, shift work, working holidays and making scheduling problematic.  It was hard enough to get together at Christmas!!  Then add in-laws to the mix---you are expected two places at the same time.  ai, yi, yi!  DJ's son was expected at his mom's and squeezed us in between his in-laws.  The way it goes.  Then we moved about 700 miles away and don't normally travel in the fall and winter months as you don't know what you will get into halfway home.   We stay home and be thankful for each other.   I spent part of the evening typing up the rest of the minutes for guild as Jackie will be needing them soon for the newsletter---I was procrastinating and it needed to be done before I can play today.

And because I don't really have to shop for Christmas, I will be avoiding any retail spot, online or otherwise, this weekend unless I absolutely have to go that direction.  Not sucking me into that Black Friday mess!  I will have to get groceries at some point but that's the other end of the store.  I hate that people had to go to work at 8 p.m. last night, on a holiday, so others could buy into that bull and "come on's".  You just know that the lead story on the news tonight was how long some people stood in line to get that big screen TV or whatever or do the tradition of shopping on Black Friday---like IT was the holiday instead of Thanksgiving day.  SIGH. 

Norma has her Christmas Patience Corner quilt loaded on her long arm now that she is home from her trip to AZ.  We hope to work on our binding at the same time.  But first!  I got to finish my challenge top.  Maybe by Sunday??

And sew it goes--------