whackadoodle coconut

Yesterday I finished the dinosaur from the book Knitted Dinosaurs I received as a special gift from Never Not Knitting .  I worked it in leftover yarn from my stash and really whittled it down to only the darker purple and white remaining from this project.  The pictures are the best, but still really cute. his legs are jointed so he can sit and stand his head is a little tilted, due to the frill, but he looks inquisitive

This week, John and I went to Solvang for the afternoon.  We had both been waiting for this day for a couple of weeks and were glad that it was here.  I had also been wanting to get a niddy noddy for my hand spun yarn to both measure the length and to prep the skein to set the twist on my singles. We stopped at the Mustard Seed on Mission street for lunch and had some really good danish food.  Usually I think of danish food as, well danishes or pastries.  But instead, we had danish meatloaf and meatballs and they were delicious.  It helped that were pretty hungry, but regardless, the texture was smooth, the flavor not like anything else I had eaten before and the combination with the cabbage was out of this world.  We sat on the patio and people watched through a leisurely lunch and just enjoyed ourselves. Our next stop was at Village Spinning and Weaving on Alisal.  We had been there before, but like I mentioned I wanted to pick up a niddy ...

I'm almost finished with the latest quilt.  I had a lot of trouble getting the inner borders right and after a LONG day working and another one with the homework, I got it exactly right.  Not almost right, but EXACTLY right. Today was my second day with makeup time and I have finished the quilting part and will trim and bind off in two weeks when I return to class.  That should be plenty of time that day to finish it all.  In whole, I have spent 4.5 days working on the quilt and another partial day to finish the binding. pinned and ready for masking tape and quilting in progress quilting process

Last week a friend and I went to a local park in our area and did a photo scavenger hunt.  This is actually pretty popular (because I searched online for it and as we all know everything online is truth).  Aside, since I picked the spot, I chose the items we were to look for.  I had been to the park before, so I had an idea of what could be there, but then I threw in a few doozies. The List - a tree a clearing water wildlife shadow a great height a sign that humans were here a window shelter smooth something that represents the current season rough right angle pattern change in texture Extra credit - letters spelling your name each color of the rainbow the numbers in your birthdate (mm/dd) a plants defense yourself Updated: included is the video of the photo shoot.    

Yesterday was week two at quilting class I was able to get the rows sewn up and half of them sewn together.  I will be missing next weeks class, but I will be posting the "homework" so you can see the progress.  I hope to be on time still with the final product the following week - last week of class. I had some trouble this week sewing the pieces together, but I think I may have figured out how to work through it.  There are these tiny little 1 inch squares at each intersection which have really been tough for me to ease into the rows and keep their seams matched up.  Now, if I wasn't totally anal about it, it wouldn't bother me.  In fact there is one that refused to match and I am already in self therapy about it. I hope to get the rest of the top done today, work on the borders tomorrow and then Thursday get it basted to the back.  Then the following week, work on the quilting portion (in the shop when the teacher is there) and finally bound off on t...

This week starts the new quilting class and I am enjoying it as much as the last one.  That's a good thing since I will have a lot of homework for the class and will need to pay close attention to the instructions before I leave each week. This first week, I prepped, cut and sewed the 4 patch kaleidoscope squares together and then homework was to get the borders on each of the 36 squares sewn on.  Two full days later I have 36 squares with borders.  Frankly some are kind of crappy looking, but I need a seam ripper to take them apart and redo.  It's okay though, just like frogging the left side of a sweater full of cables and double knitting, it's necessary to look right. Take a look at the surprisingly easy process to get an innumerable number of squares from one fabric.  Actually you could easily count the number of squares it's 42 so far and probably another 36 if I cut the rest of the fabric totalling 78 DIFFERENT 6 1/2 squares. When I say it's easy, it...

A while back now, I knit a little karate gi for Happiness Bunny.  Then a bit later I knit him a giant carrot, in the hopes he would like me better.  Which is to say that his persona given to him by my hubby would like me better, since it's not a real bunny. I also sewed some velcro on his hands so he could hold the carrot, instead of just sewing it to his hands and he can't let go of it. It's a neat little trick I learned from Susan B Anderson . I mention this in post, because I think I am knitting better, without a pattern and being more creative with my craft.  This is important to me because, I know there are a lot of knitters out there that rely solely on patterns and while patterns are really cool, there is a bit of freedom to making it up as you go and simply "knowing" how to do it.  In fact there are entire countries that just "know" how to knit and do it without thinking about it.  Like cooking without a recipe.  I haven't mastered t...