Happy Thanksgiving!

My house is full of family that flew in for Thanksgiving and my son's baptism. My two other sisters that live nearby have full houses too. I am so excited that everyone's here! We are having Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow with 33 family members. We are totally outnumbered with 18 kids to 15 adults. My generous sister agreed to open her house to everyone. Should be fun and interesting to see how it goes having so many people for Thanksgiving.




Tina is here and brought me a surprise. I had asked her to make me a Christmas cottage block so that she could be my neighbor on my quilt. She really wanted to do the swap but life was crazy for her at the time. I was so excited that she brought me a block. Isn't it so cute!!

In other news, my SSCS packages are on there way to somebody somewhere. I really enjoyed making some homemade gifts for my partner and getting to know her through her blog. I hope she likes everything!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

ALQS2

What's more exciting than getting a package from Australia? Getting a package from Australia with a gorgeous little quilt in it!!




I am so delighted with the quilt I received for ALQS2. It is beautiful! I can tell a lot of care went into this quilt. The hand dyed fabric is just beautiful and I love the arrangement of the log cabin blocks. I like how the colors of the hand dyed fabric pop with a black background.



I love how she quilted it. It really gives movement to the quilt. And look how she pieced the label on the back with more of the hand dyed fabric. Wonderful!

Thank you, Kerry! I absolutely love it!

Here is a funny little thing my sister and I found out about ALQS2 and Kerry:

I called Tina to tell her I got my quilt and to tell her how gorgeous it was. I told her I got a package and how cool it was to get a package from Australia. Tina said she sent her quilt to Australia and maybe it is the same person. I said, "Yeah right. What are the chances of that when there are a lot of swappers from Australia signed up." I told her the name and she said, "That's her!"

Isn't that so funny! My sister sent to Kerry, and Kerry sent to me!

Needles

I am a huge fan of Knit Picks knitting needles. I started with the nickel plated Options needles and love how they are interchangeable. Then I got the nickel plated double pointed needles (DPNs) to make socks with. I love the sharp points. When they came out with the Harmony wood DPNs I knew I had to have a set for my sock knitting. I was surprised at how strong they are and how nice and pointy the tips are. So when I found out that Knit Picks came out with Harmony straight needles...I knew I just had to have them.

Why? Because they are so pretty!!

I also got the Harmony cable needles too.

So I cast on a drop stitch scarf so I could take my needles for a test drive. I love them! The tips are nice and pointy, they are slick so the yarn slides smoothly, and they are so pretty! (I think I said that already)

Guess what else is new... I started my first sweater!

Will I ever learn?

I am having lots of fun making trees to go with my cottages. I love how they are turning out! Just thought you might want to see how it is going.



Unfortunately I had to stop making trees because I procrastinated on working on my block of the month. This is my only block of the month where I have to take it to the store and sit in on a class, show my previous month's block, listen to the instructions for the next block, and get my new month's block. Can you guess which block is this month's block...

The answer is... all of them! Yep, all those blocks and checkerboard strips are the block for this month. And the smarty that I am chose to leave it until the day before the class. So that is pretty much what I have been doing all day. Every time I leave the class I think, "I should make my block today. It would be so easy since the instructions are fresh in my mind. And how great would it be in three weeks to have the class coming up and know that I have already done the block". And then I 'check the box' that I went to the class and don't think about it again for another three weeks and six days.

Into the Woods

My Christmas Cottages finally came in the mail!! I only say 'finally' because I watched online as some other swappers got theirs before me. Nanette really did a great job at getting them right out to us and it was so fun to get extra goodies with my blocks. Thanks Nanette!! I am so thrilled with the blocks I received! They are all so cute!



My kids were pointing out all the cute things about each one as I lay them out on the floor. Two of the blocks have little button doorknobs and my kids thought it was the greatest thing. I love all the trims, fussy cut windows, and all the special touches that make them each so unique.


I have been considering how I want to put these blocks into a quilt ever since I sent mine off. I really like the idea of having the cottages in the woods. So for my quilt I am going to make lots of string pieced trees to surround my cottages. I had a picture in my mind and realized that I must have gotten the idea from this quilt book I have. I started drafting the tree before I got my blocks. I can't wait to get started on making these.



Here is a close up...

Get the idea? I really love the Fall trees in this quilt but my trees are going to be evergreens. I think that will work better for a Christmas quilt.

Orphans

After finishing my last pair of socks, I decided that it was time to find all the orphans around my house. So I looked through all my bags that I use to carry my knitting "on the go" and found these...



All of these have the second sock in progress, which is a good thing. I started all of these before my genius idea to knit my pairs of socks at the same time on two sets of DPNs so as to avoid Second Sock Syndrome. So from left to right...the purple tweed sock is for my Mom, the purple sock is made with Trekking yarn (I love that picot edge), the argyle is from a class I took at my LYS, the green sock is in the Embossed Leaves pattern.

I have decided that since all these socks have a second one already started that it shouldn't be hard to un-orphan these poor, lonely socks. So here is my challenge for myself...I will not start another pair of socks until these four have mates. Whew! That was almost as painful as going on my sock yarn diet. Which by the way...I am doing an awesome job! I haven't bought any sock yarn since I made my decision. Notice I only said 'sock' yarn, so all the other kinds out there are fair game!

ALQS

I finally finished my ALQS quilt. It was fun to try and make something to reflect my partner's taste. At least I hope I interpreted her list of favorite things correctly.

I used some new acrylic templates I got for my birthday. It made cutting out the pieces for the curved piecing really fast and easy.

I quilted a smaller meandering stitch around the circles and a larger one in the border.

Here is a shot of the back of the quilt. I used one quarter of a circle for the label.

I had some fun with a pieced binding using all the different greens in the circles and then some.

It feels good to have it done! I need to come up with a little something to include with the quilt and send it on its way. I hope she likes it!

I Voted Today...Did You?

I worked in my son's class today at school and made these fun buttons for the kids. They had a mock election. It was so cool!