It's Springtime!

After a depressing winter which saw me say goodbye to my mother for the final time, I've managed to deal with the grief by crocheting. While my mother was in the hospital, I started a baby afghan, it was easy to work on while sitting at her bedside for hours at a time. There is a great yarn shop in the town where she lived and I bought several balls of purple/lavender yarns and proceeded on making this blanket. Last week, saw me finally finish it. I'll post pictures soon. I keep hoping that one day I'll become a grandmother and these little blankets and baby sweaters will be used but in the meantime, I'll just keep making things because they give me great satisfaction.

After I finished this blanket, I did some searching through the knitting blogs I follow and on Ravelry and found a gorgeous shawl pattern that I have to make. It's called 'Haruni'. The shawl pictured is made out of Stoll Tonal Yarn from Knit Picks. After reading through the directions, it's easy enough to make - may take awhile to finish but it'll look lovely. I went onto the Knit Picks website and ordered 2 balls of Stoll Tonal Yarn in the Wine colour - which is a mixture of reds and purples. It looks lovely and rich and will be perfect for summer evenings. I also went a little crazy and ordered some gorgeous Harmony wooden needles to knit the shawl with and a little black sheep tape measure. You can never have enough tape measures and I love the whimsical ones. Now, I'm waiting for my yarn to arrive - which should be next week, if Canada Post is quick.

While I'm waiting, I'm also in the midst of spring cleaning my house. Where did all of this dust come from? I'm purging a lot of stuff. IT's time for a change and I'm tired of a lot of the things we have around here - so out with the old to make room for some of the things I'll bring home from my mothers house. I brought back all of her houseplants - so far so good - they all still have green leaves, so that's a good sign - right? I've always been a hoarder, probably due to my childhood when my father used to give away all of my stuff to anyone who admired it. But there comes a point in ones life where it's time to clear out and reduce the amount of stuff that is stored. I'm looking at a lot of my stuff and I'll be putting lots up for sale. I have Quilters Newsletter Magazines from the 70's - in fact, I have several years worth of them, plus many other quilting magazines that would be a treasure to someone. They're filled with patterns and hints and good articles too. I haven't got to my fabric stash yet - but that'll need to be thinned out a little too - although I'm not sure how I'll be able to part with any of it. Maybe I'll just have to make a bunch of quilt tops and then one by one, tie them or quilt them and either hang onto them or give them away to charity.

The next few weeks are going to be fun. A lot of work, but fun getting rid of things that are no longer needed and finding homes for items that still have a purpose, just not in my home. Now, I have to train my family to keep the living areas of the house tidy. That will be a major challenge in itself.

I hope today finds everyone happy and healthy and working on some special projects. I'd love to hear what you're working on. Let's inspire each other!

Back to Quilting!

Well, the book has been put on hold until more research has been done on it. In the meantime, we've been snowed in for the last week. This is what happens when you live in a city that doesn't get snow, one snowfall and the whole city shuts down. The one snowfall dropped over a foot of snow last Wednesday and we've had snow off and on since then.

With being stuck in the house (I don't own winter clothes because we don't have 'winter' in our piece of paradise), I decided to go through my stash of fabrics. Gee, I didn't realize I had so much. I started quilting about 30 years ago and I have at least that many years of a fabric collection. In 1999, I stopped quilting when my cousin and quilting buddy died. I returned home from her funeral with several quilts in various forms of completion. They've been tucked away since then - I couldn't even look at them, let alone do any quilting or sewing for myself. I used to work the craft sale circuit every winter to make extra $$$ but even stopped that. A lot of things have gone on in my life since then but last week, with the snowfall, I suddenly had an urge to start creating again.

I've been reading a lot of quilting blogs and getting lots of inspiration. In my stash, I found a couple of charm packets that I'd bought years ago. After some searching on the internet, I found a pattern for a disappearing 9 patch, which I put together in an afternoon. I loved it and had so much fun with it. The charm squares I had were both Moda, one was all pinks and the other was 'Poetry' - they look gorgeous together. Today, I"ll be adding borders and 3D butterflies to them.

Yesterday, we had rain all day and the roads were clear, so I ventured out to my favourite quilt shop and spent way more money than I should have but I was loving every minute of it and came home with some wonderful pieces of fabrics - I call them my 'shabby chic' collection - they have that old fashioned look in the lovely soft colour - love them.

Have patience with me on this blog - I'm really getting into trying to set it up nicely and will run into some bumps along the way, I"m sure. Happy Quilting!