Finis!

The border is finished! The blanket is finished! The prissy little mitered corners are finished!



It is now time to start something else, and since I'm on a major Peaches & Creme kick, I'm guessing it'll be something cotton....though maybe not QUITE so bright!

Patches blanket...a journey

Just when I thought I'd knitted squares longer than I could stand, I had one left and we did a trial layout.















Then we gathered them all up and stacked them in the order to be knitted into strips.












Then came the sewing and more sewing, and the weaving in of ends. My tip for endless end-weaving: DO NOT, under any circumstances, count the ends. Just settle in and start weaving, then be j-u-b-i-l-a-n-t when you finish.


A general tip for taking photos for blogs or Ravelry: either use your 11 year old as the photographer or as the prop for the items being photographed. This counts as "time spent with the kids".


Now I've got to decide what to do about a border. This is a hotly contested topic in our house, and unlike many decisions, I'm not content to let the kids make this one. Don't ask me why, because they vote no border and that would be easier. While I lovelovelove
Susan B. Anderson's original design, I just don't see myself making pom-poms as a border. I think I expended the necessary patience required to make multiple pom-poms while I was weaving in all those ends!

Echoing my own thoughts in the scary way only she has, my friend Jani suggested either applied I-cord or a garter or seed stitch border. I promise, she hasn't seen it yet, and I haven't mentioned what sort of bordering I was considering, and yet somehow she knew. Right now I'm thinking of picking up stitches on each side, separately, and doing each side a different color (using colors already in the blanket), then knitting miters in the corners with maybe the stripey pink and white color. Because, obviously, this blanket is NOT colorful enough!

The Son Also Crafts...

This just in from JrBravesFanatic---a lovely hand sewn patchwork pillow, completed just in time to give to his grandmother for Mother's Day. It looks a little larger than it is, but, at about 5"x8", it was still a good bit of sewing for a little guy! Thanks goes to SuperCraftyDancerGirl for threading needles and adding the button :)

Mother's Day blessings to all my mom friends out there!!!

Today's quote, May 10

Happy Birthday to Fred Astaire, born on this day in 1899, easily my favorite of Ginger Rogers' dance partners! lol

He said, "Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young."

And, "The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style."

Lessons learned from Craft

We've been watching the dvd of Craft in America at our house and I find it so refreshing to hear from others who are passionate about their chosen craft. It reminds me that one of the reasons I love to knit (or hand sew or cross-stitch) is that I feel an inexplicable link to the women who have gone before me, making things for their families. I imagine some sturdy pioneer wife making clothes by hand while planting a garden, raising a passel of young'uns, slaughtering chickens for dinner, and settling the frontier. Too much Laura Ingalls Wilder in my youth, do you think??

I also read a recent post on Ravelry about one knitter belittling another knitter because her preferred methods were different--in this case, simple vs. ornate. I think the point the judgmental knitter missed was that we all have something to contribute. It makes little sense to me anyway----what could it possibly matter to someone who likes to knit lace whether someone else only does garter or stockinette stitch?? That was something I appreciated about Mason-Dixon Knitting; there are a lot of just plain knitting patterns. I like doing lace, but I LOVE having something simple to work on, especially for times when I need to concentrate on something other than knitting. Like life, for example!

The artists on Craft in America weren't judging what others were doing, they were just thankful to be able to create things and express themselves through craft. And that attitude empowers me to appreciate what I do as well as what others do, without feeling intimidated by others' quality or quantity. Yes, I want to improve my knitting, but not because I'm trying to keep up with the speed knitters or master knitters of the world.

It all comes down to this: nine-tenths of the people for whom I knit will not be likely to receive an item from me, look at it and say, "Wow, you could have done better!" Frankly, I'm thankful for that. And for the fact that I don't have to slaughter chickens for dinner...

perfectionism + blogging = stress

...or, why I would blog more if it weren't so hard to get it right.

It's hard enough to come up with something "blog-worthy" on a regular basis, and harder still to manage to get the photos from the camera to the blog, but those peripheral items tend to present a challenge, too.

For some unknown, no doubt narcissistic reason, I feel compelled to list my latest reads in the sidebar of this blog. Simple enough, no? NO. One recent listing, a fun selection from Dorothy L. Sayers, has created difficulties for this perfectionist. I want to provide some sort of link, just in case someone, somewhere, at least once in this lifetime, decides to click on the book title to see what I've been reading. I like to use Barnes and Noble sometimes, and I went the other day to the listing and used it for the link. I repeat, simple enough, no? Yes, except the "excerpt" for the book was wrong. I admit, I was blogging on borrowed time that day and just left it so I could go do whatever it was I needed to go do. But it bugged me so much that I went back later and changed the link to the listing at Amazon. Because the excerpt is correct.

Does anyone really care? Probably not, but I feel better.