As Promised

The quilt, it is finished.

And the back:

I am thrilled with how well it turned out, and anxious to try making another one.  If you have a chance to take the Beginning Quilting Class at Spool, and the teacher is Ashley, SIGN YOURSELF UP!  She is not intent on making you create a perfect quilt to her specifications - rather, she wants you to choose the fabrics that you like, and pay attention to the instructions and her demonstrations.  Every single time someone (including me) would be upset or freak out because they made a mistake, or it "didn't look right," she would say, "This is quilting.  You are supposed to enjoy yourself, and it will be fine.  Trust me."  Every single person in our class (six in all) had a beautiful quilt at the end, and wanted to try it all again. I've taken plenty of crafty learning classes, and there are usually always a couple of people that you just know will never, ever try to do the thing again.

I have some other knitting and sewing projects that I want to finish up first, but it won't be long until another quilt is in the works here ...

Not an April Fool

Happy April Fool's Day!  March was such a great month for me (it usually is) that I kinda hated to see it go.  But April means April Fool's Day, Easter, and getting the garden ready for spring.  I'm not much of a gardener, but I love planting flowers and herbs (The Tim plants crops on our deck and roof), and this year I want to fix up the garden.  We used to spend a lot of lovely time there, but then we got lazy, mosquitoes took over, and it got messy.  So I want to make it an outdoor space that we can use again.

But before we move into April, I wanted to tell you about the class I took a week from yesterday.

If you have read this blog regularly, you know that I am a sock knitter - big time.  And I have no problem with dpns (double-pointed needles, for the non-knitters out there), actually I like making socks with them.  But of course, people use circular needles now as well (called "Magic Loop"), and I've wondered about that technique.  Having the chance to try knitting two socks at once was something I just wanted to learn about.  So when Melissa Morgan-Oakes was here in town at Loop, I signed myself up for the Learn to Knit Two Socks on Circulars workshop.  (They had one the next day about knitting two socks at the same time from the toe up.  I can barely knit one sock at a time, using the toe-up method.  But I digress.)

I had heard of Melissa Morgan-Oakes, and actually kinda felt like I knew her from Facebook, where she was a friend of Carol's, and a regular commenter.  She sounded pretty funny, and also like an interesting person.  I must admit that this chance to take a class with her seemed like it would be a good experience.

There were about 16 of us in the class, and the day itself was kinda dreary, so it was a good day to be inside, knitting.  Melissa was better than anticipated, both as a teacher of a complicated technique, and as an enjoyable person.

And knitting two socks at a time on a circular needle?  Challenging, to say the least.  But she took us all through each step until everyone got it, and by the end of the class, all of us had a cuff, leg, heel, and beginning of a  foot on two tiny socks!

Two tiny heels!

Two tiny socks ready to finish the foot!

By the end of the day, I felt so proud of myself, for having two small items on my needles that actually looked like socks!  It made me think of when I took a class to learn to make socks in the first place, and how amazing it was to watch a tube turn into something that actually looked like a sock!  Such a feeling of accomplishment, you know?

Do I think I'll start knitting socks this way all of the time?  Well, I want to try one regular-sized pair, in the same yarn (rather than two different yarns, so you can tell the difference between each sock on your needle), but like I said earlier in this post, I don't have any problems knitting socks with dpns.  Who knows, maybe it will depend on how I feel when I start any given pair of socks.  I don't know.  

I do know that I'm frogging the pair of Graydon socks (see #4 in that post) I have underway, and using the yarn to give a plain pair a try using this method.  That pattern turned out to be a yarn hog, and I wasn't really pleased with the heel construction used.  So they have been languishing for months.  I think they have been waiting to be my first attempt at two socks at once on a circular needle, and who am I to disappoint them?

I will tell you though - if you ever have a chance to take a class with Melissa, do not pass Go, do not collect $200 - get to your LYS or wherever the class is offered, and sign yourself up!  Not only will you learn something in a comfortable setting, but you will enjoy spending time with her.  

And as the subject line to this post indicates, that's no April Fools' joke!

Birthday Recap

Well, it's two weeks after the fact, but I thought I'd share some pictures from my  birthday.  I had a really great one this year.  Even if people on Facebook were tired of hearing about it (courtesy of Carol, who counted down with several updates every day), I was happy to receive many happy wishes there, as well as here on the blog.

I took the day off for my birthday, as did The Tim.  But the day before, my co-workers surprised me with a little party of cookies, tea, and a pretty bouquet of tulips.  I just think that's so nice, especially since The Evil Boss gave me grief for wanting to take a day off for my birthday last year!

The morning of my birthday, The Tim bought us breakfast:

The sight of this box made me sooo happy!  Even more so when I looked inside:

Our plan for the day had depended on the weather: if it was a nice day, I wanted to go hiking; if it was a rainy day, I wanted to stay put and watch movies all day.  Well, it was a gorgeous day - if a little too warm for me - and we packed ourselves and Dug into the car, and headed to Pennypack Park, in northeast Philadelphia.  It's a huge place, with horse trails, picnic areas, etc., and we followed a combination of one of the horse and hiking trails.

Hard to believe that less than 1/2 mile from here is a major traffic major artery of the city:

Dug encountered some honking geese (I think they were warning others of a DOG and PEOPLE!), and found it quite intriguing:

You may notice that Dug's leash looks like a piece of rope.  That's because it is ... we spent all kinds of time getting organized, attaching poop bags to his leash, and other related things.  When we got out of the car, we realized we forgot the leash altogether!  Fortunately, there was a length of rope in the trunk of the car, and Dug is not really rambunctious on the leash.  But still ...

We saw some people riding horses.  Dug didn't seem too interested (actually, he was more interested in what the horses left behind, if you know what I mean), and the horses kind of gave him a look as if to say, "What a shrimp!"

We took each others' pictures with our pup:

And after about 2 hours, we headed home to take a break before going out to dinner.  After dinner, we had cake, ice cream, and presents, including a skein of Bridget sock yarn, and this book.

The next day I had a couple of doctor's appts, and that Friday we headed to West Virginia to get together with the family for St. Patrick's Day, so it was a fun and especially nice birthday week!  With all of that, and your wishes, I really think that this birthday was particularly great.

Though I am of the belief that birthdays in general are always great.  They certainly are better than the alternative, as far as I'm concerned ...

What Can I Say?

Sometimes I just suck.  Sigh.  Oh well.

Happy [belated] first day of Spring!  Which to be honest, has not been all that different from our alleged Winter here in Philadelphia.  Other than knowing it was officially here, the weather has not been as different as usual, so the first day of Spring just sort of came long.  And then went.

Anyway, I didn't mean to disappear for so long.  But at least I had things going on - a trip to WV to hang out with the family for St. Patrick's Day weekend, enjoying a zeppole for St. Joseph's Day on Monday, and then my last quilting class this past Tuesday.

Our trip was a blast.  And Dug came with us, meaning that as The Tim said, "He expanded his fan base westward."  He was a perfect traveler in the car, and a well-behaved guest at my sister's house.  Of course, he loved all of the extra attention and new smells.  We spent a lot of time just hanging out on the porch, and Dug thought that was pretty great.  The cats stayed home, and I told The Tim that they probably spent the time partying like it was November 2011 ...

My last quilting class was spent adding the binding and then learning how to finish it by hand sewing it, which I hope to do this weekend.  I'm very glad I finally took the class, I enjoyed it, and can see more quilts in my future.  At the moment, I am not feeling as obsessed as I felt when I first learned to knit, so maybe I can be more reasonable with quilting.  Who knows?

I had a couple of days off from work last week before we went away, and I realized that I have missed a lot of things, and that I often suck as a friend.  Even as a cyber-friend.  Both Marji and Kim tagged me in a meme that has been going around, and I missed that altogether.  I have missed several birthdays, anniversaries, and written notes.  Once this knowledge hit me, I tried to figure out what I was doing instead of all the things I feel that I missed or just failed to do.  I was willing to admit that the pneumonia in January threw me off, and until recently, I felt like I was playing catch up.  But I could not think of anything else that kept me from doing things for the past few months.  I'd like to say I was living in the moment, or treasuring the time I spent at home, etc.   But - I.Have.No.Idea.  And it is also not lost on me that this is not that kind, during a year when I have pledged to try and be more kind.

So I am recommitting myself to being more aware of time - my own, the universe's, whatever.  Because time is really all any of us have, and I don't want to fritter the bulk of mine away!  I know from experience that I do need to be conscious of the here and now, because life can change in an instant.

I would therefore like to apologize to anyone I've neglected, or has found me to be incommunicado, or that I seem to have forgotten about.  I can honestly say it was not a conscious decision on my part.

In other news, I do have some pictures to share.  And I promise to do so, if I ever get them out of my camera ... !

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

May you have warm words on a cold evening,

A full moon on a dark night,

And the road downhill all the way to your door.

- Irish Blessing