Sparkly Baubles and Zoom Zoom

I have two friends I travel with most of the time.  They have both asked to have their names changed to protect the innocent.  (Personally, I don't think either of them are all that innocent but who am I to cast stones?)  I have decided to call friend 1 "Sparkly Baubles" She is easily distracted by shiny objects. OK Really, who among us isn't? She sort of kept her focus at quilt camp but it is only because she worked on lots of different small projects. She brought several to do, that did not however stop her from finding more fabric or patterns she could not live without. She did how ever complete several of them.  One of them was a project she had started about 4 years ago. But hey that deserves a piece of chocolate!! A completed project counts no matter how long it takes!
 Friend 2, I am calling "Zoom Zoom",  She is always on the go! When ever I talk to her she is in her car coming or going somewhere. Remember the car commercial "Zoom Zoom"? That is her!  I am surprised she was able to sit for three days at the quilt camp and work on projects.  Wait, I do seem to remember her coming and going a few times.  Now I know why she had her own car, she needed to escape and hit the open road for a bit.
I myself brought many projects to do and completed them in record time so I had to go buy more fabric to make more.  We stayed up way to late, and got up way to early, sewed for too many hours at a time, ate too much chocolate, drank too much caffeine, laughed till we cried, and all in all had a wonderful time!  Can't wait till next time!
Stay tuned for further adventures with "Sparkly Baubles and Zoom Zoom".

Duvet Cover

The quilt retreat was a fantastic success!  I brought fiber scarves and bags to sew for my projects. I finished both of them on Thursday (day 1) and awe shucks, I had to go buy a project or two to do.   I decided to make  a duvet cover for our king size down comforter.  The comforter is still great but the cover on it has seen better days.  I also want to paint my bedroom and I think this gives me the perfect opportunity to decide on a new color to go with the new cover, which of course means I will need new curtains, and hmmm what about that rug?  This could snowball right out of control.  I will keep it simple and start with the duvet.  I chose a pattern called Fire Escapes.  It called for 8 different fabrics and 1 contrast.  I chose to stay in the blue/purple color combo, (does this surprise anyone????) with a little bit of orange, yellow and green thrown in just for contrast.  I can honestly say I have never been accused of being a beige person!!  I worked on the blocks all day Friday and Saturday started sewing the 16 different strips together.  It was a lot of fun and got a lot of attention at the retreat.  I think that has more to do with my bold color choices then my sewing ability!  The strips look great when they are all together but the are not so straight seams before that point.  I backed it with a piece of blue fleece.  The whole things weighs like 10 pounds! I love it! I put the comforter in it and put it on the bed last night.  It was quite warm, actually too warm for dh but he sleeps half the night without blankets anyway.  Because of the fleece backing it stayed in place and did not slip off the edge of the bed.  I am ready for those cold nights now.  Now back to thinking about the other changes that need to be made in the room.....................

Cut pieces of my 8 different fabrics

This is my sewing space, it looks pretty clean and organized right 

now.  I am just starting the day.

I have all the pieces cut out and ready to start sewing the blocks together that will make up the strips.  I learned early, LABEL, LABEL, LABEL!!!

These are all 16 strips sewed but not joined yet. I had to step on my rolling chair to tape them to the wall. I got yelled by someone every time I climbed up there. I never fell once! Some scary close calls though.

Here is a small section of my completed duvet!

Simple Shell Scarf Class

 I taught a fabulous class the other day.  It was my simple shell scarf pattern.  It is really easy to learn the repeating pattern.  I had two ladies in my class and we had lots of fun making this scarf.I love how they all look so different depending on the type of yarn you use.  We are all doing the exact same stitches but they all look so different.  If you notice the bowl of chocolates on the table, we always get a treat in my class when we complete a new stitch!!

Quilt retreat

This week I am getting ready for a quilt retreat in Beaver Bay MN.  It is sponsored by Quilt Corner quilt store.  Roxanne puts on a wonderful retreat, it starts Thursday and goes till Sunday.    It is held in the community center in Beaver Bay and the quilt store is just down the block so we can go there any time we feel the need to feed our fabric addiction.  Yes I have a rather substantial fabric stash to go along with my yarn stash.  Hey, I could have worse addictions!  Quilting at a retreat with 35 other women is wonderful for so many reasons.  You can set up your machine and leave it set up for several days, work on what you want ,when you want,  you get inspiration from others by just sharing the experience.  I also love that you can see what everyone else is working on, sometimes I look at fabric and say " I don't think I would ever use those colors!"  Then I see someone who has put it all together and it looks fantastic.  I love darling hubby and boy child but it is also nice to get away from them for a couple of days.  I do not doubt they quite enjoy a little break from me as well.  In my mind boy child is sad and lonely, hugging my robe because it smells like mommy, and darling husband is just pining away counting down the hours till his beloved returns. I know the reality, boy child is thrilled to have the house to himself to watch TV,  and play Xbox whenever he wants cuz darling husband will probably go out for a beer with the guys. ( I told them last night what I said they were doing while I was gone and they both laughed at me.) I don't think that was very nice, they could have let me keep the fantasy.
We eat like kings at the retreat! We have a wonderful group of ladies who cook two meals a day for us and they are superb!!  We also have a table of goodies that we can snack from anytime we feel a bit of a sugar low.            
I plan to make some knitting projects bags that we will carry at Yarn Harbor and some fiber scrap scarves.  I will tell you more about the scarves next week after I have a finished product to show.  I am off to the great north shore to go quilting in the woods.

Yarn bombing in Duluth!

Duluth News Tribune Article  The Duluth News Tribune did an article on our yarn bombing project. Go to the link I have provided to read all about it.  I am very excited to get it out in the public and make people aware of fiber artists!  BTW that big brightly colored flower that they feature in the photo is mine.  TEE HEE.

Fiber Graffiti at Yarn Harbor

Fiber Graffiti, Yarn Bombing, Guerrilla Crochet, what ever you want to call it, IT HAS BEGUN!!  We started out instillation of the fiber art at Yarn Harbor this past weekend.  It was a cold and very windy weekend but we made sure the posts to the fence are quite warm and brightly colored.  I have just heard from the news paper, they want to do a story about it.  That is great news!!  I explained, as we head into the dark and dreary days of winter, we are bringing some color to the world around us.  Someone asked me why?  my answer was "Does art need a why?" Here are photos of what we have accomplished so far.  more to come.....

OK, people I have some really exciting news to share with you.  I DID IT! I DID IT! I DID IT!  (yes I know that is the equivalent of shouting) Are you ready for this?

 I completed a PAIR of socks. 

          Yes I actually said "PAIR"!!  Now to most people that does not seem like a major accomplishment to go shouting about, but for myself it is.  To date I have 6 single socks completed or near completion so finishing a second one is huge.  If you do not know about my Single Sock Syndrome please refer to blog post Monday Aug 29. Sock!! (I even linked it for you.)      
        Monday I started a pair of socks with my class, which is going quite well.  I worked on them the last 3 nights and I finished them!  I decided to try to do them two at a time.  In crochet it is a little different then in knitting.  In knitting you have both on the needles at the same time and work them simultaneously, in crochet you only have one live stitch at a time, working from the inside and outside of the ball of yarn and I worked each section at a time. I did the cuffs of one put it on a holder then did the cuff of the second, then moved back to the first one for the next section until they were complete.  I think it went pretty well. The yarn got a little wound up but nothing too terrible.  If you notice, I even almost matched the stripes.  OK, so those of you that know about self striping yarn know I did nothing to make it happen, it is just the magic of the yarn, but it certainly looks really impressive! You could have knocked DH over with a feather when I showed him both of them.  His first words were "I know what tomorrows blog post will be about!"  YEP, he was right.
For those of you interested in knowing the pattern I used was out of Karen Whooley's book, I can't believe I am crocheting socks, published by Leisure Arts.  It is the basic cuff down sock.