The Start of Kayla’s Cabled Lace Cowl

I’ve been cheating on quilting!  Lately I’ve been knitting…  I’m currently working on finishing up a pair of fingerless mitts that I plan on wearing while working.  My hands get cold but I need my fingertips to type.  🙂  I’ve been working through the projects in Craftsy’s class Knit Lab: in the round with Stephanie Japel.  I got a little bored and it got somewhat complicated so to get me started on something easier, I’ve started on the final project,  Cabled Lace Cowl.  This will become much more difficult but the first 6 rows are pretty easy with 120 knits and purls per round.  Very boring stuff but working between that and the fingerless mitts help me get through the more complicated rounds of the mitts.  Right now I’m dealing with ribbing and creating the thumb part of the mitts.  I’ll show a picture of that tomorrow or so.  I need to get a good picture of it in the sun.

Here’s how the Cowl should look like as taken from Craftsy’s website –

Cabled Lace Cowl
from Stephanie Japel

Mine is going to be green because that is the color Kayla chose.  I don’t really like to wear cowls but Kayla plans on wearing this as some sort of headband.  We’ll see once she sees how it really looks.  I’m not sure how she plans to use it on her head and I’m not sure if she truly knows how big it’s going to be… but practice practice practice and the only way I will learn is to actually do something regardless of what I plan to do with it.

I haven’t been able to do much quilting – or blogging – as I was gone for a bit.  I went to LA for a week and we got back this past Monday.  Knitting is the craft of choice when I’m travelling.  It’s easy to take with me and just keep in my bag.  I did take a block for A Rainbow Garden because it is ready to be worked but I haven’t been in the mood to actually put it together.   I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of quilting/sewing but whenever I leave I pack up my sewing table just to clear the living space for everyone.  When I returned from this last trip my momma hi-jacked my sewing table and used it outside for her plants.  It was okay because I didn’t really feel like quilting or anything until Thursday.  Now my table is back in the living room clean of dirt and plant debris.  I did get the binding sewed onto Easy Street and now I just need to finish the hand portion of it.  That’s what I plan on doing this week in front of the TV.  I really want to get Easy Street done so Jacob – my son who laid claim to it – can actually use it.  I made him his first quilt when he was much younger and it is now too small for him.  I was surprised that he wanted it because of the purples and flowers I’ve got on it but he didn’t care.

For this weekend, I plan to do a bit of the binding and maybe I’ll get the label on there so I don’t have to think about it once the binding is done.  I don’t know  – it feels a bit premature.  Before I left for LA I was able to get most of the Iris of my Iris Cameo wall hanging finished up.  The only thing I’ve got to do is quilt the middle part, attach the Iris to the frame and then quilt the frame.  I’ll do a little but I don’t think I’ll have the patience to finish the quilting this weekend.  I plan on doing outline quilting all around the Iris.  It’s already marked and ready to go but it will require me paying a lot of attention to it.  I tried two lines last night and while it didn’t take a long time I can see how I could mess it up royally if I had my mind on other things while I did it.

Frame for the Iris

Iris – the Iris has been quilted down but the background is only marked. I need to quilt the background.

The next thing on my list… well, I’m not sure and this is probably why I haven’t been able to get back into the swing of things.  I’ve got my BOMs and I don’t feel like doing any of them –

• Tell It To The Stars – this is up to date! Yay!
• Moon Glow – I’ve got this month’s block and should receive the next one next week.
• Hampton Ridge – I’ve got two month’s sitting here waiting for me to do…

These three are the ones I work on regularly – I’ve got 3 more that are sitting around until I feel like it…

• A Rainbow Garden – the wool BOM that I love the look of but takes forever to actually do.  I got most of what I’ve already got done when I took the girl to her cheer practices and I would sit and put it together.  I’ve finished about 3 or 4 blocks and have about 6 kits waiting for me to complete.  Since cheer season is done for now I haven’t touched it since.
• Raining Cats and Dogs – I only have 1 block left.  I haven’t yet done anything with it.
• Lucky Stars – haven’t done anything with this at all and I’ve been told to just let it go.  I may have to put this on my bucket list as something I will do eventually.  It’s not technically a UFO because I only did 1 block 6 months ago and it was a practice block.  I do not have a fabric kit for this, I’ve just been accumulating the patterns each month.  At $10 for 12 patters – I couldn’t pass it up. ;0  So it will probably move to the bucket list soon.

I’ve got a lot going on and do I feel like doing any of them…?   Well, no, but listing it out like this encourages me to make a better choice.  I do have my MAY goal list to look at and potentially work on… so maybe I’ll find something there.

I don’t know – I’m not yet inspired and I hope it will hit soon.   Today, we’ll be having family over for Memorial Day instead of on Monday.  I plan on going cherry picking tomorrow and I’m super excited about that.  I haven’t gone cherry picking since I was a kid and I hope my kids have as much fun as I used to.  We’ve gone apple picking in Southern CA so I’m sure it will be great!  Monday will be a quiet day and that’s the day I hope to get a lot of quality time with my sewing machine.

…Happy Long Weekend!

Melanie