Care Package from “The Big Easy”; sock progress

  

Our niece lives in New Orleans.  Her “dues” to the hunting club this year were a few items from the area.  It was a box load, and was brought a long way to N. Louisiana to feed our addictions tastes for something a little different.

#1 item:  Blue Runner spicy red beans

 

We CAN actually get these here at one of the small stores, but only in the small cans.  When I cook, I cook BIGGGGGGG (so I don’t have to do it again any time soon!), so small cans just won’t work.  Since discovering these I NEVER soak dried red beans to make red beans and rice.  Brown some sausage, throw in some onions, bell pepper, garlic and brown a little.  Throw in a couple of cans of beans, then cook some brown rice.   Supper in about 30 minutes!!

Item #2

Olive salad relish.  We CAN get this here, but it is so expensive I can’t buy it… my frugality just won’t let me!  She gets it for about half what it costs up here.   Can you say, “Muffuletta”?  YUMMO!

I haven’t had much time to work on my knit-along socks, but I now have 1 1/2” of ribbed cuff done.  About 1 more inch of ribbing and I will switch to stockinet stitch, and my needles will fly!  Since we will be traveling tomorrow I really think I can get this ribbing finished tomorrow…. hope, hope, hope.  This is my least favorite part of the process.  The changing back and from from knit to purl is slow and clumsy, but I AM getting better, and I am LOVING the Continental style.  Hopefully the next picture you see of these will show me working on gussets!

Have a great weekend.  We are headed to TX for a day at the beach (Galveston), IQ classes, and a quick run by Quilt Festival in Houston, but this will be a very LOW-budget shopping trip due to the IQ purchase.  My friends tell me the venders really mark things down on the last day of the show so they don’t have to haul so much home.  Perhaps I can find some real bargains.

KAT

Decision Made

 

Which one should I use?  Of course I am talking about knitting socks, and now is the time.  Judy L.’s “Knit a Pair in November” sock knit-along starts today!  Grab your yarn and needles, READY, SET, KNIT!!

I have so many options, thanks to KnitPicks.com.  As you can plainly see… 10 different yarns to choose from, and I have only been collecting for a year.  I really had a hard time deciding because I love them all.

And the winner is….. drum roll, please.

 

This Stroll Hand-painted "Make Believe” yarn.   I have been drooling over this yarn for almost a year now.  I couldn’t WAIT to get started sooooo…

I didn’t.  I am using  just an ordinary K2P2 cuff and stockinet stitch for the main portion of the sock.  I decided the colors in the yarn will show best that way (plus I am SOOOO slow when knitting a pattern that it would take me until spring to finish this if I used a patterned stitch!)

I know… it is supposed to start Nov. 1, BUT I have to have something on my needles all the time.  This is my “grab and go” project.  And I knit so slowly I knew a month probably would not be long enough for me to finish this pair. (But I AM getting faster now that I have worked on learning to knit Continental Style.) 

TIP:  For those of you interested in learning Continental Style, Knitpicks.com has some tutorial videos on their site.  This REALLY helped me figure this out, since line drawings in books don’t show you exactly what to do with the yarn tail when trying to purl.

I don’t think I really gave myself much of a head-start… I have cast this yarn on FOUR times before things went as I wanted it to go.  The first time was “toes-up”, and I decided I was not going to use my beautiful hand-painted yarn to learn a new technique… I’ll use one of the kettle-dyed yarns and the toes-up technique on my NEXT pair.  Then I cast it on “cuff-down” and played with Continental style.  My tension was all over the place, so I ripped it out twice, did some practicing on another set of needles, and I think I finally have the hang of it, so the fourth time is the charm.

Too busy to knit much right now, but it is packed and ready to go.  The road trip this weekend will give me lots of knitting time, I hope.  And thanks to my SIL  Mary Anne and my niece Salinda, I have a neat little bag to carry it all in.  It is a pretty tight fit right now, but once I get a little more knitted everything I need fits right in this little shoulder bag, ready to grab and go.

So…. are YOU in the Knit-Along?  Why NOT? Let’s knit a pair in November!!

KAT

Monday Design Wall; Socks

It’s that time again!  Boo’s quilt is FINISHED!!  (Except for the label, and mailing to a friend who will stitch down the binding.)

You can click to enlarge pictures of the quilt (and the socks, too).

Katie Bug picked the quilting design, set it up on the IQ and hit the “start” button.  I wish you could have seen her face when the IQ took off… she thought WE were going to have to move the machine to make the pattern.  I am amazed at how quickly young people pick up on computer stuff..  she was clicking buttons left and right, moving things around, resizing the pattern.  Her opinion, “This is REALLY COOL!”

The pattern is Tammy Finkler’s “Faster Posies” and it stitched up beautifully.   

 

AND… as promised, here are pictures of the socks I finished last week.  (HMMM… should have shaved before becoming a leg/foot model!)

The first picture shows the color the best.  This is “Risata” yarn from KnitPicks… a blend of cotton, superwash merino wool, polyamide, and elite elastic.  LOVE this stuff! 

I got the pattern from Mary.  These fit better than any of the other pairs I have done.

The color is not correct on the one above… taken without a flash so you could see the pattern better.

The next pair is cast on, but I am busy working on a practice swatch.   I am playing around with Continental style of knitting.  It seems to me it would be much faster.  I can do the K OK (except for that very first stitch) but the Purl is a little more challenging.  My book directions say to wrap the yarn counterclockwise, and I just can’t get a good stitch to pass through the loop doing that.  when I go CLOCKWISE, I can do it. 

So… do any of you knitters out there have advice for me on Continental style?  Especially the Purl stitch.

OH… head on over to Judy L.’s blog for more design wall Monday postings!

Now… off to quilt… without IQ.  Bulls-eye quilts (with raw, floppy edges) are not possible on IQ so I will be quilting the almost-old-fashioned way today.

Blessings to you all!

KAT

Just imagine…

Just imagine that there are pictures with this post.  I’m too lazy busy right now to deal with the camera (Now WHY do I let that little digital camera intimidate me?)

Life has been moving in a blur lately, and here is a little of what I have been up to…

We went on a camping vacation… did I take a SINGLE picture?  Nope… just enjoyed the cooler weather, beautiful leaves and the hope of catching some trout (They didn’t bite, but we had a good, relaxing time which we greatly needed.)  Heber Springs, AR is beautiful right now, and the weather was perfect for our little fall get-away.

Some close friends met us there, and we spent many hours just visiting, laughing, playing cards (Have you heard of 3-14?  Lots of fun!), and relaxing, with a little fishing thrown in on the side.

I finished the pair of socks (cotton yarn) that I have been working on for MONTHS now!  I really like them… can’t you just imagine, teal in color, a nice little design on the legs… oh well.  I PROMISE to post a picture on the NEXT blog entry.  I have already cast on the next pair using some hand-dyed wool yarn.  This time I am trying the “toes-up” method.  I’m not too sure about this… once I get past the toe increases I think I will like it OK, but for now it is WORK because I am having to THINK more since this is a new technique.

Inetta (IQ) and Gussie (Gammill Classic+) are so busy “playing” together.  I did 2 quilts yesterday… CHA-CHING!  While the girls played I pinned in a second quilt, baked cookies, prepared the lesson for church last night, and cooked supper.  I am LOVING this multi-tasking thing!

Today is another 2-quilt day, and I will work on getting the borders sewn on Boo’s quilt while IQ stitches.  I need to have that IN THE MACHINE Friday morning so I can mail it off to the lady that will be sewing the binding down.

My Katie-Bug will be visiting the farm this weekend, and we will cook and cook and play and sew and quilt… add in church on Sunday, and a possible birthday dinner for daughter Jennifer (if she doesn’t have to work) and then you can see that my weekend is filled to the brim with fun.

Must run… Gussie and Inetta are wondering where I am!  Have a really-blessed day and weekend because…

“You are blessed and highly favored of the Lord!”  (Luke 1:28)

KAT

All is well…

Just a quick post to let you  know that “all is well” on the home-front.  My machine part arrived yesterday.  It took a while to get things just right on Gussie but she is now back up and running.  And then I introduced Gussie to her new friend.  They are learning how to play, and doing a nice job of it.

My books arrived yesterday afternoon and now I am only waiting for the fabric.  But that’s OK… even if the fabric were here I would not have time right now for sewing.  SOOO, when it gets here, it gets here, and in the meantime I am getting ready for camping, quilting (I am doing one more “practice” session, then I will put on a “real” quilt this afternoon.), and all the other craziness that I call my life.

I promise pictures very soon of the 2 playmates and what they have been up.

KAT

Patience….

Is a virtue, and one of the fruits of the Spirit (longsuffering).  Mine is being tested greatly this week!  Waiting, and waiting, and waiting…

This post will probably be categorized as a “whiney” post, so you may just want to hit the X in the corner and back out now.

The machine part is STILL not here… Please, Lord, let this arrive tomorrow.  I MUST get my machine up and running again!

The fabric I ordered to finish Boo’s quilt has not arrived, either.  I ordered from a Texas quilt shop on the 27th of Sept.  I ordered from this shop because I felt it would arrive quickly, and they stated that they ship everything Priority mail… that means 3 days max.  HAHA!!  I finally called this past Monday.  They don’t know WHY it didn’t ship already but it was going out THAT DAY.  Well the post office notification says they didn’t get it until yesterday, which means I won’t get it until probably Friday.  I really wanted to get this quilt made and quilted before we went to Arkansas… that is THIS Sunday.  I wanted to deliver it to Boo when we went that direction.  That means I’ll have to finish it after we return and mail it to her.

The devotional books I ordered from Amazon have not come.  I don’t understand it, but I ordered 3 worship music CDs and 4 books (the same one).  Two days ago I got 2 boxes… one contained 1 CD, the other contained 2 CDs.  Supposedly the books were shipped the same day, but still have not arrived.  I PAID for shipping on this one because I wanted them quickly…. a test of patience.

On the positive side, I am LOVING the IQ!  I’ve done lots of playing with the pad and am SOOOO eager to get the whole thing up and running again.  But I will be so busy trying to get things ready for the camping trip that I won’t have time to play much on the machine.  Gussie Fay will patiently wait (unlike me sometimes) until I return, and then she will again work hard for me.  I just hope this time I don’t crash her into a side clamp.  I’m pretty sure I won’t make THAT mistake again.  I wonder what OTHER kind of silly thing I can do?  Only time will tell.

I really am working hard to be patient.  I think I’ll also work on the OTHER fruits of the Spirit while I am waiting!

Galatians 5:22-23 (KJV) 
    But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, [23] Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Have a blessed rest-of-the-week and weekend.

KAT

A Big OOPS!

IQ is absolutely WONDERFUL!!  I was having so much fun, until I set the quilt size wrong, walked away from the machine, and then when it got to the end of the row…

Bent needle bar when the needle ran into a clamp.  UGGGHHH!  NOT NOW!!  Yep…

A new one is ordered but the machine is DIW (dead in the water) until it arrives.  I am back to just playing with the tablet.  Thankfully this is only a $36 mistake.

IQ STILL rocks, but I have learned something important…  double-check that quilt size, gal!  It would not be an issue on a regular quilt with larger lining, but I was using a regular width of fabric for the lining and top.  Lesson learned!!

Hurry up, Linda, and get my needle bar here PLEASE!!  I want to PLAY!

KAT

I LOVE This Man!!

 

I don’t even know his name, but I love him.  (Does that sound like an Allen Jackson song???)  Sorry DH, but I just can’t help myself.

Why do I have these deep emotions for someone I have never met before?  Because he brought me THIS….

 

Which contains THIS…..

I’ve played with the tablet some (it won’t be hooked to the quilting machine until Sunday) and all I can say is AWESOME!!  I just know that she and Gussie Fay will have great times together.

KAT