What I did

First of all, I must thank Jane, from Nuido - a student's journey, for her 'Make My Day' award nomination. Not only is it rewarding to know that somebody is enjoying my blog, but I found new blogs to enjoy from her list. I'm still thinking about my list, but as always, as I think, the people whose blogs I read are already posting their lists, and so it is hard to think of somebody new to add to the lists. In my comment to Jane I wondered what a six degrees of separation list would look like for the needlework blog community. I suspect it is more like 3 or 4 degrees of separation, given the lists I've seen.

The other comment on my last post was from Elisabeth at Sew In Love who wondered what I had done back in January when I wrote my last long, meandering post. Well, I didn't do much stitching but I did select colours and find a pattern and start stitching on a band round robin I'm doing. I've posted it on the Stitching Sisters blog where we share our progress but here it is as well. I've been using "Color Play:Easy Steps to Imaginative Color in Quilts" by Joen Wolfrom to help when I am stuck with colour choice. The colour combinations are based on the Ives colour wheel and there are lots of photos of flowers and such to illustrate the concepts. For me, the colour pallates ring true, so I reley on this book.

I had already decided on a beach theme because Jenny's beautiful band had such lovely sea colours. You can read her description of this band in her Stitching Sisters post. But the reds I found that fit the colour scheme didn't quite lend themselves to beach or sea items. Luckily, back in November I taught an Assisi work class and had searched the internet for charts and remembered a seahorse chart. I used the dark aqua instead of black for the outline and after a few nights of stitching while watching mystery DVDs I finished the first motif. I won't say that I didn't have to frog a few times, but I've learned that a good mystery is not conducive to keeping count. I'll have to save my free form stitching for those nights.

I searched for sea shell charts and couldn't find what I wanted to go with this, so I charted my own sea shell to go above and below the seahorses. I finished up last night so here is how the sampler looks so far. Jenny has asked for bands in a verticle orientation because she is making a purse at the end. I have to send this off to Mandy in England next, but I'm keeping it until next week because I mentioned the band round robin to some of my EGA chapter members and they asked to see it. Jenny's hardander work is so amazing that I want them to take a look.


As I've mentioned before, I start to feel like knitting come November, so that is another thing I've been finishing off. The problem is, the yarn store is next to the wide shoe store so I can't help myself. And when I see all the amazing yarns, I just have to get them. I limited myself to scarf amounts though, rather than sweater, since it was just before Christmas and I had to consider the budget. I don't know if I'll be able to restrain myself when I go to get spring shoes though. Anyway, I've done three scarves so far, which has been good practice for the final silk scarf I will do for myself.

I almost don't want to give this scarf away, but it is for my SIL who just had a birthday so I can't keep it without getting something else for her. It is made from polyamide, which sounds awful but it really is neat. The yarn is from Colinette yarns in Wales - Lasso in Monet colourway. I tried about three different knitting patterns before deciding on this simple lace pattern. The others I tried showed too much of the light blue and the colourway didn't work. We had Catherine Jordan teaching a class at my last EGA chapter meeting and she taught us various ways to work with overdyed threads. This scarf really brought that home. You can't use varigated or overdyed yarns and threads for everything!


This morning I finally got around to blocking. When I see these two (the smaller scarf if the pale aqua silk mentioned in a previous post) stretched out on the floor I wonder if maybe I made them too long. I judged the length by putting them on me, but I'm taller than the recipients of these and I like to wear my scarf wrapped around my neck with both ends hanging in front.
I also finished this silk and cotton scarf. I really like the picot edge knitted on this pattern so I used it for the aqua silk as well. I didn't on the blue scarf and I'm sort of wishing I had, but there is no more yarn so it will have to do. I'll make sure I think of it for the next scarf.