Category Archives: quilting

The Craft Pit is All Grown Up

Posted on by

Welcome to the new studio space!
Check it out - bonus accidental self-portrait!

There’s still a bit of work yet to do, but it’s done enough to start moving into at this point. We have to figure out how to shingle and trim around the new door, and need to get our wonderful window guy back out to do the window trim, put in baseboards, move the ends of the light fixtures to better distribute the light, and get two more drawer units to put in the corner near the ironing board. That seems like a lot of work, now that I’ve written it all out…

We’ve been working on this, off and on, for almost a year now. No, I didn’t take any before pictures. The before on this was too awful to contemplate, let alone photograph.
The building had had an electrical fire at some point, after which the owners had mostly gutted it, and then used it to store several decades worth of random crap, all of which the previous owners just left out there. After several trips to the dump to get rid of all the crap, and a lot of screaming and flailing every time one of the enormous shed spiders was encountered, we finally got it cleaned out enough to use it for storing our own random crap.

A new roof here, some electrical work there, and a considerable amount of standing around wondering WTF (seriously – WHY remove whatever passed for plumbing out there by cutting the pipes off, at an angle, just above the foundation wall? WHY????), and we finally got to start the fun of hanging drywall. The drywall took forever, during which time we discovered that there were no studs out there that were the same distance apart. A few were 16″ apart, but the rest were anywhere between 11″ and 33″. And none of the walls are square or straight. Good times!

I’ve got about half of the stuff moved out there and set up so far. Still have lots and lots of bins to unpack and make sense of, but it finally feels more like studio instead of shed. Hopefully it’ll be done enough to get some drafting and sewing done next weekend. Hopefully.

Looking from the corner nook into the room towards the drafting table and the sewing table (the serger is there, but the sewing machine hasn’t been moved out yet):
_DSC8200

Looking from the far corner behind the sewing table towards the nook. All of those bins are still yet to be unpacked or repacked and put on the tall chrome shelving that’s still in the basement:
_DSC8199

Standing in the doorway looking in towards the sewing table end of the room. The books are about the only things that are likely to stay right where they are. The class sweaters will probably go back in the house, and the fabric will get moved around, the swatch bins will move, etc, etc:
_DSC8198

In other news… Nope. No other news. Nothing at all to report other than this. It’s been fairly all-consuming, really.

Not Knitting

Posted on by

As in “the picture below isn’t”, not “I’m not doing any”. Just so we’re clear.

Three quilt tops done in recent months (and by recent, I totally mean something along the lines of the last 12 months. or so.). Two will be hand quilted, one will be machine quilted. I don’t actually have pictures of the other two, just this one. Pretty sure the pictures of the other two were on the SD card that died on me last month, but one of the hand-quilt ones is on the quilt frame, ready to go as soon as the studio is done and I can actually put the frame back together.

I had to lay it out on the kitchen floor for block placement, since that was the only place big enough to lay the whole thing out
IMG_0656

After rearranging it a couple of times, it was all seamed and loaded onto the quilt frame. Yes, I forgot to mark it first. Go me.

Once the last of the drywall is up (6 more pieces to cut and hang) and taped (just those pieces left to tape) and mudded and sanded and painted, then we can put down the floor and have the electricians come back to do the finishing on the wiring and hang the fixtures, I can move all my crap out there and actually get the quilt quilted.

Can. Not. Wait.

Yum, Ow, and BWAH!

Posted on by

No, these are not the photos you were looking for.

But oooh! Yummy handpainted sock yarn goodness, courtesy of Kirsten at Through The Loops (and I know you’re jealous of my consistently crap photography skills and inability to get any kind of lighting to ever work FOR me…):

 

And (no laughing, Lara), a genuine quilting injury (caught my arm on a pin while reaching across it, and rrrriiiiiiiiippppppppppp went the skin. Woot! And who knew it was that difficult to take a picture of your own forearm? Not I, certainly):

 

 

Post monster

Posted on by

Or monster post, really.

Hoo-ee! Have I ever got a head fulla words for y’all. Seriously. I’ve been totally jonesing to post for more than a week now, and haven’t been able to due to the fact that dingoes ate my blog. It was messy, I tellya.

Anyway. This is going to be a picture heavy post, so be warned. Ready? Thought so.

So here’s a quilt all on its ownsome:

 

Auntie Pink is a knitter. She’s been a knitter for a long, long time, but last year her doctor told her ‘no more knitting’ – it’s just too hard on her body at this point. I think she’s allowed to do a teensy bit now, but it’s definitely not a carefree activity anymore. I adore Auntie Pink. I’ve only met her twice, but she made such an impression on me both times, and she’s very special. I started this shawl for someone else, and it fought me HARD. It didn’t want to be that for that person. Wasn’t going to go there. But the idea of Auntie Pink came to mind and it just FLOWED (well, other than that damn gaping hole issue, but even that was a smooth fix). It made me unendingly happy to make it for her. So here she is, all wrapped up in it, next to me looking like a total dork (as usual):

Ok. Moving on to the present. And Madrona! Hooray for Madrona! I took a couple of days off of work to get my car fixed and to hang out with some FT’ers who were in town. I, like an idiot, didn’t take pictures of them. But they were there. And they’re not imaginary friends anymore! They have faces! Go me for meeting people in person!

I got to hang out with Angela, which is always a good time, and she brought Lara and Lynne down with her. Lynne owns Knitopia in White Rock. If you’re up that direction, or passing by that direction, it’s well worth a stop. Tell her I sent you. And promise not to brush your teeth in the shower. She’ll understand. L&L kick all available ass. I heart them. And I got to meet several other people. Some of the names are fuzzy at this point (it was total people overload), but new people to adore: Roz, Jessica, Denise, Vanessa, Jean, Stephanie, Sam, Marti, and.. um… wow. I’ve forgotten a LOT more names than I realized. I’m bad with names. I admit that. Really bad. But I had SO much fun meeting everyone. And I managed to get through conversations with both Harlot and Nancy Bush without fainting OR vomiting. It was SOOOO Cool. (Stephanie is on the FT list, and actually did some hanging out with us, although I kept mostly missing those moments. Timing, as we all know, is NOT my forte.)

On to the pictures, what few of them there are:

 

And the view of the inside of the hotel room:
and

And that was just the first day’s shopping haul. There was some Damage Done there, folks.

And, last but not least, some Lisa Souza goodness:

That’s the wensleydale in Deep Sea that I finished spinning up last night. I have another 4oz bump of the wensleydale in Elektra, so once I get that spun up I’ll have to figure out something to do with them. It’s REALLY nice stuff to work with, as is all of Lisa’s stuff. Addicting, though.

Beyond that, there have been two pairs of socks and another Rogue finsihed, but I don’t have pics of any of that yet. I’ll get some pics of my Olympic sweater progress tomorrow, and maybe the two pairs of socks. Maybe.