it's Friday

Hubby's youngest sister came to town for a little visit. We took her to the zoo and we went to see the new Mummy movie (not as good as the previous ones). The next day, we went to the beach, a park, and 5-pin bowling. My right arm hurts and my left buttock is sore. Who knew that bowling can make your butt hurt? Anyways, she left a few days earlier than planned so we didn't get to take her canoeing.

Today, we got out the carpet shampooer and cleaned the carpets. It's a hot day so everything should dry relatively quickly. We've got all the fans on to move the humid air out of the house. And because everything upstairs is downstairs, I had to improvise a spot to photograph my knitting.


Ricky graciously donated his belly as a back drop for the baby sweater. I've got both of these knitted. This one is seamed up and the ends are woven in (not trimmed because the scissors weren't close at hand). I need to seam the other one and find some sort of closure. Once I'm done, the twins can be born ;)


This bit of fabric was gifted to me by my quilting friends. A bunch of them went to a big quilt show in Seattle last weekend. I really wanted to go with them but the wedding took precedence. They actually bought 4 different cat fabrics and let me choose one. I picked this fabric because there's a sleeping tortie in it that looks just like Phoebe.

Speaking of Phoebe, I woke up twice yesterday night. Both times, she was sprawled across my pillow. My head is in the middle and tucked into her tummy with her legs framing my face. She's a big kitty and I only have a standard sized pillow so that doesn't leave much room for me. No wonder I woke up.

The newly married couple have opened their wedding present from us so I can show you what I'm making for them:


(Please click on the image to see the detail) This is a circle quilt. The technique comes from the book Circle Play by Reynola Pakusich. This is the most fiddly quilt I've ever made. You need a lot of different co-ordinating fabrics (block background) and a good feature fabric (for the circles). You chop everything up and randomly sew the background blocks first. Then you temporarily assign a circle to the block. Once you've got all the blocks done, you throw everything up on a design wall. I don't have one big enough so I spent a lot of time at Nancy's. She's made one of these quilts so she helped me a lot. Then you spend the rest of your life rearranging the blocks and swapping circles until you have something you like. I ended up taking apart about 20 blocks and putting in a more appropriate fabric. I made several shopping trips for more fabric because I didn't have enough lights and darks. Then I had a bunch of reject circles that needed replacing. You will notice that most of the circles are not centered within the block. To create flow and movement, the technique involves lining up elements in the circle with the background. Each circle was scrutinized and carefully placed. Like I said, a very fiddly project but the end result is stunning. I had originally planned to make 64 blocks but now that it's assembled, the quilt is too short to fit on a queen sized bed. I need to add another row to make it longer so it's back to the design wall for me.

After I took pictures of the baby sweater, I started taking pictures of Ricky. He pulled a leg over his nose to tell me that he didn't want to be disturbed. Ha!