Thimbleanna – Page 33 – My little online diary.

The Aunts’ Quilt — Month 6

24 Comments / April 15, 2015 April 15, 2015 / Cookie of the Month, The Aunts' Quilt

Happy Tax Day — for those of you in the U.S. Aren’t we happy that‘s over for this year? The less said about that, the better! ;-D

Moving right along, it’s the 15th of the month and therefore, it’s time for the monthly Aunts’ Quilt Report. How are you Auntlets doing? I haven’t seen many updates this month — I hope you’re just too busy to post. I will say though that Karen R is killing us! She even finished and posted early this month — WooHoo Karen — Congratulations!!! I barely scraped by this month, but I got my blocks done. Here’s the applique block:

I had a hard time with the applique block this month. It’s definitely not my favorite, and I think my fabric choices made it even less of a favorite. Maybe the parts that really annoy me will get fixed, and maybe not. Anyway, here are the two pieced blocks:

And my little sneaky animal piece? I chose a deer this month and I think he’s cute.

Here’s what the blocks look like all together. They’re too big for my little design wall now, so I had to lay them out on the floor. I’m sure they won’t stay in this order, and there are a few little pieces that need to be fixed, but you get the idea.

And let’s not forget the Cookie of the Month — a girl needs sustenance for all this applique work. I had some leftover lemons from the Debutante Lemon Cake, so I decided to consult my cookie board on Pinterest. I ended up choosing Chewy Glazed Lemon Cookies and boy, were they ever good! A great choice while doing hand work and stitching. If you like lemon, you should definitely try these cookies!

Ok Auntlets, don’t give up yet! According to our schedule, we’re halfway done with this quilt (can you believe it???) — it’s all downhill from here! For month 7, we’re scheduled to do 4 inset triangles. Easy Peasy, right?

Ok — get going!!!
XOXO,
Anna

Too Late Lopi

24 Comments / April 9, 2015 April 9, 2015 / Knitting

Hello Invisible People! How’s it going out there? Did you have a nice Easter? Ours was quiet and somewhat marred by the fact that I had to spend the weekend doing MeMum and BigDaddy’s taxes. Oh well, it’s done now — Yay! I did manage to make a cake for our Easter dinner. I love lemon cakes in the spring, so I made Miette’s Lemon Debutante cake (I’ve posted about it here before, when I made it for Easter a few years ago). I forgot one crucial step, but it still tasted just fine. It’s a labor intensive cake, but well worth all the work, imho. Then, the recipe makes sort of enough cake and frosting for another little cake. I popped the extra stuff in the fridge for a few days, and then chose to make a little vanilla cake — all the work except putting it together was all done — what a treat!

Otherwise, things have been pretty boring here. Like sitting around watching paint dry, we’re just sitting around waiting for spring to pop up. It’s been raining the last few days and things are just barely starting to green up, so it won’t be long. In the meantime, I finished my Lopi sweater.

This is my third Lopi sweater and I looove them so much. They’re big and bulky and oh-so-comfy. Berglind and I decided to knit this together — if you can call it together, Berglind finished her version for her daughter several months ago. This one is late for the season, but we’ll still have some cool, blustery days and this sweater will be perfect to wear without a coat. And, hopefully, I’ll adjust to that neon green yarn — it looks radioactive to me. (Berglind was much more sensible and chose gray and white – I know I saw a picture of it but I can’t find it on her blog. Help Berglind!)

I used my very favorite tubular cast-off method for the neck. It gives a nice rolled edge to the collar. I looked for on-line tutorials for you, in case you’re an interested knitter, but none of them are just like the method I used. This one is very close, except that I do the set-up rows twice and I do all the work on the circular needle.

I was happy to see that the sweater fits nicely in my new knitting bag. The goal was to make a knitting bag that would be big enough for bigger, bulky knits — success!

Here are my leftovers. I didn’t have much blue yarn left, but I have quite a bit of the neon yarn. What to do, what to do. Maybe neon mittens or something. We’ll see.

Oooh, hey — while we’re on the subject of knitting, you should check out these adorable American Girl Doll clothes that Marsha has made.

Ohmygosh — I need a little girl in the family!!!

XOXO,
Anna

A Knitting Bag

30 Comments / March 31, 2015 March 31, 2015 / Sewing

Hello Hello! How are things going out there? Warming up? Cooling down for those of you down under? Can you believe March is over? I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty happy about that — March is one of my least favorite months. The only thing that saves it is the First Day of Spring and the TheSecondChild’s birthday. Otherwise, it’s a pretty bleak month in our corner of the world. Lots of windy, cold, unpredictable weather. It does make for good hunker down time though, so that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing.

I’ve been wanting to make a new knitting bag for the last year or two, but I’d had a hard time deciding on style and fabric. When Amy posted her Maker bag a month ago, I knew her idea would make a perfect knitting bag. (I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one here who loves everything Amy makes — I’d follower her off of a cliff!) I searched all my patterns and found a bag in a Japanese book that I’ve had for awhile. I don’t understand any Japanese and the bag in the book was too small, but luckily they have drawings and dimensions in those books, so I was able to extrapolate and come up with a bigger bag.

I added a few fun little details to the outside of the bag — some embroidered words that I made with my embroidery machine and a few little applique/embroidered knitting motifs that I shamelessly stole from the Vechernie-Posidelki blog. I can’t pronounce the blog name and I can’t read a word she writes, but I can certainly appreciate the beautiful things that she makes. You should definitely pay her (I think it’s a her) a visit!

I also put a zipper in my bag — just to keep things neat and tidy. I don’t think knitting bags usually have zippers in them — there’s probably a reason for that. I guess we’ll see how long it is before I get my project caught in the zipper. That Maker fabric on the zipper gusset is my very. favorite. print. I love it! (Shameless fabric plug: all prints are Art Gallery prints and the brown dot is the moda mochi linen dot in charcoal.)

I opted not to put any pockets on the inside — I’ll make some small little bags to hold knitting tools inside the bigger bag. I did put a pocket on the outside of the bag though — I thought it might be a good place to throw my phone and wallet if I take my bag to a knit night or something. (Hey Quilty Peeps — we need a knit night!)

I also debated what to do about the bag handles. Over the years, I’ve learned that flat handles don’t work very well for me. They get squished and never seem to last long. I finally decided to use the mochi linen and wrap it around cotton cording. Then I embroidered a bunch of little x’s on top of the seam line. It really wasn’t necessary — because the fabric is dark, the seamline was barely noticeable at all. And I doubt it will provide any more stability — if anything, those little x’s will probably wear out first.

Anyway, it looks like a weirdly shaped bag, but I love how it fits over my shoulder. After several unsuccessful attempts to take a picture of it on my shoulder, I finally just hung it on my tripod so you get the idea how it hangs.

It’s just what I was hoping for and I’ve already pressed it into service with a new knitting project. It’s a small project now, but it will grow and so far, there’s plenty of room.

So … Happy April! I hope you don’t get pranked too badly tomorrow!!!

XOXO,
Anna

Spotted Socks

27 Comments / March 22, 2015 March 8, 2016 / Knitting, Socks

Hi There! Did you have a good weekend? Mine went way too fast. It was a good one though. Lots of sewing time, although, I had to call a halt to my little project. I’ve been having fun with my maker fabric, but I decided I didn’t like the zippers I bought, so I’ll have to wait for some to arrive in the mail.

I did finish some socks this past week though. Spotty Socks. Or Dottie Socks.

I saw some socks similar to these in a Mollie Makes issue a few years ago. They were for slouchy socks though and I’m not really a slouchy sock wearer, so I just used my old tried and true sock knitting method. I did add the spots and the little band of colored trim at the top of the socks — just like the originals.

When I first saw the Mollie Makes socks, I thought the dots were knit into the actual sock, but I was surprised to find out that they are little knots. I debated using a french knot, but in the end, I opted for a colonial knot. My french knots often fall out.

These dots might not last long either. They certainly aren’t practical. Want to place bets on how long they’ll last? At least if they start to fall apart, they’re pretty easy to remove. I found that out the hard way — when I was half-way done with the second sock, I realized their spacing was too different from the first sock, so I took them out and tried again.

Anyway, hopefully they’ll be fun to wear — at least for a little while!

I hope you have a good week — March is whizzing by, isn’t it???
XOXO,
Anna

The Aunts’ Quilt – Month 5

20 Comments / March 14, 2015 April 15, 2015 / Cookie of the Month, The Aunts' Quilt

Gosh, I can’t remember the last time I posted just two days after my last post. It’s time for the monthly Aunts’ Quilt update though, so it must be done! Here’s my applique block for this month:

The first pieced block:

And the second pieced block:

I’m still having a lot of fun with these blocks — I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of them. For my little buddy on the applique block this month, I chose a teeny bee.

But he’s not my favorite part of this block. I Love the pink flower. It reminds me of the Flower Power graphics of my childhood! It was great fun choosing the fabrics for this little flower.

And for the Cookie of the Month, I decided to make Hello Dollys. You probably have a favorite recipe for these cookies — I have one too. Somewhere between making the grocery list and making the cookies, I lost the recipe. Good ol’ google to the rescue! These cookies are known by several different names — Hello Dollys, Magic Cookies, Seven Layer Bars, and probably others. There are lots of versions of this recipe and I’m pretty sure I chose one that’s not exactly the same as my original. I sort of went with the one that was more decadent than the others — more of most of the ingredients — ooooops! Anyway, I used this version, except that I used walnuts instead of pecans. Also, the recipe says to cut the pan of cookies into 12 bars, but they’re so rich that I cut them smaller.

Next month I’ll try to choose a little more sensible cookie. Or one that’s a little less messy — this one probably shouldn’t be eaten while actually sewing, which sort of misses the point. We need these monthly cookies for sustenance while stitching!

Oh, and heads up Auntlets! Is Anne the only one that noticed the missing center on block 4? If you look closely at the cover of the pattern, there are circles in the middle of block 4, but they aren’t on the the actual pattern used to make the block. I totally missed it — good catch Anne! I’ll definitely be adding some circles to my block

Ok ladies — have fun with your blocks next month. This is our last month for big blocks — WooHoo!!!

XOXO,
Anna