I think I've figured out ...

... the problem I had with the Rock Island shawl.  As usual, the Yarn Harlot has determined the cause and summarized it very succinctly.

At least I'm contemplating Christmas crafting in August - maybe I'll actually finish everything!

I've got quite the ambitious list of things I want to make for Christmas gifts:

1.  Sweater for my niece - in progress
2.  2 pairs of socks - good projects for a short work trip I have to take later in the year
3.  French press slippers - one pair in the mid-felting stage - if I can get them to look good, 4 pair to go
4.  Two little guy sweaters - one is getting there, the other still in skeins
5.  A table runner with some crazy chef fabric - which I might actually keep for myself but haven't entirely decided - haven't even considered the pattern yet
6.  Baby sweaters for various babies being born all around me.  Why do they always happen in waves?  I really need to give my friends a calendar so they can pick their date to make the knitting easier!
7.  Possibly another shawl like the one I might be keeping for myself, discussed in a previous post

When the list is written out, it doesn't sound too bad.  In fact, it looks so manageable, I'm going to have to think up some other ideas to make things more stressful!  Of course, if I decide to keep everything, that will increase the stress of coming up with replacement projects.

Plenty

The veggie garden has been so satisfying this year.  While the tomatoes have been smaller than usual, I think due to the lack of rain, they have been very tasty.   The zucchini, which I have never had an overabundance of in the past, despite their reputation, have come through with flying colours this year.  And I picked another lot of green beans this morning for dinner tonight.  Last weekend I made the best ratatouille I have ever tried.  It takes forever but is so very worth it.  Most of the ingredients came from the garden.  I had to buy an onion and an extra eggplant to supplement but otherwise, all home grown by me.  And it was delicious.

My latest cookbook purchase is Plenty which came to my attention just when things were ripening in the garden.  There are so many recipes in here that I want to try and the ones I have tried have been wonderful.  Last night it was a bread salad with tomatoes and cucumber.   I'm looking forward to a green bean concoction tonight that looks very tasty.

On the knitting front, I'm making progress on some of the projects I have lined up.  I do have to try felting the slippers again but I'm waiting until we have some laundry to do with them before I plunge them into the water again.  They have started felting but need to shrink a few more inches to be worn by anyone but Bigfoot himself.

I have finally gotten back to the blog after a couple of weeks of laziness.  I would have to say that I've also gotten back to knitting and quilting after a couple of weeks of laziness as well.  I have just exited a summertime sappy romance phase that has got to get cut back.  I know the book will have a happy ending, so why can't I put it down?  I also know it is junk food for the brain, but on the other hand, it is an escape from the stresses of the day.  But so are knitting and quilting and I have a lot of projects lined up.

Anyway, it's getting a tiny bit cooler, I'm starting to think about Christmas gifts and am kicking into knitting gear again.  This is Sursa from Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton and I really like it.  It was like lightening to make and is really cozy.  It was initially going to be a Christmas gift but now I'm not sure.  I could also make another one.  We'll see.

I'm currently attempting to felt some French Press Slippers.  I'd better go see what the washing machine is doing to them.

Summer Produce

I am obsessed with my vegetable garden.  And it has been really productive this year, starting with so many lovely peas and onward to my current crops of green beans, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers and zucchini.  I've never really had the problem of too much zucchini and I wouldn't say the plants have been that productive this year either but I do have slightly more than we can just eat for dinner a few times a week.  So I dusted off the oven which hasn't been on much lately due to the heat and baked some zucchini products.

The first was a bread recipe from High Plains:  The Joy of Alberta Cuisine, a book I picked up randomly a long time ago, which has several really good recipes.  The bread is very tasty.  I substituted chocolate chips for the raisins which makes it even better.

Next were muffins from Flour, the cookbook that I'm going to work my way through because all of the recipes look amazing.  The muffins are also good.  Again, substituted chocolate chips for the raisins.  Clearly this is not the healthy option but I've been eating so many veggies from the garden, what are a few chocolate chips?

A Summer Quilt

This quilt is called Modern Rose Garden which seems an appropriate name for a summer project.  I bought this as a kit from Mad About Patchwork at the Creative Sewing festival last fall.  I think it is quite pretty.  I was a bit worried that my general inability to sew a straight line would show up more in this quilt than in others but I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

The diamond quilt is done

Several months ago, I posted the completed diamond quilt top.  This morning, put the last stitch through the binding and it is done!

I had been debating about getting a professional quilter to quilt it for me but really prefer to finish them myself if I think I can on my little machine.  I have a Pfaff that I won on a radio call in contest in Sudbury when I was in university and it is very sturdy but small.  It has few bells and whistles and does not have a big window between the main control panel and the presser foot.  So I always have to try to keep the quilt on the left side of the presser foot as much as possible.  I discovered that the quilting method I chose for this quilt made that a little difficult but I managed and only have a few areas that are a bit less than perfectly straight.   I used the walking foot to sew down both the inside and the outside of each diagonal row of diamonds further reinforcing the diamond shape.

In deciding my quilting method, I picked up the Kaffe Fassett book the design came from and examined his quilts.  All of his diamond quilts, I think I found 3 of them, were finished in the same way.  So I thought, if a guy who clearly knows what he is doing in this area has finished all of his diamond quilts in the same way, I probably can't go wrong in matching his approach.  So I did.  And I think it looks great.