Self-Imposed Sock Club

Happy New Year!

We just had to make a rather large and definitely unexpected purchase (new central heating), so my ‘mad money’ budget for 2024 is going to be verrrrry limited. Fortunately, I’ve spent years preparing for just such a disaster. 🙂

My craft room is well-stocked with yarn and fabric, tools and patterns. Even with such an abundance of materials on hand, I do love supporting local businesses and had planned to do a bit of shopping at a couple of fiber festivals this year. But, with a giant hole in the bottom of my bucket, I will be working from stash for the foreseeable future.

To keep the thrill of discovery and newness alive, I am following in the footsteps of The Yarn Harlot: I bagged up twelve skeins of sock yarn from the stash, and will open one each month as my own private Sock of the Month Club.

I did not spend a lot of time evaluating what I pulled – I just reached into the bottom of each shelf and pulled out skeins, and popped them into paper bags. They’ve been stapled shut and randomly numbered 1-12, and I’m going to open one each month and knit a pair of socks.

The patterns will also be random (mostly); I’ll be spinning the wheel to choose a pattern from the book, 52 Weeks of Socks by Laine Publishing. I say somewhat random because I did not bag up any colorwork, and the pattern must work with the yarn-of-the-month – so I may have to spin more than once to get a good match. With 52 patterns, finding 12 that work with my stashed yarns should be pretty easy.

I open the first bag tonight!

Mystery Shawl, Part 5 (spoilers)

A bit delayed getting this posted; it was my birthday last week, it’s been super busy at work, AND I caught a fall cold. <end sympathy plea>

The Secret Forest MKAL is drawing to a close. I completed Clue #5 and am partway thru the final Clue, so I’m on track to finish it in time to be eligible for prizes. Even better: this looks like a mystery shawl that I’ll actually wear! Lol.

Clue #5 has us connecting the two halves, solving the mystery of what shape this shawl will take. Here’s a closeup of the lace section:

And here’s how the whole thing looks after completing this Clue. Vengeance had to do his inspections, too. I had to zoom out to get the whole shawl in the picture, so the proportions are a bit weird, but you get the idea. It most definitely needs blocking to open up all the fantastic lace sections.

Spooky season sewing

I had a really rough day at work on Friday, and thankfully my weekend was not booked so I was able to spend time decompressing in the soap studio and my craft room. Being the first of October, and having recently acquired a few yards of festive fabric from Running Stitch Fabrics, I decided a couple of seasonal dresses for the grandlittles were in order.

While I’m not one to put siblings in matching outfits, I wanted to use a particular panel for the main skirt piece – so the dresses were going to end up looking similar. I chose different patterns, though. The littlest got puff sleeves and a ruffle while the older got a simpler dolman-style top. It’s hard to photograph dresses on hangers, hopefully I can get in-person pics soon.

Both are lined with adorable star fabric, and I used KAM snaps on the backs because it was faster than buttons. 🙂 Pattern for the dolman-top w/ patch pocket: Lorne, by Little Lizard King. Pattern for the puff sleeves w/ skirt ruffle: Wildflower Dress, by PeekABoo Pattern Shop on Etsy.

Just cats

Mr. Poppy is glad the weather cooled down, so he can snuggle more. He loves a bit of lap time (on his own terms).

He’s such a sweet cat, when he does get a hankering to be mischievous it catches me by surprise. Usually it’s string; oddly, he also has a thing for pencils/pens/anything shaped like a pen (like knitting needles). His favorite toys are the little mice, which he flips and chases when nobody’s looking.

And I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it on the blog (took a bit of a hiatus there) — our daughter adopted a stray kitten last year, and he has become a large kitty! She named him Vengeance, and he lives up to that… At almost 18 months old, he now weighs north of 14 pounds, which is more than Poppy, and gives him a slight advantage during some of their wrestling matches. (Poppy still wins at strategy and patience; those street-smarts are key!) Here is the teenage menace enjoying a late summer sunbeam:

He’s very snuggly and loving, when he isn’t being a turd. He’s still testing the boundaries of what’s acceptable, and is a bit too clever for his own good – we have to keep the back door locked because he can open it.

Mystery Shawl, Part 4 (spoilers)

Yep, this is going to dominate the blog until the end of October.

Clue #4 came out yesterday for the Secret Forest MKAL on Ravelry; and we’re using the contrast colors this time. It’s a nice change from the first half; and will brighten the whole thing up. Here’s a little progress pic (I’m about a third of the way thru Clue 4):

If it’s ever-so-slightly blurry, it’s because I was on the train when I took the picture. 🙂

Scrap Lab Quilting

I’m participating in a year-long scrap lab at Running Stitch Fabrics, where we make two mystery blocks from our scraps; the colors to be used are chosen by the roll of the dice. We aren’t all using the same colors, and for me September’s roll turned up orange, purple, and turquoise if a third color was called for.

Orange and purple.

To say I was nervous is an understatement. With such garish colors, I tried to find fabrics from my scrap bags that were mostly solid. The blocks themselves went together pretty well. I’m making two of each in 10″ size, and will end up with 24 blocks by year-end. Not at all sure how I’ll put these together, but that’s a problem for next year. 🙂

Mystery Shawl, Part 3 (spoilers)

We’re half way thru the Clues for the Secret Forest MKAL! All seven of the accent colors have been used once, but there’s still quite a bit left so they must make another appearance in the second half. The initial information said this was going to be a “substantial” shawl, and I have no reason to doubt that. I haven’t blocked it yet, but I did pin out the last two Clues to see the detail. Lovely stitch patterns!

(The MKAL is over on Ravelry, under Paper Daisy Creations.)

Mystery Shawl, Part 2 (spoilers)

Most shawls require blocking to bring out their true glory, and this one is certainly shaping up to be no exception (get it? shaping up?? HA!)

*ahem*

I completed Clue #2 of the Secret Forest MKAL (on Ravelry), by Paper Daisy Creations, and it’s difficult to get a good picture without pinning it down to something, which I didn’t do. I was shooing the cat away as I quickly snapped a pic on the kitchen floor, so my current WIP is very…. strange looking.

Yeah, it’s weird. The right-hand side continues to slope up at an angle, and the left is vertical until the second yellow stripe, then it also angles to the right. I’m thinking maybe this is a crescent / boomerang shaped shawl?? Only time will tell. Here’s a close-up of the top section; I like the subtle cables.

I’m working on Clue 3 this week; more lace, and I expect my 6th and 7th colors to make an appearance but I haven’t read ahead to see if the shape changes again. It is a mystery, after all.

The pattern is very well-written and easy to follow, with both charted and written directions (I’m a chart gal but know that not everyone is).

FPP (on repeat)

Next in my learn-to-quilt-for-retirement lineup: Foundation Paper Piecing (“FPP”). I love the look of intricate designs and images, the ones that you just can’t piece with traditional techniques, and FPP has really grown in popularity amongst modern quilt designers. I have several patterns, and finally jumped off the ledge the other day and gave it a try.

I decided to make us a new Christmas tree skirt, and chose the Atomic Starburst Tree Skirt, by Violet Craft. The style will fit our family room well, and it is challenging but not gigantic. I am making the larger size, but it’s still much smaller than a bed-sized quilt.

I chose two layer cakes for the colored bits and plain white for the background. The stars are done with FPP, and I slowly made my way through three of them so far, with many YouTube videos to hold my hand. I made LOTS of mistakes, and had to rip and resew many (many) times, but by the third one I was starting to get the hang of it, and I’m hopeful that the remaining nine will go faster (or at least, have fewer mistakes).

The rest is solid colored diamonds, with white sashing between each. I haven’t cut any of those out yet, I wanted to make sure I could figure out the FPP parts first.

I was “that person” today

During my lunch break, I took a little walk to do a quick deposit at the bank for my office, and decided to grab a bite to eat on my way back. I hadn’t grabbed my wallet, but I had my smartphone; I figured I’d just use the mobile pay app. Most places around here take the tap no problem, and it’s nice to only have one thing to keep track of as I walk thru the city.

Before getting in line, I made sure they took tap-to-pay, and confidently placed my order and tapped my phone for my $10 lunch.

Declined.

I’m not a complete knob with technology, but admittedly I don’t use very often; I pulled up the wallet app again, confirmed the payment source, and tapped.

Declined.

Oh, the look on the cashier’s face as I fumbled and apologized, and tried again.

Declined.

By this time, the line was growing impatient and I stepped away from the register, saying I’d call and get a card number from a coworker, so she could punch it into the machine.

And then: a good Samaritan took pity on me, and stepped out of line to pay for my lunch. I almost cried, it was such a sweet gesture. I thanked her profusely and she just said to pay it forward. While I ate I tried to figure out why my pay app wasn’t working; I’m still not confident I know why, since it was set to use PayPal and that’s tied to a bank account as backup funding, and I use PayPal all the time. I did remove two expired credit cards from the wallet profile, but am still stumped on why it didn’t go thru (yes, there’s money in my bank account). I definitely felt like an idiot.

As the good Samaritan left, I thanked her again, waving my (useless) cell phone and lamely explaining that I didn’t know why it didn’t work and what a day to forget my wallet at the office. Not sure she fully believed me, but I’ll be going back to that restaurant later this week to pay my $10 forward to someone who is struggling, either financially or technologically.

And I’ll be sure to have my physical wallet in hand when I do.