By popular demand

G'day all!

This post is brought to you courtesy of my friend A.  She told me I'm not posting enough.  She is correct!

So since my last endeavours at posting... Umm... Yes I've been making lots of stuff!  Lots and lots of making!  Alas not so much photographing of things I've been making because the weather went a bit manky and getting shots in good light was not easy, then I forgot all about getting pics when the weather was better.

Let's see what we've got in the vault.

I bought a crap tonne of acid dyes.  These will dye protein fibres such as wool and silk (and nylon).  I foresee many happy hours playing with the dye pot.

I am sure you cannot tell which company
supplied these dyes. 

My big sewing machine is eating up quilts.  It is so much easier to free motion quilt things on it, and when I fix up the table so it doesn't rock around, it will be even better.  I won't be able to blame the wonky bits on the table moving with the quilt then, it will be all my fault instead.

Icky quilt.  Will be given away.

I've managed to catch up on a number of quilts that needed quilting, which is excellent.

Don't ask me what I was thinking,
I was practising loops.

The quilt below is one that I started a couple of months ago, probably three months ago, some time ago - I guess I should document these things, shouldn't I?  Anyway it is super lurid and is awaiting its turn in the washing machine and then under the camera lens proper.

This one is eye searing and I love it!

I've started not just one but two new shawls, from the one pattern (Picea sitchensis) using my handspun.  Of course now I am having the devil's own job spinning yarn to match the same weight...

The plain part of Picea

The lovely white is about double the size of the variegated yarn, but the white is so squooshy!  But too heavy.

My handspun yarns.  And knitting.

I think the saga with my handspinning needs its own blog post...

Sunset at my fave place.  With boat.

September finished in a blaze of colour and glory.

Leaves were really ramping up the red.

Leaf cutter bee on a sunflower

And we even got to see a full moon and eclipse!  I admit that this shot was taken on the big camera and I was super pleased that I've worked out how to make the colour come up instead of it being washed out.

Total eclipse.

DH took off to NYC for work at the start of October, so I took off to the coast.  (Pics below are in reverse order, which will explain why the green top is getting shorter as we go down the page!).

Baby top and the Strait of San Juan de Fuca

Stopping at this view for a couple of beauty shots (actually I was stuffing my face with two hard boiled eggs that would not come out of their shells and decided I should enliven the picture with my knitting projects rather than an annoying egg or two) made me feel a bit homesick.  The strait reminded me of a calm day on Port Phillip, the bay that my home city surrounds.   The strait often is much more excited that this day but it was lovely.  And I had stopped to visit Dungeness Spit, which turns out to be a spit of sand that sticks out about 5 miles.  Uh, no, I didn't want to walk out to the lighthouse five miles away....

Sock and the strait

My knitting and I visited the most northwesterly point of the lower 48 US states.  We saw a whale!  (pics will follow in the travel report, when I do that...)

Canada is in the distance

I walked on wonderful beaches and saw lovely sights, and sat and knitted for a while whilst soaking up the sunshine.

Knitting and Second Beach

Sock and Second Beach

Oops, I left the ball of yarn behind

We had a few days of pretty average weather - got an inch of rain on Saturday I think it was.  We were both glad that we were wearing rain coats because some of that inch fell on us - we had gone out for breakfast and a bit of a walk and the heavens opened!

A very determined cat

But the weather cleared up again and I sat outside a couple of days this week and did a bit of spinning.  Not Our Cat was completely set on sitting on my lap even as I spun yarn.  When she was determinedly napping it was fine but every now and then she decided she had to bite at the yarn and claw it.  Not so good, puss!

Hand carding top to blend it.

I'm a bit peeved that all my effort in carding up a gradient yarn is useless because I didn't spin the right weight.

(Don't tell DH that I'm planning to buy a drum carder at the fibre festival on the weekend if I find any good deals... using hand cards for the amount of yarn I want to spin up is a PITA!  Plus I have a bunch of fleece and more time than money to deal with it.)

I picked up a bit of fabric (a mini charm pack) of squares on my travels and decided to make something up immediately.  I spent some happy hours with my Me and My Sister fabrics from various collections and have built another quilt top and back.  Then I got the new batting out and discovered it is hand wash only.

New quilt featuring Hi-De-Ho fabrics

Really?  Like really?  For batting?  For a quilt?  It never even occurred to me that it would be hand wash only.  Okay, it is wool but... nope, hand wash only.  No wonder it was such a good deal - nobody wants it!  So now I have to watch out for good specials on batting cos I am pretty much right out.  I bought some at a local place but one lot of queen size batting in scrimless 100% cotton cost $40.  Ouch.

Anyway, my Modern Quilt Guild (Seattle) now has 8 yards of hand wash only batting to make some quilts that will probably never be washed.  They needed batting, I supplied it!

Some improv blocks

My guild put out a call for "improv" blocks in certain colours so I looked up the required colours, found I had matching stuff in my stash and built some blocks.  Hope they are useful....

Sunday's amazing clouds.  Stripes!

Have I ever mentioned that Seattle has amazing clouds?  There's so many levels and so much depth to them (when they are not sitting about 500m up and drizzling.  ugh).

And mammatus clouds in stripes!

And Jacob's ladders over the Sound

I leave you with one last taste of summer.  Two weeks ago one of the stalls at the farmers' market had the last locally grown strawberries of the year.  I don't normally like strawberries but these were delicious!  I made jam with a bunch of them and made a crumble, the best crumble I've ever made with the rest.  Oh they tasted like summer.... yum!

Totally delicious!  Divine strawberries

anon!