T-Minus 7 Days!

Have mercy this move is happening! This week. Oy! Tomorrow one of the cars will be shipped to The Arctic. (What I am now calling our new hometown – Syracuse). Movers come Thursday and Friday to pack and start the loading, then will return Monday and Tuesday to load up and take off.  I will be flying up to The Arctic Wednesday afternoon. Can anyone say insanity?! I think I’m getting more worked up over how to pack up my studio than anything else!

I left everyone hanging last week after I shared some shots of my scrappy quilt. So here’s what I’ve been up to. After I finished cutting and sewing all the pieces into place I gave it a good press then went to work on the borders.  With the first border, I took strips of all my prints and sewed them together until my strips were gone. I squared them up and then cut them into 3″ widths. I pieced a few of these strips together until I had enough to make the border.  Here is the finished scrappy quilt top:

The second border is 4 1/2″ RK Essex Linen. I squared off the corners of each border in keeping with the whole boxy look of the quilt as well so that’s why you don’t see any fancy corners!   I have my quilt batting ready to go as well as a nice low-volume print for the backing so hopefully I’ll start pinning tomorrow.  The plan is to try and quilt it like I saw in the magazine so I’ll share some up close pictures of that if I can accomplish that.

I have one little project I’m working on this week as well. It’s a larger zipped pouch. No, not a typical pouch. A nice leather exterior with an interior that has pockets and credit card pockets as well! It’s lays flat (which was my goal) because I need it to fit in my airplane backpack and hold my paperwork,etc.  I hope to upload some shots of that little goodie this week as well. The idea came to me over the weekend and landed on some poster board like you see above. So far, so good.

Remember my knitting lessons? The lessons I taught myself and the goal to conquer the one craft I have always struggled with? Well, I can now honestly say I’m a beginning knitter!  Granted, I can not sew a fancy sweater or pair of socks yet, but I have managed to make one child a fluffy cowl for winter this year! WooHoo!  I am currently working on this for middle:

It’s a thick wool/acrylic in natural and I mixed in a bit of blue as well.  I am not sure of the stitch name but here is what the directions said to do:

Long tail cast on odd number of stitches

Row1: Knit

Row2: Knit, *yo, ytog knit2 *repeat

Row 3,4,5 Knit

Keep going and it should look like this! I am so proud of myself for sticking with this.  I have had to re-start a few times, but I’ve learned the basics and eager to learn more.

So what’s on your plate this week? Any great projects or activities going on with you?  Have a great Monday ya’ll and thanks for reading! ~Cindy~