Quilt Odyssey Weekend Continued

I didn't tell the story of the weekend very well in yesterday's blog since I was so eager to post all the gorgeous pictures of all the quilts I saw. So, let me try again today.

As usual, my SigO made the drive (two hours) so I could knit on the way. I worked on the infamous afghan, but didn't even get more than 1/4 of the way through a block. I'm doing a chevron block and for some odd reason it's really giving me fits. It's nothing but knit and purl, but I keep miscounting, which, of course, totally whacks out the pattern, so I have to keep tinking back a row.

Before we went to the Quilt Odyssey, we had to go find a yarn shop. I diligently researched the best one for us to visit in the area...you know, if I had been this diligent in college or my career, I'd probably be a multi-millionaire by now! There were about four shops in the general vicinity of Hershey, PA and I settled on The Colonial Yarn Shop primarily because they had Tofutsies sock yarn and I've been wanting to check that yarn out for a while now. I mean, how cool is it that there's yarn made from the shells of crabs and shrimps?

I left the store with one skein of tofutsies, one skein of Opal Feelings, two skeins of sock yarn the SigO picked out for himself and eight hanks of Kollage's Cornucopia in Brandy Colorway. More importantly, I met two really awesome knitters there who were both wearing the Zephyr Knits "Green Gables" top that they had knitted up using TyDye. We all decided the Cornucopia would look great knitted up in that same top...it really doesn't take much to convince me to buy more yarn.
After the yarn shop, we headed over to the Quilt Odyssey where we saw all the gorgeous quilts in yesterday's post. Usually, I would have then gone to Show and Tell with the rest of the quilters, but the SigO and I were celebrating our sixth anniversary. Six months that is! Obligatory "Enjoy it while you can" inserts here.

So, we had dinner at Alfred's Victorian where the atmosphere is wonderful and the food is ho hum. A tad disappointing, obviously, but we did have a nice bottle of Chianti which masked the yawn of the food prettty well.





And so, finally, Carol's class! Sunday morning I showed up in class a full two minutes before start time...that's shockingly early for me! But, after all, the instructions did say to show up early in order to learn the machines! Unfortunately, the instructions also said to pre-cut all your fabrics. So, I only got 50% of that one--OK, 10%. I guess two minutes before start time isn't really considered "early" to some people! But, Carol was very patient, not to mention an awesome teacher.

This is the quilt we were inspired to re-create in our own creative way. Since not only had I not pre-cut my fabrics, but I also needed to leave early; I didn't even get one full block finished. Right now, what I did get done is laid out neatly on my sewing table as are all the pre-cut pieces all nicely organized and ready to be sewn up. Just another victim of "startitis" that will undoubtedly sit patiently for several months before I pick it up again. Luckily, I've ordered Carol's DVD on how to paper piece, so when I finally do get back to this I'll have a virtual Carol to help guide me through the process again.

Here's Carol teaching us all how to paper piece, wasting the least amount of fabric and creating perfect points.

and here she is showing some of her gorgeous quilts. This one is called Mardi Gras and I think it was my favorite of the lot...although that was no easy trick picking only one favorite. I especially love the quilting she did that looks like fireworks coming out of the stars.

So, it was a great class and a great weekend. I met lots of wonderful ladies, as I always do at these things and learned some new tricks and found some new toys. Of course, I spent way too much money. Not least of which was spent on some incredible African Indigo's...more about those tomorrow!

Quilt Odyssey Weekend

This will be a picture-heavy post, naturally, since there were many gorgeous quilts at the show. Unfortunately, the $100,000 prize winners were not allowed to be photographed, and they still haven't posted this years pictures, but the quilts I was allowed to take pictures of are still fantastic. In fact, shows like this make me 100% certain I will never enter any of my work in any show, since as I'm looking at these, I'm thinking "OMG, this only won THIRD place??!!"

So, anyway, in no particular order, here are some of my favorite quilts from the show:

There's a magazine out there somewhere that tells the story on all these quilts, but honestly, I just took pictures of the ones I liked the best, which in many cases, means I liked the color selections.



I guess that means I never grew out of the "Oooh, Pretty!" phase of my life!

This quilt of the turtles made me long for Hawaii!

And this one makes me want to go back to Africa!

This one made me think of Halloween---my favorite holiday of the year!

This one was my LOML's favorite. LOML, of course, stands for Love of my Life---obligatory "Awwwwwww!" goes here! The ugly line across the bottom is tape to keep people from getting too close! I appreciate the sentiment, but it really messed with a lot of my pictures...don't they know It's ALL about ME!?

This one made me want to go out and garden! And I might actually consider such an effort if my yard got ANY sunshine at all!! So, of course, absolutely nothing blooms back there! But that's a rant for another day!

This one is a close up of one little tiny piece of the quilt. I didn't think taking the whole quilt would do it justice. The details were incredible, as you can see

Notice the hummingbirds in this one? I ought to do that since hard as I try, I can't get any in my backyard...back to the no sunshine rant!

This one won best in show. This picture can't possibly do justice to the quilt, but what you need to know is the back was just as spectacular as the front, as it was reversible. She called this quilt Sugar and Spice. This is side one.

and here's side two

Just a few more shots. These three are all just gorgeous colors and of course spectacular work!

And this quilt was pretty spectacular in the shape of a kimono (but not really a kimono)

Final Quilt! Check out the perfect points!

This just covers Saturday at the show. Tomorrow I'll finish up on the weekend's activities, to include the class with Carol Doak. She's an outstanding instructor and a spectacular quilter, but BlogSpot really can't deal with me putting in all these pictures! It keeps putting in about 2,000 extra lines per photo that I have to now go through and clean up, and by the time I'm done with that, I just won't have it in me to post another one! So, until tomorrow!

The Sock

Well, after all this time, you'd certainly expect the sock to be finished by now, right?

And it is!

Drum Roll Please..

..

..

Yup. It's finished alright! I just couldn't deal with all the mistakes. Not to mention it was too big around...some elephant somewhere will have cold feet tonight because I decided to frog this bastard!

I plan to pick it back up and try again very soon, but for now, I need to work on something I know will come out right. Something easy and relaxing.

Something like this: Good Ole Cross-Stitch. It might not have the mystery, the pizzazz or the challenge of knitting, but I know it will look like it's supposed to in the end.

Plus, this weekend is the Quilt Odyssey! So, I suspect it may be a few days before I pick up the knitting needles again.

The sock goes for a hike

For the last three weeks, the mere thought of my weekend plans for the past two days would have me squirming in my seat in excitement. The plan: Attend the Summer fest at one of our favorite vineyards, Sharp Rock on Sat; stay in a B&B overnight and then top off the weekend with a hike on Old Rag Mountain on Sun.

The fest was everything we hoped it would be. Music, BBQ and good wine on a nice breezy summer's day. This particular vineyard is in an idyllic setting with Old Rag Mountain dominating the background. The sock enjoyed the setting, but it was tortured throughout the fest since it had to endure KWI. My SigO still hasn't learned. Friends don't let friends Knit While Intoxicated. So, there are some pretty serious flaws on this poor ole sock, but I keep telling myself that's the way "First Sock" is supposed to be. Mostly because I refuse to Frog or Tink any of this thing. I have never worked on such tiny needles and the stitches are so miniscule I can barely see them to knit them, much less tink them. And I'm afraid if I were to Frog, I'd never be able to pick the stitches back up, so it will simply have to be one seriously screwed up sock.

After the fest, we drove into town and had a great dinner at Foti's in Culpeper, VA. The sock didn't get to come since the setting here is a tad formal and the sock was still hiding in shame over all its mangled stitches. I had Granny Smith and Blue Cheese salad followed by Duck Breast while the SigO enjoyed Strawberry Frissee with Gruyere Cheese Salad followed by a RibEye. We finished up with an apple bread pudding drenched in caramel and served with caramel ice cream. A pleasant meal, but then, Foti's rarely disappoints.

Then, it was back to the charming little B&B, Dulaney Hollow. We stayed in the loft suite. Literally, it was an old barn loft they had converted to a suite fully equipped with a kitchen, bathroom, the works.

Our room (check out the cool ceiling--wooden slats nailed over the barn's tin roof) could have slept about 4 more people, at least, but we enjoyed the quiet solitude, not to mention the outstanding country breakfast the following morning consisting of all local meats and produce; including blueberries from a local farm and sausages from Jame's Madison's farm that had been passed down from one generation to the next for six generations.

Armed with our sumptuous breakfast, it was time to attack the mountain. Still feeling out of sorts from being left out of last nights dinner, the sock was clamoring to come along, although I'm sure it would have felt differently had it been on my foot, instead of in my backpack.

We took a gallon of water between the two of us and it still wasn't enough. Old Rag is a beautiful mountain, with beautiful vistas much enjoyed by the three of us (me, SigO, sock), but there were many occasions when I stopped, hands on hips and groaned "Your kidding! This isn't the summit yet!?"

I took a great deal of pictures on the way up to the summit,

inluding these of us approaching this great rock formation.

and the SigO doing his part to keep the scenery intact; but by the time I got to the summit, I just didn't care anymore. I was hot, grimy, thirsty and ready to be heading downhill.

So, this is as close to the top as we were when the will to take pictures deserted me. And I can't imagine the sock enjoyed the trip too tremendously since I lost the energy to take it out to enjoy the scenery long, long, long before we arrived at the summit.

But, finally, we were headed down hill. Hooray! It was a happy time filled with laughing and singing...until we arrived on the fire road that never ends. Littered with sign posts supposedly placed there to give you an idea of how close you're getting to the blessed destination of your air conditioned vehicle, we would happily read that we were only 2 miles away from the parking lot; hike for a day or two (some slight exaggeration might ensue from this point onward) before finding another sign post telling us we'd only gone half a mile! Three weeks later, another sign post informed us we were within a mile of the car. I'm sure I might have been able to hear my car calling to me at this point (or at least the ice cold beer waiting in the trunk!), but unfortunately I couldn't hear much of anything over the screaming of my feet.

Obviously, we did finally make it back to the car and eventually all the way home where I was too exhausted to even contemplate picking up the sock (or even taking it out of the back pack!), so, I'm sure I've got one disgruntled piece of knitting waiting for me to come home tonight. And so ends the saga of the sock that went up a mountain and barely made it down.

A Well-Rewarded Bike Ride

I signed up for a 30 mile bike ride with the Washington Women Outdoors (WWO) for this past Saturday. I knew we would have lots of stops, so I decided to pull a Stephanie stunt and bring some knitting. The original plan was for me to have my paniers on the bike, but when I packed everything up the night before, I didn't bother to ensure the bike rack was intact. So, Sat morning when I was trying to put everything together and found pieces missing, I had to improvise. I was inspired by a fellow biker who used her pack for what it was designed for...carrying water. But, seriously, what's a little dehydration if it means having your knitting along for the ride, right? So, a small piece of the Afghan got to ride 30 miles with me this weekend. I had a lot of fun snapping pictures whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Here it is visiting a quaint little hotel in Oxford, MD. This was our first stop and, other than lunch, our longest. I would have been able to get a lot more knitting done, but I had to spend the bulk of the stop scrubbing chain grease off my hands since less than a mile into our trip my chain not only popped off the bike, but came off with enough force to kink up.

I worked on it for about five minutes without any success at all and was beginning to get depressed, thinking my ride was over when my hero, Ann (President of WWO) pulled up and was able to help me get my chain back on. She's an all-round mechanic and hero to many. This is her fixing another one of the rider's bikes.

After this stop, we got on the ferry to cross over to St. Michaels, MD. Here's the yarn enjoying a nice boat ride and the only breeze of the day. We rode another 5 miles to St. Michaels. A very quaint little town with clock bells that played the Star Spangled Banner, O Beautiful, and who knows what else. Lot's of cute little shops all over the place, but no yarn shops. So, no real reason to stress my feet (since I was wearing bike cleats)walking around window shopping.

Besides, by this time, the yarn was getting hungry after all that exercise. So we took it to lunch at a nice little place on the water. This is Amy holding the yarn. She was our leader for this trip and a self-proclaimed non-sewer. Not knowing any other way to hold two sticks, she opted for the vampire-warding-cross-grip. The yarn was enraptured by her charms and it took a lot of sweet talk to convince it to get back into the improvised yarn-carrier. After lunch, I parted ways with the group since I was in a bit of a hurry. After all, it was closing in on 2PM and I knew there was a yarn shop in Easton, MD (complements of The Traveling Knitter's Sourcebook)

So, I hightailed it back to the car and rewarded my biking efforts with a stop at a great little shop where I found an abundance of Wool in the Woods, one of my favorite fibers, and two very nice women to help me decide what to knit up out of the yarn I bought (Sprout--a green and yellow Cotton/Rayon hand-dyed blend). I will be trying to tackle a hand-written pattern by Gail, one of the two women, who designed the top I want to make herself and had simply scribbled down how she did it in her notebook. Luckily, she also gave me plenty of contact information, since when I sat down to read over it last night, I was completely befuddled!

Still Quilting

Well, all those little squares became this. All laid out and ready to sew...100 big squares...together. Each square with nine little seams to match up. *sigh*

I really think quilting is the most labor intensive thing I do. Seriously.

1. Buy Fabric that has the right color and light qualities for your project

2. Press out all the crappy creases

3. Cut into tiny little blocks so you can

4. Sew them into bigger blocks so you can

5. Sew them into one big quilt top

6. Pressing your seams to one direction or another with each and every stinkin' iteration of above process!

And that just gives you the top. There's still the quilting involved, which, of course, I ain't gonna do on a beast this big!

All I'm saying is it's much easier to:

1. Buy Yarn

2. Knit Yarn

And on that note, this quilt top will probably sit on my floor all perfectly laid out for an indefinite period of time while I go back to my white knitted top...pics on that tomorrow.

Small World

So, yesterday I was sitting at my sewing machine working on a quilt top that's been sitting neglected for almost a year now, when my SigO asked me how I got started quilting.

So, I told him the story of Wendy, who used to design Haute Couture in her apartment in San Antonio. I lived in the same apartment complex at the time and we met thru my ex. I loved her fashion designs, but I was especially captured by her quilt. She was hand-dyeing silk and then putting it together in a Double Wedding Ring Quilt. It was spectacular. This picture was taken around 20 years ago at an art festival in San Antonio, Tx. Those are a pair of her hand-dyed silk shorts on Kelly's head. She taught me the basics of piecing together a quilt top, but more importantly, she inspired my love of quilts.

Telling my SigO this story made me wonder what had happened to Wendy. Had she made it in the fashion world? So, I asked him to google her and look at her now!

She's got her own line of clothes!

and she was a finalist in Bravo's Project Runway. Not sure if this was my Wendy, I dropped her an e-mail to find out, and sure enough, one and the same! Tiny little world!

And back in my tiny little world, I suffered a small shock yesterday when I realized I wasn't nearly as close to finishing my quilt top as I had been thinking. I had 48 of these squares completed. It has been so long since I started this project, I thought the red squares were all I needed to do. So, when I still had some fabric left over after finishing them, I was a tad concerned. I pulled out the pattern and discovered to my dismay that I still had 52 square to do in Blues and Greens.

So, I cut and sewed and got all of those ready to assemble and now I have this much more to put together.

Meanwhile, I'm still working on that top. But only about 10 rows/day, so progress is slow. Maybe I'll tackle more of it today and at least get up to the armholes where I have to start dividing for the neck. Not quite Haute Couture, but it's all mine and it belongs here in my happy little world.