Birdie Stitches: April 2011-June 2011

Yeeeeaaaah. I got a little behind on stitching and documenting this one, kittens. 2 of the 3 blocks had to be heavily altered...a.k.a: drawn from scratch. I finally played catch up last night and today.









April's block is one of the two that I drew up on my own. I even stuck a little Totoro in there for The Girl. As soon as I saw the next month's block, I knew my theme would work out just fine.

Yes. May Flowers. I changed very little in this block and was super happy with the composition and concept. The Girl absolutely LOVES this block.

And then June happened. While I like the idea of the text somewhere on the quilt, it felt really out of place with the other blocks to date. Thanks to Katie's suggestion, I had a theme for the block and worked on it today. It turned out OK. It's not my favorite block, but it works.

But yay! I'm caught up on Birdie Stitches until July.

Something New to Try...

I have so many projects going on these days that it's becoming difficult to keep track of them all...and I'm looking to add a new Quilt-a-long as soon as the pattern book arrives! I realized that it is time to start making a crafting To Do list.






This is what I came up with last night for June. Most of the goals are pretty unambitious, but I like to set myself up to feel good and motivated rather than demoralized when I realize I can't gain 5 extra hours a day to do it all.

I'm not sure if I'll post up the initial list at the beginning of the month and update at the end or what I'll do. I plan to add to it as a month goes on and items get checked off.

May 2011 Wrap-Up

It's hard to believe, kittens, but May is already gone. (Well, it will be in ~ 20 minutes Chez Knitpicky.) Time to see how I did with using up some yarn.

Yardage Totals 2011

January: 1071 yds
February: 762yds

March: 1189yds
April: 1083yds

May: 849yds

Year to date: 4,954 yds or 2.81 miles

I wasn't really focused on knitting or crocheting this month. I actually did a bit better than I feared. The "lack" of yardage is mostly due to the fact that I knit very little on The Boy's blanket: with The Mister in basic flight, he's unavailable every night of the week and sometimes on weekends if the load is heavier. This means we've spent very little time watching movies or shows together, and that in turn means I've had very little time to work on the blanket. And thus is life. I'm really not a big TV watcher unless he's around to spend time with me. Hopefully, June will be a little kinder to me...even if the weather is already disgusting.

So...what does one do after she learns how to make a pouch...?

This kitten here goes completely insane. She drafts a pattern from scratch, learns a new quilting technique and then spends most of the day working on it.








My arm, it is wore out from all the back patting I've done since about 10pm yesterday.






There are so many of my favorite things in this pouch. I'm not even sure where to start.







The interior fabric?







The bunny?







No, I believe my favorite part is right here: a sweet running pony 1" square surrounded by an equally sweet wonky star and then outlined with some twee embroidery. The cute, it just killed me.

I didn't actually follow the tutorial, just looked at the pictures to get an idea of what I was supposed to be doing.

I think I "done good."

A crazy part of me either wants to write up a pattern, or try making more and selling them. I'm not sure, though. This pouch has about 6 hours of work in it, and I'm pretty sure charging minimum wage plus materials it could be a hard sell. Would someone actually pay $50 + shipping for a Kindle cozy? Even one was intricate and sweet as this? And would it be fair to myself to sell my work/time for minimum wage?

Anywho! I had an awesome Memorial Day here, kittens. I hope you all had a good one.

It's not a Wednesday....

But I'm blogging today anyway! Happy Memorial Day to the American kittens out there. I've actually been a bit busy the last few days, as my friends on Facebook got to preview last night.

Pattern: Pencil Pouch Tutorial

I spent a little over 5 hours Saturday night and about an hour yesterday morning working on these pouches. I wanted to make gifts for The Boy's teachers for making his first school experience such a positive one. I will be stuffing these with chocolate and putting little notes in them; for his teacher and her assistant, I also plan to add small gift cards.

I have had so many scraps sitting around from recent projects that I didn't have to wash up anything new to make these. It felt good to clear out some left overs, even if it was such a small amount. They won't quite hold an unsharpened pencil, but any instrument shorter than that fits in just fine.

The Boy approves.

WIP-it Wednesday: 21 of 52

Kittens! I'm managing to blog today. Two Wednesdays in a row; haven't done that in awhile. You see, after last week's post, a fire lit under my butt, and I started working faster on my cardigan so I could get an idea if I need to try and acquire another skein of my yarn or not. The jury is still out as I finish up skein 03 of 06. (I currently have 4-6 more rows worth of yarn in the skein.)







From the back, it's looking good, nothing to worry about. I could have lifted the waist band up even higher to fit better with my natural waist, but as it was, I cut over an inch from the pattern right there.

The worrying part is here:

Even though the sweater is wide enough to not burst out of it, I'm still busty enough that the front is riding much higher than the back of the sweater. Once I block the sweater and the upper garter ridges relax, it will help with the problem. I know that's partially what is going on right now and why it's riding up. I'm seriously considering and debating adding darts to the front sides to give them a bit of extra length.

But this eats up more yarn...which I'm not sure I can spare at this point in time.

I originally thought that making it through half of my yarn would give me a better idea of if I had enough. Now, I'm convinced that I need to knit up skein 04 and see how far that one takes me to get a better idea. It's definitely going to be close if I decide to make this a longer sweater, add darts to lengthen the front, and keep the pockets in. I really want all of these things, but having a limited edition colorway with only 10 skeins in existence makes it tricky. I've managed to locate 3 of 4 sister skeins to mine. However, I really do not want to have to bother someone else for one of them if I can help it.

So, knit skein 04 first, then see how I'm doing from there. I keep hoping that perhaps mine are a bit higher in yardage than marked, and I'll eek through this. Sundara is known for underestimating the yardage of her skeins to avoid disgruntled customers.

WIP-it "Wednesday": 2O of 52

Kittens, I fear that I may be skipping quite a few WIP-it Wednesday posts. At the rate I'm currently knitting, there are not enough changes from week-to-week to keep things interesting. I'm not sewing or doing any other crafting at a fast enough rate either. Things are pretty slow here and my motivation has been lacking. 2011 is looking to be stressful for me 'til the end, so I suspect this will be normal.

Anywho, not to be too much of a Debbie Downer here, but I did want to address that really quick. When one has readers, no matter how many, she feels a need to explain absences. Blogging is a really interesting thing in that way. It's done primarily for one's self--for me it is, anyway--but there are others who read the content, making it almost like a letter or conversation. Thus, the apologies for not blogging more often.

But I digress.

It took almost 2 full weeks, but I finally made enough progress on one of my projects to show it off again.

My cardigan is slowly coming along, but I'm really happy with it so far. It now has both sleeves, and I've started into the body. A couple of things about it have made me nervous; the first was quieted today. It does indeed appear to be wide enough in the front that I will not be bursting out. Yay!

Before I move along to the second concern, aren't those garter ridges a lovely detail? Along with all of the stress I have this year, I'm also without The Mister, which means I'm lacking a photographer the majority of the time. He's not physically gone, but he may as well be. He spends all the time he can locked in our bedroom with background noise to drown everyone else out while he studies. And studies. And studies some more. (Some people like to talk about how the military is full of stupid, unintelligent people: this could not be farther from the truth. Most jobs require a level of intelligence and competence that surpasses being "a grunt." Being a helicopter pilot not only requires being in peak physical condition above and beyond, one has to be really sharp and able to learn/memorize quickly as well. Now you know. I digress, yet again....)

Back to the knitting stuff.

The second worry I'm still on the fence about. I have 6 skeins of the Sundara sport merino I'm using for this project. At this pictured point, I've used up 2 and started into the third. Is anyone else starting to feel nervous for me yet based on that bit of information? I'm starting to think I may have to give up the pockets which are a feature of this design, which would make me sad. I'm hoping that my obnoxiously short torso will save the day and I may be able to eek pockets out of what I have.

Only time will tell. And at this rate, it's going to be a substantial amount of time....