Month: June 2009

Newborn sweater

Here’s the beginnings of a new sweater – the last one I’m planning to make before the kiddo is born. (Two more endless months still left, but at a 7 st/in gauge, the sweater has the potential to take all of it.)

(I’m working sideways, so the button band is down, the neck is to the left, and I’m knitting across the chest towards the left sleeve.) The pattern calls for garter stitch throughout, but after trying that for a few rows, I decided that such tiny stitches deserve at least some stockinette. Now I’m thinking that I’ll do this yellow stockinette/blue garter stripe pattern for the front and sleeves, and use garter on the back? It’s quickly becoming the indecisive sweater.

Favourite baby sweater

I’ve barely posted about this project at all, which is such a pity because I’ve loved working on it. I started about a week before we left for PA, then continued working throughout the trip, and finished the hat and bootees once we got home. The pattern is cute, but the part that pleased me the most was how wonderful the yarn is. It’s a bamboo blend, machine-washable, and so very soft and drapey. It just feels snuggly.

The back is simple, too – there’s something to be said about a pattern like this that just works the way it’s written and comes together well.

So now it’s off to go live in the cabinet with the pile of other baby things for a few more months.

Flower help?

10 points to anyone who can tell me the name of this flower:

They’re big (a good 8-10 inches across), and the name has been on the tip of my tongue for weeks now. Whatever they are, they’re beautiful. The blooms are far too heavy for the stalks, so they tend to drape themselves languorously over the nearby azaleas, and in some cases just rest their heads directly on the driveway.

Sensational, showy things, and such a pretty color.

Quick sewing

The bento box quilt top is coming together so quickly, which is nice because I seem to be getting so sleepy again in the evenings and haven’t had that much time to work on it. I have the right panel finished (shown here on the chair), and am getting closer on the two remaining panels.

I needed to rip and redo some of my seams so that the blocks would all make nice points (it seems that even with my ¼” foot, I still managed to get pretty far off on some of those seam allowances), but it’s gratifying to have such a fast, pretty project.

A Work In Progress

I was only trying to get a photo of all of the new flowers we chose for the patio containers, but the pictures turned out to also be a pretty good before/after comparison of the weeding of the rock wall. In this one, you can see the total chaos that is the rock wall plantings, plus copious forget-me-nots, pansies (with runners), vinca, dandelions, mint, and assorted weeds.

Meanwhile, in this view, you can see the lovely lack of weeds in the rock wall, plus the attractively pruned japanese maple. 🙂

The “after” photo constituted a good four hour’s worth of work, and unfortunately my back doesn’t tolerate a moment more than that these days. The hopeful news is that we are in the middle of June sunlight hours (well past 9 pm!), so I could conceivably divide the remaining wall into chunks and buzz through it after work.

I’m mostly happy with the way the containers turned out. I think they need a little bit more orange and pink – between the creeper (left over from last year, and I can’t find the tag) and the snapdragons, it’s a little bit too much of that lime yellow. Pretty from the top, though!

Irises

I have more of Kevin’s macro-lens photos of our yard – the first of the irises bloomed!!

A coworker gave me these when she was thinning hers out three years ago. We had one summer of blooms, and then they sulked all last year. I’d forgotten how beautiful they are.

I love the amazing closeups that are possible with the macro lens – the colors are great.

Two years!

Yesterday was our second wedding anniversary!

We went out to eat at one of the restaurants on the Kirkland waterfront, with a pretty view of the water and Olympics, and great strawberry basil margaritas (mine was less fun than Kevin’s, but still delicious). We had a table outside right at the edge of the balcony, so our view of all of the boat and swimming activity was perfect, and the sunset was lovely.

I remember thinking this last year, too, but it’s such fun to finally have an anniversary. We met seven years ago (crazy that it’s been that long – a quarter of our lives) while we were both out in Seattle for a summer internship at Microsoft. We didn’t know each other at the beginning of the summer and we were definitively together by the end, but the closest we’d gotten to putting a date on it had been the fortnight between our birthdays in the last two weeks of July, and generally it was more just the summer season. Actually having a day to remember, take stock, appreciate, and celebrate is quite fun. Even better that it holds all of the memories of our wedding, which was such a wonderful, happy day. As nostalgic as the day is, it also feels like we’re standing on the platform about to leap – pregnancy is one thing, but knowing that with next year’s anniversary we’ll be a family instead of a couple, the world feels like it’s about to get so much wider.

Weekend quilting progress

I’ve been looking at lots of bento box quilts trying to decipher what makes some blocks work so well (clear center rings), and some so poorly. (For a reminder of what the pattern looks like, see my old post here.) Each square contains an internal L against a background color, and you assemble four squares (with the Ls rotated appropriately) to make a block with a ring. From what I can tell, there seem to be four rules:

  • The two background parts should have the same fabric.

  • The diagonal squares of a block should not have the same backgrounds/Ls.

  • The diagonal squares of adjacent blocks should not have the same background.

  • The L and the background need to be different colors or tones.

The tone vs. color issue is interesting. I took a picture of my fabrics and transposed part of it in black and white so that I could see the darker vs. lighter fabrics. Isn’t it kind of surprising that that yellow on the far left is one of the darkest fabrics? And that that second green is so much darker than the two to the right of it?

Since I need 36 squares and I have 12 fabrics, I started by cutting pieces for three backgrounds and three Ls per color. (There was some fudging, since I didn’t have enough for three and three of all of the fabric options.) I love the way the piles of pieces look, waiting to begin sewing.

I cut all of the pieces for the quilt top on Saturday morning, and then sewed the squares together in batches on Sunday.

Next up is figuring out the placement of the squares and seaming the top together. It’s so satisfying to be making progress so quickly – it’s a speedy pattern, and the small size helps, but I also think I’m getting better at organizing my sewing before I start.