Cabled Headband - A One-Skein Wonder

I made this Cabled Headband from a pattern in One-Skein Wonders: 101 Yarn-Shop Favorites edited by Judith Durant. The designer is Ann Schantz. See the previous post for a review of the book.

The pattern is designed for heavy worsted weight yarn, but I used Lion Brand Wool-Ease, a regular worsted weight yarn. I love the way the headband is narrow in the back and wider over the ears and top of the head. Just the thing for a brisk walk on a not too frigid winter day. I gave this headband to my sister, Susie, for her birthday last October.

Review: One-Skein Wonders

Do you have orphaned skeins of yarn in your stash that you want to use? Yarn left after finishing a project or single skeins that you just had to buy? One-Skein Wonders: 101 Yarn-Shop Favorites edited by Judith Durant has a variety of knitting patterns and a few crochet patterns that can be made from a single skein of yarn.

The patterns are organized by type of yarn: bulky-weight, heavy worsted, worsted mohair, worsted-weight, fingering-weight and novelty yarn. Hats, scarves, bags, socks, shawls, and more. With 101 patterns, there is guaranteed to be something you’ll like. The patterns were submitted by yarn shops across the United States.

The monochromatic pictures on the pattern pages obscure project details. The color photo gallery in the center of the book has much better pictures. The photo gallery is not organized by yarn type, making it harder to find a pattern for a specific yarn type. Grouping the glossy color pages and using non-glossy paper and 2 ink colors reduces printing costs, allowing many more patterns for the same price, a nice benefit for the inconvenience.

There is a website for the book, oneskeinwonders.com. The project gallery has color pictures of all the projects in the same order as the patterns in the book. A few sample patterns on the site.

Be sure to visit the One-Skein Wonders page on the publishers website and get the pattern corrections.

Grand Sierra Knee Socks - Designing

Since my mom's birthday socks are waiting for my next visit to Springfield, my OnLine Supersocke 100 Sierra Color yarn, bought in Albuquerque last May, has been asking to be knit into knee socks.

My original plan was to use Wendy’s Fingering Weight, Toe-Up Socks with Gusset Heel for my base pattern with k3, p1 rib and figure out how to do the increases to fit the socks over my calves.

Then I saw the Nutkin sock pattern designed by Beth LaPensee for Knitzi.com. The designer used a different yarn, but the colors are very similar to my OnLine Supersocke 100 Sierra. That has inspired me to create a knee sock pattern using a similar pattern stitch and knit top down. I spent 2 days charting out the leg of the sock in a spreadsheet, 120 stitches at the widest point and 153 rows from ribbing to heel.

I'm using size 0 (2.0 mm) circular needles and knitting both socks at once, magic loop style. My gauge is approximately 9.6 stitches and 13.3 rows per inch. The photos are my gauge swatch, not an actual sock. Click on the pictures for a bigger version.

My yarn is color #893 of the OnLine Supersocke 100 Sierra. After searching the web, I determined the color name is Grand Canyon Trekking, so I've dubbed this design Grand Sierra Knee Socks. I cast on the socks and knit 2 rows last night.

Quilting Report

I pieced 2 quilt tops this week. I added red-orange and green borders to a national parks fabric panel for an easy quilt top that kids will love. The center is a one yard fabric panel, I just trimmed the outer black fabric to an even width on all 4 sides. There is no red or orange in any of the park scenes, but the red-orange fabric works well and adds a bit of zing.

I also stitched this Easy X quilt top. The darker print is bears; some definite kid-appeal there.The fabric is some that I cut for our 3rd Sunday Project Linus group last summer. I've still got some cut squares. For some reason, no one wants to sew big quarter square triangles.

Ten days ago, I worked on binding a large UFO, a twin-size 9 patch quilt that was supposed to be a quilt for Hurricane Katrina victims. There is a picture and more details in this post from last May.

The quilt came back to me last fall ready for binding. I was working on the Lone Star quilt for my niece's wedding gift at the time and set the twin quilt aside. Ten days ago I found the binding fabric, cut binding strips and stitched them to the back of the quilt. Now that my Memory Craft 8000 is back home, I'll finish the binding with a decorative stitch.

Today I picked 2 quilt tops to finish for Project Linus and selected backing material from my stack reserved for backings. Nothing that semi-coordinated was large enough, so I had to search for fabrics to coordinate with the selected backing fabrics and iron and cut and stitch pieces together to make backs. I need to press the seams and the backs are ready to use. For some reason, this part always seems to take way longer than it should.

Home Again, Finally!

What a beautiful sight! My New Home Memory Craft 8000 sewing machine back home in the sewing cabinet and my White Superlock 634D serger back on the dining table after a 3 week absence. They both got cranky when I was working on Christmas gifts last month. I gave up on trying to use the serger; I was wasting too much time trying to get it to work. The sewing machine was usable but had several minor problems.

I left both machines at my "local" Janome dealer, 15 miles away, for service on January 2. I was told that it was taking a week to 10 days to service machines. "No problem," I said. "I won't be back up this way until the 17th."

After 2 weeks of silence, I call on the 16th to see if my machines are ready. The service staff are swamped. Seems everyone in the greater Kansas City area took their machines to be serviced right after New Years. They have no idea when my machines will be ready.

Finally, at 4:30 yesterday I got a call saying that my machines were ready to come home. After an appointment this morning, I drove an extra 20 miles to retrieve my machines. Hopefully, the three week vacation and spa treatment left them ready to go back to work. I'll have to take a test drive soon.

Easy Ripple Afghan in Progress

This Easy Ripple afghan is a UFO I pulled out to work on last week. I started it last October to have a project to work on at our annual KC Project Linus Make a Difference Day event. We had a 10th birthday celebration with several speakers instead of sewing blankets. I couldn't bear to sit with my hands idle for 4 hours, so I took this afghan to work on.

The pattern is my Easy Ripple Afghan pattern that is available on my website. The variegated yarn is Red Heart Super Saver. color 0929, Polo. The gold yarn is some Fashion Knit by TMA Yarns, color L3-365, New Poppy. The afghan is folded showing half the width with the lower edge on the right. It is a little over half done.

Mom's Birthday Socks - Progress

Since posting about my mom's birthday socks on New Year's Day, I have progressed to having the pair ready to bind off and do the finish work. I will leave them in this state until I visit my mom again. Before I bind off, I want her to try them on again, in case something really needs to be changed.

My previous post showed the foot of just one sock on the needles. I put the first sock on stitch holders and knitted the second one to the same point. Then I put the first sock back on the needles and knitted both legs at the same time. I think will knit my next socks both at the same time from the beginning.

Previous post: Mom's Birthday Socks

Project Linus - Third Sunday Group - January

We had a fun afternoon at JoAnns in Independence, MO today. Louise and Lucille returned from their mission trip just in time to join us. Jodie prepared some kits to make Snuggle Up quilt tops. The Snuggle Up pattern is free on the Quiltmaker website.

Snuggle Up top sewn by Jodie. The green print has lizards on it.

Snuggle Up top in a NASCAR theme.

Snuggle Up top sewn by someone who didn't read directions carefully (that would be me). The fabrics move from upper left to lower right instead of lower left to upper right like the pattern. I'm sure the recipient won't care. The multicolor fabric has teddy bears on it.

There were some Split Rail Fence kits left from last month and most of those got stitched up. Jodie stitched this Split Rail top with the orange print.

Christy used one of the Split Rail Fence kits and did her own thing. I believe what she did is sew all/most of the strips together. Then she cross cut the sewn fabric in 2 different widths and turned every other strip 180 degrees to reverse the fabric sequence. We laid everything on the table so I could get a picture, but it is still a few seams short of being a finished top.

Anita spent the day working on this star quilt. She not only finished the top, she layered it with batting and backing material and did all the quilting to finish the quilt.

Debby started the day by finishing the binding on this enlarged version of our Quick Quilt. Then she quilted a more standard quick quilt (shown below - front and back). The Quick Quilt pattern is available on the KC Project Linus patterns page.

We spent a few minutes remembering Dolores and admiring some afghans she made. We also figured out the stitch pattern she used so Louise and Lucille can teach it to another volunteer who crochets afghans.

Dolores Won't Call Anymore

Wednesday morning I got one of those phone calls that you're never prepared to get. Dolores's granddaughter, Shannon, called to tell me that Dolores passed away on Tuesday, quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Her granddaughter, Heather, was driving her home from the Motor Vehicles office where she had just renewed her driver's license when she suddenly felt ill. After a call to 911 and a trip to the hospital, Dolores passed away with her family by her side.

Dolores crocheted over 550 afghans for Project Linus. She saw Dawn Spencer (the first Kansas City coordinator) on the local news shortly after the chapter started in June 1997. Dolores phoned Dawn and Dawn drove from Overland Park to south Kansas City to take yarn to Dolores. This continued a few months until I observed that it would be more efficient for me to visit Dolores, since Dolores lived 2 miles from I-470 where I drove to work and to visit Dawn.

So began my visits with Dolores. About every 5 to 8 weeks she would call with afghans finished and needing more yarn. She loved to talk about her family and was proud of them. (Her 18 year old great-grandson crochets!) Dolores was 80 when she began crocheting for Project Linus. January 26 would have been her 91st birthday.

I visited Dolores on Jan. 4 and picked up 7 afghans. Shannon told me there are 2 more finished afghans ready for Project Linus.

I said my final farewell this morning. I knew no one at the funeral. I had met Heather a couple of times and she remembered me. I just told the rest of the family I was the yarn lady and they knew who I was. I will miss Dolores. She was a remarkable woman.

More about Dolores: Colorful Afghans, Meet Dolores, Yarn Out, Afghans In - Sept. 22. 2006, Yarn Out, Afghans In - Aug. 09. 2006

Mile-A-Minute Quilt Top #1 Finished!

Ta-Da! The first quilt top from my basket of scraps. That's 1/10 of one of my goals for 2008. There are 35 blocks in the quilt top. Can you tell where the seam between the blocks are? I'm lazy. The Mile-a-Minute pattern has sashing between the blocks. At 40 by 56 inches, this is a good size for Project Linus and I don't plan to add a border.

I'll leave you with 3 photos that give a closer view of 18 blocks. You can find the Mile-a-Minute pattern source and a summary of the instructions in my post "Quilting in Progress" from August 2006.

Previous Posts: My Scrap Basket, Quilting in Progress, 2008 Goals, Mile of Progress.

Get all Mile-a-Minute posts on one page.

Mile of Progress

I have 39 Mile-a-Minute blocks that are large enough to trim to 8½ inches square. I'm making a top 5 blocks by 7 blocks, so tomorrow I'm going to trim these blocks and put them up on the design wall to play with an arrangement.

I worked every day for 10 days to get enough blocks large enough for my first top. There are 27 more blocks in progress that aren't yet big enough; most by a lot, but a couple only need one more strip added.

UFO Report

I've inventoried all of the unfinished projects that I can find. The tally is:

• 13 quilts
• 5 Project Linus quilts
• 11 crochet and knitting projects
• 7 crossstitch, embroidery, and sewing projects

I remember one sewing project that I don't think I finished, but I can't find it, so it isn't counted. And I'm not going to talk about projects that I bought supplies for and have never started! I'll just say that I found a lot of those that I had forgotten.

Website Updates - January 2008

I finally sat down and made some updates on my website.

On the Handmade for Charity page,

• Under Charities Accepting Handmade Items:
• updated Christmas-at-Sea, House of Dreams, Hugs for Homeless Animals Snuggles Project, Magic Mittens and Mufflers for Mongolian Children, Online Angels, Paula's Knit and Crochet Charity, Socks for Soldiers, and Warm Up America
• added ChemoCaps, Knit Your Bit, Mother Bear Project, Operation Toasty Toes, Prayer Shawl Ministry, and Stitch for a Cause
• removed ABC Quilts Project, UFO-rphanage for Quilters, and Webb-Babies
• Under Other lists of Charity Links
• added Good Causes and Knitting Charities
• added Knitting Charities: Knitting for a Better World

On the Granny's Daughter Afghans for Project Linus page, I updated links to other groups using granny's daughter motifs and removed the list of states from which I received motifs.

On my Community Service page, I updated the groups I am involved with and replaced the first picture with a more recent group of caps.

Lastly, I updated the page about my dog, Dallas. Dallas passed away in April 2006 and, even after all this time, it was hard updating her web page.

2008 Goals

This year, in a effort to declutter my life and feel more productive, I am setting goals. I've decided to share my craft-related goals.

• Make 50 quilt tops for Project Linus.
• Subgoal: 3 quilt tops will be appliqued.
• Finish 50 blankets for Project Linus - Note: I'm tracking tops and finished blankets separately because sometimes I finish what someone else started and vice versa.
• Subgoal: 4 finished blankets will be afghans
• Make 48 hats for charity
• Reduce number of UFOs by 50%

To support the above goals, I've set a goal to sew for at least a few minutes at least 3 or 4 days a week. It's easy for me to go a couple of weeks without touching a sewing machine or rotary cutter. I'm making notes on a pocket calendar to track my progress.

I have to inventory my UFOs and I've set a milestone of Jan. 14 to complete that task.

This little fleece blanket is my first finished Project Linus blanket for 2008. The edge finish is the faux braided edge we learned at our Project Linus Make a Difference Day gathering last October. I brought the fleece home from our Make a Difference Day event and it was time to do this quick project and reduce the clutter in my sewing area by that 2 foot square piece of fleece.

Do you remember this picture of my scrap basket that I shared in July 2006? I started the "Mile-A-Minute" quilt pattern by Carol A. Coski (American Quilter magazine, Winter 2000), but the effort quickly became a UFO. I pulled out the pieces last week and started sewing. With pressing and cutting, I think it's more like a mile-an-hour than a mile-a-minute.

I had to pull out the scrap basket and cut more strips today and the scrap basket is still full. Dare I confess that I have a goal to make 10 tops out of this scrap basket this year? I need to find something faster than mile-a-minute.

Here's a couple of pictures from last Friday when I was just getting restarted on stitching these. I'm using Coski's Mile-A-Minute pattern as a guide, but I'm not following directions rigorously. Sort of doing my own thing, as usual.

As I make the blocks larger and larger, I keep making more and more small pieces. I'm creating the small pieces faster than I'm finishing blocks, so I've started to sew 2 pieced units together, like this piece on the left.

To show a little progress after 5 mornings of working on these blocks for an hour or so, this is what my little sewing machine looks like right now. I do a lot of my piecing on this machine. It's an old Montgomery Wards machine that only straight stitches and it has a long shuttle bobbin.

New Year, More Charity Quilts

50 finished Project Linus blankets and 50 quilt tops for Project Linus in 2008. That is my goal. I plan to count both, because when I'm working with our third Sunday group we don't always finish our own tops and I frequently quilt tops made by someone else.

At our third Sunday Project Linus group in December, more Dancing Squares tops made by Ruth had appeared. I finished quilting this one last weekend.

On my visit to Albuquerque last May, Wanda's mom gave me 2 packages of precut 7 inch squares from a Hawaiian quilt shop. These purple squares are cotton. The other package is light green rayon squares. I'm sewing the cotton first.

I made this top last year. I sewed 3½ inch strips of lavender and tan around the purple squares to make 13 inch squares. I cut the 13 inch squares into fourths and rearranged them.

This top is just the purple squares sewed randomly together and a border added. I put the border on it this week, so it counts as a top finished in 2008. I've still got a 4 inch stack of squares, so there will probably be more tops made like this.

What's in Those Gift Bags? - Part 3

This is the third and final installment of "What's in Those Gift Bags," the show and tell of what I made for Christmas.

You may remember I revealed in my mid-December post, Christmas Crunch, that I was braiding pearl cotton to use instead of shoestrings. I can now reveal that the pattern on the left is the reason I wanted shoestrings in uncommon colors.

I found this Quilted Casserole Carriers pattern at Harper's Fabrics in Overland Park, KS while searching for backing fabric for my niece's wedding quilt. I immediately had visions of relatives arriving at a family gathering with warm dishes of food. My main Christmas project was decided. The pattern is by Sew Casual patterns

First, one oblong and one round carrier for my Albuquerque friends. The oblong carrier will hold a 3 to 4 quart oblong casserole or cake pan. The round one will hold a 2 to 2½ quart casserole. The shoestring was to be the drawstring in the center top of the carrier. I'm convinced the pattern designer dyed white shoestrings to get such lovely colors to coordinate with the fabric. The braided pearle cotton works nicely.

Then I made 3 more oblong and 2 more round casserole carriers for various family members. The unfilled carriers don't look as impressive as carriers with a dish inside, but I don't have that many dishes.

I crocheted shopping bags for most of my gift list. The two on the left went to my Albuquerque friends. The red, blue, and yellow multicolored bag is made with Royale Quick Crochet Thread. coatsandclark.com categorizes this as a worsted weight thread.

Below are four bags I made for family members. These and the green and white bag that went to Albuquerque are made with 2 strands of size 10 (bedspread) crochet cotton thread. I have a red and white bag that I made years ago. I frequently take it to Michaels and the staff at Simply Fibers thought it was wonderful on Black Friday.

Lastly, I made a bunch of these mesh produce bags. I ordered 2 of these from a catalog over a decade ago and use them regularly. They're great for fruit and veggies and are easy to carry in my purse. I found the mesh fabric in the Home Decor department at JoAnns.

That's all the handcrafted Christmas gifts. If you've read all the way to the end, leave a comment and let me know. I'm going to go knit on my mom's socks.

Mom's Birthday Socks

I started knitting socks for my mom's December 23rd birthday on Christmas Day. I started the socks while visiting my mom so I could check the fit as I worked. The yarn is Trekking XXL that she picked out on Black Friday. The photo shows the results of 2 days work. About 1/3 of the heel flap is done. I wanted to get enough of the heel done before coming home to be able to check the fit of the sock foot. Now I'll be able to finish the socks without worrying about the fit.

Fortuitously, my measurements, swatching, and calculations arrived at the correct formula for a sock that fits on the first try. This is my first sock knit Continental style instead of English or throw style. It definitely goes faster. I tried continental style socknitting early in 2007 with double pointed needles, but I couldn't control the yarn very well and it was slower than throwing the yarn with my right hand. I think the long circular needles for Magic Loop make a difference.

The pattern is the Fingering Weight Toe-Up Socks with Gusset and Slip-Stitch Heel from Wendy Knits' Free Patterns, Help, and Other Stuff page. I increased the number of stitches, added a knit 2, purl 2 rib pattern and made the gusset bigger. I've been wanting to try Cat Bordhi's "Turned Toe" from Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles. So I substituted a "Turned Toe" and used the magic cast-on .