So many hobbies!

Mmm, tomatoes!

 

Today was a good tomatoe day.  Sadly, I don't think I'll get enough to can but I'll sure enjoy eating them.

 

This one's for my mom who wanted to see my tiger striped tomatoes.  This is a paste tomatoe but, unlike Roma tomatoes which have no flavor, this one has tastes wonderful.  It's an heirloom tomatoe just like the slicing tomatoes in the top picture.  The little grape tomatoes are awesome.  I usually don't get any of them in the house because I eat them as I pick.  

 

The Merino/bamboo yarn is finished.  I haven't counted the yardage but I'm pretty sure I have enough for a pair of socks.  It'll just have to wait until the 2011 for its transformation.  Next up is some of the BFL I bought at the Michigan Fiber Festival. 

 

I got nothin'... Um...  Yarn.  Blue ribbons.  Yay!

 

And a fab birthday present from my sister - more Castle Peeps fabric!  I just love this line!  Thanks, Yen.

Going to bed now.  This weekend there will be spinning and knitting.  Probably.

Wow!

Check out this crazy huge sinkhole in Guatemala!  Now THAT'S a hole!

Michigan Fiber Festival

The day started out rainy but happily, cleared... and became really humid.  Despite that, I managed to drop off my yarn at the skein contest and do a little shopping.  I managed to surprise myself by leaving with money left over.  No one was more surprised than me.

 

My first purchase was 8 oz. of BFL.  The brown you see running through the braid is natural brown BFL.  I can't wait to see what this one looks like spun up.

 

My second and last purchase was two braids of Superwash BFL, both in the same colorway.  The colors in BFL seemed to be brighter and clearer than any of the Merino I saw.  I just have to slow down and be careful not to put too much twist in the singles or the finished yarn is going to be harsh.

I entered two skeins of yarn in the contest and I was pretty surprised when both one blue ribbons.  Yippee!  I don't have pictures yet; you couldn't pick up your yarn until Sunday and I was only there on Saturday.  A friend who was camping picked the yarn up for me today.  I'll have pictures as soon as I get it back.

 

The first bobbin of singles from the Merino/bamboo I dyed last week.  Not much progress has been made on my socks since I last posted a picture.  I'm still working on them, just very slowly.   

I have a hole in my finger

A lesson learned:  if you spend ALOT of time knitting with small, pointy needles, eventually, you're going to poke a hole in your finger.  At least until the callus builds up.  Ow!  Since I won't be able to work on my sock for a while, I thought I'd dye up some Merino/bamboo roving to spin for socks:

 

Four ounces of roving isn't enough for a pair of socks for me so I dyed up 6 oz.  The 3 oz. on the left has more blue and the one on the right has more raspberry.  I'll spin the two separately and ply them together.  I can't wait to slip my feet into Merino/bamboo socks.  It's going to be heaven.

 

It's a little blurry but this is 8 oz. of BFL roving from the Painted Tiger.  It's also destined to be a pair of socks.

I'm toying with the idea of only knitting with my handspun in 2011.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it and that's prompted me to spin some sock yarn.  Believe it or not, I only have one skein of handspun that's a gauge small enough for socks so I need to get spinning and stock up.  I've got several skeins that'll be knitted into shawls and quite a few for mittens and fingerless mitts. 

Heels

 

One down and the second more than half done.  Yay! 

Torn between two quilts

I'm itching to start another quilt (while I keep putting off knitting the heels on my socks - I hate knitting heels) but I can't decide which one.  At first I was going to do a simple 6" square rainbow/colorbox quilt - 6" color squares with 3" white sashing - similar to this one.  But then I saw this quilt and now I'm torn between the two.  I love the second one but it's going to be a ton work and I haven't decided which I want more, a Project or something that feels more like instant gratification.  Of course, there's nothing that says I can't do both... eventually.  I wish I had my own design wall similar to the one in this post but I just don't have anyplace to put one.  I'm hampered with laying out a quilt because I don't have a space big enough to lay out the whole thing.

And because posts are boring without pictures, here's a shot of my first tomatoes:

 

Hibiscus

 

This is growing right outside my livingroom window.  It's taller than I am.

 

The flowers are bigger than my head! 

Happy Birthday to me!

The Ann Arbor Sewing Center gives you 30% off one cut of fabric on your birthday.  I picked up this today:

 

This will be the back of this quilt.   I bought 3 yards but I'll likely only use 2 or 2.5 and piece around it until I get the back to the right size.  I love it!

While I was at the fabric shop, I asked about the price of a walking foot for my machine.  Yikes!  A walking foot for my machine costs $105.  I have two quilts that still need quilting though, and each one will cost me around $60 to $70 to have someone else do the quilting.  Which means the walking foot will pay for itself, and then some, by the time I'm done with the two new ones.  That's not to say I won't send quilts out to be quilted; a walking foot will be good for only mostly straight stitching so if I want anything curvy, someone who isn't me will have to do it.  I'd better start saving for that foot!

New fabric

Yeah, I have a problem:

 

The castle fabric on the far right is from Lizzy House's "Castle Peeps" collection.  I love it and finally scored some for myself.

 

Apparently I don't have enough oranges/golds yet.

 

As I've said before, I have a thing for batiks, but I LOVE the polka dot fabric.

 

 

I didn't realize when I bought these two just much they went together:  the bottom one looks like water and the blues match the blue umbrellas in the top fabric.  I don't have any plans yet for these two.  I just bought them because I loved them.  In fact, I'm itching to make another quilt but I just can't seem to come up with a pattern/idea.  I was going to combine the greens and oranges/reds but I don't want it to look like a Christmas quilt.  I'm considering a quilt of just 4" squares, color squares alternating with white.  I'm happy to take any suggestions.  Send me a link if you can.  Please!

Because my sister asked me for it, here are a couple shots of my completely-out-of-control garden:

 

Hey, I have tomatoes!

 

The front of that mess are my melon vines.  At the back are the cucumber vines and in the middle are two grape tomatoes.  When I read the "Square Foot Gardening" book, I never really envisioned my garden looking like this.  NOW I know why people plant in rows with lots of space between the rows.  I have no idea how I'm going to find anything ripe in there.  It should be interesting.