A Special Gift

In knitting circles, there is semi-regular discussion of 'knitworthiness'. Someone who is not knitworthy will accept your handmade gift and then set it immediately aside, sneer at it, refuse to ever wear it or fail to follow care instructions, so that when the knitter later asks (yes, yes, much safer never to ask after a gift...) the recipient says 'oh, I washed it on hot and it shrank so I gave it away/cut it up/gave it to the dog...'

The general consensus is that knitworthy people are to be cherished and protected at all costs. They are worthy of the hours of work, the silks and cashmeres and handpainted yarns. My nanna is knitworthy - she got a shawl that I made for her in Wollmeise. The supervisor for my undergraduate dissertation is the most knitworthy non-knitter I've ever met; I made her a fichu and a pair of fingerless gloves and gave her a shawl during the time she was teaching and supervising me, and each time she admired the item in detail, from the pattern to the colour to the texture, and each time I saw her using the item around campus. That's how you get more handknits from a knitter! I would knit for her again like a shot. I don't know if she knows knitters or if she's just naturally gracious and knitworthy, but she is the very model for gift receiving. 

Of course, even close family have to prove their knitworthiness. I've known more than one knitter who will knit cheerfully for friends and acquaintances but refuses to knit so much as a cotton washcloth for their sister/aunt/mother who has demonstrated their unworthiness of such an honour.

I haven't seen a similar idea in quilting circles, or maybe I'm just not a reader of enough quilting message boards. But there is certainly one person in my life who is very worthy as a recipient of handmades, and that's my fiance, Mr Handmade. 

His quilt has been on the go for a while now, but he has never nagged about it. When I finally got myself into gear and finished it off, he was thrilled. He snuggled under it immediately I gave it to him; he put it on the bed so it would be close and warm and useful straight away; he laid it out and told me which blocks were his favourites ("All of them! Especially this one... and this one... and this one...") and he told me over and over how soft and lovely it is, how much he loves it, how talented he thinks I am for making it.

Oh, my lovely, knitworthy, quiltworthy love. I will make him all the quilts he asks for. He's proved he's worthy of them.

A(n almost) finished object!

Please excuse the artifical light in this picture - I just wanted a record of how I spent my Sunday, working on this UFO.

I started this morning with a pieced top and the fleece backing ready to go - and it had been like that for over a month - and hoped to get up the energy to baste it by the end of the day. About lunchtime I swept the floor, spread everything out and started the long and arduous task of crawling around with safety pins. I can definitely see why so many quilters use those gadgets to close safety pins - it'll be days before my fingertips recover.

I had some clear ideas about how I wanted to quilt it, but only partial ideas. First things first, I quilted in the ditch between each block, and then looked at it to assess how much more quilting it needed. I wanted it to be a soft, snuggly quilt, so not too much quilting was in order, but it definitely needed more quilting than just a 12" grid. My issue was mainly how to quilt it with all the squares being so different to each other, and give it a sense of unity within the quilting.

I began with the ones with a clear square in the centre - the middle two, the churn dash above them, the star from 'made' fabric, and so on. I quilted around that square. Then I looked for similarly sized shapes in the others, and quilted square or square-ish shapes in those. In the house  block, for instance, I quilted around the shape of the house. I quilted around the central square of the pinwheels block and the inside octagon of the bowties block. The four squares that meet in the middle of the nine-patch block were treated as one square in the quilting. For the string block, I found a place where three of the quadrants had seams that met, and quilted that diamond, even though it meant going down the middle of the strip on the other quadrant. Finally, for the 'breaking out' block, I quilted a square set on point around that central pinwheel.

I bound it using seven fabrics that are either represented in the quilt or from the same collections. I didn't want to hand sew the binding to the back because of the fleece backing, so I consulted this tutorial from Cluck Cluck Sew and machined it. All that remains is to bury all of my threads, and the quilt is completed. Not too shabby for one afternoon's work.

This is deeply imperfect. There are so many seams that don't match up, I was astonished when I found any that did! There are fabric choices and colour choices that I would definitely not make if I was making the same blocks today. The blocks came from the We Can Do It skill builder and were almost all made in 2011 or 2012. I made those blocks when I was still getting to know my sewing machine, totally new at sewing. The blocks moved home with me 5 times before they got put together. When I made them I was an undergraduate - now I have 3 degrees and a proper job. This quilt was started in a totally different chapter of my life to the one in which it will finish. Funny how quilts can span ages like that.

Plans and hopes

I'm not huge on New Year's Resolutions. Actually, the holidays we get around winter time aren't hugely important to me anyway. Christmas is a holiday I have a lot of ambivalence about, and last New Year's Eve, Mr Handmade and I fell asleep at around 10 o'clock and were awoken by my sister at about ten to midnight so we could come and see in the new year with my family.

This year, we're doing New Year's Eve very quietly, at home. We've had invitations from several directions, but I've come down with a terribly nasty cold in the last 24 hours, and we'll stay in, drink tea, maybe watch something on Netflix.

I do like how reflective everything gets at this time of year, though. I saw New Year's Resolutions described as 'a to-do list for the first week in January', but it's still nice that people think at this time of year about how to make their worlds better. It's nice, in some ways, to think about how things are compared to this time last year, and to think and wonder and hope about how things will be this time next year.

Compared to this time last year, I'm much happier. I'm in a stable job, not a student any more. I live in a nicer place, closer to family and slightly more convenient for visiting friends and family north of the border. Mr Handmade and I were talking about how 2014 has been a tough year for both of us, and it has - but it's ended stronger than it began. I have a really difficult job, but it's really rewarding. I have some really great, really inspirational coworkers.

Although I don't have resolutions, I have some goals for the coming year. I'd like to read more short stories - I only read one short story collection this year. I have Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood lined up to read, and I have my eye on one or two others, like Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer, which I've been meaning to acquire and read since we read the titular story in a creative writing class I took during my undergrad degree.

I'd like to finish the two fleece-backed quilts I'm working on at the moment. One of them has the top pieced and just needs basting, quilting and binding. The other has around half of the blocks made. They're a top crafting priority for me.

I'd like to make a traditional log cabin quilt. I have a mini-charm pack of midwinter red, from moda, which I plan to use as the hearts of the blocks. I want to use the traditional dark/light division and play with layouts.

I'd like to try a little free motion quilting. I'd like to knit a few more pairs of socks for myself. Mr Handmade needs new gloves and deserves another pair of socks. I'd like to finish my cardigan that's stalled halfway up the body. I'd like to make a few more skirts.

I think that's enough goals for the year ahead. What do you hope will happen in the next twelve months?

Fire the rockets!

Things have been moving slowly. Everything's winding down for... you know... the C word. But all systems are still running here. This particular spaceship (UFO... get it?) has been hanging around for years. I made these blocks when I was 21 or 22, in the second half of my first degree (I have 3). The blocks moved house with me at least five times, without being sewn together. I got them out earlier this year, ironed and starched them, then did nothing else with them.

A few months ago I bought the fleece for the back, expecting to have another row of squares; as you can clearly see in this picture, there's no space for another three blocks added onto that. Three blocks were culled from this quilt (they'll find good homes in other things) and eventually, today, I got around to sewing this top together. I have no real explanation for why it's taken so long for me to do anything with this one; that's just how things are sometimes, I suppose.

One of the reasons is probably that I haven't had a dedicated sewing space of my own before. Now I have the space for it, I've taken the decision to just make my living room into a sewing room. I live alone and keep one end of the table free for things like eating, but I can keep my sewing machine set up and my ironing board available at all times. It's so much easier when all you have to do is sit down and SEW - no messing around, putting things out and having to put them away again when finished.

Anyway, I'm ready to knock this spaceship out of the sky. It needs basting, quilting and binding, and then it can go to its new home on the back of my sofa or my rocking chair. I need to pop out tomorrow and get some curved safety pins (it's about time I stopped stealing my mum's and just bought my own).

It's funny - even the blocks I don't actually like on their own, I like in this mix. It's come together in a way I didn't dare to hope it would. And even if it was the ugliest quilt known to man, it would still be warm and cosy to snuggle under, and it would still contain my first ever quilt blocks. 

Unidentified Flying Objects

It's an inevitability of being a crafter, I think, that we end up with UFOs surrounding us. Of course I mean Un-Finished Objects. A project can take our fancy, fire us up big time, and then... fizzle. Or sometimes they get set aside so that we can do other things - other projects, other crafts, other work. Sometimes projects are tidied away so that space can be used in other ways. And sometimes we fall out of love with projects in a big way.

For me, it's mostly the time factor that gets in the way of me finishing projects. Well, that and the B word... boredom. Take this project, for example:

I began this project with yarn that a dear friend bought me for christmas... christmas in 2011. Yes, this granny square blanket has been on the go for almost three years. It's over half done, and has stalled and been picked up again many times. I'd love to finish it so I can snuggle under it!

Then there's the quilt that has all of the blocks made, mostly from Leila's skill builder sew-along. I was merrily working on that this summer, but then hit a snag with the length of the fleece. I've come to the conclusion that I'd rather do a shorter quilt than piece or change the back, so now I need to re-figure the layout, decide which blocks to take out, and sew it together. This one's annoying because it's mostly done, just needs probably a day of sewing to get it finished.

So I need to pick 3 blocks here to take out. I'm tempted to take out my 3 favourites and use them for something else - cushion covers, maybe?












Mr Handmade and I love to give each other hand made gifts. He's had several pairs of fingerless mitts and scarves and hats. He's had pyjama trousers and home made birthday cakes and stuff like that. He's never had a quilt from me. Except, his Christmas present from last christmas is a quilt - which is still not finished. (It's ok, I'm also waiting for him to finish my last christmas present, too). I have the fabric picked out and some of the blocks made, just need to get on with it. Hopefully by this christmas.

Then there are all of the knitting projects that are inhabiting my project bags. I should really go through them and do a major frog-or-finish. These are currently strewn across my house. I'd love to just get this stuff finished or reskeined and absorbed back into stash. Currently I'm doing nothing, and a huge part of that is because my job is really, really time consuming, and part of it is because I still need to buy a table for my craft room, but in part it's because there's so much going on that I should be doing that I just don't know where to start or what to do. I'd love to get everything cleared and organised so that I can just have a lovely clean slate to my crafting.

Literally the worst thing ever

You know what is literally the worst thing ever? Moving house.

Packing up all of your belongings, trying to cushion the breakables and wrap the spill-happy or spiky things adequately, filling your car or hiring a van or hiring someone to drive the van and driving for however long it takes to get from there to here and then the undignity of unloading, carrying, cursing, sweating, arranging and rearranging. Not knowing where anything is for the first however long, everything being in a permanent state of just grubby and disorganised and horrible. It's the worst.

You know what's worse than moving house?

Moving house four times within one year.

Yes, that's right. I moved at the end of last August, the middle of last September, the middle of June and the beginning of this August. Four moves, less than twelve months.

As a result, I've had the sewing machine and my stash packed up pretty thoroughly, and it's going to be a while before I can get my craft room set up to the point where I can just go and work on things. So, instead, I've been knitting.

I took a trip to London to visit my elder sibling and a dear friend, and the very best train knitting is, of course, socks. Why of course? Because they're small and portable, tend to have easily memorable pattern repeats, and, most important, nobody wants to sit beside someone with a handful of frightening looking spiky metal needles!

My big project at the moment is a cardigan, in dark purple. The yarn and pattern were bought for me by my godmother (I was named for her, so for my whole life she's been known as 'Big Lilly') and I really like it so far. Of course, I'm congenitally incapable of following a damn pattern as I'm told, so I've eliminated the side seams, patterned the back (it was plain, with lace fronts in the original), and charted out the lace repeat on squared paper. I know that written out instructions work for some people, but charting just makes so much more sense to me. The cardigan is a delicious deep aubergine-y colour.


I'm a bit further along than this picture, but not much. Doing the back and fronts at the same time means it seems to grow slowly, but it isn't really growing slowly. It's just a lovely thing, and I can't wait to finish it so I can wear it everywhere.

My big sewing project du jour is the scrappy quilt for the back of the sofa. Yes, still. I've got the backing for it, and chosen a layout for the blocks, and all that remains really is sewing the stuff together. But I've hit a snag, because my supposedly 60" wide backing fabric turns out to be closer to 57", and with a 60" top, I'm coming up short. I still need to decide what I'm doing with that. It's fleece, so I can't just piece something from the scraps of the top. I'll have to either get different fleece or add a stripe of some other fleece, or shorten the top. I need to get this done, though, so I can snuggle under it on the sofa. My new house is lovely, but a tad on the chilly side.

Works in Progress

Wow, things got incredibly busy here! My life has been incredibly hectic since September, really, though I was able to carve out a little time for me... since January, I've been unable to get even that, just working a lot and not being able to find any time to spend knitting, blogging, doing anything that is just indulgence, really.

But! I have a job where I get a chunk of time off in the summer, so I've been free and breezy the last week or so, and using it to indulge all my crafty needs.

I have this pile of quilt blocks that I made over 2 years ago - that's 3 houses ago!

There are 11 blocks there, and 3 more that I made at around the same time but didn't include in the photo. 14 blocks just sitting around, taking up space in my stash boxes, not the right number to make a good quilt or anything. They needed one more to be a 3x5 quilt, which is just a nice size for a lap quilt to throw over the back of a sofa, I think.

So I threw this one together from the book Jelly Roll Sampler Quilts, to make it up to 15 blocks. Now I have a lovely scrappy sampler quilt to put together. I've got the backing already, so it shouldn't take long to make up.

Of course, that's not the only WIP that's finally getting some love. I've got a secret project that will be revealed in a few weeks, but I can give this sneak peek of one step - that's 32 half-square triangles ready to turn into 16 wee squares.

It's odd, getting the urge to go back and finish a WIP after it's been hibernating for 2 years. What's the longest you've ever had a WIP before finishing it?