River and Ice Sheets

I was looking at the broken ice sheets down in the creek bed and debated with my husband whether or not they were a foot thick. He didn’t think they were so I just had to grab the camera and go check them out so here are a few pictures that I took while down there.

Ice sheet about 12″ thick.

Ice against the willows.

More ice from farther back.

The creek.

Mallard ducks making themselves at home.

Kid’s bike helmet swept up against a willow.

Snowdrops starting to peek through the grass. Can Spring be far behind?

Karen

Finished Cottage Tote and More Snowdyes…

I finally got around to finishing up the “Cottage Tote” bag I started the end of January and I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out. The only big snag was self-inflicted at about 11:00 p.m. when I put the zipper in wrong side to right side, lol, I decided to make it a night at that point.

“Cottage tote” from the book “Quilted Bags and Totes” by Denise Clason.

Back of bag using hand-dyed fabric received from my secret sister swap. The blue, yellow and green on the front of the tote was also from this swap. The pink and light blue was from my own stash.

Inside of the bag. The fabric is a snow-dyed piece I recently did.

Zipper closure with a pale boysenberry snow-dye.

The bag is going to a lady I know at church. Her favorite colours are yellow and blue. She’s a musician, songwriter and author so every time I see her she’s got an armload of papers/music sheets so hopefully this will help. The bag is quite roomy.

We had warmer temperatures the last few days and rain so I dashed outside wanting to do a couple of pieces of snowdye before it melted. One of my forum friends had sent me some coral to experiment with and the idea was to try and make some clouds with a hint of coral. Well long story short I forgot to do the big blotch pattern on the first piece and I used the wrong blue. I used cerulean blue and probably should have gone with the mixing blue.

Cerulean blue and Coral in a plaid configuration. The snow was from underneath and granular.

Cerulean blue and Coral, bit of a purple cast to it.

So I thought that I’d try again only this time use less of a concentration of the coral and then do the pattern in bigger blobs. Lately I’ve been working with lavender mist so I thought that would do nicely as well. It was raining outside when I got the snow this time.

Globs of cerulean blue and coral with lavender mist in between.

Cerulean blue, coral and lavender mist.

The first piece had more of a purple cast to it which was surprising given that I used the lavender mist in the second piece but I figure it had more to do with the coral being stronger and the pattern layout. The blue and coral had a better chance of interacting. The blotches of colour were smaller in this piece.

Nice pieces, I used half the strength of coral dye in the second piece but it doesn’t really look like I did. No big fluffy clouds this time around, more like peonies in blue. Might be interesting to try again but have the flowers in a bed of green.

Karen

Another oven towel with dishcloth…

Since I’m on a roll today for blogging I’d thought I’d show off the dishcloth I just finished and the matching oven towel. I’ve been doing the dishcloth/washcloths and the oven towels separately but it finally occured to me to put them together for a matching set and voila!

Matching dishcloth and oven towel.

This particular set is on it’s way to Norfolk Island via Australia. It’s part of a thank you gift for the magazine I received from my friend there. I don’t think she reads my blog so I’m okay to post it.

Karen

Blessings Blanket

Well after spending about 7 hours yesterday on this blanket (and I do not exaggerate) crocheting the squares together I finally finished it. It was a long haul and I don’t want to see another for a long, long time. An uncharitable feeling I know given that the blanket is supposed to be made with love and care for the one it’s going to but given that it was dumped on me (can’t think of a better description) at a time when I’m snowballed under with projects I was somewhat resentful, which I guess explains why I’m human and God is God.

Blessings Blanket.

This looks good, you may not think so but given what I had to work with it turned out really well if I do say so myself. The squares were all contributed by ladies of our group and were “supposed” to be 12″x12″, needless to say they were not and a lot of them weren’t even square so the challenge was how to join the squares together and make them look good and to tell the truth they didn’t even look good colour-wise sitting on the bed. I should have taken a before picture but I’m always forgetting the before pictures.

Once again I turned to one of my favourite bloggers “Thornberry” and in one of her posts were these two links:
Heartmade Blessings comfortghans

Flat Braid Method

In her post Thornberry posted a picture of a flat-braid method that she had used to join some crocheted squares together. Imagine my surprise when I went to the first web page and found out that this method is being used by a lady in another blessings group to join donated squares into blankets. I’m wondering which of the people I complained to prayed for me, lol.

Anyhow the biggest problem was trying to figure out how many stitches should be in each square and then crocheting a single row of crochet around each square so they each contained the same number of stitches. I couldn’t decide on the number of stitches so I added up all the stitches in each square, added them together and divided by the number of total sides I had from 12 squares. Then I either added or subtracted stitches from each side.

Once each square had this row of stitches it just became a matter of learning how to do the flat-braid join and crocheting the squares together. The second web address is a link to youtube where a wonderful lady spent the time to demonstrate this method. She does a good job of it and this method of joining the squares together helps to ease in the differences in the lengths of the squares.

I had been given a large ball of navy (that’s all we had in the bin) but ended up using some black that I had on hand at home. I think the navy would have looked good but the black helps to perk up the colours. I needed two balls of the yarn. I used up one ball and then part of a second; each ball was 7 oz so I probably used 8-9 oz of yarn total in joining the squares.

Karen

Edited to add: I dropped off the blanket today and the ladies were thrilled. It was agreed that joining the squares were a major chore and hassle so now I’m feeling better that it’s just not me that feels this way. LOL, I was feeling uncharitable because it’s supposed to be a blessing blanket but I’m muttering under my breath the whole way.

Newsboy Cap

One of my most favorite blogs to visit is Thornberry – http://thornberry.wordpress.com/ – and a couple of weeks ago she posted a picture on her site of a newsboy hat that she’d crocheted. Inspired I decided to make one of my own.

“Swirls Cap” pattern by Sophia Kessinger of Ravelry.

This is my version of it done in Paton’s Classic Wool Merino – Harvest. The hat is on the small size for this type of yarn and hook size but since the girl I made it for is undergoing chemotherapy and has lost her hair I’m hoping it will fit. It’s snug on my head but I have a large head and she’s more petite so I hope she likes it and it’s not to scratchy for her. I told her grandmother if she wants another type of yarn and colour to let me know. Hard to be so young but have to endure such an awful disease as cancer.

Karen

So Cool

Just a quick picture I thought I’d share of some material that I dyed to match some Handicrafter Cotton that I’d crocheted for a tote. This is a simple tote bag that I’m working on and I’m going to put a lining in it so items won’t fall out through the holes.

Bernat Handicrafter cotton – English Lavender and Hand-dyed fabric – Lavender Mist by ProChem. (I swear I didn’t know the names before I typed them out, lol)

The thing that I find is so “cool” is that I now have the knowledge to go grab my swatch book and match colours to objects that I am making. No more being limited by what the fabric store has to offer.

Karen

Potato Dextrin Resist

My fabric-dyeing group had a Water Resist swap this month and I decided I’d try using the potato dextrin that I’d had sitting around for about a year. This is one of those projects that you think to yourself “That looks cool, I’ll give it a go” and you order the stuff but then you keep procrastinating doing it because it looks complicated and time consuming. Of course the reality is that just like other things you put off doing, once you start it’s not hard at all.

The first step is to pre-soak your piece of fabric. I had a piece of ecru that I didn’t care for but always thought would look good with some black added to it so this is the piece I used. I let the material dry and then made up the dextrin. I looked up the instructions on ProChem where I bought the dextrin. I found it somewhat disturbing to find out that I’d need the whole bag for 1 yard of cloth. Call me a tightwad but at over $5.00 a bag all of a sudden the price of my homemade fabric shot up.

I didn’t have space to lay out the whole one yard piece so I divided it into two pieces. This turned out to be a good move on my part as after practising on the first piece I was better at the second. I taped a piece of plastic down to the table and then taped the fabric to the plastic and spread half of the dextrin over the material and let it dry.

Dried potato dextrin.

I guess the idea behind taping the fabric (aside from making it easier to spread the dextrin) is to keep it taut while it dries, it didn’t work as the plastic pulled away from the table and buckled. This happened both times so I don’t know the answer.

Anyhow next I made up some print paste from a recipe that ProChem has on their site. I did this because I wanted to slow down the rate at which the dye crept into the cracks. I’d heard from others that if the dye is too liquid then it just seeps under the resist and you get yuck results. The print paste was very thick and I was worried it was too thick but by the time I added the dye solution it thinned out. It was kind of interesting because I kept adding more and more dye and every time I stirred the dye stock into the print paste at first it’d be runny and then thicken up but by the time I reached the end of the dye stock it was of a good spreading consistency.

Thickened dye made with print stock paste.

Next I applied the dye into the cracks with a foam brush.

Material with dye applied over top of the potato dextrin.

I covered the top of the material with plastic and let it batch for 24 hours and then did the washout. In some areas the potato dextrin worked but in others I had applied it to thin and the dye absorbed through the resist and instead of a crackle I got a more solid looking area.

Finished material.

I wasn’t pleased with the fabric because it didn’t turn out the way I was expecting. It’s very washed out and how I got some darker tan spots in there I’m not too sure. The dye was blacker along the edges where there was no resist so it made me wonder if the resist was interfering with the action of the soda ash (you can see some darker dye just at the bottom edge of the photo). In Ann Johnston’s book “Color by Design” she recommends adding the soda ash to the potato dextrin when you’re cooking it up, unfortunately I followed the ProChem website recipe.

For my second piece of cloth I decided to add soda ash to the print paste/dye mixture as I’d already cooked the dextrin. The results were much better – darker so it does make a difference. On this piece I also tried to apply the potato dextrin in a thicker layer. Unfortunately I ran out of the dextrin so on the one end the dye is darker because the resist is thinner. The thinner the resist the finer the crackles and they are closer together as well so overall the fabric looks darker. I made up a paste of flour and water and applied that to the rest of the fabric.

I’d either made the paste to thick or didn’t spread it thin enough because it was very hard to break it up into cracks and I found when I applied the dye that the dye didn’t seep down through the cracks but some did so it’s interesting. I might had gotten better results if the whole piece of fabric was flour/water because it was difficult to manipulate the fabric to get the cracks because the potato dextrin resist was a finer resist and it was easier for it to flake off when I moved the fabric.

Potato dextrin resist on left with flour/water resist on right.

Larger overall photo.

Potato dextrin resist.

Flour resist.

I’m pleased that the second piece of resist worked out. If I had a cheaper supply of potato dextrin then I’d try another couple of pieces but given how much I pay for importing fabric and dextrin it works out to about $12/yard and I can buy ready made fabric cheaper than that. I think I’ll try this again but with a cornstarch resist and see how that works out, it’d be less costly.

Karen

Flooding…

I thought I’d post a couple of pictures of the creek that flooded yesterday. We had a couple of days of temperatures around 8-9 degrees C and with the higher temperatures and rain it was inevitable that the creek flooded.

If you scroll down a couple of posts you can see a picture out the back door that shows the creek as it normally looks. We’ve had a tremendous amount of snowfall this winter so in a way I’m glad that we had a partial melt-off otherwise the flooding would have been even worse in the spring and with much more rain besides.

Creek February 12th, 2009 in the morning very overcast and raining, high winds. This shot was taken about an hour before the creek was at the height of the flooding. Some ice floes over on the right blocking the creek bed.

Later in the afternoon more chucks of ice.

Empty sunflower seed hulls from the birdfeeder on my deck, what a mess…

Creek February 13th, 2009. The water has receded somewhat. Nice sunny day and I’m near the edge of the bank. Some big ice floes there and the water current isn’t flowing as fast, wonder if it’ll freeze up and kids will go skating?

Another shot down the bend.

More ice floes. The trees are willows down there.

Karen

The “Oh Well” duvet cover.

I have been working on several projects but haven’t taken the time to blog them as most are as yet unfinished but I thought I would post some pictures of a quilted duvet cover that I helped my friend make for her daughter. Her daughter is returning to Australia to finish up her schooling so we were under a time constrant to do this so as two heads and four hands are better than one person I invited my friend over and we used the new MegaQuilter to piece the top together.

“J” working on assembling the pieces.

Moi sewing squares together.

The problem with this quilt top was that J’s daughter had bought two single bed pre-cut kits but the duvet itself was for a double-sized bed so we had to adjust all the measurements to fit 86″ square. Shouldn’t have been a problem but J’s mom had pre-cut the material with her grandaughter but seeing as she was elderly her hands didn’t have the strength to cut straight and many of the blocks were off in size. J’s mom has since passed away so the material was precious because it was the last project she had worked on and J’s daughter had been with her at the time.

J’s daughter had bought extra material to go along with what was in the quilt kits – the kits didn’t include border material. Some of this extra border material had been cut for the four patch squares we were sewing together. Well long and short of it was there wasn’t enough material to make all the squares needed for a double sized top and there wasn’t enough material for borders because some of it had been cut for squares.

Somehow they managed to cut the material in such as way that there was no extra. It’s the one thing I hate about pre-cut kits, there isn’t any extra material if you should happen to make a mistake and the kits were bought long enough ago that we couldn’t go and buy extra fabric. J’s daughter said that she bought two identical kits but the fabric just didn’t work out. Either the quilt shop shorted them fabric or there was different material inside each kit. It didn’t matter what each kit had as somehow we had to make it fit.

The mantra for the quilt top soon became “Oh well”. The seams didn’t match – “Oh well”. The blocks were cut different sizes – “Oh well”. There wasn’t enough of one colour – “Oh well”; you get the drift. In the end we reduced the number of blocks and just added more borders. The top was officially dubbed “The Oh Well” quilt/duvet.

Trying to figure out a workable block placement with the squares we had.

J took the top home to figure out borders and added the purple.

Top with first border of purple.

There wasn’t enough material left to add more borders so I dyed up 4 yards of boysenberry to add to the front. After I dyed the boysenberry it occured to me that fuchsia would be a better match to the daisies and it did match but the boysenberry made it pop and it matched the purple in the fabric and border better anyhow.

Boysenberry with flower block.

Flower block against some fuchsia fabric, we didn’t use this.

J brought over what she’d done of the back of the duvet. Floral and purple borders make up the back with a floral heart yet to be added to the inner purple square. There will be floral hearts added to the corners as well so basically J’s daughter will have a double-sided duvet cover and can choose which side depending on her mood.

Fabric kind of squished as there wasn’t enough room to spread it out.

We had a good time working on the top together but it was frustrating at times with lots of head scratching at points but a job well done I think.

Karen

Winter

There’s nothing much new happening around here. I’m still working on my Granny afghan in my spare time between bouts of reading and computer. I thought I’d post a couple of pictures of the snow we’ve been getting here in Whitby, Ontario, Canada.

Looking out the front window.

Looking out the back window.

The deck with bird feeder.

I have a friend coming over today and we’re going to be working on a quilt/duvet/doona cover for her daughter who is going back to Australia next week. I have my new MegaQuilter sewing macine so I thought that two people are faster than one so hopefully it will get done quicker with one person sewing while the other is ironing and assembling the pieces.

Meanwhile since I hadn’t tested out the machine I thought that maybe I should and worked on this little project yesterday.

Cottage tote from the book “Quilted Bags and Totes” by Denise Clason.

This is just the front panel of the bag. I used print fabrics for the block and hand-dyes for the strips that I received in my secret sister swap. I’ll post more pictures when I get the bag done.

Karen