Peer Pressure

Happy Monday everyone :) It has been a good and busy day, including sewing, digitizing, prosperity magic, and plenty of peer pressure.

I woke up this morning to actual SUNLIGHT coming in my window. I am always happy when the time changes for daylight saving time or to go back to standard time. It will definitely take some getting used to the darkness in the evenings, and it will make it a little more difficult to practice driving, but it is SO nice to wake up when it's light outside.

Started out my work day by hosting the Pagan Team's Monday Morning Coffee Chat on etsy. One of my teammates pointed out this beautiful team treasury with a tree theme that I'm in. There was silliness, and fun, and sharing of new creations, as usual! One of the new creations is something that I suggested that NwyvreWeaveWyrks ought to make a few weeks back, and I think that it turned out really cool. Go check out this awesome purple and black chain maille necklace with an ourobouros pentacle!

After the chat, I worked on a bit of digitizing, and then headed downstairs to take care of some machine maintenance and work on some more quilt block piecing. Then, after the mail got here, I succumbed to peer pressure.

I have mentioned my knitty friends before, and how I started dyeing yarn so as to have an excuse to have a yarn stash, even though I don't knit. Well, a couple weeks ago I had to order some yarn for a custom dyeing order. While I was shopping, I saw a learn to knit kit and a basic knitting tool set, and they fell into my cart. (Betcha didn't know that things could fall into a virtual cart. They can.)

When my package arrived, I swore that I would just LOOK at things, and set aside the learning to knit stuff until I got a few things done. I unpacked everything, and petted the yarn, and did not find the knitting tool set. Oh, sad! No knitting for me. Made a phone call, and they promised to send out the missing tool set right away, so sorry!

This time, when I opened the package, I forgot to tell myself I had to finish other things first, and decided to try learning to knit.


Ta-da! That is actual knitting! Rather wobbly and uneven knitting, yes, but KNITTING!

Theoretically, it will become a scarf someday.

Productive weekend

Just wanted to stop in for a short visit while dinner is cooking. We're having chicken tikka masala and spiced okra tonight. It's one of my more time consuming meals, but oh so good.

The chicken has to be cut up and put in to marinate overnight, and then the cooking is a 3 step process. Cook some onions and brown the chicken, then put the chicken in a baking pan and cook the sauce, then add the sauce to the chicken in the baking pan and bake it.

The baking time is perfect, because rice takes half an hour to cook, and the baking takes half an hour, so meal timing is a piece of cake.

I'll be sure to post the recipes sometime soon, along with a link to the company I buy my spices from. They are awesome, and at least once or twice a year, I get a box of spices in the mail that makes my whole house smell good and spicy for days. Makes me wonder what my mail carrier thinks about my spice packages.

Weekends are often spent running errands, and true to form, we didn't spend a whole lot of time home this weekend. At least, not home AND awake--we both slept in late both days, because we both seemed to really need the rest. Got some stuff I need for dyeing, and the first of the Christmas/Yule/Whatever shopping done, plus did the last bit of research I needed to do before deciding what serger I'll be getting. Good, productive weekend!

The garden is cozy for winter

There's my garden, all snuggled in for the winter! The chest in front of the plants usually sits back in front of the window where the plant shelf is now. The quilt on top of the chest is one that I made, with corduroys, denims, flannels, and other good, heavy fabrics. It has several pockets, too.

We're supposed to get a hard freeze tonight, so most of today was spent taking care of the garden. I cut down the tomato vines and everything that is dead. I rearranged the furniture in the living room to make room for a shelf so that I could bring in the plants that are likely to survive the winter.

There are still a few plants out on the balcony. I have some petunias, marigolds, and a few other flowers that are going to die, whether I bring them in or not. Since I have limited room inside, I decided to leave them out. They're still pretty, if nowhere near as lush as they used to be, and it's possible that they'll last a decent while longer.

Now all I need to do is get the cut stuff bundled up and off the balcony, and clean out the bathtub. It's full of dirt and bits of plants, since I gave everyone a nice soaking as they came inside.

Before I go for today, I have one more picture for you. It's my garden, back in July, when it was very lush and jungle-y.

Quilty fun

Oops, missed a day! I'll have to keep trying to post every day anyway.

Today, I have sewing pictures for you. First of all, I told you that I picked up a lot of fabric within the last month. I meant it! Here's a picture of it all, washed and folded. Actually, no, not quite all of it--there's a bundle of scrappy batik pieces that I forgot to put in the picture. Anyway, the purple and green at the top right are corduroy that I'm going to use for a couple of kids' cloaks. The gold brocade at the bottom of that stack will be the lining for a cloak made of dark green velvet. There's a good bunch of black twill there for a simple cloak, too.


This picture is one that I took when I got up from my sewing machine for a minute and thought "oooh, that looks pretty!" What you're looking at here is a whole lot of 1.25 inch fabric squares, sewn to each other on the way to becoming little four-patch quilt blocks.


Once they are four-patch blocks, they will be combined with these triangle pieces to become snail trail quilt blocks.


Like these! 8 down, 262 to go.


I designed the layout for this quilt, bought the fabric, and cut out all the pieces about 3 years ago. Then I got too busy to work on it, and put the carefully stacked pieces away neatly in a cabinet. I've pulled them out a few times since then, decided I was too busy to work on it, and put them all back.

Hopefully, I will soon get too busy to work on it again, but I just felt like the best way to get settled in for a bout of sewing was to put in some work on an old project. At any rate, it's going to be really nice when I get it done, and it will be beautiful and warm on my bed! Even if it does take me another 3 years to finish.

Yep, no doubt, it is definitely November.

I know, right....any idiot can tell it's November. We just turned the calendar page yesterday, so this is not exactly remarkable.

What I really mean, though, is that the whole November thing is pretty obvious, even without the calendar thing. My garden that looked like a lush jungle not too long ago has morphed itself into Halloween decorations. My email inbox is due to be purged of the thousand or so emails that didn't get deleted right away, but also didn't get read over the last couple months. The heat has been turned on.

Long, warm skirts feel so nice, and the sweaters are back in rotation. The laundry hamper gets much fuller much faster, due to the aforementioned warm skirts and sweaters.

And, most tellingly, there is an embarrasingly large stack of fabric sitting in the vicinity of my sewing room, waiting for me to wash it all. I spent a week in Utah, where there are quilt shops in abundance. Plus, I decided to make cloaks/capes this fall & winter, so I bought the babric when the prices were good, regardless of the fact that I knew I wouldn't have much sewing time until November.

And now it IS November! I get to wash the fabric, and start figuring out the details...what do I want to embroider on that green velvet cloak lined with gold dragon brocade? What kinds of appliquees do I want to use on those cute bright kids' cloaks?

I left it later than I intended, but I decided to list my sugar skull pincushions for Dia de los Muertos anyway. I just listed the first one, and I'll be getting more of them up this afternoon.

I need to find more tie-dye printed felt, because the sugar skulls I made with the bit I had were AWESOME and sold out within a day of getting them finished. I have to at least share a picture.


Also, I just found out that I won a prize! I am delighted! Go check out The Year of the Cats blog, where she has links to 10 other awesome blogs today.