Julie and I got together for a belated birthday celebration (we both celebrate birthdays in February) and took a trip out to the Fold.   As always, it was full of inspiration for both of us.  Everywhere you look there's something new to think about.  Unusually enough for me, however, I decided to focus on three things: socks for John, Skew socks for me and something that could become a work appropriate scarf for my new job.  And I was able to find one thing that worked well in each category.

The green Trekking is for man socks -- imagine finding dark green, durable yarn with some subtle interest.  John's grey Trekking socks have held up incredibly well, so it's nice to find some more Trekking that will fit his color range.

The little red bundle is a Crazy Zauberball -- I think I'm probably the last one to this party, but I think it will be interesting to watch the striping in the context of the Skew socks (something else I am also coming late to). The socks are cast on and I'm looking forward to to seeing how the construction works out.  So far, it's not too fiddly, and it's toe up -- both of which are primary considerations for yours truly when making socks.

That gorgeous BFL from Fiber Optic Yarns, dyed in the colorway "Black Light" is the foundation for the scarf in the third category.  I love love love deep electric blues and purples.  My goal is to spin a fine two ply that can be knit up into something simple and narrow that will work in an environment that requires more formal business attire.  I've been itching to pull out my wheel, and I'm hoping this fiber will be the inspiration that gets me back there.

Oh, yeah, and about that new job thing... I'm going to be the director of operations for a brand new health care IT-focused not-for-profit.   I look at my blog as a more or less work-free zone, but I will say that I'm excited and looking forward to a number of new challenges.  And that it's very likely that posting will be a bit more irregular as things get underway.  It's a start up organization with a mission and I expect it to keep me pretty busy!

I forgot to mention that the quilt I am going to be working on next is based on a pattern called "Lincoln Park Patchwork" from designed by Collette Cogley at Quiltology.  Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to have a good picture of it, but you can see a slice of it here.  Essentially, it's alternating wide and narrow strips of stacked "coins".  Not a complicated quilt, but perfect for what I want right now: rich color to play with and no complicated sewing.

Ms. Z will be three in July and I'm anticipating that we will soon be considering a "big girl bed" for her.  She is always very curious about my craft projects and loves to grab my Serendipty quilt (my very first quilt project) and snuggle under it when she is watching movies.  I thought it might be time to make her another quilt.   I didn't see any purpose to making her another crib-sized quilt, so this one will be twin sized.  I wanted a lot of big, bright color, but I also wanted the quilt to be something that would last past her Curious George and Thomas the Tank Engine years.  I think the batiks I picked combined with the simple design will let the quilt age gracefully, and will hopefully be something that when she gets past the inevitable pink and purple princess period, will be something she still wants to have on her bed.

I got the fabric ironed and now all the strips are cut.  The real adventure of putting the colors together now awaits!

Dobby looms, such as this AVL, are essentially primitive computers using technology not all that different from punch cards -- or even old fashioned music boxes.  Pegs are placed in the holes in the sticks.  The sticks are attached to a pair of bands in treadling order and wrapped around a drum.  As the drum advances, the sticks advance and the miniature "treadles" are pressed, resulting in the raising of the shafts represented by the pegs.  There are only two treadles, and treadling is a two step process.  Depressing the right treadle advances the drum and raises the shafts.  Depressing the left treadle releases the shafts so the cycle can start again.

As you might imagine, the geek girl in me was enjoying setting this up a great deal, even if I did develop a blister from yanking all those pegs in and out of the sticks with pliers.  The weaving process has not yet begun (and won't for two weeks since I'm out of town next Thursday), but pretty much everything is set to go now.  It's just a matter of adjusting the final tension and treadling away.

P.S.  I'm going to be in Washington, D.C. Wednesday morning through Friday afternoon.   From what I can tell, my hotel is in the area near the National Zoo.  Any suggestions for "can't miss" attractions in the area?  Or good restaurants?  Good restaurants are really a plus.  I have no idea how much free time I'll really have -- likely not very much since I'm traveling for business.  But, just in case, I want to have some ideas on deck. It's been so long since I've been in the D.C. area -- I think the last time was high school -- so I'm actually looking forward to it.  Even if the weather isn't likely to be any better there than it is here in Chicago.

You knew if I took that quilt top off to be quilted that I'd come back with another project, right?

I don't suppose anyone is surprised that it involves more batiks, either.

These gloves are a little present to myself.  They celebrate an earlier in the month birthday as well as a career transition not to mention finding my crafty mojo again.  And they are pretty much the first knitted hand gear that I have ever made for myself.  They came together so fast that I might have to treat myself to another pair, though perhaps the second pair will have a flip top -- one of the things that any northern climate iPhone user needs in the winter is a nice pair of gloves that supports the occasional exposed fingertip!

This picture makes my heart sing.   My Blooming 9 Patch in Fire inspired Batiks and Prints is complete.   The finished quilt is 83" x 93" (making it very hard to find a good place to lay it out for pictures) without a border.  Since The only border that would make sense is the same fabric as makes up the dark edge bits and I wasn't smart enough to think about stashing a few yards of that when I started the project, I don't think this quilt will have a border beyond what you see here. 

When it comes to quilting, I know that I am not and will never be a technical artist.  The truth is, I don't really have much desire to actually do the quilting part, and I doubt that I will ever be a truly sophisticated user of my sewing machine.  What makes me so gleefully happy about this project is the color and how it came together.  When I first started knitting, I was really in awe of people who could work well and design well with color. Making a quilt top, for me, is about the color study.

My goal for this project (as I mentioned in a previous post) was to work with a color pallette out of my standard zone (blues, greens, purples) and to try to evoke an idea.  I have always shied away from yellows, reds and oranges. I don't wear colors with yellow undertones very well, so don't tend to work with them in my knitting.  But a quilt project is the perfect place to play with colors like that, since a housewear item doesn't have to complement my skin tone.  So I started with that notion and decided that I wanted to evoke the idea of warmth and fire. 

The fabric in this quilt is mostly composed of batiks -- batiks are my first love when it comes to fabric.  I gravitate to them like I gravitate to silk yarns when I knit.  However, there are a few standard prints in there as well  (mostly in the red zone).  Were I to do it again, I think I would select all batiks, because the properties of the batik and standard cottons were different enough that in some places is made the sewing more challenging than it needed to be.

I'm still deciding on the backing, but leaning heavily towards black minkee so that it will have a bit more soft and inviting quality to it.  

Enough yarn?  Keep your fingers crossed.  I really hate ripping and  re-knitting ribbing.

Well, I just couldn't leave that dreadful picture of my laundry room at the top of my page for too much longer.  So instead, I present the first half of my Blooming 9 Patch in all of it's slightly rumpled glory

The second half took me a little while to get going on, but it's now officially underway.  I have a feeling that when I get this quilt top finished, I'm not going to want to share it with my guest room. 

I'm already trying to decide what kind of backing it's going to get... after putting the minkee on the back of Z's quilt, I'm very tempted by the idea of giving it a black minkee backing of it's own...

I've been sewing up a storm when it comes to my Blooming 9 Patch Project.  This is the first half of the quilt (the strips are sewn together from the center outwards).  In truth, I've actually finished sewing the first half, but haven't had a good opportunity (or location) to take a good picture of half a queen-sized quilt. 

While pinning the strips together is a little mind numbing and fussy, the results make the effort worth while.  My horizontal seams are really incredibly good (at least for me... I am sure there are spots where an experienced quilter would be less happy with) and the effect is to really make this quilt look like it is made up of pieced together blocks instead of strip pieces. 

So far, this project has also been very visually inspiring for me.  The bright yellow morphing through a progression of colors out to a deep blue edging.  I imagined this quilt with "fire" in mind, the dark colors meant to evoke both the blues that sometimes show up in flame as well as the embers and it still reads that way to me.  One of the first times that I've used color to try to express a theme -- and feel that I've done it successfully, at least to my own eye.

A post on a Wednesday.  Amazing, eh? 

With the start of John's foray into Mass Effect 2, I've decided to start another pair of socks for him.  These are in garter rib (which is a delightfully easy pattern to knit with given the satisfying results it provides) using the cashmere blend Sophie's Toes that I purchased a little while back.  The colorway is "Walnut".  I have never liked knitting with brown yarn so much!  Isn't the variation beautiful?  And I'm having a hard time seeing much in the way of noticeable pooling.    While I have a nice little cache of Emily's yarn in my stash, this is the first project I've started on with it.  This cashmere blend also contains nylon in addition to the merino content -- soft and tough.  Perfect stuff for the husband man, and pretty nice for the knitter as well!

(A few minor details for posterity... socks are knit on US size 1 needles and are 64 stitches around).

Well, well, well... most of the major knitting on Aspinwall is complete.  I need to pick up some stitches and knit up the collar, but that's the last element in this knitting adventure.  It doesn't even look like I'm going to have to get concerned about running out of yarn -- something I am almost always doing somewhere along the way when I knit a large project.

Once the chest band of two color knitting is done and the sleeves are attached, it's a pretty easy run to the finish line.  It's a bit bulky moving the thing around, but I'm happy to deal with the bulk to avoid dealing with a lot of seaming later on.   Which is not to say I executed perfectly on the top half... somewhere along the way I seem to have picked up (or not decreased) a couple of stitches.  I've looked over and over and I can't figure out where exactly it happened.  One is on one of the fronts, the other is in the back.  I could have ripped back and figured it out, but since the extra stitches don't seem to affect the look of the sweater, I've decided not to worry.  I think this is one of the benefits of working with a somewhat irregular yarn.  The presence of big slubby stitches here and there softens everything and your eye doesn't really look for perfection everywhere.

After the collar goes in, the only thing left is to find a zipper and sew it in and weave in the ends.  Keep your fingers crossed that John will be wearing this item before the end of the month!