Sewing Skirts Before Evacuating

   I had to leave my mobile home before the Hurricane Irma came calling on Sunday and Monday.  So I spent part of my Saturday sewing up two more skirts with the fabric I ordered.  It was a great way to be creative and relieve a some of the stress.  I couldn't tell how bad the storm was going to be or whether I would have a home to return to so I packed the kitties and the essentials (including my Janome 7700 because I had to save at least one sewing machine) and I went to stay at my daughter's house which is not a mobile home.  We got through the storm without losing power and I came home this morning to find my house the same as I left it.  A few sticks and small branches fell out of the trees but nothing more.  I was really lucky and really happy. 

   Here are my new skirts.

   While I was away I did get to spend some some time making flowers and half flowers for the second row of the Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt.  Row two is not even half done but I'm working on it.  I should be able to show something soon.

No Paper Piecing For This Project

   I planned to make a paper pieced star block for my living room wall hanging.  I printed the instructions yesterday but they were way too intense for me.  I looked around for a pieced star block and settled on the simple sawtooth saw block for my wall hanging.  I used the instructions here  for the 12" blocks.  I did make one change,  I switched out the print center block for the light center.  These blocks were quick and easy to make.

   I made twelve flying geese for the points of three star blocks

   Then I put them together like this with a nice frame around the whole thing.

   I had a half yard of each of these two fabrics and I used up just about every last bit on the top of this wall hanging.   Now I just have to sandwich it, quilt it, and bind it, then it will be ready to hang.

Sample Socks Are Knitted.

   These socks are not perfect, but that's mostly because they are made from 100% cotton yarn and the cotton yarn was a bear to knit.  But cotton yarn is a nice cheap way to make a sample pair of socks (these would fit a small child).  I really love making socks two at a time with magic loop.  I love being able to finish both socks at the same time.  So clever and casting the toes on first and getting that section grafted in the beginning is awesome.

    These are my second pair of sample socks.  I made a pair of these a few years ago when I first bought my "Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks" book by Melissa Morgan Oakes.  The instructions in the book were great.  Easy to understand with lots of information on how to do increases, short rows, and knitting wrapped stitches.

      When I made these socks the first time, a few years ago I wasn't ready to commit to making a real pair of socks I could wear.  I'm ready to try my hand at real socks now.

     Here are the socks right before I cast off.

    Here they are with the ends woven in and the some of the major ladders stitched up.  I put the yellow sock on top because the heel on that sock came out better than the orange sock.  I lost my train of thought on the orange sock and didn't pick up my wraps on the orange sock and I'm surprised there aren't great big holes in the heel.  You can still see the wraps on the stitches in the heel cup of the orange sock.  Sloppy.

   These were really good practice.  I'm going to make some notes about how many stitches I need to get good fit on a sock for myself and I'll be casting those on in a couple of weeks.  I have some sewing and some other knitting to do in the meantime.

Cutting Out Fabric to Make Lots of Bags and Crocheted Embroidery Hoops

   I'm making a bunch of Two Kates Project bags.  I love this beautiful bag pattern and I thought this would be a great project to use up some of my fabric stash and I need some new project bags for my knitting and crochet projects.  This bag is perfect to store my yarn projects because it doesn't use a zipper  or a drawstring and it's a nice size.  The link to the .pdf pattern is here. 

   Tonight I cut out fabric to make thirteen of these bags.  The picture of the bright green lady bug fabric at the end is a bag that will be given to dear daughter.  She loves lady bugs.  Most of these bags have the same fabric for the lining as the outside but a few of them have different lining fabric because I didn't have enough fabric for both.

   I'll be sewing on these bags for the next few days.

   I finished crocheting the borders on the rest of my 3" embroidery hoops for my Christmas tree project.  I did all of these crocheted borders with embroidery thread.  It was a lot of fun to do.  To finish these hoops I still have to add some embroidered trees.

Practice Sock Knitting And A Doily Update

   So I finally started my practice socks.  I'm making the practice socks from the Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Sock book by Melissa Morgan-Oakes.

    Sock knitting fascinates me because knitters who make socks make it sound so super simple.  There are several ways to knit socks, you can make them cuff down one at a time or cuff down two at a time or toe up one at a time or toe up two at a time.  The possibilities seem endless to me.  When I found out you can knit them two at a time on one needle, I wanted to learn.

  The practice socks in this book are great because you get to practice all the different techniques you have to learn to knit socks.  This is my progress so far, this is the cast-on and where I start the increases for the toes.  I had to re-knit the cast-on several times to get it right.  I'm using Peaches and Creme cotton yarn with size 8 (5.0 mm) Knit Picks Harmony wood needles with a 40" cable for these practice socks.  I'm not in a hurry to get these done.  I may have to re-do them several times before I finally finish them.

    My crochet doily project that I started at Christmas has been frogged.  The pattern that I bought was not written very well and I had some trouble on round 5.  I tried to contact the designer to ask her about the directions in the pattern through several different channels but I never heard back from her.  I figured out the problem with round 5 and fixed it, then I got to round 12 and the instructions were really vague and I knew that I wouldn't be able to work around it, so I took my work apart to reuse the thread and I'm deleting the pattern from my library.  By the way, that pattern was the Gossamer Doily by Priscilla's Crochet (Priscilla Hewitt).  It was a really pretty doily.  I paid $1.00 for it but that was $1.00 wasted.

    So I bought a new doily pattern from the Leisure Arts website yesterday.  It's called Daydream Doily by Ocie Jordan.  I hope to start that pattern in a few days.