The Virtual Quilt Museum

I am utterly gutted to be too ill to visit the American Museum in Bath today. Had I done so I would have been enthralled and inspired and taken photos. Instead here are some of other people's photos to inspire and enthral me.

Let us begin with a scrappy spiderweb.

I do tend to be drawn to the quilts with small pieces of fabric making the body of the design. I have a bit of a phobia though about things that join many points in the centre of a motif like this one does. 8 sections? How do you get the centre to lie flat when it collects all those seam allowances and joins together? Something I need to work on. Even in something like this next one - where you have only four corners coming together - it could be an issue.

Source: finitegeometry.org via Alex on Pinterest

Now isn't that impressive? All those designs are from one square made of two triangles - one black, one white - and joined on the diagonal. And the pattern will look different again when you join multiple blocks. Do non-maths people think about iterations? It's a basic method for solving equations although thinking about it I guess dyers must use it a lot too. Although dyeing is basically an equation I guess.

Something I've never invested in but will be looking out for at the Festival of Quilts is a jelly roll. 2.5" wide pieces of fabric that are 42" long - the width of the fabric itself. Strip piecing gives you lots of options. For example...

Source: scientificquilter.wordpress.com via Alex on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Alex on Pinterest

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

Source: craftster.org via Alex on Pinterest

(Although that last one is apparently made out of t-shirts and not a jelly roll.)

Then there are quilts which use machine techniques to give the appearance of a paper pieced quilt. Hexagons for example.

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

Very clever and I would rather  like to do this on a bigger scale so you get a quilt seemingly made up of great big hexagons - perhaps 8" across? When you do a simple shape on that scale it becomes more about the fabric than the design. Like this one perhaps.


Finally (because even typing is wearing me out today) there are those quilts where the piecing is creating a bigger picture. In some cases a very big picture.

Source: funthreads.blogspot.com via Alex on Pinterest

I 100% admire the technique but it's not something that I would want to do. I'm not very good at light and dark which is why a jelly roll interests me as it will have selected the fabrics for you. Or perhaps something like this, although really this is appliqué.

It is definitely the quilting that makes it though. Free arm quilting is again not something I have mastered although I do like machine embroidery. You do need a long arm machine for it though unless you are making a miniature quilt. But this one is something that interests me.

Source: flickr.com via Alex on Pinterest

I have a fascination with little houses. This one is done in small blocks and then assembled. I can imagine having a lot of fun with this, and with the little trees, and with embellishing with buttons. Maybe one day...

I hope you enjoyed the virtual quilt show. I have to go back to coughing and sneezing til my ribs ache now.

A is for Actual, B is for Battery, C is for Chickens

When Mater got her chickens she was told they could take quite a while to recover. They are ex-battery farm and so their first year of life was not the most pleasant.

Three weeks into their residence there are new feathers growing where they were previously bald but there are still surprisingly bright red and pink areas on chests and bottoms.

Rather uncomfortable to see as I can't help thinking of them as 'oven ready'.

There has also been some difficulties as the other five tend to pick on one. They have been separated for now but it's not ideal.

Within the next week or two they'll have a section of the garden fenced off for their use. Until then they have this rather extraordinary hutch thing to romp in. Plus of course the chicken house which has roosting poles and a nesting box in it. And now you see the reason for the egg picture in my last post.

I'd have thought they wouldn't start laying until they had settled in but they've been producing 4-5 eggs a day since they arrived. Everyone in the village has shared the eggy bounty.

As ever I am taking full advantage of my proximity to the cat, Artemis.

I have never known a cat wash themselves as much as this animal. When she comes in from a few hours hunting she'll settle down to 30+ minutes of all over cleansing. It also amazes me how tight a ball she can curl herself into since she's not a small, skinny thing.

So cute. She prefers to have a paw over her nose. But then don't we all.

Following some lovely weather on saturday it looks like the rest of my holiday here is going to be cloudy and rainy. Such a shame. I was able to take a few pics though when I went to a Boot Fair.

"Clouds Over the Caravan Park" although the view in the other direction is pretty good too.

I do adore clouds. And that grey sea we used to have in Herne Bay when I was growing up. And then a little undergrowth for the vegetarians.

Later this week I will be venturing to Bath with Mater to visit the American Museum and finally see all the quilts there that I keep hearing about. Festival of Quilts is only three weeks away so this will be a good warm up. Then after that...

Curtains. I know this is a blind, but I'll be making curtains for four smaller windows once I feel the Olympic Shawl has made enough progress.

Cluck cluck.

Singing and Dancing

...in the rain.



Holiday in Somerset, staying with the parents. But ou est le sunshine?

Using the time to get into phase two of the shawl. Phase two being "knit the fecking thing the right way round" and as part of the Ravelympics or whatever one is supposed to call it.



I will explain the large number of eggs next time.

"The Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink!"

I can't help it. I love Boris.

Shawl Disaster

I thought I had done so well. Over four weeks I had knitted the Gail/Nightsongs Shawl and was in plenty of time to block it before Nic's wedding. I cast off with joy in my heart and spread it out on the bed to find this.

Some of you may be thinking, "Hmmm, why has Lixie taken a photo of it upside down?" But no. That's the right way up. Blocking! I thought. BLOCKING. A good block can solve most things. Maybe. Then I looked closer.

Strange how there were those bumps between the middle leaves down the centre line. In the pictures the centre had spread out nicely. I took another look.

Strange how those edge leaves were spreading out nicely and not looking like a robust edging.
...

...

...






I had actually knitted the shawl with the edge in the middle and the middle on the edge. I'd knitted the entire shawl - four weeks knitting - like that.

....

....

No amount of blocking was going to solve this one.

I've frogged the bugger. I have thought about it a lot since I discovered my mistake on saturday and I am going to knit the same shawl again. Only, you know, the right way round. Having seen how beautiful the pattern looks in this yarn I can't imagine it as anything else.

And in a moment

Underground, overground, wombling free.



But do you stay or run?


Hmmm.

Bloody Well Get on With It

It annoys me how few people give blood. Well done to thos of you who do, and commiserations to those of you who can't. But for the rest of you - shame on you.

I did a quick poll in the office and got the responses

• "I know I should"
• "I did once"
• "I'm not sure if I can"
• "I don't like needles"

Well let's look at these...

"I know I should"

...and so? No one who lives in a city has any excuse for not giving blood. Especially london. There are permanent sites all over the place and temp ones pop up regularly. Just type your postcode into the website and away you go. I expect you'll find somewhere you could donate within 24 hours. People in less rural areas do need to plan ahead but even there you'll find somewhere you can donate within the next month. Go! Do it now!

"I did once"

Well fecking well go and do it again. Once doesn't make you some sort of hero. Women can donate every 16 weeks and men every 12. Type your postcode into the website and book to go again online now. 

"I'm not sure if I can"

Are you waiting for someone to spontaneously tell you you can? There is a donor health check online. Go. 

"I don't like needles"

I sympathise. I don't like needles. I would suspect that very few people give blood because they like needles.  Only a very select element of the population like needles. If you have a real life phobia then fair enough. But for everyone else...do you dislike needles so much that if you needed a life saving blood transfusion you would refuse it? If you would be happy to accept a transfusion you should give blood. Tell the nurse you don't like needles and they will reassure you. Don't be selfish. 

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I have been a blood donor for a few years now but am afflicted with tiny veins. I've only been able to donate 50% of the time because they couldn't find a suitable vein the rest of the time. I would willingly give blood every 16 weeks if I could, despite my dislike of needles, but I can't. I hope at least one person reading this will make an appointment to donate.

Hen Do

Saturday saw a hen do take place in Romford. We started off in an all-you-can-eat place called Cosmo which has set a new standard for this kind of thing.

Normally you get a greasy buffet of cooling food of one sort. Here it was all hot, fresh and delicious. Plus there were currys, sushi, dim sum, diner ribs and burgers, salad, fruit, seafood, pasta and more. And then there was the dessert buffet. This is the chocolate fountain.

There were desserts of every type and you could have as much as you wanted.

Nom! After the never before seen but soon to be repeated sushi with yorkshire pudding...

...I was quite restrained with my dessert...

Despite such choice we all managed to make it to Romford Dogs where the fun continued. Nic was presented with a veil with Lucy had put together quite brilliantly.

The knitting mingled with discussions of form and suitability of name of each dog. There were several happy faces as (more by luck than judgement in my case) various dogs came first.

I won a massive £8 on a dog who was possibly named with me in mind - Comfort Girl. It just had to be.

It was a lovely evening and an excellent way to celebrate the impending nuptuals. Personally I have had a set back with the shawl I've been knitting to wear on the day but I will not cloud this post with tales of woe and misery. I'll leave that for another time!

Wedding Dress

I think I have found the dress I'll wear to my sister's wedding in December.

It's been a touch choice but I wanted something vintage and with long sleeves as it will be fricking December. Looking at the photo I can't help noticing it is pretty much transparent so I'll need a slip from somewhere. Can you get long sleeved ones? Intriguing. I got it from Etsy.

I'll have to maintain vigilance in looking for a suitable belt. The one in the photo was just the closest to hand. A dark brown leather one would seem suitable.

Yesterday I picked up a UFO which I started as a wedding present for friends who have just celebrated their third anniversary. I was making a double bed sized blanket in squares but doing it in strips so the only joining was lengthwise along the long strip edges. "Only". This "only" joining was my epic task yesterday. I had done four strips but have only sewn three into the blanket (now single bed sized) and will use the other to make a matching cushion. Once I had mattress stitched those bad boys I found myself needing to do an edging so have picked up at least a gabillion stitches, possibly two gabillion, around the edge on single Denise needle. I used one of the interchangable crochet hooks for the task and when I went to swap in the 4mm tips remembered I hadn't got any as they had vanished into a pile of WIP and were proving hard to locate.

I gave in and went to Denise's website. I did look in the UK but couldn't find anyone selling just the tips without the cords, of which I have many. I adore Denise needles anyway but then to order from them in america and find they only charge $3.50 international postage if you're just getting tips? That drives it into frenzied adoration. A UK blog I follow was promoting some delectable gradient dyed fabric and I went over to etsy to have a look. A FQ of the fabric was about £4.50 which is pretty steep but it is artisan. I then looked at the postage - £11 (not $11 even). Hello? £11 postage for something that weighs perhaps 30g? Goodbye etsy shop and potential sale. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of a way to quantify how excessive postage decreases sales. Actually I don't really wonder. It's kind of a boring topic really. Forget I mentioned it.

This has been a pretty expensive weekend, although in a pretty good way.

I joined! I had a free day pass on Tuesday and checked out how busy the gym was at 7.30 am (eek) and 5.30pm and the answer was 'not very'. It's a Council run gym so reasonably priced and a month at a time so no mental contracts. I went again this morning (sunday at 9.30am I would have thought was a pretty peak time) and there were only 3 others there. I can't run (boo) but the cross trainer means cardio while keeping my feet flat and there's no impact. I'm back on the Couch to 5K system I was using last year and it's easy to simulate running and walking speeds on the cross trainer so is working well. I've done 1.1 and 1.2km respectively and am pretty happy with that, despite Pooch telling me his boss does 23km every weekend. Some people *are* just weird. 

It seems weird not to have more photos to post when I've been crafting so much but then the other things I've been doing are a surprise in cotton and a surprise in cross-stitch so no blogging about those. Plus I continue on the shawl for Nic's wedding which is basically looking much like it did before but more voluminous. Meanwhile in London we are on final countdown for the Olympics. I am very pleased about all the regeneration that has gone on but wish we could have just done that without spending all this money on drivel.

They still look like wisdom teeth to me. Boris's voice BOOMS out of the station intercom when you travel making everyone jumping and encouraging us all to be cheerful about the impending disaster which will be rush hour. The tube system barely copes as it is. The mind boggles at how it will be. Which is why I am very happy to be going away for the first week. I offered my flat to p/hop for the week having had no luck renting it out. Someone has taken it so in return for a donation will be in residence for that week. It is the daughter of a knitter rather than the knitter themselves and so I fairly confident my stash is safe.

I am very keen on the idea of home swaps for holidays and so on and don't worry about security on the basis that you're much more likely to die getting out of the bath than you are to be involved in a terror attack, and therefore in my mind you're more likely to be subject to a home invasion by a general robber than have all your stuff stolen by a house swapper. The only time this does worry me is when I wonder what would happen if I swapped with a knitter. Could they seriously resist my stash? Would any of my books be safe? Should I hide the needles?

Source: someecards.com via Alex on Pinterest

A Little Etsy Love

Got to love a coupon...get 20% off by entering COUPONLOVE at checkout. 

Putting your New Foot Forward

My journey to conquer the tibial tendinitis (not "labial" as spellcheck keeps trying to change it to - can you imagine) has reached a new stage. In between causing bruises on my calves the Podiatrist gave me these yesterday.

If you knew how much they cost you'd be as excited as I am.

He had created a cast of my feet a few weeks earlier and measured my legs and these were the result. They force me to walk properly rather than tipping outwards with each step. What suprised me though is how the highlight the differences between my legs.

The one on the right is about 5mm higher than the other to make up for the difference in length. I know none of us are truly symmetric (think of the men you know) but it's still quite surprising to see it illustrated like this. I'm to wear them for an hour extra each day until I am wearing them all the time and should expect to feel quite knackered for the first few weeks as my body is forced to work harder than usual when walking. But on the plus side it should stop the pain so bring it on.

I received several things yesterday of a less practical nature and far more aesthetically pleasing. Pooch's birthday present for me arrived from Canada.

Di-vine. I've had it on my etsy favourites for years and am utterly thrilled with it.

I am going to wear it with pride at work to do and see it as my new go-to ring.

This is the seller. She is a real artist.

Also arriving chez Byrne was something else I'd favourited on etsy an age ago and decided to treat myself to as a birthday present.

A vintage children's book called "What Makes my Cat Purr?". Some might think that starting to buy children's books was a sign of impending intention, but no. This is purely for me and I read it out loud to myself last night. #cuckoo

The illustrations are so lovely.

One day....one day I will get to live out my crazy cat woman dreams.

Meanwhile I content myself with being the crazy wrestling woman. The CM Punk - AJ - Daniel Bryan love triangle continues. Needless to say CM Punk doesn't want to be in the love triangle, everyone keeps telling AJ she's nuts or 'needs professional help' depending on whether they are a heel or a face (bad guy / good guy for the uninitiated) and Daniel Bryan only cares because AJ is the special guest referee at his and Punk's title match on sunday (woop woop). Having snogged them both last week (and really snogged - OMG I'm so jealous as I would happily give a decent sized portion of my yarn stash to snog CM Punk) she this week proposed to CM Punk, was proposed to by Bryan and then ended by slapping them both - and proper slaps too. Their reactions were quite telling. CM Punk (face) was annoyed but would naturally never hit a lady so just pulled a real mean face.

Daniel Bryan (heel) was astonished AJ didn't want to marry him and pulled what I think of as a margaret-rutherford-as-miss-marple-upon-being-told-to-go-away-by-an-impertinent-young-upstart-face.

Come on - which one would you rather snog?