Wes and the boys went off to visit my in-laws this weekend. I went pretty nuts.
First, on Friday night I went to spinning at the shop. I'm ashamed to admit that it was the first time I touched my wheel since the first Friday of last month.
Then when I got home I tried to tackle continuous bias binding for the Lotus quilt.
It's a little mind-bending. Then I spent a very, very long time trying to make the two ends of my binding meet at a nice 45° angle. There was a lot of cursing and ripping out. I finally just fudged it. It looks fairly shitty in that one spot. I can live with it.
On Saturday I went to Bainbridge Island with six other Purlygirls. We hit the sale at Churchmouse, visited the farmer's market, got lunch and went to the fabric store. When I got home with all my fabric goodies I saw that I really have a problem. There was a fat quarter bundle waiting on the front porch that I had mail ordered. I had just bought a fat quarter of one of the fabrics. Then I realized that I had already bought one last week. This is the third time in the last few weeks that I've purchased fabric only to find that I already own some. At least my taste is consistent.
Before Wes left I asked him to turn the water heater all the way up. After nearly killing myself getting in to the shower (hot!) I knew the water was hot enough to clean some fleece. I pulled out the corriedale I bought this year at Black Sheep. It got two good, long, hot soaks. It came out very clean. This evening I cleaned the rest of the targhee I bought at Oregon Flock and Fiber. It came out very clean too. Mostly. It's very clean, fluffy and white with hardly any grease left but there are still patches that are unspeakably filthy. I don't know how to best deal with this. I guess I'll collect up the grossest parts and send them back in for another soak. The entire house smells sheepy and warm right now. I think it's wonderful. For Wes and the boys, not so much.
So Saturday night Wes snuck back to Seattle and we went out for dinner at Tilth (so delicious) and we saw The Simpsons Movie. If you like The Simpsons you will love the movie. I laughed very hard. Wes then had to slink back to his parent's house. I stayed up way too late sewing the borders on the County Lines quilt and piecing the backing.
Today I had to work. But first I ran to Jo-Ann's to get batting for County Lines. A word to the wise, don't buy white batting in a dark colored shirt. I spent the rest of the day covered in white fuzz.
I started a Gypsy Shawl for the shop out of Cashsoft 4-Ply.
Even thought I'm on the really easy part of the shawl right now I made some strange little error that I tried and tried to fix. I finally gave up and ripped but then realized after knitting several rows that I hadn't ripped back far enough. I did this over and over. I left work with 3 rows fewer that I had at the beginning of the day.
Evelyn Clark stopped in the shop today so I got to show her the quilt I finished last week. She'll be delivering copies of her book to us on Tuesday!
Then tonight I made my first attempt at foundation paper piecing. The first square went pretty well.
Messy foundation block
All clean!
The second block was like the shawl. Stitch, rip, curse, repeat. I finally got the damned thing finished and accidentally trimmed off the seam allowance on one side. Shit! I decided I'd just trim them all down and I'd have blocks that are half an inch smaller. I may change my mind tomorrow and just scrap that block. I'm only planning on making four or six to make a little baby quilt. We'll see how I feel about it later.