January Colours; Yarn

After spending 2 days researching my blocks and colours for the Initial Colour Challenge on OST, I finally got to cut and sew today .. I pulled my first set of fabrics last nite, but was just to tired to press them out or to cut them, so they were waiting for me this AM.

Ribbon Star

I started with this block, Ribbon Star and for how simple the block is, it took me forever to cut, square and stitch together .. I just couldn’t believe it! I made 2 of them and this represents “R” in my name for the challenge. I should be able to put this block together with my eyes closed and without even thinking about it, as this was, I guess you could say the base, for the blocks in Kyle’s Spinner quilt. But it took me forever .. I just couldn’t believe it! Talk and I did no frogging for this .. just in reverse I guess. I was worried that my blue, purple and green to were to close to create enough of a contrast, but with the motifs all being different sizes, it worked out quite well actually – but I still want to have more of a difference in tone for the rest of them – I might do these again, I’ll have to see how it all pans out.

Grandma's Star

This evening I got started on Grandma’s Star, which i found on Jinny Beyer’s site. This one required me to actually cut out templates for the triangle. WOW I had forgotten how to piece these. It only took one goof to get it right, but of course I kept goofing on that ONE section – the poor thing. There’s more contrast between these pieces so the star stands out more. I actually did pretty good piecing this one and even with the goofs it went a lot faster than the ribbon star. I strip pieced the 4 patches and once that was done, it was only the triangles that needed to be done .. maybe part of my problem was I rotary cut the arms and then template cut the background .. but of course I had this thought AFTER I had cut all the pieces out .. and I wasn’t about to recut them if I didn’t have to .. but the 2 blocks I made of this are squared! 😀 So it’s all good

I wanted to get started on the Air Castle block, but Reg had to get some sleep as he was getting called in at 3am .. (he was actually called at 1:30am ..where’s the justice in THAT???) So I stopped piecing for a bit .. Instead I grabbed the bag of yarn that I got from the basement earlier. This was actually one that Kyle had missed when he brought it up for me before – talk about a treasure trove of stuff .. but alas .. most of these don’t have bands as you can see .. While I can look at them and go – oh this is worsted or whatever, some of these I just can’t do that with .. I do know that you figure out what a yarn is by WPI (Wraps Per Inch). It’s a pretty simple concept, you wrap the yarn around a pencil for about 1 – 2″ and then measure how many times it wraps around in 1″. I found a site that shows an example of the wrapping and what weight yarn you have by the number of wraps .. pretty useful me thinks … I certainly did NOT feel like wrapping all that yarn to find out right then and there what it was .. This is going to be a project for when I’m mind numbingly bored! The reason why I went digging into this was to find more worsted weight yarn for the January KAL of mittens – I joined this group on Ravelry called One Skein just to get rid of all these loose onsie twosie balls of yarn .. and I will NOT buy more for these projects – so hunt I do .. but not right now LOL

Remember this sock?? Well, I rather tripped over something in the directions that gave me pause – so I opted to try it on – not a big deal – normally .. (**sigh) I got the sock and I must have had a dropped stitch somewhere because I ended up with a ladder from the cast on edge to the where I started to work the heel – I just could NOT find the dropped stitch – with the variegated colours in the yarn, small needles and the lighting, that stitch was playing hide and go seek and I didn’t have a prayer to find it .. so guess what .. I frogged the whole bloody thing! That sock now looks like this -I hated to do it, but that is not something that I can live with. On a good note – (I AM trying to be positive here) – at least I found this out before I cast off the sock .. I would be so bloody ticked if I had done all that work and had the sock do a ladder up the back of the heel – this was infinitely easier and less painful when you look at it in that light.

I might cut out the last 2 blocks tonite and do them – or I might hunt down some yarn and start the January KAL .. or I might even read – my current book is taking me forever to read!!