Long summer

It's been a long summer and I'm glad that it's over, but I've come out of it with a half dozen almost-finished projects from nearly ever craft hobby I have. Yes, I admit it, I'm a flitter. A bit here, a bit there, over there and back again.

One of my first hobbies, the one I picked up on my own instead of learning from someone else as I did crochet and sewing, is cross stitch. I was in college, I needed something to work on and WalMart - at the time - had a fair selection of cheap and easy cross stitch patterns.

I let it fall off for years, but a whim had me picking it up again and now I have plans for gifts both this year and next. This is for a friend of mine. I'll put it in a shadow box and add a couple whimsical shoes.



The first day of fall is in late September and I'm working on ponchos for a couple friends. The blue is from the summer issues of Crochet Interweave and the second - though this picture ruins the color, it's a combination of pink and green that I quite like - uses a diagonal stitch that sometimes is called the crazy stitch.





I'm slowly making my way through my small group of friends, making them afghans for the hols and bdays. This is for my shoe-friend up above. She was down this weekend and I forgot and left this bright beastie out where she spotted it. Thankfully, she
commented on how much she liked the colors. Phew. It's much (much) brighter in real life, rows and rows of mitred squares.



One of the first quilts I tried to make was a postage stamp quilt. Epic disaster, if I do say so myself. As much as I enjoy looking at these exercises in frustration, I have avoided making another until I came across the technique where long strips of blocks can be sew together vertically and then horizontally, creating even corners and an almost-stress free sewing experience.

Enter in a cross-stitch sampler pattern that just screams to be made into a quilt. This is the first four blocks, a hundred inch and a half squares (yeah, I have a couple screws loose) per block, 10 blocks by 10 blocks. The plan is to have it made by xmas for my mom. She might have to wait until next year.

And an important note for anyone thinking about doing this. I went to the store and found the floss recommended by the pattern and used that to pick out my colors. Otherwise I would have made a huge mess.



And finally something for me, because every crafter knows you have to do stuff for yourself as well as other people or burn out. This is based around Caron's Tulsa jacket, but in bright neon colors and black, because I'm peculiar like that, in microspun, which is silky soft and light.