Dad, I love you and will miss you terribly

March 26, 1935 - March 27, 2007
I am flying to Maine in the morning and will be off line for the next 5 days.

New felt hat

This is another felted hat just like my brown one (pattern from Fiber Trends. This one is knit with Knitpicks Merino Style wool. It is lighter weight and not as fuzzy as the brown hat knit with Lambs Pride bulky. It took about a skein and a half of the color Storm and I used a little Black and Tide Pool to knit the band.

Fauna Makes the Cover of Quilting Arts!

Here is what Pokey had to say about it on her blog:

"Here's a sneak peak of our next cover of Quilting Arts. (I just got my advanced copy yesterday). This is a detail of “Fauna”, a collaborative quilt by Kathy York, Vicki Hallmark, Frances Holliday Alford, Judy Coates Perez, and Julie John Upshaw. Never before in the history of Quilting Arts Magazine have we dedicated eight entire pages to a single quilt, but it's that amazing. (I still have this quilt in my possession as we'll be featuring it in our Quilting Arts booth in Chicago.) Subscribers, this issue is being mailed as we speak, and for those who pick up Quilting Arts on the newsstands, expect to see it April 3rd."

The seahorse is from Kathy York's panel of Fauna. Congrats on making the cover girl!

I am so thrilled that Fauna is making its public debut on the pages of Quilting Arts. Pokey and her staff have done such a fabulous job with showing the quilt, each panel is featured on a seperate page of the magazine with a full page photo. The photography is exceptional. Just wait until you see the photo of Vickies cactus panel, (the reason our quilt was rejected from Houston) it is jaw dropping gorgeous!

Lace Shawl #2

Well, here is my second attempt to knit the Print O The Wave Stole by Eunny Jang. The top picture is the finished shawl as it came off the needles. Not much to look at. Once the shawl was blocked it was amazing how much bigger it got, this is a twin size sheet folded in half the long way. As I began pinning, it became quite evident I picked up a lot more stitches on one side of the shawl than the other to knit on the border. Thats what I get for not counting stitches and just winging it. The nice thing is that it is not noticible at all when the shawl is wrapped around a body. It is soft, drapey and warm made in Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud. I am happy to say that the shawl does look much more like it is supposed to this time.

Happy Birthday Deb

This box should be coming to your door any day now.
My sister has a thing for bees, so I had a great time searching google images for crazy pics of bees to glue on to this package. I found a movie poster for Invasion of the Bee Girls, an old newspaper masthead, chinese postage stamps with bees and Chairman Mao, and a photoshopped bee with a snarling cat head. All perfect for my sisters twisted sense of humor. Then I filled in some bare spots with paint, miscellaneous scraps and local gallery business cards. When the UPS sticker went on top of the box it completed the collage.

My first lace shawl

This is supposed to be the Print O The Wave Stole by Eunny Jang. I cannot believe what a challenge this was, how many times I ripped it out started over again and how many mistakes there are in it! The most glaring mistake is the border. I did not realize that you are supposed to knit two rows and attach only the pearl row to the shawl. I attached every row and there fore had half as many rows as I was supposed to. So the lovely scallopy border is stretched into a solid square. Reading knitting directions can be so confusing to me. I also ended up knitting two skeins of Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud together and went up to a size 6 bamboo needle. With one strand of yarn and size 4 metal needles I kept loosing stitches because the needles were so slippery the stitches kept falling off.

I really like this pattern. I am determined to get it right. Or something close to right. I will post a picture when I finish shawl number 2.

Auditions with Oprah

I woke up this morning to the sound of a saxophone playing in the distance and remembered that today is the day Oprah is having auditions at her studio for a new show called The Big Give, a pay it forward challenge. This is what I see when I look off my balcony, I live next to Harpo studios. There is a man playing some mellow jazz tunes and someone else handing out T-shirts.

Yesterday a crew from Harpo studios come over to look off my balcony to see if they wanted to have a camera man shooting from there. But they decided to go with someone on the other corner of our building.
The street behind the building has been closed for two days to allow for lots of people.

It is cold outside too. It is snowing and the wind is blowing 30-40 mph gusts. You know these people are serious, to stand outside all day in this.


Oprah has even arranged for a temporary coffee stand in the lot across the street.

Thread Heaven

There is nothing like having organized thread at your finger tips when you are sewing. For years I kept my thread in plastic containers used for storing matchbox cars that I bought at Target. But Target stopped selling them a few years back and I soon ran out of places to put my thread. My solution was to buy this taboret from Dick Blick. I divided up the space in the drawers with easy to cut and stick drawer dividers from the Container Store. I also like to keep my thread wrapped with Hugos amazing vinyl tape to keep it from unraveling.