New Friend and Experimental Knitting

In cute news, me and my boyfriend, after talking about it for months, finally adopted a kitty. Barry was being fostered just two doors down from us by some lovely people from PAWS. Seamus had seen him in the window, and knew Barry was the one. He's very affectionate but we've had to ban him from my studio for getting into everything!

In Lenore Tawney Project news, sketching became a little impossible--too many little strands and lines to draw! So I just jumped into making some samples. I'm pretty excited that it's working out so far, but I've realized that I'm going to need like 20 DPNs to continue, so it's on hold until my new needles (size 0 ugh) come in. It's going to continue to split, until, hopefully, it relates to the shape of Lenore Tawney converging woven pieces. 

More Dear Jane, E-5 is complete! Probably work on more blocks this week as I wait for the DPNs to come in. Came out a little warped but I think it will trim down okay.

And I've added a bit more to the rag-rug. Unfortunately, three whole shirts only make it around the oval once now, as it gets bigger, so progress feels a lot slower. 

Do-Over

So you may notice the rag-rug is now in a different shape. The round shape was warping/turning into a cone, so I sucked it up, cut it all apart and started over. The oval shape seems to be working much better. I'm out of material now, it'll have to get put aside until I can find some more old shirts. 

Finally got around to finishing patching my cape. The lining (some kind of fake silk) had shredded around the armholes, and in a couple other spots, so I covered it with some scraps of silk I had lying around. 

And the red cable knit scarf is finally done! I really should have made it a little longer, but I was really, really sick of doing that cable pattern over and over. And I wanted to start quilting my Irish Chain quilt as my 'hand work' 

Still, it's long enough to wrap around a few times. I'm not totally sure I should block it--I've heard conflicting things about heavily cabled designs. But it does curl a little at the ends....

Very exciting things to be happening soon--Leonore Tawney's estate donated a large amount of materials to Uarts, and a bunch of students and alumns (myself included) have been invited to do work responding to hers. It's a bit of a challenge because my work is very different, but I'm in the pondering/sample making stages. This is a bunch of really lovely fine alpaca that unfortunately, makes my nose run something awful. 

And some spools of linen. The projects aren't due until January, so I have some time to figure it out. Watch for updates!

Also, I'm trying to keep on drawing, so have this little doodle--I scanned it in before I started working on color in case I messed up terribly. 

Well Basted/Well Vested

I brought the Irish Chain quilt to school with me one evening, and managed to get it all basted on the 12' print tables. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Now I'm wishing that I'd gotten thicker battering, though. I'm sure this will quilt really nicely, but it's not going to be very warm. I'm thinking of buying a down comforter and just using this on top (for me, at least, my boyfriend is very hot blooded, I'm sure this will be the perfect weight for him. 

Also while I was at school getting my jump-suit patterns in order, I traced out a darted-vest pattern from a vest I own. It was a little bit of an oversized fit, which I liked. Last night I couldn't quite commit myself to one of my existing projects, so I made up a quick vest with some thrifted fabric to test it out.  

The back--I hate that weird silky stuff they normally use as the back on vests, so I just used the same fabric throughout. 

 And the lining, which is actually a scrap of hand-dyed fabric from one of my students this summer. Anything they didn't take with them joined my fabric stash. Most of it got cut up for seam samples, but I had a big chunk of this, and it matched nicely. 

Progress on the rag-rug, with my new shoes there for size-reference.  This is six shirt's worth so far. Slowly getting better at joining the braids together, it's a bit lumpy in the middle. 

Bedroom Essentials

It's occurred to me that the two projects I'm working on right now are both for my new bedroom. I've always been awful at decorating, I tend to just go for ugly utilitarian furniture. But I'm trying to make an effort to make our new apartment a little more homey and pleasant on the eyes. I finally bought a bedside table for the bedroom, and stopped using one of Seamus's old amps to put our alarm clock on. Baby steps! 

The backing and batting for the Irish Chain quilt finally arrived. I couldn't find an extra wide backing fabric I liked enough to justify the cost, so I bought 9 yards of a normal width fabric on sale. I think the busy multicolored floral is a good match for the busyness of the front. I'm now waiting for a chance to get to school to use the print tables to baste it together--I don't have enough floor space in my house for it. 

I've also wanted to get some rugs for the apartment, we have pretty rough wood floors, and I think they're going to be cold in the winter.  But any rugs I liked were too expensive, and any that were cheap were ugly and gross feeling, so I decide to make a braided rug. 

$9 from the thrift store for starting materials. I washed and dried them to get the 'thrift store smell' out. Then  I cut them apart and cut into 2" strips. 

Strips joined and wound into balls! The knit fabrics fold onto themselves really nicely and leave a clean edged tube. I went for florals, blues, and purples, and each braid has a light, medium, and dark tone. I figure it will go well with the new quilt, and I have a neat painting on the wall that's largely a periwinkle tone. 

So far I've got yards and yards of braid, but I'm only just starting to spiral it into a circle.