longing for freedom

I haven't had time to do ANYthing lately. My dissertation is due to my committee in a week and a half, and then I fly out to Portland for my defense on June 9th. I can't WAIT until it is over!

We were in New York City on Friday and Saturday for a wedding, and I stopped at Purl Patchwork (I've been wanting to go there for so long!). Adam went to hang out with a friend and his last words to me were "buy lots of fabric," so I did! I couldn't resist getting some of the Cake Rock Beach fabrics plus a cute little spectrum bundle of orange and yellow fabrics. I don't know how I will manage to hold off on sewing with these awesome fabrics for another month!

It is gorgeous and spring-like outside and we have a family of foxes living in our field with FIVE babies! We watched them for almost an hour last night, chasing each other and leaping into the air and rolling around in the grass. Hopefully soon I can spend more time watching foxes, gardening, sewing, and knitting!

bark BSJ

The trip to Portland involved a 2.5 hour bus ride and over 6 hours of flying, each way. Aside from a short nap here and there, pretty much all I did during the transit was knit this Baby Surprise Jacket. It is made from my handspun bark yarn (dyed by Pigeonroof Studios), which is a sport weight yarn, and I think I used size 4 needles for this one.

I literally think every woman I know between the ages of 28 and 35 is currently pregnant, so I anticipate knitting many more Baby Surprise Jackets in the near future. I'm in love with this one though, because the handspun merino-silk yarn is so beautiful, almost too luxurious for a baby! But you know, nothing is too good for certain babies.

spring greens

We returned from Portland on Saturday and picked up our last winter CSA share on Sunday. It's slightly sparse on the root vegetables, because obviously by now many of them are suffering from being stored all winter. But they made up for that with a dozen eggs and a huge bag of spring greens. It's hard to tell from the photo, but that bag of greens must weigh at least two pounds...and they are delicious!

Portland went very well, Adam is done with his dissertation, we ate some incredible meals, and saw some friends. Everything is in bloom there and it is just gorgeous. Luckily though, when we got home, most of our snow had melted! We can see our driveway, yard, and back patio again, and spring is definitely in the air here too.

I finished a couple knitting projects, and will try to post them soon! But I am really a little frantic right now about finishing the last chapter of my dissertation, so posting knits might have to wait.

congratulations, adam!

Adam finished his dissertation and we're heading to Portland, Oregon tomorrow for his defense. I'm so happy for him and now he will have more time to work on his wood lathe...he is learning how to turn wood bowls, and I can't wait to see what he creates! I'm also really excited to visit Portland...I miss that wonderful city!

I am hoping to do a lot of knitting on the airplane. I've almost finished knitting my bitter orange yarn into a plain garter stitch scarf (inspired by a similar scarf by jared at brooklyntweed), and now I think I'm going to make a Baby Surprise Jacket with my handspun bark yarn. Next up is the Minimalist Cardigan, which will definitely satisfy my current desire to make a sweater (which I haven't done in years), and I know it is something I will actually wear for a change! And on the sewing front, I can't wait to make some things with this new fabric line, Cake Rock Beach...I really want to make these pillows, and I have some other ideas up my sleeve too!

I have to quell some of my creative urges for a while though, because now that Adam is done with his dissertation, it is my turn to finish mine!

bitter orange

The last few Pigeonroof rovings that I have spun have been so beautiful as yarn that I am hesitant to knit with them. I'd rather just look at them! This one is different. It's colorway "bitter orange" in 80% merino and 20% tussah silk. I really loved the color of this one and was excited to spin it. But I'm not happy with my spinning at all! I was trying to spin a thicker yarn, but this one just seems dense and it isn't very pretty to look at. I'm also not as even of a spinner when I try to spin thicker (I think in the future I'm going to stop trying - I'll just 3-ply my thin singles if I want a thicker yarn). Plus it is very barber-poley, which I'm not so crazy about in a yarn.

And I learned something about myself. When I am not 100% satisfied with a yarn, I just want to knit it right away! So I discovered a way to get myself to knit more: spin yarns that I'm unhappy with! Just kidding, I won't do that, but check out how amazingly gorgeous the bitter orange is in this knitted garter stitch swatch I made.

I LOVE it. It's tweedy and interesting and it drapes really well (because of the silk)...and I love all the colors. Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to make with it. Unfortunately I only have about 200 yards, which isn't a whole lot. I'm really anxious to knit with it though, so hopefully I'll figure out something good.

finished quilt!

As promised, here is my finished quilt! Like I said before, I am really happy with it, and still amazed that I did such an extensive sewing project. I quilted it in a diamond pattern, the same way it was done in the book where I got the instructions for making this quilt (Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts). Some of the quilting lines are a little wobbly, mainly due to my beginning sewing skills. My really old crappy sewing machine didn't help much either...my walking foot fell off more than a dozen times during the quilting, so there was a lot of stopping, carefully trying to put it back on, and getting everything lined up again so there was no obvious gap in the quilting line. I would love to get a new sewing machine some day.

I did a double-fold binding, which involves hand sewing the entire binding onto the back of the quilt. I was dreading this part because I've always heard how time consuming it is, but it was my favorite part of the whole process! I really liked the slow precise hand sewing, and it was the only part of the process where I felt somewhat in control. It didn't even take that long...basically two nights of sewing. Look how cute my little polka-dotted binding is.

Making a quilt was on my "life list," or list of things to do during my lifetime. It is always such a good feeling when I actually accomplish one of these things. And the greatest part is that I really want to keep making quilts, so this definitely will not be a one-time thing. In fact, I just bought some gorgeous fabric for my next project! There will definitely be some hand-quilting in my future too, since I enjoyed the hand sewing so much.

bark handspun

I finished spinning yet another Pigeonroof roving. It is one of the two I talked about here... 80%merino, 20% tussah silk dyed in colorway "bark." It was a really subtle roving, which suits me well...I'm still not a huge fan of wildly variegated yarns, and it spun into a gorgeous yarn with a slight shine from the silk.

It's about 360 yards, 4.1 ounces, and once again it fluffed up into a really soft squishy yarn. Back in my spinning heyday (just over 5 years ago when I lived in Moscow, Idaho), I never spun yarns like this...I mainly spun drapey, very fine yarns with a looser ply. It is probably partly because I am spinning a lot of merino these days, which is really springy, and partly because I've been making a conscious effort to ply tighter. I'm really really happy with my current spinning though, and it is very knitting-friendly (though obviously I haven't even been knitting with it!), so I guess I'm just going to keep it up. I did recently buy some chocolate brown bombyx silk, which I can't wait to spin, and that will be a nice change of pace from all this fluffy merino.

Anyway, stay tuned (my two readers!) because my quilt is officially finished, and I will try to get some decent pictures this weekend and post it. It turned out really great, and I'm so glad that I did the whole process myself instead of having someone else quilt it.