and now I can get back to my regular life

When you hear the words, "Mum, will you knit me something?" come from a 15-year-old, it's remarkable how fast you snap into action. She has scorned knitted garments for years. We hopped onto ravelry.com and found a crochet pattern for a lovely poncho with a cowl neck. We raced out to buy yarn, choosing 7 balls of grey and one of red.

I had to learn how to hdc (half double crochet). Easy peasy when you know three other crochet stitches already. So around and around and around and around I went, with increases placed regularly. Two and a half weeks later, it's done.

She doesn't know yet because she's out, but she'll see it this evening. And then she can stop nagging at me to work on it and get it done already. Time to focus on sewing!!

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did I really get that done?

I had a quilting workshop today. It was on the topic of 'quilt as you go'. It's a matter of making small things, fully quilted, and then putting them together to make bigger things.

I knew I wanted to make a Christmas table runner. I cut pieces for the back and the batting, and took a lot of fabric for the fronts because I didn't know what we'd be learning. Would my 5" charm pack work? Would I need strips the width of fabric?

When I saw the pattern, I knew I wanted to use my charm pack. It's called Winterberry and I love it. When I saw the dimensions in the pattern, I knew that the 5" squares weren't quite big enough. So I decided to chop them in half, wonky-like. Then I started cutting others into 3, wonky-like, for smaller pieces. I cut them two at a time so they'd always have a buddy to mirror, so they'd almost always come out squarish when two pieces were sewn together (the middle ones on the 3-cuts didn't behave as nicely, but I had wiggle room).

Then I started chain piecing. Then I ironed. Then I pieced the pieces together. Then I ironed. Then I did it again, and even a fourth time, because I needed 8 things 4 x 5.5 and 8 things 4 x 10.5. I have *NOTHING* left from that charm pack but wee little trimmings. I used the whole thing and panicked that I wouldn't have enough. I squeaked through. PHEW!

I have four of these. I'm going to quilt them some more, and then I'll attach them to each other. They're all the same pattern, but will be different because of the randomness of the cuts.

Random. That's the word of the day!

It's pouring out. I'm going to make some soup and then turn on the radio and get sewing. So awesome.


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