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Wednesday, November 19. 2008

How was your weekend?

Oh, it was sew-sew....

 

Take 10 enthusiastic quilting friends, several sewing machines, 2 ironing boards, 3 irons, piles of fabric, pins, needles, threads, and a good selection of work-in-progress and put them all in a modern youth hostel for three days and two nights and what do you get? A very happy group of ladies and quite a few finished projects (or at least projects well on their way to completion).

 

I just got back from such a weekend. Our patchwork and quilting group is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year (hard to believe) and we thought we should do something special to mark the occasion. We‘ve been thinking about organizing a sewing weekend for several years and this seemed like the perfect time to actually make it happen.

 

We have a very modern youth hostel about an hour‘s drive from here where we could book  single rooms (actually 3- and 4-bed rooms, but single occupancy), have three meals a day cooked for us, and have the use of a huge, lovely conference room for our entire stay – and all for less than 100 Euros per person!

 

We have several group projects in the works and, of course, each of us has plenty of UFO‘s, so we didn‘t think that we would be bored – and we weren‘t! We sewed until around 10:00 pm on Friday and Saturday and to 4:00 pm on Sunday. What a treat to not have to worry about meals, kids, husbands, house, garden, etc. It‘s amazing how much sewing can get done when you can stick with it for more than just a few minutes at a time (or even more than just one or two hours).

 

After cleaning and packing up on Sunday afternoon, we all sat down to have coffee together and to sum up the experience. What was good? What was not so good? What could be improved or changed if we have such a weekend again? Everyone was very satisfied. “It was much nicer than I had anticipated it would be.” But then one criticism was voiced – “It wasn‘t long enough!”

 

The weekend was such a huge success that we have decided to make it an annual affair!

 

Here are some impressions of our stay:

 

 

 

Everyone brought along several projects to work on, but we also had

several group projects that we took turns working on. Here, the quilt for

the friend who moved back to Sweden (see my earlier blog entry) is being

quilted. We finished the quilting on the weekend. Now all it needs is binding –

hope that doesn't wait until we have our next quilting weekend next year!

 

 

 

 

The second group project was this quilt, started by one of our members

who very sadly died suddenly last year. We decided to finish the quilt for

her and donate it to be used in the parents' apartment at a local children's

hospital.

 

 

 

We got it up to a little more than 2 x 2 meters (80 x 80 inches) – we know because

we measured – which ought to be big enough for a double bed. Now we have

to decide how to quilt it! 

 

 

Watch where you're cutting!

 

 

 An extra hand would be nice.... 

 

 

 

One of the personal projects – she's hoping to be finished by Christmas.

 

 

Encouraging the next generation – and we do need them!

 

All in all, a very successful weekend! 

 

Written by Mary at 22:27 in Patchwork and quilting
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Sunday, November 2. 2008

Toe-up socks

Judging by the number of sock-knitting reports, blogs, clubs, etc. on the Internet I don‘t seem to be the only one who is enthusiastic about socks. I think that I can safely say that I always have a least one pair that I am working on. Nothing fancy, just 2-2 ribbing around the ankle and stockinette stitch foot. And with double-pointed needles (I don‘t quite understand the rage for knitting socks on circular needles, but oh well...maybe I‘m just old fashioned). Socks are my all-time favorite take-along project – on the train or plane, at the Dr.‘s office, while the grandkids are doing their homework, etc., etc. I always grab a sock-in-progress before going almost anywhere. Just imagine, the car might break down and I would have hours of time by the side of the road, at the garage, etc. and not have a sock along to fill the time – unthinkable!

 

 

One result of all of my sock knitting (aside from lots of socks for me, family, and friends, of course) is that bits and pieces of various sock yarns accumulate. Every once in a while I knit a pair of “garbage” socks to use up all the accumulated bits. I knit them helter-skelter, without worrying about them matching – they will still keep my feet warm. The only thing I make sure of is that all the yarn left-overs are of the same type so they “behave” the same way (for example when washed).

 

Now I have accumulated enough bits of various colors of a cotton/wool sock yarn, that I think I have enough for a pair of socks. I weighed the last pair of socks that I knit with this yarn and weighed all the left-overs and I‘m sure I have enough, but I don‘t know for sure how far I will get with half of the yarn (= one sock), how long to make the ribbed top, etc.

And I certainly don‘t want to end up with left-overs from my left-overs! So I decided that this would be a good time to try knitting socks from the toe up. I‘m sure I have enough for the feet of two socks. I‘ll knit two socks in parallel and knit the ribbed tops the same lengths, until I run out of my left-over yarn. 

 

Here are half of my left-overs. I know the colors don‘t go together well at all, but that doesn‘t matter. I‘m not planning on wearing the finished socks to the opera!

 

 

 

I have never knit socks from the toe up, but I have Internet access and that is the same as having a whole treasure trove of knitting information – there are instructions, tutorials, even short videos of all sorts of knitting techniques. I found two good descriptions to help me get started – both, it turned out from Wendy D. Johnson (here and here).

 

I won‘t repeat Wendy‘s very good instructions. I‘ll just say that with this technique, you start by knitting the toe cap. There seem to be several ways to do this, I used the short row method, starting with a length of crocheted chain stitches – that‘s the dark blue yarn in the photo of my toe, below.

 

 

Then you knit the foot in the round (I prefer using 3 double-pointed needles) until you get to the heel, which you also work with short rows (just like the toe).

 

Then you continue in the round to work the top of the sock as high as you like....or until the yarn runs out. I like to work the entire top of the sock in ribbing (I think I read that Elisabeth Zimmerman liked to do this also), so they stay up better.

 

Here are my finished socks. As the Germans say, “Nicht schön aber selten.” (Not pretty, but unusual.)

 

 

Knitting from the toe-up was perfect for using up left-over yarns evenly – and it did impress many of my friends who had never heard of doing such a thing before – but I don‘t think that I will be using this method much for normal sock knitting....

Written by Mary at 20:44 in Knitting
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