2014 Final Project Wrap up

 One night just before Christmas, the sky looked like it was on fire.  It was a totally awesome sunset!  I was glad I looked up when I did as I had time to grab my camera and get outside for a few shots.  I couldn't go far because I didn't have my coat, my mittens or time.   It had faded after a couple of minutes, but was glorious while it lasted.

 I finished one quilt but not the second one.  I just did straight stitching along the blocks, but I did a large stipple on the black border.  The backing is a green print that isn't related to the blocks in any way other than some of the greens are similar.   It was well received.   I wrapped up the second quilt top and gave it anyway.  It is sitting on my sewing machine, waiting for me to finish it up.  I have all the supplies except thread. 

I finally found the rest of the alpaca/superwash merino yarn.  I knit the second mitten and finished it the evening of Dec. 31st.   They are soft, pretty and very warm.   I was glad to have gotten that project finished before the new year.

Pretty Colours for September

 This is a handspun 3 ply Blue Faced Leicester/Nylon sock yarn, from a commercially blended roving.  The skein only weight 105 g though and measured up at just under 300 yards.  I don't think it's quite enough for a pair of socks with cuffs of my preferred length.  I will either spin up some extra to use for the toes, heels and ribbing or finding some odd bit that coordinates in my stash, just to be certain I have enough yarn.  I dislike socks which are too short in the leg or cuff.  It's dyed with weak acid dyes.  I used Navy and magenta, which work really nicely together.

I'm trying to find an interesting pattern for these socks, but so far all I'm doing it stashing new ideas for future projects. 

 I've not been very successful with getting home started perennials to survive over the summer.  The past couple of autumns though, I've just sprinkled the desired seeds in a suitable garden spot and walked away.  Both times I've tried this, I've come back the next fall to find big, beautiful plants.  The Phlox is lovely and so is this lovely Pink Fall Aster.  So pretty and so very pink!

  The wild purple asters are abundant this year.    Even though some of the flowers are starting to fade, the bees and few remaining butterflies are out in full force.  We don't seem to have the Yellow Jacket Wasps this year, but have Bumble Bees galore.  Luckily they aren't aggressive and just keep working away.  Today's weather is perfect for their last minute foraging with the mild temperatures, sunshine and gentle breeze.

I've started on the second Christmas quilt.  I've 2 of the 3 sets of blocks cut out.  I realized after I was half through cutting the second set of blocks, that I could have save a whole bunch of time by strip piecing and cutting out whole rows of pieced squares.   Now I have to lay out every set of squares for each row, making sure that the blue print is running the same way, since it's directional.   Oh well, the quilt is only going to be about 55in. x 65 in., so it shouldn't take that much time to piece together, even doing it the long way.

Now to get the third fabric cut up and to sit down and piece this baby together, in time to get it quilted.  

This week's conquests

Finally finished this quilt top.  It's only taken 2 years, sheesh.  I can't pride myself on getting that one sewn up in a timely fashion.   It's a pattern called Bento Box and was easy and fun to assemble when I actually sat down to work on it.  Now, can I get it quilted up before Christmas?   I'll have to decide whether I'm going to quilt it on an electric machine or the treadle.  It's a bit smaller than I originally planned as the second border just didn't look right, so I left it off.  I'll use the fabric for the backing instead and the remaining black border fabric for the binding.

Ramie - rainbow dyed sliver.  This was hard to spin.  Every once in a while there was a blobby bit of fibre which wouldn't thin out.  While I was able to just rip off those inches of sliver in some places, others made it into this skein.   It sure won't be one of the bast fibres I'll spin a lot of, that's for sure.  I much prefer flax, hemp and cotton to the Ramie.  

My yearly batch of sweet relish.  This year it was really watery and yep, is orange instead of green/brown as it normally is.  I think I usually don't bother with adding the Tumeric but I did this time.  It's still tasty but took forever to reduce and even so, it's more watery than in past years.   Maybe due to all the rain we've been getting? 

Apricots were at the market last Saturday.   I had enough for one batch of jam, a pie and 5 apricots to eat out of hand, from a 3 litre basket.   I got almost 7 cups of jam from this batch, but since I'd only prepared 6 jars, that last jar ended up in the fridge for immediate use.  I don't really mind mis-planning when it works out that way.  It's pretty yummy jam.  I really can't decide whether Apricot, Peach or Currant jam is my favourite.  I think it depends on what I'm eating at the time.

Quilt Update

The quilt is not going to be made by October, but it is coming together, albeit slowly.  I did find my missing quilt squares.  I was obviously using my awesome observation skills, which unfortunately must fall someplace between non-existant and 11 year old boy who doesn't want to go find his missing mittens.  There were, exactly where I had left them.  No less, they were in the same place, the exact same place as the rest of them, just waiting for me.    They were all ready cut into four and ready to go.   I'd looked everyplace but where I'd put them in the first place!  sigh..

I've been using the treadle machine for this project and was happy about being able to leave the machine set up and just sew a few blocks when I had a few extra minutes.  However, it's been slow going, for only one reason.






Every single time I have a few minutes to sew the quilt, the kitten is sleeping on it.    He's a fairly active kitten, getting into mischief at every waking moment.  He's awake running, playing and finding new places to explore, conundrums to solve and figuring out new and exciting ways to get into what he was barred from yesterday.  I tend to let sleeping kittens sleep. 

While it does look like he's sleeping here, he's actually tussling with the quilt blocks.  It took a few tries to get him to explore elsewhere, while I started to lay them out.  It was short lived peace though as he decided to play with the potted plants, tumbling them to the ground from the bench in front of the window.    Emergency clean up and vacuum at the south window in aisle 1! 

Right now, my plans of getting 2 quilts done by Christmas are on the back burner.  Getting this single quilt done will be quite fine, thank you.

Rainy Day Activities..

It was a weirdly busy week.  It feels like we're having the second solid week of rain.  In the short time it wasn't raining, I got most of the garlic planted.  I say most as last minute, I decided to plant a 5th row.  I realized that I didn't have enough large heads of garlic to plant - larger cloves of garlic grow to be larger heads of garlic.  So I popped out to the market on Saturday but haven't planted it yet because it's too wet.  It looks like it will sitting on my counter as it's still raining, and then the remnants of Hurricane Sandy are supposed to hit us tonight, giving us more rain, which will apparently be followed by even more rain.  Already our ground is squidgy and mushy.   I've no idea where all this rain will go.

While the garlic and some flower bulbs languish in my home, I did manage to do a few other things.  I spun the most unworthy cabled yarn  ever.  I followed the exact instructions and got this over spun, twisted mess.  It's a pretty mess though, since I used some of the Indigo dyed yarn from my stash.  Not worthy of a photo though.

 Frustrated, I finally got around to processing the  cotton sample I'd spun from some of the naturally coloured cotton I'd purchased.  The colour is supposed to darken when the yarn is boiled.  There is a noticeable difference in the colours.  I took a piece of pipe - supposed to be PVC but I only had ABS around, so I tried it.  I had my sweetie cut it to size and then drill holes in it.  I wrapped the cotton around it and tossed it into a pot of boiling water.   It didn't melt or distort, so I called it good. 

I had a meeting to go to and remembered that I'd cast on a pair of socks at the beginning of the month and promptly forgot about them.  I'd only an inch done on the cuffs, and these were plain Jane, 3/1 ribbing so I could use them as a mindless knitting project.  I got over 3 inches knit at that meeting and then have made time to finish the one and get a start on the other.  I really think I should have chosen a more interesting pattern, although I do prefer wearing ribbed socks to any other - I'm just finding it hard to keep my momentum up for these particular ones - despite the lovely pink in the colourway.

I also dragged out the quilt blocks to work on.  This quilt was supposed to be done by October, so I'd have time to make a second one.   I counted each set of blocks, both dark and light, numerous times and always had 15 of each.  I cut them up into 4 as required by the pattern and as I was reassembling the blocks, I noticed that I have more of the dark blocks than of the light.  Did I just misplace them or did I really miscount each time I checked my block count number?  I've no idea, but it means either blindly making up a few more blocks, or sorting through the fabric shelf where I'd parked them.. neither of those options sounds like much fun.   It's a pretty block though, despite my manage to not match anything but the centre points.   I wonder if that could be because I've actually ended up using 3 machines to piece it together and perhaps they all have slightly different 1/ 4 inch measurements?

I also spun up some silk.  I'd been playing around with silk and I've finally gotten some that I'm quite happy with.  I'd been spinning some dyed Tussah and was getting horribly inconsistent results.  When I tried for more twist, it was harsh and unyielding, with little lustre that silk should have.  With too little twist it was soft, but obviously fuzzy and dull.   So I dug up a small sample of unbleached Tussah and tried it as a comparison!  Yay for that, because I think it's just the silk I'd been using and not me.  Phew!!!

End of Week update..

The Elecampane is blooming.  It looks like a rather oversized Dandelion, although paired with the Black Hollyhock it's growing beside, it's a pretty combo.  This plant is huge.  The seed catalog description suggested it would grow about 4 feet tall.  This baby is as tall or taller than I am when I'm standing on the deck, so someplace in the 7 plus feet range.  Amazing.   I'm leaving it growing for this year.  With the winters perennial flower losses - both Echinaceas, the Cardinal Lobelia, Coreopsis, all the Icelandic Poppies and more, at least this is some colour in the garden beds.



The 30 quilt blocks are pieced and pressed, ready to be cut in 4 quarters, rearranged and reassembled into thirty new blocks, which will be then sewn into a quilt.  I already have border fabric, which I hope will work suitably and frame the quilt.  It looked good with the uncut fabric, but sometimes the blocks seem to look differently when all put together.

My first attempt at a bouclé yarn.  I cannot believe how much time this took.  Of course I over estimated the amount of fibre I'd need in the first place, so the amount of the base single was more than expected.  Then I had to spin more of the mohair as wrapping was supposed to take at least 1.5 times the base.  Then I had to ply the two together and then ply a third time with a binder thread.  I used sewing thread.   All in all, I'm pretty happy with my first try.  It's a balanced and nice looking skein although I think I could have done with a little less enthusiasm with the wrapping of the mohair ply.  It's got an awful lot of loops!  This was the result 3 days of spinning for several hours each day.

I also played around with spinning thick yarn.  I got thick and uneven yarn, thick, dense and mainly even yarn, and finally I got a fairly even, fairly light, sproingy, fluffy yarn that I am happy with.  Who knew spinning thick yarn was so difficult?  I cannot for the life of me think what I would use this for, but it's good to know that I can indeed spin a variety of thicknesses.

More Practice

 More practice skeins.  I'm trying to get a consistent twist per inch as well as a consistent grist.  It takes a more refined drafting technique than I'd used before.  It's starting to get a bit easier, the more that I practice.  Fibre prep sure shows in some of these skeins.  They are all using commercially processed rovings and top.  Some are much nicer to work with than others.  There are samples here of both short forward draw worsted style drafting and a woolen style longdraw.

Before I set out for the course, I sewed up one block of the quilt I was planning for a Christmas present.  I knew that if I had even one block done, it would be the incentive to keep at the quilt blocks.  I did 3 more the other day.  They are 10 1/2 inch blocks, which will then be cut in quarters, to make a Bento Box quilt.  The light and dark centres will be set opposite each other, creating a bit of an offset optical illusion.  It's not my personal favourite pattern, but I know that several of my kids will like it.  I've a couple of other sewing projects which I'll work on as well, but it's a good break from spinning practice, both mentally and using different muscles and body positions.

Between times, I've gotten some gardening done, most things planted for now and even some weeding done!  I'm also on the second red/black sock.   While I like the finished sock, I will be happy to have these ones off the needles.

Just a little update..

 The little quilt top is done.  It's a pretty enough pattern.  I'd thought that I'd have enough of the border fabric to use as backing, but I'm slightly short.  It will only take a metre of fabric, but I've nothing that looks totally right at the moment.  Horrors of horrors, but I don't feel like fabric shopping right now.    When I do get it backed and ready to quilt, it will be the perfect size to practice fancier machine quilting techniques.

The plum tree is blooming.   We had quite the frost last night, so no idea whether it will still be in flower this afternoon, but it is pretty for the time it lasts.   The tree is fairly wild, shadowed by Cedar and Maple trees, so doesn't get enough  light or nutrients to produce more than a few small plums, which are sour.   Still, it's a glorious sign of the beauty of spring.  I'm just happy that the pear trees haven't blossomed out yet.  The pears are edible and abundant.   I've been debating trying to make perry with them this year as we've had several large harvests of small pears.  However, the past couple of springs, I've done some pretty major pruning to the younger tree and maybe this year will be the year that we get not quite so many, but larger and easier to harvest fruits.  The old tree is very old and hollow.  I fear that pruning would stress it more than necessarily.  It will have to come down soon, but until then, the pears are a delcious, old and sweet Bartlett  type and too yummy to lose if not necessary.

Scottish Traditional Dye samples by Margaret Stalker

Two nights in a row I've been to guild meetings which were energizing and inspiring.   The first was a new guild that I joined.  I've been debating this for a while as it's a bit of a long drive to get there but they are such an exciting and active group of people, that I finally broke down and joined.  The program was mechanical sock knitting machines, which was well presented but not quite an area of my interest, but the people and the projects presented were awesome.    Last night at my home guild, we had Margaret Stalker in, speaking on Traditional Tartan dyes.  It was more than fascinating.  It makes me want to veer off into deeper dye studies , play with tweeds and tartans, spin, dye and weave.

On Cats and Gardens and Other Projects

 Yesterday my poor kitty was unhappy.  He's fairly routine oriented and his routines have been pretty much shattered of late.  I woke up yesterday to a kitty who I think was showing major signs of separation anxiety.   At one point he was actually hanging on my arm and trying to pull me toward him.  This is a cat whose human touch needs are fairly minimal.    He wanted non-stop attention and even when he'd settled a bit, if I'd move away from "my" chair, he'd give me the evil eye and stare at me until I'd sit back down.   If I didn't he come beside me and fuss.   This morning however, it has paid off and he seems to be back to his old, active, talkative self and his routines are back in place.  Now to deal with a day and a half's worth of emails and other chores.

I started a new pair of socks.  The colourway is nice enough, though I'm not sure about the pastel greeny blue colour.  If I were dyeing it, I'd have likely used purple there.  The last pair of 3/1 ribbed socks I made with 64 stitches, turned out a tad looser than I like, so I made these with only 60 stitches.  Of course they are a tad tight.  I 've had to redo the toe 3 times already, so this one better work.  I could have left the last one as it was a fitting issue.  However then the socks would have fitted my daughter, rather than myself.

Cotton seedlings are on top with the large, round leaves.

I found the small packets of cotton seeds that the Master Spinner 2 class had been given.   There were green and white cotton seeds.  Because we live in a cold climate, where cotton cannot be grown as a crop, there are no issues with growing coloured cotton here as it won't contaminate anything.  They'll pretty much be house plants anyway.. big house plants hopefully and with any luck, set a few bolls later this fall.  I've no expectations that they will produce a lot, but I hope they'll grow and survive long enough to produce something.  It could be a fun experiment. 

I'd planted Wild Indigo, but nothing has germinated.  Some Weld has germinated, but I don't know whether it was purchased seed or donated seed as I planted both.  Woad, both regular and Chinese are growing and Dyer's Knotweed seed has come up although somewhat unevenly.   The Purple Calabash and Black Cherry tomato seeds did nothing, but the Black Krim, Red Robin and Orange Sun Salad toms are doing well.  I'm a bit disappointed in the germination of the peppers as only 3 hot chili peppers germinated out of 9 pots and only 7 of the mixed colour sweet bell peppers.  Coreopsis, some herbs and some buttercrunch lettuces are doing well.  It's still too early to plant the cukes, pumpkins and zuchinnis.  Anything else I need, I'll buy.  I planned that in this year as the allure of garden centres is always too much for me to ignore.

The fabric store was having a sale of cotton yardage for $6 a metre.  I loved the black print and have been eyeing the blue with brown dots for a while.  They went nicely together and I added the others.  The little square print is an animal print which I would normally avoid like the plague, but it had the right colours and was the only thing I could find that worked.  I would normally not choose these colours for myself, but I've found that stretching colour choices can be a very good thing.   I've been wanting to make small project, just to practice machine quilting skills.  It's easier on a small quilt.  This will be a table topper, just under 1m in size. 

The blocks are half done. They still need trimming before I can assemble them.   The colours are pretty and work well together bu for the life of me, I cannot think of where I would put this piece.  I guess I'll have to wait until it's done.  I am a little ticked because although I measured at the machine, the seams are a tad too wide.  The 8 1/2 inch blocks will have to turn into 8 inch blocks.  I wonder if they still make feet compatible with this old machine as a 1/4 inch foot could be useful.

Friday Night Sew In Success

I'll have to admit that I did a bit of sewing during the day as well, but in all I marked the quilt borders, quilted the borders, cut and made the binding, and bound the quilt yesterday, finishing up just before 10 pm.  Included in that was a repair to the treadle belt as it had stretched.   The belt is leather and a new one will stretch a bit after using.  In this case it started slipping miserably and I managed to sew my finger while wrangling the quilt through the sewing machine.  Thankfully it was minor as the treadler responds very quickly in situations like that!

The two major projects I'd wanted to get done before Christmas, are both done.  While I was somewhat singularly focused on the quilting over the past couple of weeks, it is such a huge relief that they are finished. And no, I'm not making quilts for the other two kids this year.  I'll plan that a little more carefully and give myself more than a few weeks to accomplish that task!

Only 3 more projects to sew for pressies... I guess the countdown begins

Bits and Pieces

It's been an odd week, but a busy one.  We've had a lot of rain -thankfully rain and not nearly as much snow - but so much rain that it's just been puddling, with standing water all over the place. It's been quite funny watching the chooks decide whether they thought the puddles or the snow was the lesser evil.  Most decided wading was better than the snow - funny birds.

I finally rinsed out the solar dyed fibre experiment .  Well, mainly rinsed out.  The excess dye just kept coming and I was starting to be concerned about fibre felting.   The colours in the photo are just a tad more saturated than in real life.   I'll have to do more research into Lac recipes and how to get red instead of purple.  I can get those purples with Logwood and Cochineal as well.  Good reds are much more difficult to find.  The Madder though, yielded a nice red colour with the solar dyeing.

I've started quilting my daughter's quilt.  The centre log cabin blocks are stitched in the ditch.  The bulk bamboo batting only had washing instructions, (wash after quilting) and no quilting instructions.  From doing a bit of web research, it seems that a number of the bamboo battings need to be quilting no further than 2-4 inches apart.   I decided to go with the 2 inches, just to be safe.   It was easy with the blue quilt as all the stitch lines were 2 inches apart.   The wonky log cabin blocks are fine as they are narrower than 2 inches, but the wonky stars in the corners needed a little more fussing with as the odd shapes have somewhat less equal dimensions.   It's going to take a little longer to quilt this one up, but it's still a lot faster than hand quilting.

The cat is undicerning about what quilt he sleeps on.  He did however choose the quilted blue quilt over the plain log cabin top.  Once the layers were together, it no longer mattered to him, which quilt he occupied.    He seems to like sleeping on the treadle sewing machine when it's open.  He can survey the room easily and still gets the heat from the woodstove!

I wound off a new warp for some tea towels with 2/8 cotton.   I'd been dithering over 3 different projects.  I printed out the specs for 2 of them and decided on project number 3.  I proceeded to wind the warp for project number 1.   It's not so bad, but of course my excitement to quickly dress the loom has slightly faded.  Mainly though, I realize that getting the quilt finished has to take priority.  Once it's done, I have several little project bags to make as presents and then I can dress the loom.at my leisure.

The dark blue fibre which I've been spinning on the Mazurka is almost finished and the bobbin is just about full.  I thought I had another lot of the dark blue, but all the other blues I can find are substantially lighter in colour.  I may  ply this with a lighter blue of a similar weight.    We'll have to see what I can come up with.  It's a little to fine to ply back on itself.  I find that with the singles are very fine, self plying tends to end up with tangles unless one is very careful.

In other news, I may never get a chance to keep my new white mittens clean.  I've put them in a safe spot and cannot find them anywhere!  I'm quite sad about that.

Crossed off the To Do List!

Yesterday was my son's birthday.  Instead of a cake, he asked for an apple pie.  It was yummy.  He also wanted chicken pot pie for dinner so it was a pie sort of day.

I've been itching to put another pair of socks on the needles.  However, I decided my foray into multiple sock projects hadn't been horribly successful.  While I finally finished up the socks I started  while on holidays, I still had the colourwork socks on the needles.   So I dug out that project bag and started knitting.   Being sidelined with a horrible cold helped enormously.   I was at the round and round part of knitting the foot and couldn't believe how much I accomplished while not realizing it.  Yesterday the last toe had been grafted and they are now crossed off the to do list.

The double Irish Chain quilt is done!   It would have been finished yesterday but my last filled bobbin was empty.  I know, I could have filled the bobbin and finished the binding then.  I was tired and decided it would be better to wait a day than risk making a mistake.   In the end, it took less than half an hour this afternoon to finish it off.  I should give it a quick rinse to get the basting spray and chalk lines removed.   It will need a good once or twice over with the cat hair removing brush as well!  Then it can be wrapped up and ready to become a gift! 

Next on the list is a quilt top I made several years ago and set aside for my daughter.  I gave it to her when she got married but still haven't gotten it quilted.   Hopefully, I'll get this one done before Christmas as well.  Of course I had the backing all ready to go years ago, and do you think I could find it?  Nope!  I've several different bins marked fabric.  I'm betting it's in the one one the bottom which I couldn't get to.  Today I purchased new backing fabric and will wash it up this weekend.   It's prettier that the old backing, which was simply plain black broadcloth.  This one is purple clouds and stars.  I love this pattern and wish I could remember how I made those wonky Log Cabin squares!

The Great Machine Quilting Adventure (and grey yarn update)

We pickup this story from when  the Double Irish Chain quilt was ready to baste together.  I had purchased an obscenely expensive tin of spray basting adhesive.   I lined the diningroom in old newspapers in order to protect the furniture and flooring.   I spent a couple of days trying to research the ventilation requirements and possible health issues with the spray.   I didn't find anything screaming out at me.  Finally, I got up the guts to spread out the bamboo batting, spray it and apply the quilt backing.   I was totally amazed.  There was no obvious odor, virtually no excessive spraying and the fabric was easy to reposition on the batting and still held tight when patted back down.  I flipped the batting, sprayed and put the quilt top on.  To my horror.. no really, exasperation, there were a couple of wonky bits on the border which I couldn't smooth out for anything.  I let it sit for a day or two while I tried to figure out a suitable solution.  In the end, there was only one.  I peeled the quilt top off, setting the batting carefully aside as I'd heard that the sprayed bits can stick to themselves quite nicely.   I ripped that quilt top apart, resewed a few blocks, reassembled the top, squared it up properly, remeasured the borders, trimmed them up and sewed them back on.

   In all, it only took a good part of a day to get back to basting.   When I plunked that quilt top on the batting, the original light spray of adhesive still held!   I was impressed, but I wanted to be certain, so I peeled back various corners and gave the batting the lightest of quick sprays anyway.  That poor quilt sat on the dining room table for several more days while I tried to figure out what to do with quilting and fiddled with the treadles tension, which seemed to not want to be happy doing free-motion work on my samples.   In the end, although I did get the tension worked out, I decided to do the centre part in diagonal straight machine quilting.


I was ready to mark it and go.  Then last night, as I wandered past the quilt, the light hit it in a certain way and I knew exactly how to quilt it.. not plain straight line diagonals, but some of them will be interlaced and some not.    This morning I started marking the quilt out and this afternoon, I started quilting.    I need to reconfigure the work space to give the quilt a little more support but otherwise the treadle is working beautifully for the quilting.  There are a few wobbly bits of quilting here and there but it's getting better and I'm sure by the time I've finished machine quilting the next quilt, I'll be loads better.   I'm not sure I like the blue quilting thread on the beige blocks, but I think I'd dislike a lighter thread on the blue blocks more, so not much to do about that.   

Grey wool update -   Yep, the 1 lb of grey roving is spun, plied and waiting for a project.  I've been spinning stashed roving lately, to get some of it used up.   I think I'm down to almost needing more roving, so mission accomplished there.  However, now I have an interesting assortment of skeins to use up!   If I'd thought ahead for this grey, I might have kept the grey as singles.  Half way through the last bobbin, I realized I had a nice amount of similar grist singles stashed away, which may very well have worked as weft with the grey as warp.  None the less, it is spun and worked up quite nicely.   Next time, I'll have to remind myself to actually write down the yardage after I count it though.  Not sure why I bothered to work it out, if I wasn't going to write it down.. sigh..

Weekend achievements

I almost ripped out that Clun Forest Mitten.  It's not nearly as soft as my usual mitten yarn is.   However, I realized that I wanted these to use in the barn.   The Clun Forest yarn will be hard wearing and durable.  I may dye them because white is really not a barn colour!  If I'm feeling energetic, I may knit up a second pair of mitts for myself, just for "pretty". Then I can wear the pretty mittens when I go to town.

I also finished up the quilt top.   It's just shy of a twin size, which should be a good size to practice machine quilting with and still be useful.   Lots of resources recommend not using a large quilt to learn machine quilting.   I'm not sure if using the treadle to quilt with, will change the learning curve at all.  Technology is sometimes quite cool and there is now a quilt basting spray: a temporary, water soluble adhesive which glues the 3 layers together so that no pins or basting stitches are needed.   While in the past, I'd have been dead set against this sort of short cut, I've purchased a tin of the spray because I just can't figure out where I'd actually be able to stretch out the quilt in order to hand baste.   I used to either tape the backing to the floor, then layer and baste or just set up a huge quilt frame, stitching the backing down first and then layering and basting.  I no longer have the quilt frame and taping to the floor just no longer seems feasible with our small rooms and carpeting.  Admittedly, crawling around on the floor to baste a quilt no longer really sounds like fun, so I'm giving the basting spray a shot.

Yep, more grey fibre spinning.  Grey like today's sky.  I think I need to spin something sunny, just as an interlude.