Summer of sock?

Other people are having a summer of socks. I'm apparently having a summer of sock. Hey! I might even start on the toe tonight! And who knows? The second sock may eventually happen too! It's a bit hard to tell in the picture, but there are little cables running down each side of the leg. That's my favorite default sock treatment for the moment.

But on a brighter front, here's the quilt all tied up. I still need to make a binding and machine-sew it on. May get around to that this week, but that means I need to clean up the sewing room (cue ominous music here). I can't even walk through that room right now, so this could be a challenge.

What am I doing?

Since I don't feel much like taking pictures of my knitting right now, you get flowers instead. Accidental flowers...

This is from a set of volunteers growing on the front edge of the lawn. As you can see if you look closely, the ants love them. They'll bloom for a while longer, then I'll actually get to mow in that spot. I've been carefully manuvering around them for a couple of months. I suspect these were planted years ago - they just keep coming back. I've no idea what they are. Does anyone recognize them?

Life finds a way, doesn't it? My husband and I planted a few hydrangeas the first year we moved into this house (9 years ago, now). They did ok the first year, but really suffered from the heat. We pretty much gave up on them and thought that they had completely died out. Look what I found tucked up under the hedges this summer! Not very big and not many flowers, but there all the same. These flowers are like litmus paper. Depending on the acidity of your soil, the flowers can be pink or blue - that first year we had pink and blue flowers on the same plant.
And does anyone recognize what I'm working on here?

Yes (for those who guessed right). It's a quilt. It's become something of a family project. Mother and Daddy pieced it from a bunch of 'fat quarters' - those nice square bits of material you can get at the fabric store specifically cut for quilters. They also sandwiched it with batting and backing and pinned everything together. They then tried to machine quilt it - using an embroidery flower tacking pattern.

The darn thing didn't want to cooperate with them. It's a real headache to manage a full-size quilt using a regular sewing machine. I've done it but there was a lot of cursing involved. Mom and Dad gave up and the quilt went into the closet.

I volunteered to hand tie the quilt for them so all that effort wouldn't go to waste. So... 16 ties per block times 30 blocks ... 480 ties, right? And then the binding and the finishing.

I got out my Q-Snap quilting frame and put it together. And then put it together again a different way. And then again. And then went online to their website and printed off a picture of the frame and put it together again the right way.

I think I'm almost half-way through the blocks now. That part of it is going pretty well, now that I've got my equipment sorted out. I'll probably use my sewing machine to do the binding, but we'll worry about that when I get there.

There's another sock in progress, too, but I'll post pictures of that later. I still have not resolved the lace scarf problem, but I'm not too concerned, it will be months before I need something that warm around my neck.

proof of life

Tap, tap, tap of shoes approaching in a darkened room. The click of a light switch. And she's back.

No, I haven't disappeared. Or been kidnapped by aliens. I just haven't had much to say lately and it's hard to maintain a knitting blog when I'm not knitting (or spinning, or crocheting, or quilting, or anything crafty).

What have I been doing while healing my neck? Reading. Listening to audio books. Working. (Boring, isn't it.)

Fortunately, the neck is much better and I'm much more sensible about how much I carry at one time. I'm still having to be reasonable about knitting time (no marathons), but at least I can knit more than a few stitches at a time now.

And look! I finally finished Mom's socks. This is the pair that I was making for Mother's Day. Granted I knew that I wouldn't have them finished by Mother's Day, but this is ridiculous.

And I looked at my second qiviut scarf.... I've somehow managed to lose not 1, but 2! stitches somewhere. Apparently about 3 repeats ago. Sigh. So I'm trying to decide if I want to just magically add 2 stitches in where I think I misplaced them or do I rip back 3 of the 15 repeats and fix it properly. At this point, I'll probably add the stitches and move on. After blocking, no-one will ever know except me and you and you won't tell, will you?