The first project of 2019!

Handspun and Toyon dyed

I'd wanted to make a scarf for Peter... he's greatly admired everything he's seen of my weaving, and frankly the way to my heart is to love my craft... I've only seen Peter in jeans and jeans jackets (probably because he's always working), so I made this scarf to go with denim. It's the last of the hand spun that I used with the Ligeia shawl, combined with some commercial MCN (Merino/Cashmere/Nylon) sock yarn that I dyed with Toyon from my yard. It's sett at 15 EPI and woven at 15 PPI in a simple birdseye-ish twill. I just took it off the loom and will put it in the mail to him soon. (Hint, if you're reading this and want a scarf, feel free to say something).

I like the drape of the scarf, but would like to sample fingering weight sock yarn at 12 EPI; I think it would drape better for a scarf. I'm currently warping up fingering weight sock yarn for some yardage for a class I'm taking at Stitches; I'll be setting/weaving that at 18 EPI as I want it to be firmer for a garment.

Five dishtowels, finished in December

Other than  that,

• I finished the Melon Shawl I'd started in December and blocked it on New Year's Eve! 
• I finished a run of 5 towels and set two to friends in Sweden, complete with card woven hanging loops.  
• I've got a couple of knitting projects in flight; some fingerless gloves to match the ram tam, and I'm working on the skirt again.  
• I'm ready to start on my next stained glass mosaic project.
• I'm getting ready out to a week long mosaic class, then to my knitting retreat, leaving my DH to manage the barbarian cats.

All that and I'm looking at remodeling the kitchen later this spring; we want to do it anyways, and it was the best way to attract someone to fix the leaky deck. So I've been researching appliances and looking at granite slabs. I'm not unhappy about all this! But it is getting in the way of my fiber work.

The Christmas quilt and the Pub quilt

I have two quilts that have been in progress for Quite Some Time (20+ years) and need some design work and some hand work to progress to the next steps. Every few years I take them out, figure out the next steps, and do a small amount of work on them... Then I forget all that I figured out and the cycle starts again. So why not document things in this blog?

I'll tackle the Christmas Quilt first. It's a collection of 12 18" blocks of hand pieced stars; I decided to make appliqued border for them. It'll have  6 swags and 5 flowers on the short sides, and 8 swags and 7 flowers on the long sides. One short side is done and one long side is done except for finishing the flower.
If I recall correctly, I was going to run out of one of the flower fabrics, so I need to alternate them on the next long side.

Next steps:

• Finish the flower on the one long side.
• Draw the guide lines on the 2nd long border and make some swags, then start appliqueing while I make the following decisions.

Decisions:

• Do I do the corners as designed or change to something simpler?
• Do I do swags on the top border or not, give than the top border generally sits under pillows? Or do I do a different pattern across the top?

Here's the layout I decided on for the pub quilt. It's progressed slightly further along; all the blocks are now bordered with a small 1" border in the dark red color. 

I'm stuck on the setting triangles on the border (and have been for about 18 months now). I think they need to be pieced semi stars; if so,

All the same? Some variation?

Apex near the center? or at the edge?

Some type of soft-edge applique using the amazing border print featured in the blocks? 

Some interaction between the setting triangles and the next border?

What, in fact, is the next border?

I'd like to finish this one soon, as the whole cloth quilt on the bed is slowly dissolving, and it is indeed our anniversary year. I'll go work on this now.

And yes, both of these quilts have a story. I'll document that when I have the quilts in progress.

One last bit... I have 3 egg whites leftover from key lime pie; they're now pecan meringue cookies; super easy and super tasty!

The Four Slaws of Christmas, a food post

Happy New Year!!! I'm sitting in the window chairs looking out over the ravine and the hills beyond, drinking Costa Rican coffee with Strauss cream (my favorite!!!), surrounded by the Beloved Husband and cats. Later, a friend is joining us for a hike and dinner; I did all the prep yesterday so there's very little to do today other than update this blog! Few of my posts lately have been about food, so it's due...

I've been doing a fair amount of cooking over the holidays, really more than most years; we did some entertaining on non holiday occasions so I wasn't bound by traditional menus. Working from the premise that vegetables are healthy and that everybody loves a good slaw, I tried some new recipes, all with slaw pairings:

Salmon Pie with cabbage, mushrooms, and caraway

• 
  On Christmas eve, I cooked a salmon pie, and served it with a fennel and red pepper slaw. I knew exactly why there's a layer of rice on the bottom crust; thank you British Baking Show! Next time I'd used one of those tasty Lundberg rices for a little more flavor.
• We joined friends for Christmas dinner, and I brought a cabbage and apple slaw with pomegranate to go with their big roast beast.
• G&C joined us a few days ago, and I made Green Chile Stew from Hatch chiles that I mail ordered to delight my Darling Husband, and made a southwestern slaw to go with it; I also found my new favorite cornbread recipe. 
• Tonight, B is coming for dinner and we're making jerk seasoned chicken, black beans, cornbread, a Jamaican inspired pickled cabbage salad, then my first ever key lime pie for dessert.

The Four Slaws of Christmas recipes are here. A small word of advice: with 4 slaws in 8 days, we're definitely over-slawed. Be careful you don't suffer from the same problem!

• Fennel and Red Pepper Slaw 
• Red Cabbage Slaw with Apples and Pomegranate
• A Southwestern Slaw from the Santa Fe Cooking School Cookbook
• Pickled Cabbage Salad

Marshmallows getting dipped into Tcho Chocolate

I can cross Make Marshmallows off my bucket list, If you've never had a homemade marshmallow, they're nothing like the Kraft ones in the bag. I made vanilla ones, and dipped some of them in Tcho dark chocolate.  I prefer them plain, DH liked them better with chocolate. There will definitely be more marshmallow in my future.

Q4'18 Completed things (8), just a list, really...

Poppy table top

In the last quarter of 2018, I finished:

• The poppy table top
• A tiny woven demonstration purse with inkle handle
• The Modular vest except for buttons
• Handmade Christmas cards
• Five Dishtowels, 2 with hanging loops
• The Melon shawl, which has been on the needles for 6 years
• The Ligeia shawl, handspun and pinwoven, 
• and Power Mitts to match the Ligeia shawl

I also finished the pebble beach Shawl, but I'm going to frog it, so I'm not counting it.

Looks like I completed 29 things in 2018, I'm feeling pretty good about that. What's up for 2019? A Stashdown! That's where I try to work primarily from stash to make room on my shelves. Let's see how that goes...

tiny woven purse, with inkle band handle.