Thankful

I gotta make more empanadas...

It's a few weeks after Thanksgiving, but I still need  to say I'm thankful. I'm thankful for my health, my family, my friends, for all God's gift around us. I am particularly thankful this week for all the fun things I get to do on a nearly daily basis. This life has been very good to me!

I don't feel like I've mentioned food lately.  We spend Thanksgiving with a friend and his twin 10th graders... My cooking was okay but frankly I'm suffering from lack of practice. Some dishes were good, others just okay. A couple of days later as I was dismembering the carcass and making turkey mulligatawny soup (yum!) I realized I had leftover pie crust and all kinds of things that go in empanadas: leftover turkey, onions, garlic, potatoes, cinnamon, chipotle, and turkey gravy on the inside; we ate them with cranberry sauce.

Summer and Winter baby blankets

The baby blankets are both done and will be in the mail this week. It makes me smile to send the grandmother blanket as the recipient is Knit Worthy (or Weave Worthy); the other I know will never be acknowledged but I had fun weaving it ,I hope they use it, and I wanted to celebrate their baby.
The name of this type of weaving is Summer and Winter; would I do Summer and Winter again? Yes, in an instant, for a baby blanket  or for something else.

Rep Weave runner

I did mention that my Weave Structures Study group is doing Warp Rep projects; I've finally got weaving on my project. Colors in the photo are crappy but here it is. Weft is  3/2 perle cotton sett at 30 ends per inch; thin weft is 8/2 tencel and thick weft is 12 strands of the perle cotton held together. I'm intending to put it on the credenza in the den that should arrive at the end of January; the credenza is 72" long, and the runner pattern as written is 66" long. If I want the runner shorter, 51 inches long works well with the patterning. If I make it shorter, I really only need to do the final border and I'm done; the other benefit is it would fit on the coffee table. I'm on hold while deciding what to do. I won't take long to decide as it need to be done for the Study Group by January 6.

I've made considerable progress on the Christmas Quilt: I'm done with all the parts I've finished design on.  I'm dithering about what to put on the corners of the border, and if I want the top of the quilt to have the border swag design or just a quilted in design. The argument for a plain top is that it'll be under the pillows anyways; and the skin oils and the other things we all put on our faces at night won't mar the lovely applique. Arguments in favor of making all the borders the same are that the quilt can be used in any direction on the bed, and that if I show it, it'll score better with the judges. I refuse to stall on the quilt while I dither and will make a decision by tomorrow. My hope is to have the quilt basted so I can start quilting at the January knitting retreat.

I've had two days this week where I needed to be at the guest house; I spent my time  straightened out the glass studio  (where studio is a fancy word for garage bay). I spent some time on my first table top and am hoping to accelerate and get better circles using an indirect method. I had leftover thinset one day and used to to glue random green bits to a small concrete cylinder; I also finished grouting the money piece.

On other projects, I've done no more spinning; I've been working on Lake Breeze sweater off and on but making it low priority; I worked on the pillows I wanted to make from the old Kilim but am quickly coming to the conclusion that there isn't a 18" square piece of the rug that's worth keeping. Mom's opinion was that it needed to be thrown away and sadly I am coming to agree with her.  There are other projects queued up and I'll blog about them when they're no longer dormant!

One last photo, taken last Sunday about a mile from our house; there had been enough rain to get the stream running well! What an amazing find. Someone had cemented in some stones in the middle as large stepping stone so it was easy to cross and a complete treat on a Sunday afternoon.