Sketch: More Bunny Egg

I've got round 1 of the materials finished.

You might notice the embroidery isn't as shiny on the new one (on your right) as the old.  That's intentional.  I was never quite happy with how it came out the first time.  I'll work on it some more, but first I want to gamma correct the materials.  Gamma Correction is the coolest discovery to hit Poserdom since MAT poses.  It's absence is responsible for the infamous distinctive "Poser murk".  As it turns out, a lot of the data Poser's rendering engine is outputting doesn't display correctly on a monitor.  Hell of an oversight there. :P  You can correct some of that in post, but what I've seen so far, having the engine do it (Poser Pro 2010) or doing it in materials gives results I like better.  It's the engineer in me; I rather get good data directly than massage bad data to something workable.

Oh, the feet there? Same deal as the ears; the soles are part of the same material zone as the legs.  I'm so proud of those, because that is three materials mixed together.  (33 nodes, if anyone's counting.  But I suspect some of those can be optimized out.)

It wasn't necessarily picked for this reason, but this project is actually a great one for learning the Matmatic compiler.  It touches on tons of the main concepts.  Once I finish him, I'll probably try to spend more time learning Python programming full out.  I want to learn it for other reasons, and it'll only help me with the shader building.

Excited nerd sketch

I'm working on rebuilding and improving the shaders* for the little Pysanky bunny-egg thing I did at Easter.  So far I've got the ears.




So why am I excited about the ears?  After all, they look basically the same.  Well, let me do some isoteric babbling that most people won't understand.  There's an important difference here.  The model on the left, I remapped so that the inner ear could be a different material than the outer ear.  On the model on the right, that's all done with a single shader that contains both the satin and the velvet.  It takes 9 extra nodes to do it just for this relatively simple case and would be more or less insane to assemble in Poser itself.

Luckily, someone built a compiler that lets you write materials in Python code, and then translates them into Poser nodes.  I'm working on learning it, and trying to learn shaders as well.  It allows you to combine separate materials into a single shader fairly easily, which will be even cooler for more complex situations.


* Properly speaking, they're actually materials.  Shaders are the pre-existing nodes they're built out of.  But that gets confused with the laymen definition of material, which would view the satin and the velvet separately.

(It's Ukrainian.  I looked it up.) 
(OK, I'm taking the internet's word for it that this means "Happy Easter".    It could actually be something really rude for all I know.)

As an extra Easter gift, here are some "tubes" (actually PNGs with transparent backgrounds) of the little bunny egg: the above image, one with the bunny-egg sitting, and one with him standing.  Enjoy!

Download Pysanky Bunny Pics



Pysanky Bunny Tubes 1 by Jinnayah is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Sketch!

You sketch your way, and I'll sketch mine:

I'm working on a pysanka texture for this little guy, and these are my base materials.  I especially like how the velvet has come out, but I'm worried about how to light the egg part.  It is not going to take much to blow those highlights out.

Let the cursing begin.

Gauge swatches are lying bastards.
I did a gauge swatch for the Wonderful Wallaby sweater I started on New Years.  I did.
I think I may have done it in Magic Loop, not realizing I knit more tightly when Magic Looping than when knitting on needles normally.

In any event, my sweater that was supposed to be 43 1/2 " around the bust, about the size of the largest commercial hoody I find comfortable.  It's actually going to end up 46 1/2" around the bust -- much too big.

My options are to frog an entire month's work, or work another month for a sweater that will never fit right and so rarely if ever be worn.

The choice seems obvious to me.  Frogging it is.  :P  Suck!

While I'm at it, I think I'll change the various garter edgings to seed stitch.  I like the look somewhat better.

I'm going to have to figure out how to compensate for a larger upper arm diameter, too.  I want more ease there than the pattern allows.

Gosh, this is frustrating.

I think I'll frog the sleeves back to the ribbing, and do them first before redoing the body of the sweater.  I'm not enjoying knitting them, so I can get it out of the way, and the ribbing is OK to a bit large already so I don't have to start completely from scratch.  Mostly, but not completely.

I mentioned suck, right?

I haz a sad.

The alpaca yarn I was going to knit into an Ishbel?  Yeah, something about it is causing allergy-like symptoms.  I'm thinking maybe I'm allergic to some of the VM in it.  Whatever it is, though, I start working with it and my eyes start watering in a matter of seconds.  First time I hoped was a fluke, but the second time in a completely different environment?  Nope, we're talking irritant.  Not gonna keep going with that

Sigh.

Guess I'll wait until my Thursday knit night, have the yarn shop wind a skein of Cascade alpaca lace I bought a while ago, and buy a size 3 needle while I'm there.

Started my Ishbel

I balled up my special alpaca yarn and started my Ishbel scarf.  Let me tell you, though, I was threatening to confiscate the skeiner of the person who wound that hank.  Messiest skein I personally have unwound.  It doesn't help that the stuff is full of sticky grabby vegetable matter, either.

When I started knitting, my eyes started to water and get that "puffed up" feeling, so I'm a little afraid I may be allergic to something about it.  I doubt it's the alpaca itself -- alpaca is considered hypoallergenic -- but it may be the VM is something I'm allergic to, or something used in the processing.  Or it may be throwing off dust and fuzz as I'm working, and it's more an irritation than an allergy thing.  It did seem to clear up as I work, so we'll see if it gets better or if I have to bail and pass this skein on to someone else.

Suddenly developing an alpaca allergy would be utter cruelty on the part of the universe.  I hate to say it, but if that were to happen, I'd go back to wool and the cat's on her own.  (Well, you know, with the meds to help.)

I started this thing with US5 needles, but that was way too loose, so I switched down to 3mm (European size, between a US2 and a US3.)  If you're wondering the method to my madness, those happen to be the sizes of Addi Lace needles I own.  Going up a size from the 3 mm would probably be better, but not enough to wait until Thursday when I get back to the yarn shop.  The 3mm is giving a pretty nice fabric and should block out OK, but I think I will be a bit below gauge even blocked.  (Yes, I'm a bad girl who didn't do a gauge swatch.  It's a flippin' scarf.)  I was already thinking of doing the larger stockinette section from the shawl but stay with the narrower border of the scarf to get a little more size out of it.

I thought on it some more.

The lace + locally produced alpaca thing.  What I've gone and done is bought myself a copy of the Ishbel shawl.  It seems all the time someone in one of my Ravelry groups is sharing one they've done, and I click on their thumbnail going "ooh, pretty, what's that?" and it's the Ishbel.  My 540 yards should be more than enough to make a nice triangular scarf.  Because it starts with a good chunk of stockinette stitch, by the time the growth function gets intimidating I'll be well committed, and even on the big size the last row isn't that big.  As an extra bonus 80% of the purchase price goes to Doctors Without Borders to help in Haiti. :)

I hate it when this happens.

Although I guess I hate when this doesn't happen even more.

This afternoon I was really jonesing to ball up some locally-produced alpaca laceweight I have and start a Swallowtail Shawl.  So this evening I brought up the Ravelry page to see if there was an easy download location, since I'm not exactly sure where I stored my copy.  And suddenly it hit me: I don't really like the Swallowtail Shawl.

Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely shawl.  I just don't care for it.  I'm not very fond of the leaf pattern that makes up the body, and the transitions from body to border and border to edging are a bit abrupt for my tastes.

I'm glad I realized this before knitting several tens of thousands of stitches into the thing.  But, now what do I do with 540 yards of locally-produced alpaca laceweight?

Guess that'll live in the stash for a while.

I'm still kind of jonesing to knit some lace, though.  But not the Alka shawl I've got started.  I'm barely into it, and each row already takes 1/2 hour to do, and it's a top-down faroese so it's one of those shawls with a growth function that just gets worse and worse.

I'm thinking maybe a Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl or a Cap shawl (both Ravelry links; you'll only be able to see if you have an account, I'm afraid), but both are knit from the center out, and the Alka has me a little gun shy about those growth functions in laceweight.

I'll have to think on it some more.

For the people who claim Martha Stewart Isn't Sexist...

I present exhibit A.  Notice her reaction to the backhoe design and its intended recipient at 1:35 in.  Rather insulting, huh?  Notice at about 3:25, the way she emphasizes the pink T-shirt is for a "cute little girl".  Contrast the two.

I rest my case. :P

Attention Panic-Striken Christmas-Gifting Crafters

It is December 19th.

Stop for a minute.  (No, I don't want to hear that you don't have time to stop; if you don't have time, you need to stop even more than most.)  Take a deep breath.  Now, take a look at all the knitting/crochetting/sewing/art of choice projects you are "supposed" to finish for Christmas.

Can you reasonably finish that in the next 5 days?  Without risk injury yourself?  Be honest.  Aim low.

1) You still have time to buy something.

If you can't afford to buy something, you have time to make "gift certificates" for those projects, to be redeemed in a more reasonable timeframe.  Christmas is a nice holiday, but it is not worth injuring yourself (or your sanity) over.

2) Look at all you've got finished, and all you have no chance of finishing.  What you've got finished or can reasonably finish in the next few days ("reasonably" means without staying up to 3 AM one or more nights and pushing on through pain) is your crafting capacity for Christmas.  I want you to remember this for next year.  Next year, either start earlier or keep your projects below your crafting capacity.  (I vote for number 2.)

Also, if you need permission, it really is OK to give people storebought gifts or giftcards instead of making something.  Even if your gifts would be small.  Be honest with yourself.  The person you're injuring yourself for, if two items were on a table, would they chose your handmade creation or a gift card to their favorite place in the amount that the supplies cost you?  If the answer is "gift card", for love of God, self, and recipient, just give them the gift card!

3)  Remember, you do this for fun.  In the future, do what it takes to keep it fun, even if it means someone gets a $5 Amazon gift cert.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled panic.

Willpower Recovery Rolls - I botch them

The vacation sewing is not going according to plan.  At all.

About a week and a half ago, I bought a brand new super awesome sewing machine with buttloads of decorative stitches.  Have you ever looked at a sewing machine and gone "who actually uses all those embroidery stitches?"  It's me.  I'm the one who uses them.  I like crazy quilting.  I don't like embroidering over the seamlines by hand, though.  So I use the machine for the seamlines and then do hand (or in the future perhaps free motion) embroidery in the patches where it's fun.

So, I buy this awesome brand new machine a week before my vacation, and I bring it home, and... it doesn't zigzag properly.  So then there's a big fiasco with a snotty and insulting salesperson at the store until I finally got around her and got the owner/technical person to look at it, and he agrees the machine isn't all it ought to be.  Most people wouldn't notice, but most people don't use every single stitch their machine has to offer either, and I more or less do.  So he's going to replace it, but because of the holiday, the new machines won't be in until next week.

I do have another machine to do the straight stitching with, so I've assembled the crazy quilt piece big enough to ultimately turn into a fat quarter project bag with full lining. It's all ready to be attached to the foundation fabric with decorative stitches -- but unfortunately, the machine with the decorative stitches is not here.  (The owner did offer to let me borrow the one he'd worked on, which is now in "good enough that most people wouldn't notice but you do" territory, but I didn't really want to be schlepping a 30 lb machine back and forth.)  So that's on hold -- although on the up side, when I do get the new machine, I've got the perfect project to run it through its paces with.

OK, no worries.  A few weeks ago in a fit of passion I bought a ruffler which fits the old machine.  I was planning to use it for doll clothes. I even have fabric to make a circle skirt with tiered ruffles for Rose that I never got around to because I wasn't up to ruffling so much fabric by hand.  So I put it on my Old Trusty, and pull out the instructions from Youcanmakethis.com.

Now, typically when you're doing a not-insane ruffle, you want to original fabric to be 1.5 to 2 times longer than the finished ruffle turns out to be.  The youcanmakethis.com instructions start you with the minimum your ruffler will reliably do, and then show you how to tweak your settings upward until you get to 2.  So I get started, I find where it just starts to ruffle and DAMN.  The things goes from nothing to insane immediately.  I take the measurement, and with the minimum ruffle depth and a 2.5 stitch length, the ratio is 3.3 -- way above where I want to end up.  Making the stitch as long as the machine can handle will just get me down to a skosh over 2.0.

From past experience I know that the circle skirts with tiers look better around a 1.5 to 1.75.  When you're doing multiple tiers, that exponential growth catches up to you fast.  But now I'm out of levers to pull.  (Well, I can do a deeper pleat every 6 stitches, but that doesn't look the same as the gathered look you get with a very shallow pleat every 1 stitch).

I guess when you pay $15 for an accessory that usually starts at $40, you kind of expect this.  So, if anyone was considering the Inspira ruffler because it's too cheap to resist, warning: you're getting what you pay for.

It works OK as a pleater.  I could do some cute pleated sailor skirts if I wanted to. Or if I get really desperate, I can pull out the old Izek and use it, since it has a longer top stitch length.  I don't really want to keep the Izek around indefinitely, though.  I have a gathering foot around here somewhere, too, so maybe I'll give that a go.

This ruffler won't work on the new machine anyway, assuming the new new machine works out.  If the assumption is correct, I may see if I can get that brand's ruffler for it before Christmas, and use it over my next vacation.

From the Department of "You've Got To Be Kidding Me."

Floss storage.  There are dozens of ways to store embroidery floss out there, and for each one there's someone who claims it's the One True Way.

Myself, I've liked bobbins since the first time the local Big Box carried Anchor floss already wound onto a bobbin.  Sure, winding can be a pain, but once you're done you've got your floss on this little easy to store, easy to sort piece of cardboard.  The floss isn't going to tangle and it's easy to wind off the amount you need.

Some of the other methods look promising, but they all use some sort of plastic.  I'm trying to reduce my consumption of plastic.  I won't pretend I can eliminate all plastic, but you know, the less you use, the better.

So this is where we come to the "you've got to be kidding me" part: plastic floss bobbin.  WTF?
Someone needs to explain this to me, because it makes no sense.  They're more than twice as expensive.  They take up more space than the cardboard ones.  You can't write the numbers on them except with a Sharpie marker.  And of course, most plastic never goes away.  It can break down into a state that's no longer useful, but it doesn't break down into something that normal biological processes can use.  You just get tinier and more useless particles of plastic.

Is it an archival thing?  Because I'm thinking the cardboard ones could be made of acid-free lignin-free material and still be cheaper, and frankly, your basic "hi, I'm a cheap plastic" isn't archival either.  Outgassing and breaking down and stuff.

Is it stiffness?  Because using two of the cardboard bobbins is still cheaper than one of the plastic, and again, I'm thinking using a thicker cardboard would still be cheaper than the plastic.

These are the only reasons I can think of to use the plastic bobbins instead of cardboard.  Yet of the three big craft stores in town, only one carries the cardboard.  I was afraid I was going to have to special order some.

I do not get it.

Cross Stitch: Is the Laying Tool Worth It?

That's what I'm trying to decide right now.  I've been working on the Evil Tiger Cross Stitch of Doom.  It's one of those projects that I pull out whenever I get into cross stitch, and I work on it for a few weeks until I get so frustrated that I shove it back in the bag until the next cross stitch phase.  (The chart isn't well designed, in my opinion.)

I got myself a stand for help with the big projects.  Now, I'm short overall (and thus have short arms), and I'm extremely short-waisted proportion-wise on top of that, and I stitch sitting back on the couch. Each of these makes a frame a bit of a difficult decision, so finding a stand that suits me with all of them is a tricky proposal.  Add to it that I don't have a local needlework shop, means I basically have to buy to try, and most needlework frames aren't cheap.
That said, I think I got about 80% positive on my first try, and I don't expect that I could get much better.

So, I'm working on the Evil Tiger Cross Stitch of Doom with a stand.  This piece is 3 strands on 14-count Aida cloth, so the stitching is pretty dense.  Three strands mean it isn't really suitable for railroading.  To be honest, I'm somewhat dubious about railroading in general, although I do use it on pieces when I'm doing 2 strands and working in-hand.  It seems to affect the amount of twist in the individual plies, though, and that's not easy to correct.

So, I've been using a laying tool (OK, a hair stick) with the Evil Tiger Cross Stitch of Doom, and I will absolutely admit that it makes the individual stitches look better.  It also makes the work progress at a speed usually only seen in tectonic plate movements.  If I'm getting even a hundred stitches an hour I'd be shocked, and when you're doing a piece with more than 30,000 stitches...  That isn't pretty math.

I got kind of fed up this evening, put the laying tool down and started doing the work two-handed since I am working in a stand.  Whoo!  Much faster!  We're at least up to glacial speed here.  Of course, the individual stitches don't always look as nice.  But it occurs to me, there's this thing called "gallery distance".  Gallery distance is the distance from which an object is meant to be viewed, and in fine arts should at least theoretically be kept in mind when working details.  Details that are too coarse for their gallery distance appear rough, and details that are too fine can't be seen.

This thing I'm working on is a 10" by 28" picture.  It is intended to go on a wall.    Its "gallery distance" is between 2 and 15 feet.  Individual stitches are most assuredly in the "too fine to be seen" category; hell, I'm still thinking I should get a magnifier to be making them.  Now, there will be a difference in how light reflects off stitches depending on whether they are laid or not, and that may cause a difference at the gallery distance.  But if I'm observant and careful to untwist my floss when the stitches start to twist, I'm thinking that's not enough difference to be worth my sanity.

I would feel differently if I were entering competitions, but I'm not.  I do this for fun, and I can't have fun while being the level of anal required to win a dedicated cross stitch competition.  (Besides, competitions require that there be no pet hair, and that ain't happening in this house.  I do my best, but cat hairs are sneaky.)

In any event, I've got a trolley needle and a Best Laying Tool coming to me, so when they arrive I'll give them a try and see what I like.  The trolley needle in particular may get a "best of both worlds" going where I can do two-handed stitching without as much slow-down.  If not, gallery distance.  And the fact that I do this for fun, not for other people.

OMG Squee!

Hansi Singh has a book!

Hansi Singh is the mastermind behind Hansigurumi and hands down the best pattern writer in modern knitting.  I've done her squid and started her octopus, and you absolutely can not beat her for creativity or for completeness.  She documents the hell out of how to make her stuff.  I really can't say enough good things about the way she writes her patterns. 

And she's got a book out!  Amigurumi Knits!  Brand new.  The knitting store just got it in today, and they don't have it anymore, because I bought it.  (Well, hopefully they have more copies.)

I'm super glad I stayed late, because I hadn't seen it on the table earlier.  I'm not sure if Lynn or someone brought it over to look at or if Deb had set it out for perusing, but I look down and I see a book with Hansigurumi's octopus on the cover.  Oh hey, she must have contributed to a book.  Wait, that's her praying mantis.  And her hermit crab.  Oh, she's the author; it's all her stuff.  *snatch*

There's tons of stuff in here I've wanted to do, but couldn't really justify buying the individual patterns for until I was ready to make them.  The mantis, the hermit crab, the Loch Ness monster, the jackalope, and several more.  But to have a whole book of them right there in front of my face and in my hot little hand...  Yarn stores are dangerous.  It HAD to come home with me.

Now, flipping through the book I can see that not all of the photos in the stand-alone patterns were put into the book, but it looks to me like the most crucial are.  The mantis especially has tons.  So if you're a knitter and you like awesome toys, go buy this.  I'm sure you will not be disappointed.  And she's got even more in her Etsy store.

Hee, how fun!

I ordered The Best of Teresa Wentzler Fantasy Collection, Vol. 2 and it arrived today.  I'm so excited.  I want to do The Storyteller.  Or maybe The Guardian.  Or maybe start a little smaller with Above the Clouds, which is sort of a smaller and easier-to-acquire version of The Castle to my eyes.

Are y'all seeing a theme here?

I don't plan to start a new big project for a couple/three months yet.  November's NaNoWriMo, and I intend to take a go at it (with a "can bail without shame" disclaimer), which may not leave much project time or energy.  Also, I've never worked cross stitch on even weave, so I'm thinking of starting small.  My plan is to get some next time I'm out shopping (I know Hobby Lobby carries it if Michael's doesn't) and do a few Christmas ornaments for practice.  And I do need more Christmas ornaments; I still don't have very many.

But, one of these would be great to start the New Year with.  I can buy/order the supplies as a Christmas present to myself.

Blog Division

Some of you may have noticed that some entries have disappeared.  I've decided to break this blog up into three seperate ones, based on topic.

This one here will be dedicated to my hobbies, mostly various forms of handicraft (although occassional collections may slip in as well).  Hopefully I can think of a better name for it. :)

A Fine Line is dedicated to fiction.  This is where I will have my movie and book reviews, and also talk about my own writing and events like Nanowrimo.

And finally, Fire and Spice will be for my socio-political writings.

Hope I haven't messed your bookmarks up too much.

This Week In WIPs.

I thought it would be fun to show the projects I've worked on this week.  So, in no particular order...

First up, a ginormous cross stitch of a mama tiger and a few cubs.  Ultimately it will by 10" by 28" and look like this:

You can see I've got a long way to go.  I didn't do all that this week, either.  I started this thing way back maybe even in college, and I usually work on it for a few weeks, get fed up with it and shove it away somewhere for a few years before going at it again.  It's been excruciately slow.  I hope it speeds up a bit once I'm not having to sort through floss and add several new colors a row, but I think it's always going to be slow.

This time around I'm using the parking method.  I was so excited when I found out about this method.  "Oh wow, you mean the cross stitch police won't come after me if I do this?!  Yay!"  When I was taught to cross stitch, that way was verboten, but it's very logical to me.  I think it's come about because computer use in cross stitch design has resulted in a large number of modern patterns that are beautiful, but not what I would call well-designed.  I'll go into what I consider a well-designed pattern in a later entry.  For now, though, this one is not terribly well designed IMHO.

Also cross-stitching is this little kimono card.

Also started long ago and picked up again.  This little guy is living in my bed to work on while waiting for appointments and what not.  Since I have a kimono hanging on my wall, I am regularly laughing my ass off at how completely not accurate that silouhette is.  But at the same time, the actually outline of a kimono hanging with the side panels spread wouldn't translate well to cross stitch, so I can maybe forgive it.  Although they could have been a little less extreme in the wrongness.

Also worked on a piece of crazy quilting:

I need to put the cross stitch down and work on this a bit more.  The size of the tracing paper transfer isn't much smaller than the hoop, so I can't really take the hoop off between stitching.  I don't want to leave it on indefinitely, though, because it can distort the fabric.

This is part of a piece that's going to be made into a duffle bag.  The white basting you can see is lining out approximate cutting lines and where the straps will be.  This are blocks that were originally intended for a coverlet back before I had a queen-sized bed, and now I'm trying to use them in other ways.  Another week maybe I'll think to lay it out on the floor and take a picture of the whole thing.

And of course, there is the infamous Spiderman blanket:

Growth functions suck.  You can see I'm really far along on this.  I only have to do two more wide stripes, one in blue and one in red.  The problem?  Thanks to the growth function, on a stitch-count basis this is only about halfway done.  I still have 46% of this bastard to finish. :P
It's TV and social knitting.  Luckily it's a super-simple pattern; I hardly have to look at it.

Ack, I'm going blind!

I am in the midst of a Hobby Hop.

I have a tendency to dedicate myself to a craft almost exclusively for a period of time ranging from a couple of months to a couple of years, and then switch with almost no warning. The "no warning" bit is actually rather annoying, because I have a bad habit of buying the materials for the next 5 projects or so, and then they don't happen. They usually don't happen on the next round, either, because they no longer interest me.

Well, it appears that knitting is swiftly being relegated to a social and movie-watching activity while crazy-quilting and cross stitch duke it out for new art-of-choice. Cross stitching appears to be winning. This is actually kind of unfortunate, because I have a plethora of crazy quilting materials and a use for the finished objects, whereas cross stitching just sorts of sits there being a picture.

Then again, I have wall space. Pictures are nice.

So anyway, I pull out this little cross stitch kit intended to be made into a greeting card (like I'm going to send that many hours of work to someone as a throw-away card. Pfph.) that I'd started during the last cross stitch round years ago and not gotten far on, and OMG! The stitches are so small! Were they always this small? Gosh, I'm getting old!

Actually, perceptually they weren't always that small. When I first started the project, I was wearing glasses with a weaker prescription. I love my contact lenses, but the convenience and improved distance vision comes at the price of near objects appearing smaller. Not blurry, just smaller. When I could only wear them for 10-to-12 hours a day I just gave up trying to estimate sizes of anything ever, because size perception between my glasses and contacts was just too different. Now that I can wear contacts all the time, I'm getting better at guesstimating sizes again, but yes, the this project does appear smaller, and it has little to do with me getting old.

So, that feeling that you're old when you're actually not? When you've got more than half your expected lifespan left, it's just that for the first time in your life, music you listened to when it was released is now on the oldies stations and childhood toys are now collector's items and clothing styles you've worn before are back in fashion? When does that feeling stop? When does it actually get into the deep part of your brain that this is normal adulthood and not "old", and the 'everything is new' was actually part of being really terribly young?

Because academically I know I'm not old; I've hardly started. But the deep down part doesn't always listen. I'd like it to get on the bandwagon and stop the whining, please.

Barring that, you kids get off my lawn. ^_~

If you didn't know better...

I am culling my library pretty hard and getting rid of the books that no longer delight me.  As I go through I'm realizing that if you didn't know me and you looked at my shelves, you might think that I am a quilter.

More accurately, you might look at my discard box and think I was a quilter. That would be closer to the truth, but only slightly.

I did dabble with quilting briefly in and shortly after college. I even got so far as to finish one quilt top, get it basted (using three different techniques in a vain effort to find one that didn't make me want to hang myself with a spool of quilting thread) and started tying it as I had no room for a quilting frame. The kitties thought that its presence in my wicker project basket transformed both into a marvelous cat bed, and so it has remained ever since, half the safety pins and basting still in place. Binding was right out.
I don't mind a bit, because they love it more than any human ever would. It is still the sleeping spot; Bunny's in it right now this second.

That was the closest I ever came to completing a traditional patchwork quilt project.

The truth of the matter is, I love the look of a well-executed quilt. Particularly the tessellating ones like Snail's Trail or Milky Way. Absolutely beautiful. I admire the people who make them, because they require a great deal of planning and precision, and I do not have the aptitude to do that.
Actually, I suppose I do have aptitude for planning and precision, but the 40+ hours a week I get paid for it pretty much empties the storehouse. A quilt like that isn't fun for me to make. The truth is, part of the reason I have so many quilting books is that on some level I was convinced if I just looked enough, I would find a method that would make quilt-making not painful.

Didn't work so good.

I need to find a quilter who wants some large handknits done, so we can trade. They can make me a Snail's Trail and the paper-pieced Pegasus quilt I have a pattern for, and I'll knit them a couple of sweaters. We'll each pay for the materials for the projects we're getting back, and the labor will even out. And we each get to do a hobby we love on someone else's dime, kinda.

So anyway, most of the quilting books are going. Not all, though. I do crazy quilting, and some techniques, especially applique, still work. (And some of the stuff like in Fantastic Fabric Folding I will make work, because it's just too cool not to.)