New Toy

 Yesterday my quilt group made our annual trek to the Arizona quilters guild quilt show, and I came home with this treasure! I have been dreaming of a new machine for quite awhile, I think I just plain wore the other one out. This is the Pfaff Smarter C1100 Pro and it is wonderful! Of course I got a great deal since I bought it at the show, a discounted price and all the quilting accessories. I wasted no time in taking her out of the box and putting her to work! This morning I finally finished up the star and chain top.

It was so nice to sew together all the rows without having to tug the fabric through every time I got to an intersection. Now I need to find the perfect fabric to back this with, some batting and get it loaded on the frame.Sounds like I need to take a trip to the quilt shop.

In keeping with my goal to finish some stuff up, I pulled this project out to work on next. This is another quilt kit that I bought in 1999. The pattern is called English Trellis and the fabrics are still so pretty, even 13 years later. I started working on it during our quilt retreat in August, but it was slow going to get all the strip piecing done and I didn't get it finished during the trip. I have 9 more blocks to make, then borders to add, so it really shouldn't take me more than a weekend or two get this top ready, but we shall see.
I'm still knitting away on my red socks, I am just starting the heel, so hopefully I will have a new pair in my drawer very soon!

UGH

Seems like the month of February was one big UGH for me as far getting any quilting or knitting projects done. It all started with my Noro sock.

This is another project that was started ages ago and I when I came across it, the first sock was about half done. After I finished knitting the first sock I got a funny feeling that there wasn't going to be enough yarn in my 100 gram skein for the second sock. Now I wear a size 6 shoe, so I have never had to worry about running out of yarn before, but I decided I better weigh the yarn and the sock to be sure I had enough. My sock weighed 48 grams and I only had 42 grams of yarn left. Wait, 42 plus 48 is 90, not 100. So obviously I will not have enough yarn to do the second sock - UGH  I went back to the shop where I bought the "light" skein and the owner said she really wasn't surprised to hear that, but she didn't have any more of that yarn. Now, I could just use what I have left and make the toes out of something else, BUT that will never make me happy, so I searched online and found another skein on ebay.

So, while waiting for my new Noro skein to get here I grabbed another sock project. This one had a completed first sock, but the second one had not been started yet. I set out to find the book that the pattern was in and it was no where to be found. I looked in all the usual places, still no book. I called my Mom, we often borrow each others books, and made her search her sewing room, no book. I called my daughter in Minnesota and she assured me repeatedly that she didn't have it. I texted my friend Sue and asked her to look, no book. All the sudden my youngest son was looking on my book shelf, with the other knitting books, and pulls out a book and asks, does it look like this one - it was there the whole time - UGH.

OK, well now that I had my book, I got going on the second sock. I found the pattern, cast on and started stitching. I knit, on and off, for about a week, when I got the feeling my second sock really didn't look like I remembered the first sock looking. I pulled out the first one and Lo and Behold

UGH, they are not same! Good grief. Now what do I do? Well my husband said that all that really matters is that they are both same color, right? WRONG. So, I could buy more red yarn and make 2 more socks so I could have 2 matching pairs or rip out my weeks worth of knitting and start over with the right pattern. I debated over this for quite awhile before finally deciding that I didn't need 2 pair of socks from the exact same red yarn and ripped out my mistake and started over.

Since the knitting wasn't going well I thought it might be time to think about some of my quilting projects. I have been doing the 2011 designer mystery block of the month from Fat Quarter Shop. Originally I was a little uninspired by the blocks when they came and they were all piling up, untouched. Then I saw a picture of the finished quilt pattern, super cute! I went out to order the finishing kit only to find they are all sold out, well of course they are, this is how everything has been going lately. After 2 days of scouring the internet I thought I had found all the fabrics I needed and placed my orders. The first package arrived and sure enough my order was wrong - UGH. The website apparently hadn't been updated for a few days and they really didn't have all the fabrics or the quantities required. They sent what they had, but that really didn't work for me. Apparently this is all my own fault for not telling them specifically to contact me if they couldn't fill my order as placed. OK, whatever, they clearly don't need anymore of my money. So after more online searching, I think I have the rest of the fabric on its way.

This is why I never finish anything - sometimes it just feels easier to start something new.............................

However, March seems to be starting out a little better. I sewed up a couple more rows on my Stars and Chains quilt and I really love it so far .This is the top third of the  quilt.

And as long as I don't have anymore UGH moments, this will soon be the bottom two thirds!

Hope your knitting, quilting or whatever makes you happiest goes smoothly for you and you are not plagued bu the UGHs.