Christmas in August

Oh, there's been a lot of sewing around here lately! Mostly gifts, which I'm just itching to share with you, but can't quite yet. I did manage to whip out a tiered skirt for my daughter before our impending trip, but it was so quickly packed up into the luggage I didn't get to snap a pic for you!

And should you think Christmas is too far away to think about yet - not so!! I wrapped 2 Christmas gifts today! Plus I got some long-awaited Christmas fabric in the mail this afternoon.
It will be the backing fabric to match this hexagon quilt I started waaay back in March. It's "Glace" by Three Sisters/Moda. I'm still deciding how to finish off the top of this quilt....it's quite small, about 36" x 30". I have just a few strips of the Glace left, along with a bunch of a sand colored Kona which is most of the quilt top already. Perhaps this will become a Christmas wall hanging! I'm envisioning hand-quilted snowflakes between the hex's, done in a deep red to really stand out against the background color.

Hopefully I'll have a finished quilt top to show you soon! Until then, I'm signing off for some much needed R&R for a couple weeks.

Angelic stitches

The next generation of crafters is rising! My 8 yr old daughter stitched this.... the only help from mom was tying off a few threads! It is part of a kit to make 6 mini Christmas stockings. This is the second one she's stitched.

Hot Rods, Wheat Sheaves, and rolling in the hay

My fifth pair of socks for the 20/10 sock challenge is complete! Half way! For July, the solid sock knit-a-long group over at Ravelry challenged us to knit a solid colored sock inspired by our flag's colors. I found a sport weight yarn called "Hot Rod Red" - what could be more American than hopped up muscle cars? Then I saw this pattern by Gina House and knew I had a good match.

The textured diamonds and ribbing reminded me of the star field and stripes on the US flag. The stitch pattern is called "Wheat sheaves," another icon of midwestern America. Even the title of the pattern, "A Roll in the Hay" reminded me of some twangy country songs I've heard.

Vikings

We're studying barbarians and Vikings recently - what a great topic for boys! Lots of battles, double-crossing conquerors, pleading bishops.... drama and action! Alas, many of those battles have been re-enacted in our home, which can drive a mama batty after a while. Certainly Vikings did something other than fight? Enter in the fiber arts....

Hang with me. I see you snoozing as I prepare to mention wool. No knitting involved here. This is fiber arts as related to battle training, children, and household productivity!

Every Viking home and village needed ropes and cords - lots of it. They used it on their clothing, boats, you name it. And those Vikings also had children hanging about that had lots of energy. So they figured out a way to occupy the kids and put that energy to good use - making whipcord! To ensure they'd stick with the job, it developed into a fun game.


Here you see four "bobbins" with attached wool yarn hanging from a plant hook. Vikings would've used a tree branch, but we made due. The bobbins would normally be carved wood or even plain stones. Something with some heft. Water-filled bottles work great. Enter in two enthusiastic, fair-haired Viking boys.

"Leif" and "Rolf" each hold a bobbin in each hand. Two bobbins are wound with black yarn, two with white. They toss/trade bobbins, right hand to right hand, left hand to left hand. As the bobbins are traded back and forth, the yarn is braided into a very sturdy cord. As they boys got the hang of it, they aimed to set new speed records. This productive game helped train young Vikings for battle, increasing eye-hand coordination. Even our 4 yr old figured this out! Not complicated, but highly entertaining!

Here's the finished rope, which is about 3-4 feet long. Depending on how the black and white bobbins are oriented in the boys' hands, different patterns result. At first we had a spiral pattern going, then some blunders later accidentally reoriented our bobbins which gave us a vertical stripe. You can see that the tension is tighter, and thus the rope is firmer/denser, as the rope got longer. This is mostly because the boys figured out that they didn't have to be so gentle and gave the bobbins more of a pull.

If you want to try to make your own Viking whipcord, you can find instructions and read all about it on this pdf.

Summer Abundance

There are two pear trees in our yard, great big 30-foot tall trees, loaded down with ping-pong ball sized pears. These diminutive fruits are seckel pears, sweet and delicious when at the perfect stage of ripeness. Mmmm. It's harvest time, and the lower branches have yielded plenty to keep us busy! The squirrels are welcome to eat everything I can't reach. If only I could train them to knock down some of the beauties that are higher up in the trees! The first batch of pears became a delicious Walnut Pear Coffee Cake. Last year I canned pickled spiced pears, but I think they were too vinegar-y for our family's tastes. Perhaps I'll try regular canned pears this year. Any thoughts on canning them whole with just the peels and stems removed?

A special boy celebrated his birthday this past weekend. A friend's son has his birthday the day before, so we did a joint party. I contributed this "Tow Mater" cake from the movie "Cars". Volcano cakes are easier, but the little guys were quite pleased with this one. My birthday is next in the queue, and I will NOT be making a cake for myself. To be honest, I don't even like cake! A nice Chinese dinner will suffice, thank you.

Beat the heat

What would summer be without kids in swimming pools?

Taking dominion of.... the wheel

This great wheel was in my parent's house for years, decorating their basement. I took it home, had some help replacing missing parts, and now it's up and running! It spins really well, once I got some tension issues out of the way. But like any 200 yr old object, it's gonna have some quirks to deal with.

The yarn is stretching from my hand to the spindle at the far left. You can see it's a bit bumpy and uneven. I'm still perfecting some techniques, so I'll call this batch of yarn "designer" yarn. :)