I took a week of vacation in between jobs. While I was off, I managed to get half of a baby sweater knit for a good friend who just had her first baby. Initially, this was going to be a Dale sweater, but somehow in getting the house packed up and ready to sell, I managed to lose my Dale pattern book. Oops! I think it is for the best though, because the Dale sweater was knit on size 1 needles, and would have taken years for me to finish at the rate I’m knitting right now. This sweater (from Adorable Knits for Tots) is on size 8s - much faster! It seems larger than it should be for a 6-9 month size, but hopefully when it is all seamed up it will be the right size.

Now, I just have to figure out how to find time to finish the sweater!

Yes, had. Past tense. Our days here are numbered. I’m leaving a job that I found interesting and challenging (for the most part), working with people that I liked at a pretty darn good company, and I’m off to another very different job that will hopefully be even more interesting and challenging at another pretty darn good company. It’s exciting, but also scary. I’ve been at the same company for almost 10 years now, and always assumed that I’d be there for much longer. It’s hard leaving someplace that is so familiar to me and going to a place that is completely unfamiliar. Having to sell our house and move is even more difficult than leaving my job. I love my house - it is pretty much the perfect house for me. But it will only be mine for a few more months at the most. And we’ll be moving into an apartment. An apartment that is less than half the size of my house and costs 1.5 times as much to rent. Ouch. Every time I think about it, it brings me to tears. I’ll miss my house. And I’ll miss my friends. There are definitely some things that I’m looking forward to about moving. We’ll both have a much shorter commute to work, we’ll live in an area where there is more to do, and we’ll have new places to explore and new friends to make.

I’m still not exactly sure how this all happened. There was a call from a recruiter. A conversation that evening about how it wouldn’t hurt just to submit my resume - what the heck, I may not even get an interview and if I do, then at least I’ll get some interview experience for the first time in ten years. And then came an offer, for basically my dream job. An offer that I didn’t expect to get, and an offer that I couldn’t refuse. And now, chaos.

There will be very limited knitting and posting for a while, at least until things calm down a bit and we are settled into our new, downsized life in the south bay. For now, I’m planning to keep up the blog, but no promises. If there is no knitting, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a knitting blog.

My diet/workout regimen has been going great. I feel much better about myself now, and treated myself to a shopping trip last night to buy some new clothes in a size smaller than I’ve ever worn. When we met our personal trainer, he looked at me and said that following his plan would get me down to this size, and I completely laughed at him - I did not think it was physically possible. For those who are curious, I’ve been doing a somewhat modified version of the glycemic index diet, and generally trying to cut out processed sugars and junk foods. Basically, I try to eat as much lean protein as possible (chicken breasts, shrimp), healthy carbs (whole grains, brown rice, etc), and pretty much whatever fruits & veggies I want. I’m also a huge fan of the peanut butter Zone bar for snacks. Yum!

No knitting pictures - I haven’t completed anything recently, but hopefully will soon. I’ve started a baby Dale sweater for a friend who is due any day now. Thankfully winter is still a few months away, because the baby sweater is knit on size 1s, and has a higher stitch count than any sweater I’ve ever knit for myself!

So, I joined a gym, hired a personal trainer, and decided to completely change my diet and my lifestyle. I spent an entire Saturday cleaning out my pantry, fridge, and freezer, and tossing all of the unhealthy food. I was truly amazed at how much junk we had. Lots of bad carbs (not whole grains) and lots of things with processed sugars. Yuck. [I had no idea that corn syrup was the second ingredient in ketchup. Or the third ingredient in Prego spaghetti sauce. The things you learn when you actually read labels!]

Since that day, I’ve taken my lunch to work every day (spinach or mixed greens with grilled chicken or shrimp, lowfat cottage cheese, and fruit), have been drinking lots of water (no soda!), and have been exercising at least 6 times a week, either weights or cardio. Quite a change for someone used to eating out for lunch every day, and whose idea of exercise is getting work after 8:30 am and having to walk all the way from the far reaches of the parking lot.

Even though I’ve yet to see any results, I’m feeling a lot better about myself already. Instead of just being miserable because none of my summer clothes fit me anymore, I’m doing something about it. Hopefully it will work, because, damn I want a hot fudge sundae already!

I’m also going to try to find some more health & fitness oriented blogs to read to keep me on track. (Not that I won’t still read knitting blogs, but those of you who post frequently about cooking - I’ll be skipping those posts!) Christine started a great blog about how she lost 30 pounds. Lolly has also posted occassionally about her quest to get in shape. Anyone know of any other good health & fitness blogs or other resources that you’d like to share?

I’m not familiar with many sewing machine shops in the area, and I’m positive there are none that carry my specific machine (an ancient, er, vintage Necchi). So, before I left home, I did some research on the internet, took some measurements on my machine, and figured out exactly what I needed - a straight, low shank darning foot. I then headed to the shop where I’ve taken my machine to be serviced before… a shop that just happens to be next to an Ann Taylor Loft, a Nordstrom Rack, and across from a mall. Convenient, eh?

When I got to the shop, I asked the woman for “a straight, low shank darning foot.” She insisted that in order to find a foot that fit my machine properly, I’d need to bring it in to the shop. Oh, no I don’t! I asked to see all the feet that they carried in the store, and she dumped an entire bucket of unlabeled feet out onto the countertop. She had pretty much every type of sewing machine foot I’ve ever seen, and a few that I haven’t. I dug through the pile, pulled out the three darning feet that she had, and asked for a tape measure. I’m pretty sure she thought I was nuts. I started measuring the feet, and found one that fit my requirements. It was straight (the foot was directly below the screw hole), and it was a low shank foot (a half inch from the screw hole to the bottom of the foot- high shank feet have a 1 inch measurement). Perfect! But, she still didn’t want to sell it to me, because she wasn’t sure it would fit my machine and the store didn’t take returns on feet. I had to spend fifteen minutes explaining everything I knew about sewing machine feet in order to convince her that it was going to work. At that point, she practically offered me a job in the store! I guess if this lawyer thing doesn’t work out, I’ve got something to fall back on. I’d totally make an awesome sewing machine foot salesperson. Ha!

I got home and put the foot on my machine… and it was perfect!

I attempted some free motion quilting on one of my class squares. Not terrible for my first attempt. Not great either.

The back is easier to see…

I definitely need more practice before I try this on the real quilt.

And here’s a question for the quilters out there… the quilt filling: for a baby quilt would you use cotton or polyester batting? I was leaning towards cotton, but at the quilt shop they said that polyester batting can be better for babies because it won’t hold allergens. Thoughts?

I made these using the free Textured Slip Stitch pattern from the Dishcloth Boutique. Looks a lot like the Mason-Dixon Warshrag pattern, no? I’m pretty sure it is the exact same pattern.

I knit these after Amy told me about how much she loves using the linen dishcloth that she knit.  So, I picked up some Louet Euroflax linen to make a couple dishcloths for myself.  Hopefully they’ll be a good replacement for my kitchen sponges.  I’m not a big fan of the sponge.

Let me tell you, the linen yarn is not much fun to knit at all. It’s like knitting with twine or wire.  There’s no stretch whatsoever. But it knits up into a lovely fabric - much softer than I expected, but still rough enough to take on kitchen messes. I’ve got at least one more dishcloth worth of yarn to knit up from the skein, and after that it’s back to my regularly scheduled knitting - socks, Salina, and Sahara.

On Saturday, I hosted a baby shower for a friend. I wanted to keep it as un-annoying as possible. Of course I knew that there would be some of the requisite fawning, but wanted to try something a little different. Inspired by Stephanie and Kathy, I thought it would be fun to have each of the guests stencil a onesie for the baby-to-be using freezer paper stencils.

I cut out the stencils ahead of time, and let the guests do the ironing and painting.

It was a huge hit! Everyone loved the idea, and had a great time being creative with the paint. The mom-to-be was thrilled with all the neat onesies, and I was thrilled that I didn’t have to make people smell baby food in diapers. :)

I’d definitely recommend this as a get-the-guests involved baby shower activity. It would also be great for a group of kids, as a birthday party activity or a girl scout/boy scout/4-H activity.

You see that? That’s a swatch. A swatch of Noro Cash Iroha, which is quite a lovely yarn. But. (yeah, there’s always a but…) I really, really wanted to use this yarn for Sahara. It’s not 100% silk, but it has enough silk in it to be drapey when knit up. Here’s the thing - I got gauge on size 6 needles (the top 1/4 of the swatch). The fabric was really tight though. I didn’t like it at all. So, I went up to size 7 needles. Ah, a much better fabric. Except my gauge is completely off now. Completely off.

So, what do I do? Recalculate the pattern for my gauge? This wouldn’t be too difficult, although I’ve never done it before. I’m hoping it might be as simple as knitting one size smaller than I’d typically knit, but it probably won’t be that easy. Or, should I save this yarn for something else? I don’t really want to do that, because I have no idea what I’d use it for. I don’t have enough to make an hourglass sweater. And I really want to make a cute short sleeve sweater or tank for spring. Also, I love the sequins that I bought to string along with the yarn for the trim.

Sigh. This is my least favorite part of knitting - trying to substitute yarn in patterns that I like without spending a bizillion dollars on fancy expensive yarns called for by the pattern. It’s especially frustrating when I buy yarn with a pattern in mind and it doesn’t end up working out. Like this Noro. And the Malabrigo. (In case you’re wondering what ever happened to SKB - it still looks like it did in that last picture. I haven’t the heart to rip it and I’m not sure it’s fixable)

Laying out the blocks was the most fun part of the project… they are totally random.

I realized after sewing them together that there’s a slight lack of yellow in the upper right corner, but I’m just going to call that a design feature!

Here’s another closeup. These are such great fabrics!

I also tried my hand at actually quilting one of my blocks from quilt class. Notice how there are no pictures of it. Let’s just say that it didn’t go so well. I tried quilting the block with straight diagonal lines, but the fabric got all wonky because the feed dogs would pull too much fabric through on the bottom. I either need to get a walking foot or a darning foot for my sewing machine before I quilt this thing. I’d love to quilt this with stippling (sp?), but am hesitant to try it on a gift quilt for the first time.

Instead, we learned to make these:

A flying geese block. I did not know what it was called before this class (so, I guess I did learn *something*), but I did know that this is by far my least favorite, most disliked quilt block of any that I’ve ever seen. I just don’t like it. And, if I had known that this was what the class was going to consist of, frankly, I would not have wasted three hours of my time.

We also had a substitute teacher for the class. To give her some credit, she had very short notice that she’d be teaching. But, compared to the instructor we had for the first class, she was just not my style of teacher. She micromanaged everyone in the class, and never gave us a clear indication of what we were supposed to be learning or doing. The entire class was spent waiting for the teacher to come around and give us an indication of what, exactly, we were supposed to do next. It was extremely inefficient. She also expected us to have a book and other supplies that we were never told to purchase before the class. There was clearly a lack of communication between the store, the instructor, and the students.

All of this got me thinking about what makes a good crafting (knitting, quilting, etc.) class. First and foremost, I think it’s important that the activities taught in class are similar to what is described in the promotional e-mail/brochure/etc. After all, if you’re not learning at least the things that got you interested in the class in the first place, why bother? Next, I think it is extremely helpful to have a class handout. The handout should give the big picture of what will be taught, and also give details of any techniques taught. What good is a class if you can’t go home and repeat what you learned? Third, a good instructor can make the difference between a worthless class and a worthwhile one. This is kind of a crapshoot, unless you get a recommendation from someone who has taken the class and who has a similar learning style. Finally, the other students in the class can also contribute to whether or not you enjoy the class. Just one “crochety old (or young) lady” can ruin an entire class for the rest of the students. This is also a total crapshoot, as you have no control whatsoever over the other students. A good instructor can make a huge difference here, as well.

This quilting class failed on three of my four criteria - the activities taught were not anything like what I expected, there was no handout, and the instructor’s teaching style (hands on, micromanaging) was not my style at all.

What do you think makes a good crafting class?