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My photo skills must improve!

Every “artist” needs a portfolio. Every craftsman needs to maintain a catalog of their works or at the very least, a catalog of samples of her work. I realize that. So I keep trying to make pics of completed items and add then to my “catablog”. But evidently my photographic skills have gone down the toilet. The last few pics I have taken have been fuzzy and out of focus – definitely not up to my high standards of excellence! But in an effort to capture images of my work, here is one, although fuzzy. These are a pair of wristers made from Coats and Clark yarn called Wiggles knit using the Wristers pattern in the latest issue of Creative Knitting. CK is a publication I dearly love. The patterns are great and practical. I loved Wiggles but it did not speak to me until the boss wanted a set of wristers for the wife. Then it screamed out her name. She is a musician, a pianist to be exact, and has several items that match them.

One more completed project! But I managed to pick up 3, maybe 4 more projects over the weekend. I have 2 prom dresses coming up for minor alterations and an adult Snow White costume! How fun is that!

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Another T-shirt quilt underway

The shirts have been stabilized and cut. I got the final word on the shirt layout from the Princess so I am ready to proceed with stripping and piecing the top. I can’t wait to see how the tiger stripe fabric looks with the black and gold shirts! Then on to the borders, backing and quilting.

Times a-wasting because I have more projects lined up behind that. I slipped in a coffee corset for T. It was my own design, of course, based on the ones I saw on Etsy with her name embroidered on it with her own sister’s embroidery machine. She says she loved it but I don’t see how it will be practical to use, but then I don’t drink coffee.

Next project is a pair of banners for church. Banners are near and dear to my heart and I have fabric and a vision for a new pair for Easter that coordinate with our Easter musical. Being married to the Music Director, I kind of know what the musical is going to be ahead of time. And then there are purses to design, a wedding memory quilt UFO that I MUST finish soon, and ……and……and…………..

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Knit nite at M’s

There is nothing more fun on a cold January night than getting together with friends and having a Knit nite. Throw in a good pot of chili and you have a real party! We all got together last night and showed our skills and our completed items. We even had a fashion show, of sorts.

Its always fun to teach someone new to knit and that is what I got to do with the Princess. She was such a fast learner! She put all of us “older” women to shame. I enjoyed talking about projects we loved and yarn we hated.

I think we all enjoyed just unplugging from the rest of the world and just sitting down, chatting with friends and indulging in some handwork for a couple of hours.

Thanks, M, for a great time and I guess we probably need to thank the King for the chili!

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Posted by PicasaBrazil Blue scarf
I just love starting new projects. It allows me to get my whole creative thing going on. A friend of my husband requested a knitted scarf from some yarn she found at Big Lots. I have to admit, I am jealous. This is a really nice yarn PLUS was a good price! I think it is coming along nicely. I should have it finished in a day or so. And I found another victim willing to let me convert their T-shirts into a quilt. This time, it will be high school Dance team shirts and bright colors. More pics later

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Terrific Team scarf

I finally found the solution to the earlier scarf problem. In knitting scarves to sell, several people requested some in local school colors. I remember when those were a hot item to wear with your letter jacket. Evidently, they are not available any more. I tried to knit a few in garter stitch using some fancy yarns but I wasn’t happy with the results. Then I remembered a pattern for team scarves in an old magazine article. I stumbled across it and made this one up for my husband. (Go Vols!) It’s a simple knit 1, purl 1 rib on about 40 stitches and 24 rows per color band. All of the samples in the magazine were 2-color, but I think they can be made with a third accent color. There are 15 bands, starting and ending with the base color. Then I made the fringe 2 color instead of the base color like the samples. That’s me. Never one to go by the directions. I always have to be unique somehow. That is the fun of making things by hand–adding your own personal style.

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T-shirt quilt finally finished

I FINALLY finished the sorority T-shirt quilt for a customer. I hope the person receiving it as a Christmas gift is not disappointed. It turned out beautiful but I have to admit it was a struggle.
Most t-shirts quilts just have between 20-25 panels in the top with plain fabric borders and this one was not average! This one was over the top. It has 20 panels in the main body and then 20 more shirts made into borders around the quilt plus an appliqued panda from a pillowcase. Another extra was the person’s name and graduation year appliqued in the border.

Thank goodness its finished and my arms can recover from wrestling the entire thing.

It turned out to be 84″ x 100″ — definitely a queen size.

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Fabulous new research tool – Zotero

For all of you Firefox lovers out there, I just found the handiest Firefox add-on named Zotero. Zotero calls itself “a personal research assistant. inside your browser”. Simply get the add-on and install it in your Firefox browser and start surfing. I hate doing research across the web and having to take notes with a pen and paper. Taking notes in a Word document doesn’t work for me either. And as for webpages, bookmarking is the best I can do but the way the web changes these days, the information is long gone by the time I go back to the bookmark. Then I have forgotten what specific tidbits looked important.

Zotero lets me save snapshots of webpages and (here is the best part) highlight and add annotations to those snapshots…….right in the Firefox window! Another great thing about it appeals to the Librarian in me. With one click, Zotero will create and save citations from databases, library catalogs, and webpages. These citations can then be exported into Word or some of the other bibliographic utilities.

Zotero is compatible with RACERtrac and most of our databases so research can now be a paper-less sort of thing. No more keeping up with the scraps of paper, napkins, and legal pads. No more shifting from clicking the mouse to writing with the pen/pencil or highlighting with the marker then back to the mouse. I love the idea of all of my research, thoughts and references in one spot!