this is what I came home to tonight, which was super weird:



it would seem that the boy piled his clean laundry up all on his side of the bed, as if you were going to cover it to make it seem like there was a person in the bed, and the cat fully took advantage of the situation by rolling all in it and making herself a bed.

AND, there were fat quarters awaiting my arrival home. SO exciting. :) the lovely ladies i was paired with for the sew, mama, sew swap sent out my FQ's! they're lovely, and are in the dryer now getting ready to be cut up into 5" squares.

then, i organized the pile of fabric which is to become my 5" squares for several swap-bot swaps over the next few months. i'm quite excited.





i spent pretty much all night cutting up fabric, which was lovely, and now i have another 37 pieces for my stash and several gazillion more all set for my swaps. :) result: i'm exhausted and am heading to bed presently.

heading to quebec city for the weekend to visit with the man's family, so i'm going to be knitting up a storm (no tv and no internet!), hopefully i'll get somewhere on the shrug that i started ages ago. :) or maybe the black and white baby blanket. i haven't quite decided which project(s?) to bring along.

orange peel!

here are some pics from all the cutting i've been doing...and forcing my roommate and visiting friends to help with. i'm making an "orange peel" quilt. these are my two fabrics.





there are 175 squares in total, and they're around 8.5" around, so we'll see how big the quilt ends up being. i really did think that there would be enough, and there should, i guess, but i was hoping for a bit bigger than a standard queen-sized quilt, since both me and the boy (and the dog when she gets the chance) are HUGE cover hogs. we shall see.




now i just need to get some fabric to use as backing. i'm not sure what colour to go with. obviously, white seems to make the most sense, but really, white and i aren't totally the best of friends, for reals. i'm a BIG spillypants. my roommate's suggestion is a really deep, dark purple and i'm also thinking that a dark brown might be nice. but i'll probably end up going with white, and will have another 175 circles to force people to help me cut out.

i also had a friend's little sister come to our stitch n' bitch and she unraveled and balled a gazillion skeins of lovely cashmere yarn that is spent two weeks knitting into a heinous shrug. so now it is all ready to be knitted into a baby blanket...i think. it's ready for something at least. also, it turns out that i LURVE having me the little helper monkies working on the crafting.

i've started a black & white pinwheel knitted baby blanket, but i'm a bit concerned that black and white might be a bit not-really-baby.

i also sent off my FQ's for the Sew, Mama, Sew swap, so i can't wait to see what i get back. i've also got my package for my ravelry karma swap ready, i just have to post it, and i've got to cut a gazillion 5" squares, which i started the other day, and am going to continue this afternoon/evening for some swap-bot swaps. :)

finally, i'm washing up some fabric for a summer quilt that's going to be based on the tutorial that i stumbled on here for a faux cathedral windows/orange peel quilt, which i think will be my next quilting project.

recycling!

i'm quite excited about this prospect, and needed a forum for it asap. i was perusing blogs, and found this post on the thrifty knitter's site. long story short: i'm gonig to start wrinsing and saving all of my stupid plastic bags to send to lou for recycling. YAY! i'm very excited at the prospect of cutting down my waste a LOT, although i'm not too sure how the boy and our roommate are going to feel about it...*sheepish* AND, this gives me good cause to eat a ton more of the individually wrapped chocolate packets that someone insisted on bringing into the office...because i'll save the wrappers. yes. the chocolates need to be eaten so that i can send on the plastic packaging. :)

post number one

so my last blog actually lasted quite a while, but i pretty much quit posting in 2006 when i started grad school, which is, coincidentally, about the time my knitting dropped off drastically. who knew that doing a master's degree would be so frigging much work?!

anyhow, i'm back at it, mostly to chronicle what i've been working on, looking at and plotting to get up to next, primarily with my knitting and quilting.

i've discovered swapping, and am obsessed. i've already swapped several scraps & fat quarters with a host of lovely ladies throughout the world via the intarwebs, and i'm just LOVING it. :) i actually just today got my package from the we the people scrap swap. i got a bunch of loverly fabrics which i *will* sort this weekend, along with the fq's that i got from the last swap a few weeks ago. i've also joined swap-bot, which is awesome, and i'm anxiously awaiting the deadline for the first of several (million) nickel swaps that i've signed up for. this weekend is dedicated to cutting up 5" fabric squares, packing up packages and sorting out what all needs to be posted when. and possibly a slight trip to the fabric & yarn store.

also on the radar is a vintage sheet quilt--quite sweet, and a knitted baby-ghan for a not-yet-even-thought-of baby (DEFS not mine!). i have a couple of friends who have recently or are rapidly heading for wedding-ville, and i can't be sure that 9 months will be enough time to knit babythings, so i want to get a jump on it.

i've also been on ravelry non-stop and am participating in a swap there for which i made a small project bag which turned out beautifully (and only a light tearing up and re-jigging, thankyouverymuch!). my swap partner there is a sock knitter, which i don't really get, but am quite envious of after pawing at sock yarn all last weekend.