Long time no see.....or should I say blab?

Remember that quilt I made for Bailey? Well, I forgot to put a label on it, shame on me....but, have no fear, I will be seeing her in person in March and will take the label with me to Seattle and sew it on while I'm at her house. Phew! You should always label your quilts for history's sake. I'm finally quilting Luke's quilt I made for Stef's baby shower. Well, the holidays got in the way after I made Bailey's quilt and I feel bad that I haven't worked on his quilt yet. In the photos you'll see that I'm not so brave about thread color. I tend to choose thread that matches rather than makes a bold statement with the quilting....mostly because I don't feel confident enough with my quilting techniques to put them out there loudly. I'm quilting schools of fish in the courthouse block areas and some bubbles and I drew an octopus on the golden threads tissue paper and quilted that on between the schools of fish. My cats love this quilt....I'm always shooing them off of it.

My camera isn't getting the true color of this dolphin....he says "hi".

One of the fish in the school.....he's currently got a 3.5 GPA.

*********************************************************************************************** In the knitting area, which is all over my house, I am working daily on a sweater for myself from the Yarnplay book. The body of the sweater is knitted sideways with a beautiful purple Noro Iroha and has occasional rows of purls for texture (done with Noro Silk Garden). After the body is finished and stitched into a tube, I will be picking up stitches with the Silk Garden to do the yoke and sleeves. I don't know why the photos make this sweater look blue, but it is not, it's purple.

See from the picture that the sleeves and the yoke are striped from the Silk Garden?

Some of the stripes are 2 rows of stockinette instead of a purl rowl.

It's about 33" long now. I'll keep going until it's about 37 1/2".

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We celebrated four February birthdays on the 7th. Patrick is now 32, Mark will be 60 on the 26th and Jenny and Matt turned 29.

Matt and Kathleen drove here from Chicago.

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I was watching Luke here and put him on this quilt I made for our guild challenge several years ago. He liked all the colors. Ivy is off to the side keeping watch over him.

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Do you recognize what this is? It's probably an antique now. Give up?

It's a staple remover! Mark brought it home from his mom's house and remembers his parents using it when he was growing up. Since he's going to be 60 soon, I think they may qualify the staple remover for being an antique.

Rest in peace, Mary Esther!