Inspiration

I had a lovely time going to the craft and quilt fair on the weekend! I wandered the stalls for at least a couple of hours, in a bit of a daze. So much pretty stuff! There were disappointingly few yarn-related stalls…but the ones they did have pretty good! I was blown away by the free-form crochet and knitting stall.

This photo doesn't do it justice... check out the website. Although they may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I was so impressed by the creativity that has gone into these pieces. Some of the coats etc were hard to take in, there was so much going on. Definitely wearable art!

I made a couple of small purchases. Some lovely soft Bolivian alpaca yarn…

And some very pretty beads which I have no idea what to do with! But I also bought some beading wire, so we’ll see what happens!

But for me the best bit was the quilt show. I’ve never really been that into quilting… although I like looking at the pretty fabrics for sale at quilting stalls, and admire the patience that quilters must have…it just never really took me as something I would be that keen to try. But OH MY GOODNESS I’m inspired now!! All of the quilts in the show were absolute works of art! And they also looked so fun! And I really like the idea of the free hand ‘drawing’ with a sewing machine on top of all the quilted together bits. Wow. Congratulations to everyone who made all the gorgeous quilts! Mick’s Cobargo Squares quilt looked absolutely vibrant in real-life. My favourite of all the quilts had to be the 50cm square tree of life quilt, with a gorgeous swirly-branched tree and over 1600 (!) tiny leaves all sewn by hand!!! This tiny quilt had won so many ribbons that they took up more room on the wall than it did!
I was only sad that after I’d finished drooling over all the quilts (not literally mind you), the fair was closed so I couldn’t pop back in and buy my first bits of quilting fabric!!!! Which is probably a good thing. One obsessive hobby is definitely enough at the moment!

Dad’s beanie is coming along quite well despite a couple of setbacks on the weekend. Setback 1: Whilst knitting at S’s house on Friday night as the boys set up the band equipment for S’s Global Warming Party on Saturday, there was a burning-of-the-special-butter incident. Not a pretty smell. Which then permeated everything that had been within a 3 block radius of the house. Including the beanie in the lounge room!! But a good airing on the clothes-line the next day worked wonders. And provided the opportunity to take a pretty photo of the sun shining through the beanie. Did I mention spring is almost here??

Setback 2: In calculating the decreases at the top of the beanie, I thought I would decrease in multiples of 7 – i.e. have 7 decreases running up to the top. So… 112 divided by 7 = 16, therefore I should decrease every 16 stitches right? But instead, I decreased every 7 stitches, and continued thus every second row before realising that I had way too many decreases, and the beanie was going to be incredibly short. (I claim distraction as I was also watching the subtitled ‘Ten Canoes’ at the time!) So… I got to frog for the first time ever! And I found it kind of sadistically exciting. I took advice that I had read somewhere, and picked up the row I was frogging back to on smaller needles, so there were no live stitches to try and catch up when I got back to there. It’s amazing how easily all those time-consuming stitches come undone!! Anyway… I’m back on track now, was able to enjoy the rest of Ten Canoes… and will hopefully get close to finishing the beanie at SnB tonight with plenty of time to spare before Dad’s birthday on Thursday!!