These are More of my Favorite Things, Cont.

I have a lot of quilting and knitting gizmos that I love. Here are a few more!

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This is an invention from a little company called Rollie. It's remarkably simple--a couple of plastic caps and a piece of elastic between them. When you look at it, you think it's something you could have done--but the truth is, I've thought about what you would actually have to do to make these, and quickly decided it would be a pain. I prefer letting Rollie do that job.



These gizmos hold double-pointed needles. You put a cap on each end, and the elastic keeps the caps held onto the needles. The project stays tidy, the needles stay on the knitting, nothing is ever lost again (or if it is, it's your own fault), and life is good.

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This looks like an innocent, rolled-up piece of plastic. But it's not. I thas a grippy side and a slippery side. You put it grippy side down on the bed of your machine, the slippery side up, and free-motion quilting becomes a breeze.



I learned about it a few years ago when we were vendors at a quilt show. The booth next door sold nothing but Sew Slips. Over and over, for 4 straight days, I heard the Sew Slip Sales Pitch. Finally, on the fourth day, I gave in a tried it (which was a big part of the pitch).

I was completely hooked. For another 6 months, I tried to explain to Kim how cool the Sew Slip was. She thought it looked just like another piece of plastic. Finally one day, I shoved it onto her machine. She was assimilated.

Come on it. Try one out. You know--just to see if you like it.

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For the rest of this entry, our theme will be hand-sewing.

Wait! Don't go away!

Hand sewing is part of both quilting and knitting. You need to do it to FINISH things. Do you like the word "finish"? I thought so. Please keep reading, because I am going to show you a few more tools to make it go more easily.

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One day, a year or so ago, I started to thread a sewing machine, and I couldn't see the eye of the needle, which made threading it hard. I told Kim about it. Rather than sympathizing with me about how my eyes are going downhill, she explained that there is an automatic threader on the machine.

Thanks, Kimmie. Problem not solved. My eyes are still going downhill.

But now I will tell you, if your eyes are going downhill too--or even if they're not--about a similar invention for hand-sewing: The Clover Needle Threader.


This is the coolest little thing. You put the eye of the needle into a hole at the top of this little baby, drape the thread across, press the lever, and--voila!--your needle is threaded.

Once again--provided that you can at least discern between the eye end and the pointy end of a needle--you can put off buying those zebra-print half-glasses that are a feeble attempt at making the 40+ wearer feel "hip."



Between the needle threader and....

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....Thread Heaven, I don't mind hand sewing the binding on a quilt quite as much anymore.

Thread Heaven is a simple little box of wax. It has a scattering of sparkles throughout the wax, which I was puzzled about at first, but finally figured out that these symbolically represent "heaven."

Thread Heaven lives up to its name. You just run a piece of thread across it, and you get no more tangles as you're hand sewing.

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Speaking of heavenly, the next helpful thing I like is my business partner. I love her the most of all! Oh, Kimmie, just look at you--so smart, so beautiful!

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Woah! Hijacked blog! I should have known to change the password. Let's be moving on. Quickly.

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Knitting also requires a bit of hand-sewing to finish, and I have found several tools that make this process better too. The first is Knit Klips.


I used to use hair clips to hold my knitting together in preparation for sewing seams, but the problem was that they go caught in the yarn. About a year after I discovered the hair-clip idea, Knit Klips were invented. (I am pretty sure that I sent the inventors Special Energy Waves from My Head that made them invent the clips.)

They have a single hook in the center, which means no more tangles or catching.

By the way, all of you who know Kirsten (our Saturday godsend) know that she seems pretty mild-mannered. But trust me, that's just on the surface. If you want to dare test it, take away her Knit Klips. You will see her instantly turn into someone with the amiability of "Venom" on the TV show "American Gladiators."

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The other sewing tool is the humble Chibi. (I bet you'll be unable to process any thoughts at all about Chibis as you continue trying to picture Kirsten acting like "Venom.")

The Chibi is a darning needle with a smooth finish and a bent tip.

It makes sewing yarn a breeze. It also comes in its own little storage case. The case has a little hole on the side, so you could, should you desire, put a string through it and hang it around your neck, kind of like a necklace. (Don't you want a necklace made from a plastic tube and darning needles? I'm sure it would look good with those hip, zebra-print glasses you have dangling from your neck too.)

Why it is called a "Chibi," I have no idea. "Chibi" is apparently a Japanese word meaning "small child." I am not pulling together any connections here. All theories welcome.

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Here is something for everyone! It's a cute little sheep from Lantern Moon.


It's not just cute, it's practical: It has a special secret when you pull on its tail!




Everyone doing any kind of craft needs such a tape measure!

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Well, there are lots more gadgets that I love, and I want to go on and on about them, but my mother was always big on telling me that I should "know when to quit." (She is a good mother and always tried hard to teach me things, and I am at least able to recite some of them back.) What I am actually trying to say is that the little sheep is helping me symbolize that this blog entry is at

the End

My Favorite Things

Because we do the ordering, and because we're in the shop every day, Kim and I often see things that you might not ever notice. Today, with that in mind, I want to talk about some of the knitting and quilting gadgets that I love; I think you will love them too. If you don't have these things at your house...well, you know us: We're never above selling you stuff.

I'll alternate them, so if you don't quilt or don't knit, feel free to skip over every other paragraph!

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Let's start with quilting, shall we? I think I'll start with my newest favorite thing: Mary Ellen's Best Press.

We initially bought it because one of our customers nagged and nagged for it. I finally told her we would order it if she bought it and also made some of her friends buy it. (We have minimum orders for some items, and I didn't want to be stuck with a bunch of extra bottles of this stuff.) She promised. Kim was skeptical when she saw that I had added it to our order, but I explained that this customer and her friends had promised to buy it.

We sold out of all of it within about a week.

Whenever we sell out of something that quickly, I sure do get very interested in it. So I tried it myself.

I loved it.

Kim was not so sure; she was a Magic Sizing fanatic. But I really, really loved it, and I suggested that she just try it once, because, really, I loved this stuff. So Kim buckled under.

Our can of Magic Sizing is now gathering dust.

Now we have every scent that Mary Ellen's makes--lavender, cherry blossom, Caribbean breeze, and, of course, unscented. And we're thinking that it's about time to start carrying the gallon refills.

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My next newest thing that I love for knitting is a bag.

Oh, I know. You have tons of bags. You don't need another one. But, my dear knitting friends, I'm talkin' about a bag here.

When I travel, I never carry less than 3 projects, and usually I carry many more if I'm traveling for longer than, say, dinner in Altoona. You never know what you're going to need. For example, the last time I went to Kevin's parents' for a 3-day weekend, here were my projects (circled below in a cheerful turquoise):

Lantern Moon understands my needs. They came out with a bag that is so large I can carry at least 3 full sweater projects in it. And I love the graphic, black-and-white print:


Inside, the pretty blue lining is attached in such a way as to give four additional large pockets (one for each sock project you're working on), a cell-phone sized compartment, and a zippered pocket. In addition, this bag helps people in Vietnam earn a living while being paid fair wages in good working conditions. Hooray!

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The Clover Yo-Yo maker is for making an old-fashioned type of quilt with a new-fangled type of gizmo:


To make yo-yos with this thing, you no longer have to use the bottom of a glass or piece of worn-out cardboard to draw circles on your fabric. You just snap the yo-yo maker onto the fabric, trim around it, and start stitching. All your stitches are the same length, and when you're finished, all your yo-yos are the same size. If you use it once, you will never look back! And of course it comes in different sizes and shapes.

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I know this might seem mundane, but I love Plymouth's stitch holders:


They are a classic style. The metal glides right into my live stitches. They come in a couple of sizes in each pack. I have never found a better stitch holder. In fact, I like them so much and hate running out of them so much that I wildly over-ordered them. Kim suggested that it might be good to talk about them in this entry, and maybe people would come in and buy a few of them.

So, knitters, if you come buy them, she will be happier.

And as soon as you do, I will order even more. Because I love these things.

Coming up soon.... I'm not done yet! I don't want you to have to spend 3 hours reading one blog entry, but I still have untold amounts of enthusiasm left! Stay tuned for more of My Favorite Things.

Wide Open Spaces

Kim has been wanting to move the fabric around for years so that we could put the quilting tables in the middle of the room. She initially wanted to put the tall bolt-holders against the window. But I nixed that idea, on account of losing all the light.

In fact, I have nixed that idea about 5 times over the 5 years we have been open. (I give both of us a lot of credit for our once-a-year stick-to-it-ness.)

Then the other week we were preparing for our Yarn Tasting. We were trying to figure out how to get more than 20 people into one space without putting them into two corners. Kim tried her idea on me for the 6th time, but this time made it more palatable: "What if we put the short bolt-holders at the window?" she asked.

Done.

We were in the middle of a quiet morning that day, so we plunged in and started moving stuff around:


It took us the better part of the day--which of course was the day before Yarn Tasting, a day we had lots of prep left to finish. But we needed the space. So we worked hard and fast.

And after a while, we had a new space:


I cannot describe how thrilled we both were.

For Yarn Tasting, we were able to take the tables down and comfortably fit all those people into the room. (I would show a picture, but all of the pictures I took were of knitters frowning as they concentrated on their knitting.)

Pictures aside, the Yarn Tasting went great. We started by giving away a goodie-bag to each person:

.....Okay. This particular person, while indeed ending up with only one bag (under duress, I might add), thought that maybe if she sorted all the nearby bags, she could find the best goodies for herself. I did not put her face or any identifying characteristics in the picture--but Bag Sorter Person, you know who you are!

We ate snacks:

See those cupcakes in the upper-left corner? Hannah made them just for this event. Let's take a closer look at her little yarn balls and little scarves:


They looked so real at first glance that one person actually asked if she knitted the icing. Hannah, I think you'll soon be ready for a job at Charm City Cakes.

Of course, the best part of Yarn Tasting was tasting the yarn. Kim served it up to everyone:


And we all played with a bunch of great yarns that night. I even let her keep all the descriptions in those handouts you see in her left hand. I had my editing pen at the ready but decided that when she wrote that "Dreams Really Do Come True," I felt as if I was at Disney. I love going to Disney. So I didn't change a word in any description.

Everyone had a blast. In fact, it may have been the most fun we've ever had at an event.

Which means we need to do it again.

Look for another Yarn Tasting, coming up sometime in the spring!

Mmmmmmmm...... Good


Coming up this Thursday is our first Yarn Tasting. We have a nice little party planned, and we're both so excited! This is an Event. We've chosen 8 yarns to taste--and everyone who attends gets a sample.

I have never attended an actual wine tasting on account of how I do not like the taste of wine, but Kim has explained to me that this will be similar to a wine tasting. She says that at a wine tasting, you get a little sample and then want more; on a yarn level, this makes a lot of sense to me. We'll no doubt be telling you to sniff each yarn to see if it has a sheepy bouquet.

We have a lot of good things planned: We'll have not only a discount for that night on the yarns we taste, but of course we'll also have snacks and door prizes. Kim keeps coming up with dramatic, fun ways of showing off the yarns. She is worried that I will be boring and only tell you, "This is yarn. You can knit it. Or crochet it." This low-level of drama from me is indeed a very real danger.

But Dearest Kimmie: For you, I will try my best to be dramatic! I promise!

We both spent today making a lot of cute little mini-skeins. Kim has been spending the past few days writing up wonderful descriptions of the yarn. Today, I threw that off a bit with my last-minute shuffles of exactly which yarns we're going to taste.

By now you might be wondering what my role is in this whole thing other than winding mini-skeins. It's my job to explain what we can make out of all the yarns. I'm in the middle of researching that. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it.

Above is your preview. We got it yesterday. I'm madly playing with it to see what I can tell you about it. Hint: This picture is an extreme close up.

We have just a few opening left for this event, so if you're interested, give us a call ASAP!

Yarn Tasting: Thursday, September 25, 6-9 p.m.

That Time of the Year

It is that time of the year for me. The same thing happens every year.

Every fall, I have a list of new projects that I'm excited to start. In fact, I have that list right now.

But I also have a lot of old projects dragging along, because I always start with a long, long list every fall, start them all, and then don't have time to finish them all over the winter. I start to get mad at them. And then I work like a dog to finish them. That is what "Labor Day" is all about.

For the past few weeks, I have been working like a dog on finishing up projects. I am thrilled to report a few that are out of my hair. Let's start with the quilts.

First, is my brother Alex's quilt. It is my feeling that when a wall-hanging is actually hanging in a house, it is super-ultra done:

(Didn't I tell you he likes fancy stuff?) I had been too lazy to put a quilt hanger on the back, but he didn't know it was supposed to have one, and he figured out on his own how to hang it. Thanks, Bro. You saved yourself another 6-10 months of your quilt not being done.

How do I know this? Because I just finished my other brother's quilt.

Below is my brother Todd's quilt. He lives in Colorado. He likes earthy stuff. I had given his wife and him the quilt top for Christmas 2007. Deb quilted it in January. I finally finished hand-sewing the binding last week:

Should I mail it, or at this point, give it to them for Christmas 2008?

I know it looks innocent enough, but below is the most nagging UFO I've had a while:


It was the Block of the Month that Deb Kerr and I designed in 2006, which we called Starry Night. Back in 2006, Deb had finished hers, so I was able to show her finished one to the block-of-the-month groups. Mine, with deadline-motivation thus gone, languished. Until this week.

I got tired of looking at it on my piles (or maybe I wanted my head clear for the 2009 Block of the Month that I'm in the middle of designing). Whatever the reason, I finally sewed on the borders, which was all that was left. DONE. Now it's Deb's turn to quilt it.

It's all yours, Deb!

Next, I pieced a tree skirt for a class I'm teaching in October. I'm well pleased with it:

It still needs to be quilted, but since it's a new project, I am not feeling the pressure yet. Having it pieced kind of feels like it's done, at least for the moment.

On to knitting. Knitting is a bit less instant-gratification. It seems as if you sit your butt down to quilt, then the quilt gets done (unless you're a hand-quilter--and then my sympathies are with you). But knitting--when you're "almost done," you still have hours or even days of work left. I have a few projects that are "almost done." But I do have one that is actually done.

Remember that Back-to-School vest from Fitted Knits that I was making? Here it is:

And as a glorious bonus, I don't actually have to go back to school. Ha!

In case you are interested in knitting it, I ended up modifying the shoulders to make them way more narrow. (I didn't really take good notes. I used my eye to judge them, and then, when they were still too wide, I steeked them into the shape I wanted.) And I had to cast off the armholes and neckline several times before they looked right. That's life in knitting. I'm thrilled with it, and am thinking about putting a few more vests on my to-list for fall.

Because when you finish one project, you can start two more.

Diamonds are Forever

About 6 months ago, my mother visited Bassett Hall, a Rockefeller house at Colonial Williamsburg. There, in one of the bedrooms, she saw a knitted coverlet that she fell in love with. (Go to this page, click on the lower picture in the master bedroom, and you will see a small picture of it.) She asked about it, and it turned out that another knitter had figured out the cabled pattern and had written out her instructions for any tourist to have.

My mother took home those instructions, and started thinking about it. She was at a point where she was ready for a new project.

She decided to swim that ocean.

Now, before you decide to jump in too, let me tell you a little about what you'll need to do to knit it.

The coverlet is knit into long strips with crochet thread. My mother used #10 crochet cotton. She is using Maxi, which is a gorgeous thread made in Austria that you can only get at a Local Yarn Shop. (She has a good source for it, however.) To make the coverlet, we figured she needed somewhere around 40 skeins of the Maxi. Each skein has 600 yards.

Each strip takes 2 skeins of yarn, or 1200 yards of thread. To put it in perspective, for each strip she makes, my mother is working on the equivalent of knitting one medium-sized sweater in worsted-weight yarn.

But it is not worsted weight. She is on a size 0 needle. (She calls it 2 mm, because millimeter sizing is more precise. My mother steadfastly refuses to talk in American knitting needle sizes. If you are going to make this coverlet, you need to have this frame of mind too.)

Each strip has 19 repeats of a diamond-shaped motif. She plans to make roughly 14 strips. (If you've done the math, you know that she will need around 28 skeins for the strips, not the 40 we got her. We got her 40 skeins of yarn because there is also an enormous amount of fringe, fringe eats yarn, and neither my mother nor I wanted to take any risks on yardage.)

She told me that she cannot ever think of the whole project because it's too overwhelming. She thinks of one diamond at a time. Each day, her goals is to knit a half a diamond. She works on it about 3+ hours a day, and at that rate, it takes her about 40 days to make a single strip.

So far, she has 3 strips and is well up the fourth. This is the one strip that is blocked so far:


So that the strips are joined perfectly at the same spot, Mom has tied on little pieces of red thread between motifs:

Extreme closeup:


She will join the strips by matching up where the thread is. (She's been experimenting with different ways of joining, so I cannot yet give details on that.)

Now that you know about all the work that goes into it, do you know how much the Rockefellers paid for their coverlet in what we suspect was 1930s? About $15.00.

Lest you think that this was a lot of money back then, I ran this amount through an inflation calculator. (Isn't the Internet a wonderful place?) If you were to buy this at the Rockefellers' cost today, you would spend about $225--approximately half the cost of the yarn alone.

And people wonder why knitters don't sell their work!

Nature at the Shop

Here in Happy Valley, we all live among a great deal of incredible Nature.

On account of how our job is what you might call the inverse of "Forest Ranger," Kim and I spend most of our time indoors. But occasionally, on the way back and forth from our cars, we have do an encounter or two with the Nature that Surrounds Us.

This week, I have seen quite a bit. It started with a bird's nest that had apparently been finished with and dropped out of a tree:

Whoever made that one was quite an architect and builder.

I also saw this strong little ant carrying a dead moth on the sidewalk. As a yarn lover, I never much mind if I see a dead moth, even though I realize that moths are probably an important part of the Nature that Surrounds Us:


Go on, sweet little ant. Gather your provisions and get ready for winter!

And then today, this little guy came in with one of our customers who does animal rescue, looking for a home:

He's probably about 6 weeks old, no name yet (though when Kim tried out names, he clearly preferred "Max" to "Spats"). He needs a kind, loving home with plenty of Kitten Chow available. We have the information if you're interested.