Igolochkoy

Every so often I get a hankering for igolochkoy. It's an amazing dish made from dried beetle shells, horseradish and fermented brussell sprouts. It's great with ketchup. Nah, just kidding...igolochkoy is just the fancy pants Russian way to say punch needle embroidery.
I usually have a punch needle project going at any given time because it takes me forever to complete them. They begin as travel projects and it's anybody's guess as to when I finally finish them. They get tossed aside and forgotten once the vacation is over and rediscovered months later in my sewing room under a pile of other abandoned projects.
Anyway, I completed my most recent forgotten punch needle project over the weekend and I thought I'd share it on my blog. Ha! Like people actually read my blog. I know for a fact that my dearest loveliest mama is my one and only reader. So I'll just go ahead and address this post to her directly.
Hi Mom! How's the house search going? Make sure you get a house with a huge sewing room so that we have plenty of space to play when I come visit. Adrian says he will build you another water feature if you have room in your new backyard. Here's the my latest punch needle project: I started it last summer on a camping trip. It was when Sandra (my sister) came to visit and we went to Crescent Lake. Sandra started a punch needle project too which I know for a fact that she hasn't finished. She ran off with my Cameo punch needle tool and now it's lost forever in the wilds of Alaska. Mom, will you tell her to give it back?Here's a few other punch needle projects that I've done over the years...This one I started when Adrian and I were staying on Molokai one winter. The hibiscus flowers were blooming and there was a lime tree right outside our door.
I made this next one an a road trip one summer from Minnesota to Oregon. It was Adrian, Sandra and I on this journey. We camped along the way and got to experience a herd of bison take over our campsite in North Dakota.The heart reminds me to always love my sister even though she turns into Senorita Cranky Pants after a sweaty three day car ride. Being rudely denied a bathroom by an over zealous camp hostess at the John Day Recreation Area did not help the situation one bit.
I made this next project while I was in a neck brace and recuperating from a broken neck. Mom, when you came out to stay with us it was a life saver. Adrian always says what a relief it was to have someone help him change my diapers. HA! Just kidding, I didn't need diapers. But I certainly know how very lucky I am to not be in a wheelchair right now. DMC had just come out with their variegated embroidery floss. I love that stuff for punch needlework.
I've already shared this one, but here it is again. I made this one on another trip to Molokai. My sister Sandra was with us and she wanted it badly (she loves turtles). I gave it to her to remember the trip by and to ease the horrors of the mutant tropical rodent that was living in the kitchen of our rental house. I really liked this one, it was my first all original punch needle design, so made myself a replica. The one I have is way better that the one Sandra has. Anyway Mom, call me when you get back from Boise.
Love,
Pammie

Specs

It was just a matter of time. My eyes have finally aged to the point where I need reading glasses. Particularly at night when I am embroidering or beading. I was having a really hard time threading my needle and I was starting to get headaches. Last weekend I was working on an embroidery project and I asked Adrian if I could borrow his reading glasses. Holy Cow! I couldn't believe how great it was to see my stitches close up. So I decided to take the plunge and go buy a pair of my own. Adrian frugally suggested the dollar store. Come on!! My eyes may be getting older, but I haven't lost my mind. All of my girlfriends have really funky and fashionable reading glasses and I wasn't going to settle for some ugly cheapo dollar store glasses.

Anyway, I was at The Three Kittens Needlework Store on Wednesday spending my grocery money on Caron Watercolors thread because it was on sale and what do you think I found in the front display case??? These fabulous turquoise reading glasses and they were BEDAZZLED!!!
Best of all they were marked down from 40 dollars to a mere seven bucks. Bazinga! I had found my reading glasses. I decided that they needed a fancy case and I knew just the fabric to use. My beloved Micheal Miller koi and lilypad bark cloth. So I cut a square along with two layers of batting and some pretty pink polka dot lining fabric and free motion quilted them together. Next I cut it into a pocket shape and added some pretty ric rac trim. I stitched it all together and added some green gros grain ribbon to bind the top and voila! I had a spiffy new glasses case. It is the perfect thing to hold my new fancy bedazzled eyeglasses.

Taste the Pretty

I am just about finished up with all of my frivolous knitting projects and I am getting ready for something fun and new. We've had a bit of a thaw here in Minnesota this week which got me in the mood to work on something with spring colors. Also, decorating those little felted hearts totally made me hungry for an embroidery project. So I took a long look in my cigar box filled with my favorite size 8 perle cotton and all I saw was a bunch of dark saturated colors. Bummer. What to do...what to do...hmmm. I clearly had no choice but to take a little road trip to the nearest needlework store.
So off I went today to Three Kittens Needle Arts. In addition to being a great little yarn shop, it is also a fully stocked needlework shop. One of the best things about Three Kittens is their friendly and welcoming staff. There are a couple of other needlework shops in the area that are so snobby and high falutin' and I do not tolerate their snooty pretension very well.
Like most needlework shops, Three Kittens seems to cater to the needlepoint and cross stitch crowd. But there are oodles of wonderful threads for the non-canvas embroiderer like me. I went looking for DMC perle cotton and was delighted to find Finca perle cotton instead. I really love Finca thread. It's made in Valencia, Spain and it comes in so many lustrous colors. I was so happy to find a local source for it. I also snagged a couple of skeins of Caron Watercolors hand dyed thread. I am crazy about this stuff as well. I use it single ply and feels similar to size 5 perle cotton. Again, there are so many colors and I want one of each. Three Kittens was having a sale on the Watercolors for 2 bucks each which is a really great sale and it goes to the end of February. I'm heading back there next week with my grocery money to stock up.
Next week I'll share the embroidery projects that I am starting over the weekend. Here's a sneak peek at one of them and here is another. Have a happy weekend!

Croc-a-doodle-doo

Almost every Friday I get together and knit with my pals Beth and Sue. We have the best time and sometimes even manage to knit while we are together. A couple of weeks ago Beth glanced down at my ginormous black Crocs and said: 'You know Pam, I think that there is a pattern for knitted Crocs liners out there somewhere'. Prior to this announcement, I'm pretty sure that I was whining that the fleece liners that the Crocs came with were all squished and linty and flat.
Anyway, the rumor of this pattern immediately intrigued me as I am always looking for a completely frivolous project to squander my time on. So I did a bit of searching on the Wide Wide World of Web and found not only a knitting pattern, but also a crochet pattern as well. I settled on the knit pattern even though it was for a pair of size 8 liners and my lined winter Crocs are a size 11. I figured that I could adapt the pattern to fit and what the hey, the pattern was only a buck anyway.The pattern was quite easy. You knit a garter stitch sole, pick up the stitches around the sole, knit a few rows, shape the top of the sock and finish with some rows of k2 p2 rib. It reminded me a lot of knitting those stay-on baby booties that I think everyone has knit before. I tweaked the pattern a bit to get a better fitting liner with more room in the instep and to avoid some pesky short rows in the ribbing that the pattern called for. I also made my liners left and right foot specific, something that the pattern did not do. It was a great pattern to use as a jumping off point for customization. Or you could not be an obsessive compulsive wench like myself and just knit the damn things exactly like the pattern instructs. But where's the fun in that, right?
So I knit up a pair of robin's egg blue liners first. I knit them with Lion Brand Cotton Ease yarn. It's a cotton/acrylic blend that I thought would wash well (and it does!).
After completing the first pair and dancing about the house in them for a few days, I decided to test out my revamped pattern to make sure that everything was written down correctly. So I knit another pair in the same yarn, different color. This time in a lovely key lime green.I have to say that these liners are the absolute bees knees. They are super thick and squishy because you knit with two strands of yarn held together. They keep my feet toasty warm whether I am wearing socks with them or not. This is a really wonderful thing because the wooden floors in my house are absolutely frigid in the winter. In fact, my ice rink floors were the reason for me buying Crocs in the first place.I am quite happy with this little knitting project. I am happy, my feet are toasty, and now its time to move on to the next completely frivolous project to squander my time on....

Happy Valentine's Day

I have been doing a bit of frivolous knitting these past few weeks. This time it's tiny hearts that have captivated me. It began with the purchase of Mags Kandis' latest book called Gifted. On the cover is a bunch of the cutest little knit and felted hearts that you've ever seen. The hearts alone enticed me to buy the book and I am so glad that I did. There are some really great projects in it. I rarely purchase knitting books and prefer to check them out from the library, but this book is definitely a keeper.
Anyway, I got the book last fall and knit up a few of the hearts. They are the ones pictured above, in the bowl of crocheted acorns. They turned out okay, but in my opinion (which means absolutely nothing), the pattern was kind of fiddly. I really don't want to criticize the pattern because it is really quite clever and is a brilliant work of engineering. But I just didn't like knitting it and I wasn't perfectly happy with how they turned out after felting them in the sink. I still really wanted to make some little hearts so I did a search on Ravelry for another pattern. Lo and behold, I found a pattern called Little Hearts by Teresa Fox. The pattern was absolutely wonderful. Teresa included some really useful pictures as she knit the heart and best of all, the pattern is a free download. I found it an absolute breeze to knit and I easily memorized the pattern after knitting a few hearts. The pattern calls for worsted weight yarn. Because I wanted my hearts to be a bit smaller, I used 2 strands of fingering weight on size 7 needles . I also did not use Teresa's figure eight cast on. I did a long tail cast on of four stitches and divided them on two needles. I felted my hearts first before stuffing them. I did it by hand with hot soapy water. It took about a minute apiece. The yarn I used is called Palette by Knit Picks. Knit Picks has super affordable yarn which is perfect for frivolous knitting projects like the little hearts. As with many of my frivolous knitting projects, I got totally carried away and knit a zillion of them. I intended to embellish them all with stitching and beads and such, but that will have to wait for a bit as I am kind of burned out on hearts at this point. I did manage to embellish a few during the Superbowl last weekend.I have another frivolous knitting project that I completed last week. I'll share that next....

Meet Claude

This is Jean-Claude. He is french and he used to live in Paris....on the left bank, of course. He spent his days writing poetry in his flat above the boulangerie Poilane on Rue du Cherche-Midi. He had to flee the country after an altercation with a Bulgarian juggler. That's how he came to be living with me on Rue de Eustis in Saint Paul.This past Christmas Adrian and I decided to give each other toys. Just toys, and nothing else. He got an tiny flying indoor helicoper and a knex build-a-monster-bug-robot kit. I got shrinky dinks, hello kitty lip gloss, a hypotrochoid art set and a knit-a-monkey kit. Adrian was really unsure if I would like the monkey kit so he got me a robins egg blue Chantal tea pot just in case. He did not need to worry about me not liking the monkey, I absolutely adored it and I had a total blast knitting it from beginning to end. There was a great deal of giggling as I knit the long gangly arms, legs and tail. This was one of the best gifts ever. I used some self striping sock yarn to crochet the scarf. I made the scarf really, really long, just like Dr. Who.

Winter Vacation

For me, one of the best parts about living in Minnesota is the glorious winter. The skies are blue and the pale sun is always shining. The snow sparkles and the frigid air takes your breath away. I absolutely love it here in the winter. I wake up smiling and look forward to the day ahead.
Unfortunately, this past week the skies overhead have been gray and dreary. The temps warmed up and the snow was alternately slushy and icy. It totally threw me off my game and I had a really hard time getting motivated. So today I am going to take a break from the gray skies and re visit a quilt that I made last spring.I made this quilt for Alex, one of my most favorite girls, who was graduating from high school last May. I wanted her to have something pretty that she could take to college with her this past fall. I've known Alex since she was a tiny baby and consider myself so lucky to have been able to watch her grow up into an amazing young woman.
Over countless sleepovers at my house Alex learned to sew and knit and be creative. She took her first canoe trip with Adrian and I when she was still in diapers and learned to paddle my kayak on a trip up to the Boundary Waters. We've has so much fun together over the years and it goes without saying that this quilt was stitched with a great deal of love for it's recipient.Because I wanted this quilt to be special, I decided to use my beloved stash of florals from Westminster Fibers. Most of the fabrics that I used are designed by Kaffe Fassett or Phillip Jacobs. The pale turquoise pansy fabric in the above picture in probably one of my all time favorite fabrics. It came in several different colorways and I confess that I bought every single one. The nine patch block is one of my favorite quilt patterns, I love it for it's simplicity and versatility. The blocks are six inches square and alternate with solid florals and nine patch blocks. I free motion quilted a loopy pattern with variegated thread. I finished off the quilt with a hand stitched tag on the back:In December, when Adrian and I went to visit Alex at college and I was happy to see the quilt scrunched up on her bunk bed in her dorm room. It made me happy to think of her sleepy and warm, curled up underneath the quilt that I made for her. Covering up with a handmade quilt is like a big fabric hug from the person who made it.

A Fresh Start

It has been over a year since I put anything up on this blog. I guess I just got lazy or bored or maybe a little bit of both. It could also be because I felt really bad for using my blog for evil last year when I shamelessly begged for votes when I entered a contest at Marx Foods. The blog just didn't seem like much fun after that little debacle. But I think a year is enough time to slack off, so I guess I'll try my hand a blogging again. Plus, my mom said I should start blogging because she likes looking at the projects I've been working on. Well, I can hardly say no to my dearest loveliest mama.

This little pillow is something that I made earlier this month while I was recovering from the black plague. I got the pattern from my friend Phyllis. Phyllis lives in Sisters, Oregon close to my parents house. She and my Mom are good friends who share a love of quilting. Whenever I am home for a visit, my mom and I get together with Phyllis for a day of fun and creative inspiration. She's one of the most talented and amazingly creative women that I know. Just hanging out in her sewing room is like a shot of creative adrenaline. When I was home in October, I noticed a darling little yellow wool pillow in Phyllis's sewing room. There were four little quail appliqued on it and the best part of all was that they had googly eyes! I was immediately smitten and asked about the pattern. Phyllis said that she saw a quilt on a tv show that had quail on it and that's where she got her inspiration. She very kindly shared the pattern that she made with me.The pillow is about 16 inches wide by 11 inches tall. All of the felted wool is from my stash that I've collected over the years. I used DMC broder medicis wool floss for the applique and embroidery. Broder medicis has been discontinued and it breaks my heart every time I think about it. I love that thread and wish that I could find a good replacement for it. I didn't have googly eyes so I used some white flower beads for the eyes. I like Phyllis's googly eyes better. If you look closely at the bottom of the pillow, one of the stems of sagebrush is missing it's little french knot flowers. I didn't even notice that until I was editing the photos of the pillow. I must have just spaced that out in my nyquil and benadryl induced delirium. I really did make this while I was recovering from a nasty bug. I felt good one day and managed to get the pillow top assembled and my embroidery supplies organized. Then I had a relapse, was sick for a few days and then I embroidered this while wrapped in quilts on the couch. Once I was feeling better I sewed the whole thing together. It was a really quick, fun little project that kept me amused while I was stuck in the house. Thanks, Phyllis for the inspiration!

Scones and a Sweater

There was a new episode of The Barefoot Contessa on the food network yesterday. I think I must be Ina Garten's number one fan. Well, maybe not number one because that title might be reserved for a stalkerish nutball ala Kathy Bates in the movie Misery. But I sure do love Ina's recipes and I wouldn't mind having a bite of lunch with her at a Paris cafe. Anyway, thanks to that new episode, Adrian and I enjoyed fresh maple oatmeal scones for breakfast. The recipe is a keeper for sure but I recommend halving it because it makes a butt load of scones. In the future, I think I might play around with the amount of whole wheat flour and baking powder in the recipe (I always like to try adding more ww flour to my favorite recipes). I used a heart shaped cutter partly because I'm a romantic sap and also because it's a scientifically proven fact that everything tastes better when it's heart shaped.
This past week my former sister Brenda rebroadcast an essay that I wrote for her podcast, Cast On. It was an essay about the first sweater that I ever knit. I thought I'd post a few pictures of that sweater here. If memory serves, I think that I knit it five years ago or so. It took along time to work up the nerve to buy all the yarn for it because I was terrified that I wouldn't have the perseverance to finish it. Then I'd be stuck with this shaming pile of yarn that would heckle me and remind me of my failure. Thankfully I had my very own sweater coach who cheered me on and encouraged me as I went along. That role was filled by my former sister Brenda, by the way. She was great about keeping me motivated even though sometimes I had to remind her that the phone call was supposed to be of the 'Yay, Pam!' variety and not a venue for Brenda to tell me all about what was going on in HER life. In fact, most of our conversations include the phrase "Enough about you, let's talk about ME". The pleasure of who gets to utter that phrase depends upon which of us is yakking the most at the time.Anyway, the facts about the sweater are these: It's adapted from a pattern in an Aran Knits book put out by Knitter's Magazine. I knit it in this wonderful dark blue/purple color. The yarn was Lopi light because I happened to have a half a skein of it in my knitting basket and that's what I knit my swatch out of. I had never knit cables before and I wanted to see if I could do it so I grabbed the yarn and knit a swatch. I liked the look of it so I went to my local yarn shop and ordered the 4000 skeins that it would take to knit this sweater. (Bonus points to whoever can name the tv show that always began with narration by Jim Dale and the phrase: 'the facts are these'.Naturally, like everyone else who has knit their first sweater, I was immensely pleased with myself and I spent a good amount of time thinking that I was the cleverest girl on the planet. I wore (and still swear) my sweater a lot that first winter, and it's still my sweater of choice for cross country skiing. But the problem with Lopi light is that it's itchy as hell. Also, I discovered that my delicate moon flower of a face does not like itchy wool rubbed against it so I have to make sure that I wear a heavy turtleneck with the sweater. Also, Lopi light is a single ply yarn. I don't know if this is true about all single ply yarns, but my sweater has been growing steadily ever since I knit it. Though it's not quite down to my knees, it could almost be considered a dress at this point. I know it's just a matter of time before I have to breakdown and shorten it, but I am putting that thankless chore off for as long as I possibly can.

If you want to hear more about my sweater, pop over the Cast On and listen to the episode. Also, in case you were wondering, my former sister Brenda gave me to her partner Tonia because Tonia wanted a sister of superior quality to call her own. So now I am officially Tonia's sister and Brenda is now known as my former sister, Brenda.