Everything Since April

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yikes, it's been 4 months! Summer started and is happening. I finished up my blue Cruiser mittens pretty quickly, the thick yarn and easy-to-remember pattern certainly helping. I knit a little hole into the palm of one so that I can turn the pages of my kindle when it gets cold out. I also finished up the quilt I started for Mary before she was born. The bright colors aren't really my style, but in the end I'm OK with it. The pattern was quite easy due to mostly strip piecing and bulk cutting. I can't remember where I got the pattern from, but it's somewhere on the internet so it shouldn't be too hard to find, right? What took forever was the quilting. I did free-motion quilting across the entire top and I pretty much hated it. I really underestimated the physicality needed to push and pull a full-size quilt under a machine. No wonder people pay other people to do this for them! I will definitely go that route for my next large quilt.

We went to Sheep & Wool and I bought NOTHING. True to my new year's resolution, I have bought no yarn this year and have knitted completely from stash. This actually worked out well because I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up which made me want to get rid of everything. I sent a large bag of craft supplies off to live with someone else, and I'm working on clearing the decks of my quilting WIPs so I can pare down my fabric collection even more. The fabric I was attracted to and was available decades ago (yes, it has been multiple decades since I started quilting) isn't my style anymore. I have one quilt ready for quilting, and another one about 1/2 pieced.

After 6 years of being away, we went back to New Mexico for a wedding in June. We mostly stayed around Santa Fe, eating chile-based foods and looking at Southwestern scenery. I wanted to go back to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, which was smaller than I had remembered, but is worth a visit. The plaza was cheesy as usual, although perfect if you're interested in a dreamcatcher or t-shirt with a howling wolf on it. We drove up into the mountains for a short hike, which was brutal at 10,000 feet; the views were amazing, however. Oddly, one highlight of the trip was the Jambo Cafe, an African restaurant. Highly recommended.

Of course, there have been baby pools and bowls of cheerios on the floor and naps and reading the same books over and over and over. As Mary would say, "It's allllll gooooooood."