It's Feb. 28th!

That means that I have to have my February "A Lovely Year of Finishes" project done and posted - so here goes!
Our guild challenge this year is to make a project, crib-quilt size or larger, and it's to be made COMPLETELY from stash!  I've got lots to choose from; choosing a project would potentially cause an issue - that is, until I found a quilt in a magazine I was flipping through.

 I already posted the details in an earlier post, and now, I have the pleasure of being able to post the completed top!
The guild challenge doesn't require the project to be quilted, although that's in my plans for this season yet, but for now, I can bring this to our next meeting for "show & tell"!
I know that most of the braid sections are a mix of older and newer fabrics, but the outer border is a Debbie Mumm print from the 1990's - it's great to finally have the perfect project for it!  (Take note hubby - the fabric that I buy on all of those stops at quilt shops on our holidays DOES eventually get used!)

Time for a few cards!

It's been quite a while since I shared some new cards, so I'm going to change that right now.  I haven't needed any new cards lately, and now I suddenly needed 3 birthday cards.  I love Pinterest for inspiration, and that's where I went last night for some ideas.  I managed to give one card away without taking a picture of it first, but I grabbed shots of the other 2 - and here they are:

The owl card is for a young woman, and I thought that she'd enjoy the quirky owl.  The original card used a larger scalloped circle behind the owl, but I still haven't found everything back after my craft space reorganization.  Some of the parts that I needed for my Cuttlebug are still MIA, so this embossed flower petal is the best substitute that I had.  I had made another owl card just before this one, but I used brown cardstock for that one, and decided that I wanted something a little more cheerful than that, so So Saffron it was!

This second card is for an older friend - he enjoys the beauty of  nature (even bare, wintry trees!), so Lovely As A Tree was the stamp set I used.  I love how versatile the different tree stamps are!  This card idea looked really interesting - let's just say that making it well after midnight wasn't the BEST idea... but I think it turned out really well!  Once I got started, I began to worry about getting the spacing "just right" between the highlighted trees, but it really wasn't a problem after all.  I just might make this card again for a "Thank You / Happy Retirement" card - I'm going to need one of those in a week or so...

On my knitting needles today...

I'm trying to be better at posting things on the day that they're supposed to be posted - and I think that I'm right on time today.  I managed to finish the back of my sweater, and have started the sleeves.  The sweater will definitely need to be blocked!  When I knit a sweater, I try to knit both sleeves at once - that way, I'm bound to get the shaping in the right spot on both the sleeves, and they'll match perfectly.
I really like working with this yarn!  The stripes look good as they develop, although that will change when I do shorter sections, like the sleeves and the fronts.  I don't know if I'll get much knit tonight, and tomorrow is already looking like a REALLY busy day, so I don't anticipate even being able to pick up the needles.
I'll leave you with a pic of my progress so far:

We have a holiday on Monday - Family Day.  Hubby has to work (he's sort of self-employed in the winter) so I might have some knitting time on Monday!

Pink ScrappHappy Saturday blocks

I still seem to be blogging a day late - but I'm not going to worry about that too much!  I'm really enjoying making the scrappy blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I've decided that I'm going to make 2 Kickin' Stash blocks and 2 of the Japanese x and + blocks for every month - and so far, I'm keeping up!  (Please don't point out that this is only February - it's too early in the year to burst my bubble...!)
So, here are my two x and + blocks - you'll notice that I'm working at making the blocks completely from the months chosen colour - this month it's pink:

It's really strange - reds and greens are my favourite colours, and yet, I have LOTS of pink and blue fabrics, and also pink and blue scraps!  The challenge will be finding enough scraps for 4 blocks every month once we get into other more "exotic" colours - you know, like brown and purple....!

I'm going to try this...

I've recently started following Judy Laquidara - she quilts, and knits, and probably does 1 or 2 dozen other things too.  She hosts a number of blog "group projects" - one of which is "On the Needles".  What you do is take a picture of your current knitting project, and post it on Fridays.  We got home rather late last evening, and I didn't really feel like posting my knitting then, so I'll do it now; I'll do my best to post my progress weekly.
This is a kit that I won in a draw last year.  The Craft Supply store in Sarnia was celebrating their 10th anniversary, and anyone that purchased anything had their name entered in a draw for a number of different projects.  Imagine my surprise when I got a call from them a few days later, telling me that I had won!  I set it aside when I got home - I wasn't sure what I'd do with a sweater like this.  In the meantime, my go-to, absolutely FAVOURITE sweater developed a hole in the left elbow area, and the same thing happened to my back-up sweater.  I noticed the bag with this project Thursday afternoon, so I picked it up and started the back ribbing then.  I took it with me when I visited my dad that evening, and it came along with me when we went to Sarnia for an overdue anniversary supper yesterday with our daughter and son-in-law.  We watched Despicable Me after supper, and this mostly mindless knitting proceeded at a great pace!
I've just taken the picture of it, and I might try to get to the armholes tonight while watching some Olympic coverage - and here it is:

January's project was a bust; let's try something new!

I ran into SO many issues with my January "Lovely Year of Finishes" project - I finally just threw it aside.  I may pick it up again at some point (the fabrics cost too much to just abandon), but for now, it's not on my mind.  I'm choosing a fun project for February, especially seeing as it is a shorter month.  One of our quilt guild challenges this year is to make a project entirely from stash.  I've been bookmarking projects that appealed to me, but when I saw this one, I knew that I'd found THE quilt that I'm going to make.  It's in the Fons and Porter Scrap Quilts magazine (Fall 2011), and is called Technicolor Braid.  It's a little different than the traditional French Braid quilts, because the "legs" are half-hexagon blocks!  The best part is, you make it with 2 1/2" strips, and you can cut all the parts using a 60° triangle ruler!  No new ruler to buy, no trimming of the finished strips, and I found that after I cut the strip, if I flip the ruler over and line it up on the right lines, I can nip the points off the sharper corners to make lining the blocks up really easy!
The pattern calls for 5 strips, separated by sashing strips, but I might make it wider than that.  Here's a pic of the 5 strips I've started, and another one of some of the pieces ready to be sewn on:

Today's the first of February!

...and it's a Saturday - that means a new colour reveal for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge - and, appropriately for Feb, it's PINK!  I get to make some scrappy blocks for my scrappy rainbow project, and I'm going to stick with using the Kickin' Stash pattern.  These blocks work up fairly quickly, so I was able to cut out and sew both the KS blocks for this month, as well as completing a number of other activities.  Here are the blocks:

Some of the strips aren't truly pink - there's a few with dusty rose backgrounds.  I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to keep them in the blocks...

I'm also still drawn to making the Japanese x and + block, so I'm working on making a 2nd blue one for January yet; I'll leave the pink blocks for next Saturday.  I'm off to link these blocks to Vicki's site.