She Lives!

Well, well. Look who's here. Despite rumors to the contrary, this blog and I are not dead. Merely resting, with eyes closed.

I finished up my spring schedule for travel teaching last Sunday, my last out of town booking until September. Wa hoo! I taught for the North Carolina Quilt Symposium, a statewide group that rotates locales around to be accessable to more members. The students were wonderful, the organizers were delightful. An excellent way to finish for the spring.

It's been five days now, and I think I've finally relaxed into my real life. I can't tell you how wonderful it is to know that I'll be sleeping in my own bed until the fall. I'll have this great, uninterupted expanse of time to explore new techniques (for the next, next book), and make a quilt for the next issue of Quilter's Newsletters special issue of fat quarter quilts (which will be out in December).

I'm glad to have cleaned up the studio before leaving for the Symposium. The fabric ended up going to a local charity which makes quilts for the homeless. My daughter-in-law's mother is in charge (which I didn't know when I first posted). I was happy to have the fabric going to a good home, especially serving local needy. Saginaw needs all the help it can get.

Along with tending my garden, I'm also looking forward to some knitting time. Knitting is what I do so I know I'm not working. When quilting became my job, I discovered that I needed to find a new hobby. I'm taking part in a summer challenge called Camp Loopy. Hosted by The Loopy Ewe, we'll have three projects to complete, one each of the summer months. Our first challenge was to knit a pattern by someone from a country different from our own.

This is Jaali, by Kitman Figueroa. It would have been easy, except that I kept miscounting my cast ons. I love knitting lace, and I particularly love knitting Kitman's patterns. They are very architectural. And the way we start at the bottom, casting on approximately two jillion stitches and then decreasing our way to the neck edge, makes the project move along quickly.

Even with the false starts, it took just about two weeks to finish. Knitting on travel days makes the airport hassle and waiting go by quickly. Our next project is to knit something that takes more than 800 yards of yarn. I'm going for Girasole. I do so love a challenge.