Here is the Celtic Stained Glass wall hanging I made in a class with Beth Ann Williams. The pattern is from her book Celtic Quilts. I used pre-made fusible bias tape and my itty bitty iron.
If this uploads, I have become a crackpot geek! And I only had to call for help once!
Marty
For all your crossword and/or chocolate fans, here’s a photo of the World’s First All Chocolate Crossword Puzzle* that I sent to Marty for the recent celebration. Obviously I am inordinately proud of the Crackpottiness of this project.
Ann
*There are no data to support this claim.
For a photo of one of my wackiest projects, go to http://junecookscreativesewing.com/newsletter.pdf. Go to page 5 and check out the picture. I’m pretty sure I am the third from the left.
Marty
Here, to grace the pages of our Crackpot Website, are photos of the heart quilt that we all made this summer at Lake Goshorn and which I just delivered to The Villages here in Lafayette a couple of days ago. First, two pictures of the quilt taken in our living room:
And then a photo of the quilt being held by Vivian Leuck, manager of the Lafayette office of The Villages. This is the photo that I already e-mailed to all of you.
Woo hoo, everyone!!! I think I have successfully uploaded my first photo!!! It is the photo of my modification of the cute little critters that Rebecca knitted for all of us for Christmas. I hope you all like it. If I really was successful and if uploads, I will upload a few photos of our Crackpot Linus Quilt, which should now probably be know as the Crackpot Villages Quilt.
Very cool, Rebecca! That seems like a crackpot project, all right…
I’ve been working on my blue jacket. The fastenings will be different than anything I’ve done before. I spent 2+ hours this am trying to get a tube of the wool turned. Success at last! But not quite as many steps as your hat.
Marty
1. Decide to make a hat with earflaps for running, using fair isle-esque techniques.
2. Determine desired yarn characteristics: superwash worsted weight wool
3. Search internet for patterns
4. Find one pattern that is nice, except
a. gauge is different
b. hat is knit top-down
c. top shaping is strange
d. I only like some of the colorwork
5. While at yarn store, covet some Cascade 220 superwash yarn, but resist buying it because I have multiple other projects in process
6. Go back to said yarn store two days later, only to find that one of the colors I’d wanted to buy is no longer in stock, and I can’t make a pleasing color combination with other colors which are available.
7. Decide to knit with Dale Freestyle yarn instead.
8. Since the freestyle comes in smaller skeins, decide to buy 4 colors instead of the previously-planned two.
9. Spend a long time debating which color should be the 4th in the set. Yarn store owner advocates one color, I decide I prefer the other
10. Get in line to check out with choice of colors.
11. While waiting in line, try to put the colors together in 2-color subsets.
12. Decide that there isn’t enough contrast.
13. Switch to other possible 4th color, which provides more contrast.
14. Purchase yarn.
15. Knit gauge swatch
16. Decide I’m getting 11 stitches/2 in
17. Cast on 110 stitches, but don’t start knitting
18. Determine that the colorwork I liked from the pattern I found on the web doesn’t have a stitch repeat that will fit evenly into 110 stitches.
19. Look through numerous books in search of a colorwork pattern that will fit evenly into 110 stitches.
20. Chart something that is vaguely pleasing.
21. Decide that I really should admit to myself that I’m getting 10.5 stitches/2 in, so I should use 105 stitches instead.
22. Look through numerous books for colorwork patterns that will fit evenly into 105 stitches.
23. Downsize a 17-stitch pattern to make it 15 stitches
24. Add some more color changes to it to reduce incidences of long floats.
25. Chart out pattern.
26. Start knitting hat.
27. Realize while doing the 2nd repeat of the pattern that I think I would’ve preferred the “less contrast” color combination after all, or smaller bands of color. Grumble to self.
28. Oh well, I can always make another hat suitable for wearing in public when it’s not 6 am and I’m not running.
29. While at work, ponder top decrease options and come up with really cool idea for reducing star size.
30. Work on hat some more, see that really cool decrease idea would lead to incredibly long stocking cap.
31. Do far less exciting, but much easier and shorter decrease pattern.
32. Determine size of earflaps, chart out earflap pattern
33. Choose color combination for earflaps
33. Knit earflaps on to bottom of hat.
34. Grumble to self about two-color purling, ponder using slightly different purling techique for one of the yarns, but that would take more thought.
35. Note that earflap color combination makes the high-contrast second pattern repeat stand out even more.
36. Use one of the high-contrast colors for edging along bottom of hat.
37. Rationalize less-than-attractive color combination as a way to prevent wearing of sweaty running hat in polite company
38. Further rationalize that the color combination with less contrast still wouldn’t have coordinated with the scarf I made earlier in the winter for dressy wear, or the mittens I’m going to make to coordinate with the scarf.
Unfortunately my digital camera likes to eat batteries even when turned off, so no pictures until batteries are recharged.
Here, with a little luck, is a photo of the Whimsy Twins, the name I have given to the critters Rebecca knitted for all of us for Christmas. Rebecca, as you can see, creativity begets creativity. First, it was clear to me that your little critters needed faces, and that brought me to my button box. As you can see, they do indeed have faces. But my button box also contained a cow button and some beetle buttons that clearly needed to be used. So the Twins became Beetle Belly and Cow Tummy. Then I filled their bodies with dried navy beans and stitched them up, so now the Twins can stand up on their own. For now, they will hang out in the general vicinity of my sewing table until Nicholas and Andrew arrive to play with them.
Hi, Cathy!
So, I’m very proud of myself for editing my post on Associate Crackpots, but then I remembered that I used Mary’s last name in a comment I made on “How to post a comment.” How do I edit that? And it was easy to edit my post on Associate Crackpots because there was a button right at the bottom of the post that said ‘Edit.” So I did. But none of the other posts seem to have Edit buttons. Is that because I can only edit posts that I wrote, so that button only appears on my posts on my screen?
And how do we get rid of old stuff when it starts to clutter up the blog? You all know how I hate clutter!! I don’t want to delete any really important stuff, but I doubt that we need to keep posts or comments that are basically, “Wow! Look at me! I just figured out how to log on!!”
One more question. It seems that I never logged off several days ago when I left the site because I was still logged on when I tuned in today. Is that a problem?
I am not getting the e-mails that Ann wrote about… er–now I get it–someone has to comment on my comment… Duh!