Applique and knitting

I did more knitting than appliqué these past couple of weeks. I’ve started a new sweater called Moon Pulls, found here, using a wonderful wool called Washted by Malabrigo. It is so deliciously soft!!! I don’t want to put it down. It’s worsted weight yarn so it is going really fast. In addition to this much of the body, I already have the sleeves already done.



 I watched a few youtube videos and learned how to do two handed stranded colour work. I’m clumsy at it since my left hand has very little coordination, but it is a great improvement over one handed and having the colours of yarn twist around each other. And just because I’ve learned that new technique, I have to make sure I get lot of practice...... all new techniques require lots of practice don’t they? You know where this is going don’t you? I ordered more yarn and bought another pattern for yet another sweater. It’s likely going to be another week or 10 days before the new yarn gets here. I wonder if I can get this project done before then? Wanna see a picture of the new one? It’s called Canyon Road and is found here.
This seems to be my year to get engrossed in knitting. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d done until I got curious the other day to look at all the projects I’ve finished since last January. I won’t bore you with the names and details of each of them. But I did come up with an interesting statistic when I added up the yardage used on all of them. Over 18,000 yards of yarn which converts over to over 10 miles used in the past 10 months! YIKES!!
However, today I am determined to get back to my appliqué. I have half of this section finished but got stalled because I needed to trace out more of the shapes and draw in the embroidery lines.



The tracing of the shapes isn’t bad, but the placement of the embroidery lines is a bit more time consuming and bulky. It involves a makeshift light box using a desk lamp and a large clear tote box. The tote box gets balanced upside down on a foot stool and my lap with the desk lamp on the floor underneath everything. Then I have to wrestle the paper pattern that has been taped together and the quilt over top of that in order to do the placement tracing. All of which explains why I’d been putting off doing it. But now it’s done and I’m ready to go.



Time to fill up that empty space in between the diamonds and the berries with another pineapple and  pomegranate and all the other fun details.
Before I get to that I’m going to link up to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching.

Hand on your Heart

I’m continuing to work on this quilt. It has so much variety and interest that it is continuing to challenge me to keep going. I have the bird scenes finished now, except for a little bit of embroidery.



So now I’m moving on to what Esther Aliu calls the Bowl of Plenty Scene.



  These pieces are just sitting there. I have some embroidered stem to do before actually basting and stitching the elements into place. There are some leaves and flowers yet to prepare for stitching as well.  That pineapple took 3 tries with different fabrics before I got one I was happy with.



I’m not going to get much done on it this afternoon unfortunately. I have a dentist appointment..... very close to the top of the list of things I hate to do. I’m Linking to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching. I’m looking forward to seeing her post next week about the slow stitching retreat happening today.