Yesterday morning my feet were cold. I went looking for a pair of socks and found the only clean ones in my mending box. I sat down with my darning egg and picked a pair to work on.


These are my Lucy socks (that was the name of the yarn). The first pair of socks I made for myself and the second pair ever. I made them when we went to Nova Scotia for our honeymoon and British Columbia for my sister's wedding so they've got some nice memories attached to them.

After a while my socks didn't have holes anymore.


After a little more reinforcing they were keeping my feet warm.


There was another pair of socks nearby that needed reinforcing. This time it's pre-darning reinforcement. Do you recognize the socks? I promise a proper post once I've got some fun pictures to share.


Eventually I stopped thinking about socks ...

... and started thinking about slippers

... and which style to make:

The square toe?


Or the round toe?


I haven't made up my mind yet, but that's okay because I haven't decided what fabric I want to use either.

Right now I need to go make some newspaper pots and plant my sunflower seeds so they'll have a chance to bloom this summer.

My quilt survived the wash ... and feels wonderful and warm. I am wrapped up in it as I write. That trip through the washer completes my reasoning for this quilt. I'm not sure if you can really create a quilt out of laziness but that is how this one started: I had this lovely bag of scraps from Erin but I wanted to wash them before they went into my stash and I was just too lazy to wash and press that many little pieces. I knew they would fray and leave bits of thread everywhere and it just seemed like it would be easier to wash them without any of the raw edges showing. So I sewed them all together and made a quilt.

I had no idea what this would look like when I started. The scraps are very random and range from tiny little calicos to novelty prints of candy and insects. There are two different hot chili fabrics. Some pieces were large strips while others were tiny rectangles. There was even a small collection of triangles. It was so exciting to see things come together that I could hardly stand to work on anything else. I owe thanks to Blair of Wisecraft for the idea of using a solid colour for the binding and flannel for the backing. The flannel is so soft and warm and the binding really pulls everything together.


I spent almost the whole time I was piecing trying to figure out how I would quilt this. With so many little seams I was worried that machine quilting would result in a stiff quilt instead of the squashiness I was hoping for. I liked the idea of tying the quilt but I know from experience that Abby will happily spent an afternoon pulling out every last one. My compromise was to tie the quilt with bars of satin stitch on my machine (there is a quilt finished this way in Last-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts). I love the effect but did not enjoy the day spent tying off and sewing in all those little thread ends.


This quilt will live in our family room and I plan to spend plenty of time this winter curled up under it with a good book. It finished up at about 160 x 200 cm (65" x 80") making it a perfect size for curling up under without being too big. Abby and Zeke have both show a liking for this quilt while it was under production and I expect it will be regularly covered in a layer of insulating pet hair (what a good thing I know it can survive the wash).

I went thrifting with my sister this weekend and came home with some pretty good finds.

When I dumped out the button jar I got to sort things out I found this sweet little sailboat ...


and this tiny oval.


I found a package of three suiting fabrics that just have to be made into owls. They might make contributions to some fall cushion covers for the living room this year too.


Two large wooden embroidery hoops might get used for embroidery but are more likely to end up displaying some of my favourite fabrics. In favour of the embroidery, I found a long rectangular dress (all the dresses at the flea market were this style) of pure linen to add to my fabric stash.


I also snagged (but didn't photograph) a couple of bags of stuffing and some pillow cases. I think there is a lot of fabric washing in my near future.

Things just don't seem complete at the moment without a cute puppy picture, so here is Abby snoozing on the couch.