Sorry, I didn’t mean to miss a week. I cannot even think about what happened that I did not get around to posting last week. This has been a week of completion and experimentation. Starting with experimentation, one of my colleagues mentioned venison a couple of weeks ago, I think it was Halloween actually, and I decided that I wanted to experiment with some different meats. This is good for my diet since I am supposed to be eating relatively low carb and high protein. One of the products I ordered was a stew sampler pack. Last week I made antelope stew and right now on my stove is a bison stew. Since cabbage is supposed to be very good for digestion, and I’m half Hungarian, I added half a head of cabbage to each batch of stew. I just finished listening to “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and decided to add some vinegar to my stew as well as making sure that I have added enough salt to actually flavor my stew. I’m excited to see the end result. On to Crafting Content!

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I had been storing a guild loom for a couple of years, and yesterday I took it to a guild meeting so that someone else can store or use it for a while. This has freed up enough floor space for me to put up two of my flat topped bookcases so that I can put my swift on top and have it freely spin. This is going to make it much easier to turn hanks into center pull balls. This has also given me somewhere to put my craft sets for crafts that I either do not use much or intend to get to in the near future (leather painting and paper making specifically).

This past Thursday’s craft class went fairly well. I had several people learn how to English Paper Piece (everyone that came and was physically capable learned) but a couple of problems popped up. Since I have use it or lose it vacation time that I am working to finish I was not at the craft class last week. While I was gone a new person came and saw the pouch one of my patrons was working on and a colleague, innocently, gave the new patron a pouch so that they could work on it. So last week while I was trying to teach English Paper Piecing I had another patron wondering why I wasn’t taking time out to haul out the wool and teach them embroidery stitching. Fortunately I was able to get the patron to work on an English Paper Piecing Project and I sent them home with wool and a book on Embroidery Stitches. There was also enough of a problem with a child hanging around that my supervisor has decided that there will be a simple craft or Makerspace activity in the Children’s area while the adult crafting is just for Adults starting in December. Fortunately, I had several people completely finish their projects so I look forward to seeing what will become of them in the future, I hate to feel mean about this but I teach a craft in the Makerspace for the young children on Mondays, Teens on Tuesday, so Thursdays are for Adults, and sometimes like with these sharp hand sewing needles it is dangerous for the children to be underfoot. As it is I am frankly surprised that no one stabbed themselves, especially since I said that someone would.

For my personal crafting I forgot my thread and needles so I could not make any progress on my Nova Quilt EPP by Tula Pink EPP Project during the class nor when I brought it to my guild meeting yesterday. I’ll take that as a sign that I need to get my stuff organized better. I did finish the piece I had on my 32″ rigid heddle loom. I decided to use up the Cascade 220 yarn I had lying around from my experiments in knitting two sides at once to create a picture (cannot remember what that is called). I thought that it was super wash so I just threw it in the washer, the fringe felted a bit but most of it looks great. It is not as wide as I though it would be so it is now a shawl. I love the length and it is quite warm without being heavy at all.

I am working on pulling out my embroidery machine so that I can make up some Christmas Presents for the family. I hope to remember to take pictures of each piece as I finish them. I still haven’t finished my halloween quilt and I have to face the fact that my idea of making my Aunt a quilt isn’t going to happen in time for Christmas. I’m probably not going to get my sister’s done in time either but I do plan on working toward that over the holidays.

Until Next time I hope that you remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!

*Update: This was supposed to be posted Sunday but I didn’t get a picture of the blanket in time, so instead I’m going to update this with new information and photos to post Tuesday.

So the shawl turned out very nice. I have also been working on a couple of my other projects. I managed to get another piece added to my English Paper Piecing Project. I find that if I have all of the supplies readily at hand it is much easier to work on the project.

Speaking of Sewing I have been trying to figure out embroidery on bags, it turns out that the bags I purchased are too small for me to hoop one side and push the rest of the second side out of the way. This means that I get to learn how to create embroidered patches. The instructions I found state that you use a satin stitched outline on wash away stabilizer, then cut out a piece of cloth to fit that outline (the outside of it so that the cloth gets caught by the outline, spray stabilize the fabric, satin stitch over that then complete the design. It turns out that the spray stabilizer is very important, and that it is pretty easy to take apart the throat plate of an embroidery machine to get the knotted thread cleaned up.

Though getting things cleaned up does involve sharp, tiny scissors and a lot of snipping., The spray stabilizer should be here on Saturday.

Finally I have been working some on my peg loom sock. I love the yarn and hope that this type of ‘sock knitting’ will help me to get these actually knit!

I think that this is enough for a cold, late fall day. Stay warm and remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!