Bastille Day Housewarming Party

Lawson and I really like to entertain, so since we moved into our house in May, Lawson and I have been looking forward to having a housewarming party and breaking in our new house.  Since the weekend of July 14th was the best time for us, we decided to have a Bastille day themed party - which turned out to be a great excuse to come up with a french-themed menu.

I may have gone a little overboard... we had a cheese plate and a veggie tray, and I cooked a number of favorite items such as french lentil salad and meringues.  I made Smitten Kitchen's Zucchini and Ricotta Galette, which I had made once before and was just as yummy this time as the first time (although I didn't get a picture, so you'll have to take my word that it really does turn out as great as she says).  I also made a lemon curd fruit tart that I had made before but which I hadn't made in years, and which was a great way to use fresh berries from the farmer's market, and I made a broccoli quiche which I had made before (although I wasn't as thrilled with how it turned out).

I tried out a few new recipes - a mushroom walnut pate, and creampuffs (mini-eclairs) which were a big hit, especially with the kids at the party.  I'll be back to share recipes soon!

The party went really well and all the food was all a hit, although we were pretty wiped out afterwards.  We are looking forward to entertaining more in our house now that we are getting to be mostly settled in!

3 months of bee blocks

I feel like every blog post I have written lately starts with an apology about how long it has been since I last blogged, so I won't do that, other than to say I certainly didn't intend for it to be this long and hope to get back into a more consistent blogging habit soon!  In good news, we are all moved into our new house and getting closer to mostly unpacked.  We are really enjoying the new house and I am hoping to have much more time for sewing and other fun pursuits soon!
So, here are my last three months of bee blocks that I made for the Love circle of the do.good stitches bee.  Above are this past month's improv block for Jacey - I hadn't done much improv piecing before, and I really enjoyed making them!  I'll definitely have to do some more improv projects soon.

For May, Deb asked us to make Patchwork Wheel blocks from (tutorial by Elizabeth of Don't call me Betsy).  I had fun making these scrappy bright blocks and enjoyed the secondary pattern of a star that emerges when you put them together.

For April, Rachel asked us to make Polaroid blocks loosely following this tutorial - but said it was fine if they had fewer than 9 polaroids in each block.  I liked the looser arrangement with fewer "photos" so I paper pieced each of the polaroids and then basically built each part up and fit it all together.  It was really fun to get to fussy-cut some of my cute fabrics and showcase them with these blocks!

end of winter knitting

So, I have had in the back of my mind that I should do a knitting blog post soon, but I hadn't fully realized how long it had been since I had written one.  So long, in fact, that all these items now seem out of place because the seasons have changed... oops.  In my defense, it has only just started feeling warm here in Oregon and I actually just finished (and wore) one of the cowl (below) last week.  Anyways, this is kind of a roundup of the end of my winter knitting for the year.  Since I didn't have many hats or scarves that I had knit for myself (and those that I did have ended up in storage when we moved), I went on a bit of a winter accessories knitting bonanza this year, helped on by a temporary obsession with cowls - as seen in previous posts this winter here, here, here, and here.

Pretty much all the projects in this post came out of desire to think of a use for a fun yarn more than anything, and the winter accessories kick was a good fit with trying out new yarns without having to commit to a big project.  The hat above is the Claudia pattern, knit with 1 skein of superwash 220 that I bought exclusively because I loved the teal color.  The hat is a bit snug and since it was warming up by the time I finished it, I didn't get much wear out if it this year, but I am hoping that it will break in well with more use next year.

This necklace/cowl thing is made from the sevencircle pattern (although I ended up only making 6 circles), and was a great project for malabrigo sock yarn - which I had wanted to try but was hesitant to use for socks since it is 100% wool (no nylon) so it seemed like it would wear out quickly for socks.  It is an interesting pattern, where you cast on a bunch of stitches, knit some rows, then cast off most of the stitches and cast back on a different number, repeat.  You end up with loops attached by a small continuous section at the back that you can see in the photo above, and the back section mostly rolls up when you are wearing it and isn't too noticeable.

Finally, I just finished this cowl, the tuesday night cowl pattern, which was a great match for super soft tosh merino yarn.  I had heard folks online gush about tosh, but after having some serious pilling with other single ply yarns like malabrigo, I was hesitant to buy this expensive yarn for a big project.  I love the depth of color in the yarn, so it will be good to see how well it wears - if nothing else, I would definitely use it for more hats/scarves/cowls in the future, if not for a sweater (not that I have really been knitting adult-sized sweaters lately anyways).

This pattern was really fun, with a series of really big cables that give it a neat folded texture when you are wearing it.  The construction was cool too - you do a provisional cast on and then knit back and forth like you were making a scarf, and then at the end you do a grafting stitch to join the two sets of live stitches and make an invisible join to form the loop.  I tried a new provisional cast-on technique which was so much easier than the chained cast-on I have done in the past.  It was especially great because I was using my knitpicks interchangeable needles - since you end up with the new stitches held on a needle, I just took off the needle tips and put on the needle end caps while I was knitting making a convenient stitch holder.  Then at the end when I was ready to graft I just put a needle tip back on one end and I was ready to start the kitchener stitch. (Apologies for all the lingo for any non-knitters reading this).

In other news, we are moving on Friday, so the next time I post may be from the new house (fingers crossed we will have internet there soon).  I'll try to take some photos of the house to share here!

1001 Peeps Half Square Triangle Quilt

I finally finished up the twin-size half square triangle quilt that I have been working on today (which I mentioned when I posted about my HST placemats).  Crafting time (and blogging time, clearly) has continued to be more scarce lately as we finalized our house purchase.  Thanks for all the well wishes on my last post!  We closed this week and will be moving in about a month, we are very excited!

So, about the quilt - this is the first twin size quilt that I have pieced and then quilted myself and it made me even more impressed by folks that quilt bed size quilts on their home machines... it definitely took at lot of wrangling (and made me think about getting a nicer sewing machine with more room under the arm someday).  It was gorgeous out today and we went for a walk in a nearby park and took some quick photos of the quilt while we were there.

Lawson was having a hard time holding it all up since it really is pretty big, you can get a better picture of the design in this photo where the quilt is folded 2/5 of the way down.  It is a (late) 8th birthday present for my god-daughter, whose favorite color is purple.  I knew she would love these 1001 peeps fabrics (by Lizzy House) as soon as they came out, and I think I bought them all a year or so ago - I'm glad that I was finally able to make this quilt for her!

The quilt layout is 8 blocks wide by 10 blocks high, and each HST block is 8" finished (so they were 8.5" unfinished).  I wanted to go with a pretty large block size both to make the project more manageable, and to make sure that the characters in the fabric were visible.  I made most of the blocks using the technique where you sew all around the edges a square and then cut it diagonally twice into 4 HST blocks (shown here), so I started with 13.5" squares of fabric (and then I did trim the blocks still, although I'm not sure it was really necessary).

I quilted it with straight(ish) lines on the diagonal and used a pinkish-beige sheet for most of the backing, with a pieced strip inserted.  I started with fat quarters of the 1001 peeps fabric and used almost all of it with this design, which worked out really well since I definitely hadn't planned it out before I bought the fabric!  If you aren't familiar with this fabric line, you can see a bit more of the details of it in the photo above - it has some more abstract prints and also ones with little characters and scenes.  It's super cute!

I'm linking up to Megan's Festival of Half Square Triangles over at Canoe Ridge Creations - there are lots of beautiful HST quilts entered, so definitely check it out if you haven't yet for some fun triangular inspiration!  I'm also linking up my HST placemats from my last post :)