Crafting Update, November

 I'm going to roll the knitting and sewing/stitching updates into one post this month.

Currently, I am working on Buck's Christmas stocking.  I started it in mid-October, and worked down the first several inches until I got to the part where the name goes.  Ehen I set it aside until after his birth, since DD1 and Honorary Son were keeping the name they had chosen a secret until his arrival.  

Last week, once I knew who he was, I charted the name, and went back to knitting.  As of last night, I am probably about half way done with the stocking.  If I can continue knitting at the rate I have in the past five days, it should be done in time to hand over to DD1 at Thanksgiving.

In the interim--while waiting on Buck's IRL name--I whipped up a sweater for Faline's upcoming second birthday.  I need to sew on the buttons and block it, but otherwise it's finished. I used the Sunday Sweater pattern in a size 2/3 and adapted the buttonhole placket to accommodate 6 buttons (instead of the patterned 3) so that it will close all the way from neck to waist.  The photo below really doesn't do the color justice; it's actually a very purple purple, not bluish at all.

And then there is Buck's quilt. . . I used 6" star blocks, as I had in Faline's baby quilt, to keep a common pattern between siblings.  For the 'solid' blocks (the non-stars) I found some cute Harry Potter themed fabric, as both Honorary Son and DD1 are HP fans.  The stars were all made in fabrics that had some sort of meaning to DD1 and Honorary Son. . .

The main fabric

The star in the exact center of the quilt

Cats, as they both love cats (and Faline's quilt also had some stars with cats)

Soccer balls, as Honorary Son played soccer all through high school (and, ironically, when DD1 started high school she swore up and down she would never date a soccer player--both her brothers had played soccer all through high school and she thought their teammates were dumb).

John Deere, because all my grandbabies have to have a green tractor in their quilt somehow; they all grow to love taking rides on Papa's tractor.  

Also Winnie the Pooh (as background), which has a story behind it.  The Pooh fabric I used is some that I bought when DD1 was still in high school.  She had seen it at the store while fabric shopping with me, commented that she liked it and wouldn't it be great in a quilt for her future son some day?  Unbeknownst to her, I bought a yard and stashed it away until this year.

Music notes.  Music is such a big part of Honorary Son, I had to include not one, but two fabrics with musical notes.  The lighter colored one became stars.  The darker (the black on the background of the soccer blocks) is a tone-on-tone music note fabric too. The skinny inner border of the quilt is also in the black music fabric.

The finished top

For the first time ever, I had to go with a 2 fabric pieced backing.  It was a big step requiring much deliberation, but I had to do it.  You see, the blue fabric (Frog & Toad) I had bought in 2017 when I saw it in a fabric shop in Seward, Alaska.  But I could only get two yards.  I figured I would find it again somewhere after returning home from that trip and get more, enough for--you guessed it--a future quilt for a future grandson. But it proved impossible to find more when I went looking, and looking, and looking, and Googling multiple times in the last couple of years. 

So, if I was ever going to put that awesome fabric in a quilt, I was going to have to find complimenting fabric and do a pieced backing.  Which really caused me a lot of emotional turmoil because I really like backings that are all the same fabric even if it means the painstaking cutting and matching of designs on directional fabric. Cuz yeah, I'm kinda anal like that. Then I happened upon a picture of a pieced backing done in 9-patch style, and I knew that was the one and only acceptable way of putting together the back of this quilt.

A flannel giant 9-patch

Definitely the right way to treat my fabric dilemma.  I like this quilt back a lot.

Since August, when I last posted a knitting and reading update, I've read six books:

Outsider by Linda Castillo.  Another great Kate Burkholder mystery.  It's so hard for me to limit myself to only 2 or maybe 3 titles in this series per year, but I don't want them to end, so in order not to reach the last book too quickly, I'm pacing myself. This one is 12 of 15, so there's not very many left to read. I sure hope the author cranks out a few more in 2023!

Dead Broke by Vannetta Chapman.  This is the 2nd of a trilogy.  I liked it far better than the first one.  I felt that it was much better written, more along the lines of the mystery novels that had made me like this author many years ago.

The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works, edited by Ron Riekki. By and large, I didn't care for the stories and poems in this book.  There were a few that I liked, but overall it was just so dark and dismal.  Yes, there's a lot of poverty in the UP, but there's also a lot of people in that poverty who have sunnier outlooks than what was expressed by these writers.  I just found the focus too depressing and leaning toward the hard part of UP living without expressing the many positive points that exist despite the struggle.

The Orchard by Beverly Lewis. This is her newest one, that I've been waiting most of the year to be published. It was a quick read, and didn't disappoint.

Women Talking by Miriam Toews.  This was a book that made me think.  I had requested it from the library after seeing previews for the movie.  The previews looked interesting, but also like the movie would probably be done in a way that I wouldn't want to watch it (I have a thing about tv and movies that portray violence towards women, or women being stalked, or women being held captive; it's not entertaining, it's stressful to be exposed to. Maybe shades of PTSD from a former relationship?).  I'm glad I decided to read the book.  Yes, the topic is all the things I don't want to watch, but the way the book is written it was very good to read and think about.

Dead Set by Vannetta Chapman.  The third and final book in this series.  Not as good as Dead Broke, the writing (and editing--gah, I hate poor editing) were more along the lines of the first book in the series.  This plot line just seemed too unbelievable for the main character and I felt it had strayed from the level of the second book.