New Comforter Cover

I spent a long time this past year working on a new cover for my comforter, with the purpose of having something bright and colorful for my necessarily white-walled dorm room, and it has finally arrived in my room. My residents keep commenting as they walk by, and they can hardly believe I made it. The only unfortunate part is that my favorite of the embroidered squares usually ends up between my bed and the wall. Ah well.

Birds on a wire

This one is supposed to be horseshoe prints, but it didn't turn out like I would have wanted.  Probably my least favorite.

Lightbulb!

This is one where I embellished the fabric with some stitching, just for texture.

Here's another embellished one.  The idea with this one was to make the dots look reminiscent of the chairs at the Madison Memorial Union.

Fun flowers using a whole bunch of stitches.

Fish!  This fabric was once my sling from when my shoulder was dislocated.

A campfire and marshmallows

Paisely-- this is one of my favorites.  I had fun using loads of stitches to make the fun paisley patterns.  I just freehanded most of it, since the style is so relaxed.  I got the inspiration from the fun style in a book called Doodle Stitch, by Aimee Ray.

My favorite square.  It was the most intense, but it actually wasn't as hard as it looks.  I freehanded most of it, just filling in leaves and dotted lines. At least now you all can see it, even if I don't get to on a daily basis.

Bucket Hat

March 9th, 2010

My new hat! I knit this from some of my christmas yarn, which was a fabulous silk-alpaca blend. The buttons were a lucky find-- they came as extras with one of my button-down shirts, and just happened to look perfect on the hat. I finished it just in time to have a less-wooly hat for the beginning of spring and my trip to Europe.  Details of the project, and the pattern as a free download, can be found here.

The Knitting Craze

Come on, everybody's doing it!

Hillary knitting a scarf outside on a lovely day

Melissa knitting in some awesome footie pajamas.  This is her first practice swatch, she's now moved on to a scarf using the needles I gave her for her birthday.

Hillary starting a baby hat for her cousin's baby, and Illika working on a swatch she started last winter when she learned to knit

Hillary and I with our dueling mittens.  Her mittens are Pittsburgh Penguins mittens for a friend, mine will be flip-top mittens.

Here's the finished product for mine.  I added a cable down the center to make them go with a hat for a gift for Laura.  The project's on Ravelry.

Here's the full set.  I LOVE the hat pattern-- it's molded after Hermione's hat in the 5th Harry Potter movie.  You can find it online here as a free Ravelry download.  I used a bamboo yarn, but the yarn suggested by the pattern is heavenly.

What can I say, I'm a trend setter.  And, knitting makes a great low-stress, high-productivity break from homework.

Insomnia Hat

October 29th, 2009

I call my most recent knitting accomplishment my insomnia hat.  After some difficulty falling asleep, I decided to knit a couple rows on this hat every night before going to bed.  It helped a lot, and now I have an awesome hat.  I picked the yarn to match my favorite scarf-- a plaid cashmere that my grandma gave me for Christmas.  I also modified the pattern to add a button flap on the side.  Find the super-simple pattern here, and my project on Ravelry.

Book Doctor

If there's one thing my new job has taught me, it's that you really can judge a book by its cover.  I work in the basement of Olin Library repairing books that come in damaged from circulation.  In this workshop, all the restoration of rare manuscripts and obscure texts takes place, but not by a new student employee like me-- I'm working up to it.

So far, my work has included taking books after they go through the "cleaning" process, which is basically where the covers and spines are separated.  It's my job to reinforce the "text block" (the chunk of pages without the covers and spine) by drilling and stitching it, then gluing on a spine liner.

As I add the covers back on, using linens to secure them to the text block, the book starts to come back together.

Next I choose a color of buckrum (the thick durable sheets we use to reinforce the spine) and apply it to the outside.  Finally, I trim what's left of the spine label and glue it on top of the buckrum.  The reconstructed book looks something like this:

This is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the thickest book I have repaired to date.  I've also repaired such well-known titles as the Jungle Book and such obscure things as math texts in some unrecognizable script and fine arts books on gardens western Europe in the 18th century.  The amazing part about the obscure books is that since all the books I repair come out of circulation, someone has actually just checked out every book I get.

I've come to identify books based on the type of wear and tear they get.  Because the spine label is the last step of the process, I can go through almost the whole repair without knowing the title of the book.  I've discovered that I can tell the genre before reading the title based on the "shoulders" of the book (the place where the covers open out).  Books read cover to cover (novels) have deep shoulders at the front and back, while non-fiction books tend to have a deep shoulder in the front and almost no shoulder in the back, indicating that they are opened most often near the front.  I thought I had found a flaw in this theory once when I worked on a book that had a deep shoulder only in the back.  As it turned out, this was a math text book with an answer key at the back, so of course it made perfect sense that people often opened it to the back.  Ah, what you can learn from books.

Miscellaneous Summer Fun

Madison, Mineral Point, and Hixton WI

Here's just a few snapshots from my summer back in the dairy state.

Fourth of July at the Jones Mansion-- the family photo that also served as a workout for my mom, who had to click the button on the camera outside, then bound up the steps to get to the upstairs porch.

Mineral Point's Fourth of July run/walk, "Get the Lead Out."  Yes, nearly half the town participated.

Learning to grill was one of my summer projects-- I progressed from brats, to veggie kabobs, to chicken, to steaks.  If only I had a grill out in Ithaca now.

Another summer project-- my bandana quilt.  During my years at the barn, I racked up an impressive collection of bandanas, so I put them to good use in a picnic quilt.  I cut each in quarters and scrambled the colors, then made the backing and the edging out of denim for durability in many picnics to come.

I just really like this picture.  My brother and I have always commented on this tree, which is very striking on the horizon as we drive to the cabin, and I just thought I would snap a picture of it on my way by.

Summer's not complete without the Dane County Fair-- Tori and Spring back at the trailer

Cowboy's little siblings, Spice with Jayme and Stetson with Heidi, all dressed up in their western gear

Saying goodbye to the good old van before donating it to Rawhide.  It served us well for many, many years.

Camping in Hixton, for the blueberry picking season

It rained a lot.

Solution to the rain-- hammock and tarp, the perfect set up.

My new quilt got to enjoy the hammock as well.