Kaffe Fassett's Kaleidoscope of Quilts

Denyse Schmidt Quilts

The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking by Jane Brocket

I've never been someone who sews. When I was 12, I was in a 4-H club that did “domestic” type projects. Sewing and basic cooking were the main subjects. We also had our colors done (I'm a “winter”), decorated shirts with puff paint (yes...it was 1989), and learned about table settings and table manners. One of my projects for the county fair was a pair of bermuda shorts in cool Miami pastels. I loved these shorts, but sewing them was a pain. Our sewing machine was temperamental at best, and my mom wasn't too familiar with how to use it.

It's far overdue, but I wanted to put up a post about my son J.

J. was born May 8th, 2011 at 12:50 pm. He weighed 8 lbs, 6 oz and was 20-1/2 inches long.

Detailed Birth Story - Lots of cute pictures at the end!

I started having contractions Saturday night around 9:30. At first I thought it was just indigestion, but the contractions just kept coming. I tried to relax. We used a timer application on our phones to keep track of the duration and frequency of the contractions. Walker helped me breathe through the pain.

By morning, the contractions were pretty intense and about 5 minutes apart. We called the midwife around 6, but since my mucous plug was intact and my water hadn't broken, she told me to continue to rest and keep watching for other signs of progression. We went back to bed for a few hours and tried to sleep between contractions. I lost my mucous plug, but my water didn't break. Walker made breakfast, and I tried to eat it, not knowing when I'd get to eat again.

Around 9:30 am, I felt very strong desire to push! We called the midwife again and she told us to come to the birth center. We grabbed our bags and got on the road. Fortunately there wasn't much traffic on Sunday morning.

After my explosion of startitis in January, I find myself not wanting to start any new projects. I just finished my Daybreak Shawl, and I have a number of unfinished projects I’d rather get completed than to start any of the items in my queue.

Here it is, fresh off the needles:

This is how it looks blocking:

• Daybreak Shawl by Stephen West
• Size 5 needles
• Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Mediumweight in "Cloudy with a Chance" and "Saffron Surprise"

I’m trying to make an accessory per month. I made the bulky hat in January, and Daybreak this month. I have some gloves started for Walker, and if I actually work on them, I could easily finish them in March. I’ve started the fingers on the first glove.

I have been busy preparing for midterms this week, so my knitting time has been minimal. I also rediscovered embroidery. My very first fiber craft was embroidery. When I was maybe 6 or 7, a family friend gave me an embroidery kit for my birthday, parts of which I still have. This friend was very artistic and had a big influence on my creativity from an early age.

I used to spend my allowance to buy pre-printed fabric with smiling rabbits and work simple stitches in primary colors. I also found iron-on designs at garage sales featuring anthropomorphic fruits. I loved choosing the colors and making the designs my own.

Eventually I found counted cross stitch, and worked some small designs. I even had a larger sampler I started in college, but that was abandoned and eventually discarded.

I’m not interested in the ornate scenes or landscapes, but I like the more “primitive” bare-bones designs, such as colonial American samplers and the more modern single color designs from France and Italy.

When we lived in California, there was a great needlepoint and embroidery store just blocks from our apartment, Needle in a Haystack.

As part of the podcast we're doing a knit-a-long of patterns and yarns that remind us of clouds. Not surprisingly, I have a number of gray yarns that I am excited to use. I was especially looking forward to using the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock I got for my birthday - the color is called "Cloudy with a Chance"! I had to have it! I knew right away that I wanted to use it for the Daybreak shawl.

I love the color combination of gray and yellow, so I also got a skein of Socks that Rock in "Saffron Surprise". It goes very nicely with the gray.

• Daybreak Shawl by Stephen West
• Size 5 needles
• Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Mediumweight in "Cloudy with a Chance" and "Saffron Surprise"

This is the only project I've been working on this week. It's very easy: the only challenge is that the rows get quite long. I could see knitting this again. There are so many beautiful projects on Ravelry (Ravelry link).