First Temari Ball

When I was in second grade, my father went to Penn State for a year's sabbatical and we lived in an apartment in State College, PA.  While we were there, my mother made friends with two women from Japan.  One of them taught her how to make Temari balls.  I always wanted to learn how to make them myself and when Barbara Seuss started offering on-line classes, I signed up.  Yesterday, I finally finished my first Temari ball.  It is a Morning Glory design based on Barbara Seuss's beginner class.  The top and bottom look really good, the sides are a bit crooked but it is still beautiful and I don't think very many people will notice.

Afghan is finished!

I finished my afghan tonight.  It looks wonderful on the floor and even better on the new couch with, of course, a cat sleeping on it.

Partially finished objects

I am almost finished with my afghan.  All of the squares are done and joined together.  The top lace border is completed, I have the bottom lace border and i-cord on the two sides left.  I am out of Rowan yarn in noir, so I can't finish until I get more.  The yarn shop is also out of noir but they have it on order, so I will have to wait until they come in.   I am very happy with how the afghan has come out.  I enjoyed working out the color combinations and charting the bird in the center.  I am knitting another afghan this year but I selected the colors and ordered all of the yarn at the start.  I ran out too many times while working on this one.

While I wait for my noir yarn to come in, I am working on some old projects.  These include my UFO for the Lake County ANG Chapter which is Lynne Tomlinson's Cabin in the Woods.  I started it 13 or 14 years ago and never finished.  Now, I have a year to finish or I will have to pay the guild $10.00.  You can see from the picture how much progress I have made so far, I think finishing is feasible.  There are two more trees, a top and bottom border and a very simple background.  I am hoping to finish a number of projects this year, I selected two challenge pieces for the Lake Michigan Sampler Guild as well.

Almost finished objects

I finished all of the embroidery on my Chatelaine Rose Sweetebag, now I am adding beads.  I supplemented the beads in the kit with some from the local bead store and I think it is coming along quite well.  Now to decide what to do for the back of the bag.  I don't want to stitch a duplicate of the front on the back but I do have a lot of thread left.  I am thinking about a back that is done in solid embroidery -- a color pattern in queen stitch would look awesome but I don't know if I am up for around 500 of them.  We'll see.

I am also continuing to work on my skill building afghan.  I had hoped that the cat would not take it over as hers until it was finished, but as you can see, she had been sitting on the squares as soon as they
are blocked.  I need to finish the complicated lace square, finish my duplicate stitch, put the squares together and then knit the mitered square in the corner.  I have been putting off the mitered square until I could really see what it looks like with the multicolored afghan squares.  While I was at the Afghan Party, admiring the finished ones, someone suggested that I use a neutral and multiple colors left from the other squares for the second color in the mitered square. I am really excited about that idea -- now to get my project back from the cat. . .