I see knitting in my future!

Because this came out today!

Only I'm going to use double knitting, to avoid the floats and to make it even warmer.  And reversible.  And because it's twice as much work.
Because that's how I approach life:  What can I possibly do to complicate this?

There are gaps in my rainbow...

For the last several years, I bought almost no fabric.  What little I did get was earmarked for my Katie's Star Patch quilt, so it fit within the parameters of what I needed for that.  Generally, I bought lights (I think they're called low volume, nowadays) and brights, preferably non-floral, and no reds.  (The color scheme for the quilt had started fairly narrow, but kept morphing and widening until the final rule was no true reds.)
There are also very few pinks in the quilt.  Neither my daughter (the intended recipient of this work) nor I are pink kind of girls.  When fabric shopping, I've rarely even noticed the pinks.  Not on my radar at all.
And I didn't even realize how far off my radar they are until I stumbled on Soscrappy's Rainbow Scrap Challenge at the end of February.   February's color was pink.  I started checking my boxes of fabric and came up with two pinks, one of which was more of a salmon.
Huh.
Oh, well, I thought.  I don't like pink anyway.  No big deal.  Maybe I'll play in the scrap Challenge next year.
Then sometime in the last month I stumbled across a blog where I saw the most gorgeous pink quilt - pinks, pinks, and more pinks.  And I thought, huh.  I don't like pink, but that's really a great quilt.  Huh.
(And I thought I had bookmarked it or pinned it, but I didn't, so I can't share the link.  I wish I could.  If you've had a gorgeous pink quilt on your blog lately and I commented on it saying something to the effect that 'I wasn't a fan of pink but oh, wow, you've changed my mind', please let me know and I'll add a link.)
So anyway.  I was fabric shopping (quilt batts were on sale for half price, and I figured I might as well pick one up for Garden Party since at the rate I'm going, I'll need it soon) and I grabbed another couple of orange fat quarters, still trying to fill the orange gap in my rainbow.
And when I checked the batiks, I grabbed this one.

Yeah.  It's pink. 

It looks really good with brown.

And I started thinking about some four patches that I'd squared up as an experiment.  I'd set them aside because they were dull dull dull.  Boring.

Turned out all they needed was a little pink.
I grabbed some burgundy deco fabric I had on hand, did a little quilting,

 and a little more quilting,

 and some more quilting,

and made myself a bag to carry my Kindle Fire in. Since I'm now using it as my primary camera, I'm toting it around with me, so it needed a little protection.  Not that I'm clumsy or anything.  Just, you know.  In case.

.

I was hoping using the strip just on one side would look all cool and asymmetrical, but instead it just looks sort of unbalanced and eccentric (not in the good way.)
Oh, well.  It's the prototype.
Oh, and in for a penny, in for a pound?  Check out the lining:

That pink sitting on my cutting table started accumulating scraps on top of it...

and I discovered that there are a lot of colors that don't look ugly with pink.  Who knew?

                                            Linking to Scraptastic Tuesday!

Ooo! Ooo! It worked! (Liz, don't look!)

After getting my hopes up and making my last post, I couldn't figure out how I'd gotten that last photo from my tablet to my computer.  (It may have involved magic.  I'm not sure.)
Until this moment!  Literally.

Liz, don't look!

Three, two, one...



Here's a photo of my swap quilt, after I removed the hideous horrible ugly-excuse-for-a border and put on a simple pretty one instead:

A little closer:

And remember I told you I'm a little bit guilty of overbasting?  Check out the amount of thread in this corner.  What's in view measures about 6"x10":

I'll probably use less thread than that for the actual quilting...

Linking with Oh, Scrap! because it's my kind of party!

And I'm adding a picture of Garden Party just so I'll have a non-swap quilt picture to put in the photo header.  Just in case Liz visits Oh, Scrap, too...

Test... test...

I think I might have a workaround.

At least until I can find a card reader that works...

If at first you don't succeed, pretend Plan B C was what you intended from the beginning

Still no photos, so you'll have to use your imaginations.  The good news is that my quilt swap partner doesn't have to close her eyes, since she can't see the quilt anyway.  Even accidentally.
Speaking of the swap quilt, I got it basted this afternoon.  I finished the top over the weekend, then let it marinate for a couple of days to make sure I liked it, since the path to final assembly had been fraught with peril.  And cursing.  There was definite cursing. 
There was a problem with the inner border that I showed last week, in that the fabric I had planned to use was an inch shorter than the center part of the top (the part the border would be bordering, in other words), which I didn't notice until I had my rotary cutter in hand and was ready to go.  And for reasons unknown, I decided that I didn't want to just piece the border, probably because that would have been too easy.  Oh, no.  I came up with a really clever thing that I thought would be perfect, made up four border strips with the snazzy idea, and sewed one on.
And hated it.  And not just any ordinary hate - the flaming hate of a thousand white-hot suns.  I hated it so much that I set it down, went up the hill home, and still hated it even when it wasn't even in the same room with me, hate it hate it hate it.  I hated it all through supper, hated it till bedtime, hated it when I woke up in the morning.  Hated it as I was headed down to The Flat.
I was reaching for the seam ripper the minute I walked through the door, before I even dropped my keys in my pocket.  A quick ziiiiiiick!  And no more dreaded terrible horrible awful hated hated hated border.  Whew!
Now of course, the next attempt would have gone a lot smoother if I had measured correctly before cutting all four borders.  Because, you know.  Fit and everything.  But, hey.
And then, finally, while I was cutting the borders again (and starting to feel slightly worried about running out of that particular fabric), a light bulb went off in my head and I realized what I should have been doing from the beginning, and did it.  And it was perfect.
Ya know, Right Brain and Left Brain were both suspiciously quiet through this whole ordeal.  Probably off somewhere sulking after the last time.  Borders.  Yep.

So anyway, I decided I loved it in its final state, and I got it basted this afternoon.  I don't particularly enjoy basting, but that's probably my own fault since I have a tendency to overbaste.  Like I'm worried about the basting having to survive a cattle stampede.  Or an alien invasion.  That kind of overbaste. 
As I was crawling around on the floor with backing, batting, and top, cursing my aching knees and back, overdoing the basting, I found myself wishing that there was an easier way to do this.  Something that could raise the work up off the floor.  Maybe a piece of furniture.  That would be a wonderful thing.  I could invent something that would do just that, and make a fortune.
I'm thinking of calling it a 'table'.   What do you think?

Argh again

I had two (two, count 'em, two!!) posts all written in my head, plus dozens of pictures taken to illustrate all the looky-here's.  Unfortunately, all the pictures are stuck on my SD card because my card reader has died again.  And this time I didn't even shove anything in backwards or sideways.  So it's either the make of card reader (I got the same kind both times), the cards themselves (but I have two different ones that I alternate that have been working fine), or my computer.  Or me.  Because maybe I don't have to put the cards in all cattywampus to kill a card reader.  Maybe it's just a talent.
Anyone have a recommendation for a replacement reader?
*sigh*

Last of the Lawnbenders

Last summer I learned to use my dad's riding lawn mower.  Well, 'learned' might be stretching it a bit.  I became acquainted with Dad's lawn mower.
The first time I used it, I was happily mowing his front yard and was almost done when he flagged me down.
"You know, you're not really cutting the grass - you're just bending it.  You need to raise the rpms."  And he walked away.
Bending?  I looked back, and sure enough, my wake was a little tufty looking.  Downright scruffy in places.
But rpms?  What rpms?  And how do you raise them?
This was like telling a beginning baker that the cake didn't raise because there wasn't enough leavening.  Leavening?  What's that?  And how much is enough?
So, later, after some judicious questioning about rpms, I established that I needed to give it more gas.  Since there's no gas pedal, I have to give it more 'throttle' by raising a lever from down where the turtle is to up more towards the bunny.
Which would sound less crazy if I show you a picture:

That's actually a picture of a newer and fancier throttle lever than we have (there's a knob!), but you get the idea.
So naturally, for the rest of the summer, whenever I was headed for the mower, I would announce that I was off to bend the lawn.  (I've never been one who could resist a chance to be a smartass.  It's probably a character flaw.)
The other lawn I mow is down at The Flat, which is a family property about a quarter mile down the road, that I'm currently using for my sewing room and storage.  It's an interesting lawn, with trees and bushes and deadfall limbs and rope swings and mild inclines and a clothesline, and any number of other traps and pitfalls.  Literally, there's a pitfall.  It's a hole deep enough to get a riding mower stuck in so that you can't go forward or back and have to call your dad for help.  (Ask me how I know.)
This spring was pretty wet, with long soaking rains happening every time the lawn finally dried out enough to mow.  Finally, there was a stretch of a couple of dry days, so I bustled the mower down the road and started mowing, just in the nick of time - another hour and we'd have had to have a haying crew in...
So round and round I went, through grass 12-18" tall, past trees, under clotheslines, halfway over small logs (oops).  I was just congratulating myself on remembering where the hole was and mowing around it instead of through it, and "yay!  I won't have to call Dad to come rescue me", when the mower suddenly made a brrr-slither-chunk! noise, belched some black smoke, and died.
I said words.  Then I climbed down to investigate.
Hidden in the deep dark grass was a really long garden hose, and the mower had tried to inhale it.
Now everything probably would have been fine if it had been a crappy inexpensive garden hose.  The mower would have just turned it into orange confetti and gone merrily on its way.

.

But no.  This was a tough, top-quality, made to last a lifetime type garden hose, so it just wound around and around and around until it jammed the mower blade and gave the mower a small stroke.

Here's a closer view of the wound-up part.  The pics are taken of the hose after my Dad cut it loose and we threw all the bits into the back of his truck.

Because, yeah, I had to call Dad to come rescue me again.