"Let us make an honorable retreat"

Sunday I returned from a quilting retreat during which I knitted.

It's true, and I wasn't driven out of the place with little bayonets of seam rippers, bless my fellow KansasQuilters. It was the only thing I could do, after all, since I had paid my fee months ago and was determined to go seeing as how I'd escaped practically unscathed from the accident...and yet I didn't relish the notion of pushing one very clumsy, cast-hindered hand toward a motorized needle that was in a frenzy to slash into my fingers Norman Bates-style.

So, instead, I opted for slower pointy sticks and knitted two more Lizard Ridge blocks on Saturday. On the day before that I had brandished a plastic darning needle to finish my Reading Kimono sweater. (I'm done! I'm done!)


Sunday's work consisted of adding to my Toothbrush Rug (using another kind of plastic needle). This last day of the retreat was the only time I got to work with actual fabric. All around me sewing machines hummed all weekend--only once did one of them klunk ominously--and quilt tops were materializing right and left. But not for me. (sigh)


In two weeks, though, this cast comes off for good. That's the plan, anyway. And then I can get back to quilting. My Lumberjack Butterflies quilt is now basted and is waiting for the day I can bend my wrist again.

At this retreat everyone contributed a little something to everyone else's goodie bag. Included in the spoils was a plethora of pincushions, see photo. (The Log Cabin chicken was already mine. I call her Henny Pinny. Now she has a kindred friend from Texas; please meet MoneyPinny.) The little fish pincushion is hereafter FinnyPinny, and she sits atop a thick toothpick and is for keeping one's needles with one's spool of thread. Judy Danz designed it, and she is selling the patterns--one for fish and another for fowl--at a Kansas quilt shop called Needle in a Haystack. I have no affiliation with this money-making venture; I just think they're wee wonders.



Here is a toucan...or crow.

The Ripple Effect

...has been calmed. The edges of my toothbrush rug are all at peace now. Or at least suppressed. Like I predicted, however, there are bulges here and there where too many stitches still live together, but I'm not ripping them out. They'll learn to like each other.

My cats, however, have found the larger rug just the right size to fight on. It was a pretty good slapfest for a whole minute. Then they got bored. I've got another photo of them resting quietly together on the rug, but you get the idea. Yin and Yang, putting up with each other, neither of them wanting to give up possession of their new rug.

And finally a close up of the stitches themselves. I'm going to have to begin increasing the stitches around the edge soon or else I'll get a humongous rag bowl to set in the middle of my livingroom furniture. Popcorn anyone?

A Friendly Rug

See how it waves at us?

I suspect toothbrush rugs are more difficult than braided rag rugs. I haven't made a braided rug before, but it seems to me that you'd just keep snaking the braid around and around, anchoring it as you go. With a round toothbrush rug, one must contend with increase stitches. I have been too contentious, apparently. And now I have the makings of a happy, frilly rug.


So, I'm going to try to decrease a little as I go along until it begins to lie flat. It may pooch here and there along these growth rings, but maybe I can get the whole of it to calm down a little. My cat doesn't care about it, though. Here is where I found her a couple minutes after I'd spread out the rug for its latest inspection.

She approves.