Hello – I’m trying to get back into blogging regularly again now that so much is happening, it would be kind of nice to keep track of what’s been going on! This weekend, the Perth Craft & Quilt Show was on, and I went together with a friend. This was my first year going, and I was both a little overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time. The quilts on display were stunning and absolutely inspirational. In a way, I wish I took more photos, but I know that if I were snap-happy, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate them the way I did.

The bit that was a little underwhelming were the booths – good thing I’m a quilter, because there were lots of lovely quilty fabric goodness. There wasn’t much Liberty, which was a little sad to see, and I think all of the good quilty tools were already snapped up, since I went on the very last day. No matter, there’s always next time. There were a few booths with Japanese fabrics, which was super yummy, and so I spent a little money at Bebe Bold, where I got some super cute Polka Dot and Strawberry printed zippers. They will be going into a box bag and maybe a cross-stitch pouch. Then I got a little english paper piecing hexagon kit from Mai Misaki.

 

Now, for a while I thought I would never do EPP because I thought the people who did it was crazy, since it’s so time-consuming and fiddly. But as I kept seeing more and more hexies popping up on IG, I figured that I’d give it a go. So now I’m hooked. These little hexies finish at 1/2″ on the sides. They are small and super cute! (I’m not crazy enough to do a 1/4″ side hexagon quilt with fussy cut pieces (see below). Yet.)

I’m thinking that maybe a small EPP-a-long is in order. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the 1/2″ hexies – I don’t know if I have the strength to turn them into a queen sized quilt, but when I finish the pieces from my Mai Misaki kit, I think I’m going to look in stash and cut up some fabric for 3/4″ side hexies. They’re a little bigger, and I think a little more manageable to turn into a queen sized quilt. The 1/2″-ers might end up just being a long term project, where I use fabric scraps! So if you’d like to join me, I’ll be posting my hexy progress on IG. (PS: If you need a tutorial for the EPP hexies, Katy Jones of Imagingermonkey has a great series on the Fat Quaterly Blog.)

This week I made David Lebovitz’s Mint Chip ice cream. If anyone has any recommendations for a soy frozen yogurt recipe, please share it with me!Tea of the Day: The Earl’s Garden from David’s Tea

I finished knitting the Prudencia Hart socks (David’s Toe Up Sock Cookbook) out of Yarn Pirate’s Merino/Bamboo blend in “Bird of Paradise”, as well as a test knit that I can’t talk about just yet.

I finished spinning “Fire Mountain”, a Superwash BFL/Cashmere from Ixchelbunny from the Feb 2011 club and started spinning “Hinterland”, a Merino from The Thylacine’s Oct 2011 fibre club shipment.

The book review is on The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs by Sarah Anderson.

I received the March shipment of the Spunky Eclectic weaving club.

I sewed two muslins for the Wiksten Tank Dress and one for the Colette Ginger skirt pattern. Craftsy is offering lectures from QuiltCon 2013 for free.
Please let me know what you think, and you can leave a comment here, send me an email, or find me on Ravelry as sheralynn, on Twitter and on Instagram as carbonsoup.

Music is from Musicalley, and today we have the “Pluparenthetical Polka” by George Hrab.

My finished objects were a pair of afterthought heel socks in String Theory Colorworks’ Resonance Base in “Eris” and the Ernie Socks by Cookie A from the latest Jan/Feb club shipment (see link to my project page! No picture here in case of spoilers).

I spun up Finn in “Alchemy of the Word” from the Sep 2010 Fiber Salon club shipment from Bridge Flight Studios, “Darner Dragonfly” in Polwarth from The Painted Tiger Apr 2011 club shipment, some Superwash Merino from Crown Mountain Farms in “Brown Sugar” and plied up a loop! bump in the green “Tiger’s Eye Coordinate” colourway. I started spinning Superwash BFL/Cashmere from the Feb 2011 shipment, “Fire Mountain”, from Ixchelbunny.

I wove a scarf from the Jan/Feb 2013 shipment of the Spunky Eclectic weaving club.

I received two club shipments – from Bare Naked Knitspot and Southern Cross Fibre. The BNK yarn is from the Snow Leopard Trust and the SCF fibre – well, spoilers, you know! See the SCF Rav group if you want to be spoiled!

The Mr and I saw “The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart” by the National Theatre of Scotland.

Please let me know what you think, and you can leave a comment here, send me an email, or find me on Rav as sheralynn, on Twitter and on Instagram as carbonsoup.

Music is from Musicalley, and today we have “The Bruinenberg Technique” by Darren Lock.

I’m blessed in that I’m still able to get to university, that I can still knit, spin, craft. It could be much worse for me, and although I can do all these things, it’s not to say that it doesn’t take a lot of effort. I don’t want to give up the things that are dear to me because it’s one of the few things that make me happy. I guess one of the things that I can compare ME/FMS to is like having a dreadful case of the flu and feeling like you got hit by a mack truck – sore, stiff, achey joints, sore throat, just feeling ill and poorly and extremely tired – imagine that in your day to day life. Imagine you had the flu and had all those aches. Combine then with the feeling of a really bad sunburn where it hurts to get touched and put pressure where you are burnt. Imagine that all over your body. And then think about having to go to work, or to class, and to sit up when you just want to rest, but resting is difficult and you feel a little grouchy that you got ill in the first place, and wanting to knit, or spin, but not having the concentration levels to. Realising you’re someplace and you can’t remember why or how you got there.

Life is hard enough as it is – give support to the ones you know and love, even if they aren’t sick. Please don’t treat others how you would not like to be treated. ME/FMS sufferers all have different ways of coping. Many people don’t know what it is, and many people don’t realize how much it affects the sufferers. I understand that you mean well, giving suggestions, but believe me, many of us have tried, and have heard those suggestions many times. It’s harder coping than it looks, and I’m trying hard to live life normally. It’s a real struggle.

Spinning method: worsted
Construction: 3-ply
Yardage: 381 m
Weight: 145 g
WPI: 18