Comments are definitely kaplooey and we’re waiting to hear back from WorkPress what went wrong on their end and how to solve it. I know a bunch of people have commented on the last post, but unfortunately I have no way to see who you are or what you wanted to say! Please use the email address over there by my picture in the sidebar to comment until I can get this fixed.

I picked a lousy time to dedicate myself to better blogging, it would seem. Thanks for being patient.

An apology: the Comments have run aground. I don’t know what happened, but at some point in the last few days they all vanished like Kate Moss turning sideways. The Blog Mechanic is going to take a look at it as soon as he can. Meanwhile, I’m not sure whether you can leave a new comment or not, but I hope you’ll send me an email if you find you can’t communicate in the usual fashion!

The Sisters quiltapalooza was a heck of a good time. I enjoyed my two classes, I showed reasonable proficiency in learning new techniques and was satisfied with the results, I met lovely new people and relished the company of my mother-in-law and her sister, I sat in the presence of some of the quilting women of Gee’s Bend and found them as salt-of-the-earth powerful and full of spirit as their art would suggest, as well as overflowing with gratitude and love for the world that has embraced their quilts and the individuals who have advocated for them. (Also they sing spirituals while they work and are quick to praise God for their gifts and inspirations; they are deeply humble and wise about the primacy of human relations in times of difficulty; and they are fiercely proud of the beauty they have wrested from a hardscrabble life. I already counted them among my primary inspirations; hearing them speak and sing only increased my admiration and regard.)

Here’s what I made:

Thursday: Hand Quilting, taught by sisters Jan Bressler and Lou Shafer of Philomath, Oregon

Clicking for bigness will show you that the first picture is of the back of the work; the second shows the blue marking lines of the pattern I have yet to complete. Jan and Lou teach the use of a simple metal tool called Aunt Becky’s Finger Protector, which you use underneath the work to avoid stabbing your fingers and to help manipulate the needle tip for small, even stitches. Mine are still twice as long and twice as far apart as my teachers’, but they don’t look too bad for my first try. I learned the value of a good quilting hoop or frame right away. Jan and Lou had a number of different frames on hand for us to try, and I found that the models with little stands or legs to hold them above your work surface were far less cumbersome. Turns out I’m hopeless at balancing a traditional basic hoop. I need my work to hold still by itself in order to use both hands correctly.

Friday: “Sisters 4’s and 9’s,” again with Jan and Lou.

Jan and Lou adapted this quilt design from an antique quilt that came across the country on the Oregon Trail in the family of Margaret Peters. Pardon the lack of ironing; I was scrambling for the last of the light here. The quilt is assembled on the bias from these two large blocks of 4-patches and 9-patches. It’s obviously easy enough for a raw beginner, since I made a go of it. I loved seeing the color combinations my classmates chose; as we began to finish our first blocks Lou and Jan pinned them up at the side of the classroom (which was the high school library, an ideal setting—I parked myself next to the biographies of the Founding Fathers) so we could see the many permutations. See the block in the upper part of the picture? I opted to divide it visually as a 9-patch by making five light 4-patches and four medium 4-patches, but others divided it as a big 4-patch of two light and two medium 9-patches. Also, I realize now that I tipped the “fancy” A block a different way in that photo. I meant to do it like this:

… or like this, if I decide I prefer vertical green “stripes” in the B block:

So many possibilities! We’ll just have to see what I like when I’ve made enough blocks to assemble the whole top.

Now, that challenge I spoke of. Ye olde blog has been much neglected of late, and I don’t just mean the Comments problem. Between work and managing an international knit-along and cycling, I haven’t made much time for the creation and posting of content here. I’m not alone; I’ve seen a lot of bloggers abandoning the spaces they’ve inhabited for years in favor of shiny new Twitter feeds or what have you. Twitter holds no appeal for me (I don’t even have a cell phone, people), and I’ve never been a good Flickr user, so Blue Garter stays, even if it needs a good dusting. But my father recently told me he checks it almost every day for news of my life, and that was so touching I need to find a way to respond. More discipline in posting here is what’s needed.

So the challenge is this: Keep the camera with you, Sarah. Use it. You’re no photographer but you sure could get better with practice. Upload pictures and post them here, even if you don’t have a lot of words to go with them. Or post words without pictures—surely you had at least one interesting thought in the past day or two. Provide peepholes for the people who love you and care about the beauty and proportion of your daily life, and for unknown internet voyagers who might find a point of resonance here. Starting tomorrow. Over and out.

This was the state of Daisy Daisy yesterday at 4pm. After two days of knitting, I’ve got decreases done, and enough sweater to cover me up to the ribs! I’m flying through this knit, which is only appropriate since I’m completing winging it on the design. I like a bit of waist shaping, but need the fronts to be totally clean for design reasons that will be revealed later. So I can’t use my usual scheme of placing four dart-like decreases and increases on verticals centered under the bust and correspondingly on the back. Instead I shifted all the shaping to the center back, and while I was at it, I thought I might as well make those decreases decorative.

This should be easier to see when it’s blocked out, but those are 4>3 eyelet decreases engineered by Amy Detjen and featured in her Beginner’s Triangle shawl from A Gathering of Lace. I’ve unvented a corresponding decorative increase, too. I watched half the Tour stage this morning before work, and I hope the increase section will be finished by the time I’ve watched the end tonight. (Don’t tell me what happened, okay? I’m scrupulously avoiding the world of cycling news, including today’s KAL thread on Ravelry, so it’ll be a surprise!) And then it’ll be time to start neckline shaping and cast on some sleeves!

All is not entirely rosy, though. I’m pretty sure I don’t have enough yarn. That daisy stitch is a real yarn-guzzler, and the i-cord cast on, while I’m 100% sure it’s the right look for this jacket (I started with a couple of other cast ons and ripped them out), it used a lot of my first ball, too. So I’m hunting a sixth skein, and may have a lead via Ravelry. This yarn—it’s Louet MerLin Avalon—has been discontinued and reissued as MerLin Worsted, so while I’m pretty sure MerLin Worsted in Champagne would be an acceptable match, I haven’t found a local store selling it so I can compare the colors.

Anyway, I’m going to knit until I can’t anymore, and if I have to put Daisy Daisy on hold while I wait for that last skein, I’ll just slide over into the Polka Dot jersey category and tackle some of my innumerable WIPs.

And for those holding me to task on my cycling goals, I’m happy to report that I rode both days this weekend. Saturday I set out midday (after the time trial was finished; it was well worth a hotter ride to see Cancellara come scorching in 18 seconds over everyone else!) with my bike computer registering 99 degrees. I got out as far as Kelly Point and turned south, having already downed a bottle and a half of water, and then my beloved Serotta and I experienced our first mutual flat tire. I was cruising along, and I didn’t see any patches of broken glass or anything I might have ridden through to cause a puncture, but suddenly the bike felt mushy and slithery under me and I knew exactly what had happened. I hadn’t yet assembled a patch kit to carry on this bicycle (situation amended—thanks, neighbors!), and I’d never changed a road bike tire anyway. Luckily there was a patch of dense shade handy, and Mr. G had sent me out with his cell phone, so I called for the sag wagon and my man and our dog came to rescue me. Only about ten miles logged for that day. But yesterday I went out with our neighbor and did the Airport Loop and Rocky Butte—my first look at that climb. I huffed and puffed and gave it my best shot, and although I did stop once to pant and drink water, I made it to the top, and the descent was definitely worth it. I didn’t know the road and wasn’t quite brave enough not to touch my brakes at all, but I topped 60kph and loved every second of it! (Good thing my computer happened to be logging max speed… on the way down I was too busy watching the road and trying to judge my lines for the bends to think of looking at the screen!) So climbing is still my weakest point, but I’m determined that I’ll be able to pedal straight up Rocky Butte without resting by the time I have to be ready for the Tour de Cure on the 25th! I’m going to try to ride it again after work at least once this week.

In the room I optimistically call the library,* because one day we will build proper bookshelves in there, is a celadon green couch we inherited from my grandmother Ruth. The walls are creamy and the windows face north; if we could only manage to buy a lightbulb in the proper spectrum it would be a pleasant room. Above the couch hangs a painting of a woman fiddling by moonlight on the shore and a pair of cats dancing to her tune. It’s a dreamy picture by an island artist who’s a friend of my parents, and I’m chiefly drawn to the colors: greens, golds, broody nighttime iris blues and slatey blues and lilac blues. Fox red for the woman’s hair and skirt and one of the cats. A softer red, too, in the faded pencil portrait of red-headed Great-Aunt Priscilla that hangs in the corner.

The couch folds out to form a double bed; this is where our guests sleep. In winter they can snuggle under a green comforter, but in summer they must make do with a motley collection of aged light woolen blankets from my other grandparents’ house. I find these blankets rather charming, with their peculiar seams and haphazard binding—it’s clear they were run up from bolts of fabric for utility. But in their many years of service they have grown yellowed and stained and rather raggy at the edges, and the light summer comforter I best liked to cover them, a simple down-and-calico coverlet that was Priscilla’s when she was small, is no longer sturdy enough for any but the most gentle use. The fabric could be easily torn and I’d hate for a visitor to feel the remorse of accidentally stepping on a corner and shredding it, so I only take it out of the closet for the occasional quiet rainy afternoon of knitting on the couch, and I make the cat keep his paws gentle if he wants to nestle beside me.

In short, I need a quilt for this bed, and the opportunity to make one is just around the corner. My Christmas present from Mr. G’s mother included a quilting class at the big quilting extravaganza in Sisters, Oregon… next week! I’ll be hanging out with the womenfolk of my husband’s family, soaking up as much knowledge as I can (some of the Gee’s Bend quilters are giving a lecture!) and practicing my piecing and hand-quilting skills in two classes taught by Jan and Lou of JanniLou Creations in Philomath, Oregon. The quilt I’ll start making on Friday is an arrangement of four-patch and nine-patch blocks. Because the internet is a land of marvels, I found a picture of the sample. I think it might be the perfect blend of antique and modern for this room.

I bought the fabrics Wednesday, taking my inspiration from the painting above the celadon couch. I found a matching green semi-solid to anchor the midtones, an array of creamy and green- or red-printed neutrals for the light tones, a russet print for the small burgundy squares, and two deep solid blues. The sample is quilted with freehand feather shapes; I’m leaning toward taking inspiration from Too Much Wool Cassie’s beautiful Welsh leaf patterns. (Of course, we may be talking years before this quilt reaches the quilting stage, given my track record.) Something botanical would be appropriate as a connective thread to Priscilla and her sister, my grandmother Caroline, both of whom were avid gardeners and had vast stores of knowledge about plants and trees. And there are botanical prints throughout, from Joanna Figueroa’s Fig Tree, Gypsy Rose, and Dandelion Girl collections.

All this fabric is now cut into the requisite strips and blocks, neatly bundled, and ready for next Friday. Here’s hoping I can squeeze some regular sewing into my summer around the Tour de France project and all the cycling I need to do! A goal: 20 miles every other day, plus longer weekend rides, while the Tour is on. I’m supposed to complete 63 miles for the Tour de Cure in 22 days, so I need to get fit quickly!

*Mr. G derisively calls it the TV room, just to push my buttons. Yes, the television is housed there, and yes, watching it is often one of the things I’m doing when I spend time there, but there’s only the one television against many, many books. And actually, there’s a great deal of wool in various stages of knit in there, too. It’s sort of the Woolery Annex, now I think about it. Someday our children are going to want both these rooms for their own use, but we’ll cross that bridge later on.