Another UFO bites the dust. I am ashamed to tell you that I made this quilt AND quilted it about 10 years or so ago, but I never put the binding on it. So I put it by my seat on the couch, and whenever I watched TV, I handfinished the binding. Now, this is not a quilt that I would ever enter in a show. It's a Billie Lauder mystery quilt that I made back in 2000 or 2001, when I first started quilting. Billie came to the Allenberry Resort (where my family and about 100 close friends all used to go each February for 17 years for the Murder Mystery Weekend) to teach this quilt under the auspices of Quilt Odyssey's Melissa Molino and her fall quilt retreats. So now it is finished, at last!
Today several things arrived in the mail! This luscious grouping of Sulky threads contains all the ones I didn't have for embroidering the St. Nick Lights the Way mantel scarf that is our next embroidery group's project. This starts Februrary 2nd, so it has arrived in plenty of time.
These ChiaoGoo 24" circular needles also came today. They are the same 1.5 size so that I can do the double needle technique of making socks, particularly an intriguing way of starting from the toe and knitting up, rather than the usual way of starting from the leg opening and knitting down. This will be an entirely new experience for me, and there's no telling if I will even be able to master casting on, so we'll see. That little tin at the bottom is shea butter for the hands. It has an almond scent and feels quite lovely on the skin.
The piece de resistance is this super luscious Sea Silk yarn. It is multicolored and looks almost irridescent, much like a butterfly's wing. The yarn is made from 70% silk and 30% Seacell, which is some sort of seaweed derivative. I can't wait to use it. This is the yarn I am going to use for that shawl that I started in cotton. I will complete the cotton one first so that I can learn from that experience and get all the bugs out of the pattern -- or out of my knitting, is more like it!
On a surprising and wonderful note, the little old black chihuahua that I told you about that was having a horrible time breathing in the vet's office the other day -- well, it's doing well!!! I dropped in to see my vet today to ask how it was faring, and she was so happy to tell me that it was recovering rapidly! It seems that its teeth were very very dirty with lots of tartar, and an infection around the base of the teeth in the gums had taken hold and spread to the entire body. It took the diuretics to help the enlarged heart and lots of antibiotics to cure the gum disease. I suspect that the heart has something called endocarditis -- same thing junkies get from giving themselves injections with dirty needles. The bacteria set up housekeeping in the heart and destroy the valves. So this little dog will never be fully well, BUT he will last alot longer than anyone thought when we first saw him a week ago! Hurray!
The moral of the story is -LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER! Brush your teeth. And brush your dog's teeth, too!
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