June was a busy month!

What have I been up to?  There’s so much to tell!  While you haven’t been hearing from me I took lots of pictures and thinking “that would make a great post!”…and then not posting it.

All of the expensive things seem to have happened at the end of June.  We got our house painted and then both DH and I had dental work.  Of course, about that time is when his vehicle needed over $1500 worth of car repairs.  Oh boy.

As for the fun stuff, the first quilt you haven’t seen was absolutely darling.  I got a couple of photos of it while it was on the frame, but forgot to get photos of the entire quilt.  How does THAT happen?

I met a new friend, Maryon, at a Quilters’ Schoolhouse quilting class put on by Boise Basin Quilters and we made an awesome string quilt for donation.  We had a heck of a time deciding on which border to add, and we eventually chose the dark green one.

I was contacted by a new quilter, Katie, to quilt her first quilt.  She thought she was picking an easy project, and she did a GREAT job, but I told her that was NOT an easy project!  Do you see all those straight lines she had to keep in place?  And that color arrangement?

We picked a blue and yellow variegated thread, which looked awesome, but I hadn’t realized that it was a size 17.  Why would I have something different in my thread stash?  Let me just say that size 17 is about the size of a rope, when it comes to thread, and I ended up picking out an entire bobbin’s worth of quilting.  That took about 4 hours.  I ordered some King Tut thread from Superior and it turned out beautifully!

I also finished the spinning project I started while I was at Mom’s house over Memorial Day weekend.  It sure turned out differently than what I expected.  I’m really proud of myself because I actually finished a project!  Not only that, the yarn is balanced, which means it’s not twisting back on itself when it’s hanging on the hanger.  And this is only my third spinning project!  I’ve been asked “what are you going to make with this?” and the answer is “I have no idea.”  I just picked it because it was pretty. 

One aspect of finishing a yarn is to set it by soaking it in hot water.  This means the twist in the fiber won’t come out and the wool “blooms”.  It’s pretty cool!  I checked on mine this morning and it’s still a little damp where the cotton yarn is holding it together so I’ll be hanging it outside today.  Boise has been close to 100 degrees lately, that should do it.

And yesterday, I started Tour de Fleece 2014!  This is my first TdF, and I’m using Gritty Knits LeGrand Boucle merino, which arrived yesterday afternoon.  In case you’re unfamiliar with Tour de Fleece, it is an online spinning event that mirrors the Tour de France, including rest days.  They spin, we spin.  A real spinning-themed spin-along.

My goal is to spin at least 15 minutes a day.  Since I’m on vacation over the 4th of July weekend, and we were watching a movie, I spun for about an hour and a half yesterday!

I’m having trouble making a consistent single because I’d used my jumbo flyer to spin the singles on my previous project (I won’t do that again!) and have changed back to the traditional flyer, but after about an hour of spinning my normal technique is starting to come back to me.

This isn’t a colorway I’d normally pick. The red/orange is on either end of the braid and the brown/yellow is in the middle. I decided to alternate the strips of color in my spinning, we’ll see what happens!