A couple of the things I made over my break:

First, the curly-ended scarf. I didn't feel like doing the whole set-up-the-camera-on-timer-and-then-take-eight-different-shots-because-my-hair-is-wrong-in-this-one and I-have-a-strange-expression-on-my-face-in-that-one, so I pulled out a critter to model it.

His name is Charles. (Named for Charles Trenet, one of my favorite French singers, so it's actually pronounced "sharle" rather than the typical English pronounciation.



The scarf is short but it is long enough to sort of tie. I think it's probably more a decorative scarf than a warm scarf.

I really, really liked the yarn I used for it (Kathmandu Aran); if I were thinking of buying yarn for yet another sweater I'd definitely consider this one. (No, I am not. I have too many sweater's worth of yarn ahead). It is soft and warm and has a slightly felted feel to it. The "nubs" in the yarn (it is a nepp yarn) are in pretty securely and don't shed out as you knit. It has a really nice hand when worked up - soft and yet firm.

I also did a small amount of quiltmaking. I didn't have the energy to try to work up a bed-sized or throw-sized quilt (and probably would not have had the time), but I made a small quilt (like a doll quilt; most quilters differentiate "small quilts" from "miniatures" in that a miniature has to be to scale. And I'm just not down with doing a block 1/12 the size of what it normally is, especially complex blocks. So when I make small quilts, I make quilts kind of like what girls would have made for their dolls - small, but not necessarily to-scale small.)

I had bought some of the April Cornell line of fabrics at one of the local quilt shops and I made them into just a simple four-patch set on point:



A couple of things I was thinking about as I made the quilt: I think the prints are designed to recall (but not be strict reproductions) of Civil War-era things, in terms of the colors (more or less), but also, interestingly, one of the prints in particular (the one I used for the setting squares; it's a greenish-brown with dull orange and sort of a drab turquoise print) made me think of 1970s fabric.

I suppose someone HAS done a study of color trends and how certain color combinations seem to crop up at different times in history, but I wonder if there's any relationship between color preferences and what is going on socially or culturally at the time. (I always wonder a little at the 1970s-revival people. I was a child during the 1970s and as I remember it, it was not all that great a time - there was inflation, and the gas shortages, and President Carter coming on the television to ask us to turn down our thermostats in the winter and wear sweaters, and there was concern that the bald eagle was going to go extinct, and there were other environmental worries, and there was the threat of the Soviet Union...I suppose the people who want to revive the 70s are more excited by the free-love and disco and the design elements, but there were also a lot of undesirable things in the decade. Although I will say the "Americana" movement (where there was sort of a colonial-revival around the Bicentennial where people got kind of in touch with Early American roots, and got interested in history and the culture) and the greater freedom to "make it yourself" (rather than buying it) were two more positive trends.)

I machine quilted the top using my mom's old Singer machine (which actually had been mine for a while; the machine has an odd history of ownership: first it was my mom's, then she passed it on to her mother-in-law, and then when my grandmother died, I got it - it was the first "real" machine I had - and then, when I got a "better" newer machine, my mom got it back). She has a walking-foot on it and uses it mainly for machine quilting.

And as I worked on the quilt, I was struck by the difference between doing something on the machine with the walking foot - even something very simple like the straight lines on the quilt I made- and hand quilting.

I do not like machine quilting. If I have a quilt that I want done quickly, or I want machine quilted, I will take it to someone with a longarm machine and pay them to do it for me.

For me, the difference between machine quilting and hand quilting is the difference between driving in heavy traffic and going for a walk. With hand quilting, you have enough time with each stitch to deliberate a little: is this stitch even in size with the others? Am I going in the right direction? Do I want to change the pattern up a little from what I have marked on the top? It's slow and meditative and conducive to quiet thought.

With machine quilting, you have to be looking several steps ahead of where you are at the moment (like driving in heavy traffic) and have your route mapped out so it will "work." You also have to concentrate very intensely on what you're doing (maybe that changes with practice but the few times I've machine quilted it seems that I have to THINK so hard about what I'm doing that it's tiring). If you make a mistake, it's a lot harder to undo than in hand quilting. And it's harder to see when you've made a mistake. It's also kind of stressful on the arms - you sort of have to "stretch" the quilt a little or work it as you move it under the needle and it gets tiring (I know they make products like machine hoops to help with that but I've never tried them.)

So I don't think I will be buying a walking foot for my machine.

I do want to strive to finish the quilt I am hand-quilting (and have been working on since 2002); I have the antique bow-tie quilt I bought in McKinney that I want to hand-quilt, and also another quilt that is made of fabrics thematically evocative of the French countryside. So I'm once again going to try the "quilt for ten minutes a day" trick and see if I can keep up with it this time.