When the Students Surpass the Teacher

A friend of mine says you can always tell when a teacher has done a good job, when the student begins to surpass the teacher. That has happened to me already with my oldest daughter, with her writing, quilting, knitting, spinning. Now it is happening to me all over again with Diantha.

Diantha is only 13, but already she is a great quilter, with a terrific eye for color and what seems to be few restrictions on how she combines. It is amazing to see really. She made these two quilt blocks for our block-a-day calendar, and for her Initial challenge on my N2Quilting Group at Yahoo. I love her freedom in the fabrics she chooses and her nonchalance for how she puts them together. We are playing catchup (after the all-day bullet fiasco on Monday) but here are hers for yesterday and today.

She has been doing some spinning also. I bought some roving balls from Claydancer on Etsy who said she has become allergic to wool. One of the rovings was called Mardi Gras - deep red but has small streaks of a golden color, green, and purple in it. I was wanting to spin it up, and then knit it into a semi-permanent felted Easter basket for Betsy. So Diantha says, mom, you have stuff to do... let me spin some of that roving for you. Here is the end result. The roving ball was 4 oz. of Merino, and Diantha ended up with 108 yards of this luscious, even, heavy-worsted yarn. Wonderful!

I walked and ran some errands today, taught the kids, held B (a lot!), made some copies and a Post office run, and another run out to drop Diantha at church for youth group, and for eggs at the store. And, I actually got a quilt block done, for a change, though it is Monday's block, so I am still a couple days behind. Oh well! This one is going to go in my Connie Rosolli mini quilt in the Bumbling Bounty Hunters Mini Quilt Challenge 2009. And it also qualifies for the Black and White Quilt Challenge Project.

G'bye, Leaves, Hello, Yukon Cornelius

So, here in the foothills of the Great Smoky (without an E) Mountains, we have what is called Color. Our hills and trees are ablaze everywhere you look with just about every color God can come up with. I think He does it just to show off. Whatever the reason, it is spectacular. I love living here and looking at the mountains any time of the year, but in October it is wondrous to behold. Thing is, just when the colors can't get a bit richer, it is over. Just the other day I was sloping onto I-40 East and thought, "In another couple days those golds, reds, purples, and yellows will be rusty brown." And sure enough, yesterday they were.

Then this is what happens. We get rain. We had drought nearly all summer. Welcome to Tennessee Winter... cold and drizzle. It's like living in the UK, with better scenery. The first big rain of winter comes with wind, usually hits at night, and knocks all those newly-brown leaves off the trees. Next thing you know our hills look like the buzz cuts of so many Drill Seargeants. Bare black branches reaching soldierly for the sky. The rain came last night. Today was cold and damp. But my Bradford ornamental pear trees stubbornly stuck to their coats or yellow and scarlet, cheering me a little while longer (and I am thankful). Pictures: top, from my front porch; above, from my driveway looking toward my front yard.

Today I made another pair of felted fingerless glove, mitt wrist warmers for my Heart Felt Fun shop at Etsy. I also got a felted, really cheery bag nearly done but not up. Another day maybe.

Today I also got 4 new yarns done for the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer series:

Clarice - she is brown, pink, and fuschia... lovely stripes and highlights in the highest angora-content yarn I have ever recycled... 40% angora rabbit. Luscious.

The Spotted Elephant from the Island of Misfit Toys. She is a creamy white wool blend, wrapped with a narrow cord of white and salmon pink boucle. A nice, chunky, quick knit for a scarf!

Mrs. Claus - we have Christmas with an attitude! She is the high-angora blend yarn in pink, fuschia-red, and a little bright green.

Yukon Cornelius - this is the first cotton blend yarn I have bothered with. For the most part, I think cotton yarns are a waste unless you are knitting dishrags. But this has enough acrylic to give it memory, and enough cotton to class up the acrylic. AND, I realize that not everyone loves wool, however soft. So here we have good ol' Yukon. The original sweater was a sorry pale algae color, but it did have a nice metallic glitzy thread shot through it. So I have hand dyed him deep blue like his coat, red like his beard, and left a little green. All run along with a fine thread of silver 'n' gold. I hope you will like him too!

Don't forget to enter my "Go Green for the Holidays Giveaway" a couple posts below this one!

So here I am

Once again NOT doing yarn today. Well that is, not doing recycled yarn. My BIL called wanting to borrow Artemas' muscles. I had to go out to the PO, so of course I should drop Muscleman off at their house and haul all the rest of us to my oldest daughter's for a day of sewing, eating, and all kinds of other fun.

We usually go there on Wed. nights while a couple of my kids are at youth group. It is closer to her house from our church than back to mine (12 miles instead of almost 20) so we go hang out a while, let the kids all play together, exclaim over babies, make dinner, knit a little while together.

But now it is dark earlier, so it was fun to go earlier tonight and let the kids play on the playground out in the circle of apartment buildings. And it gave us more time to play with quilt blocks, yarn, and a spindle.

DD #1 has decided she wants to ply some fabric with some handspun yarn and bits of stuff to make "art yarn" for an upcoming project. So she figured she should play with a spindle to see if she could actually spin something.

I had brought along a spindle and a batt of Blue Jeans merino that I got from The Ranch at Etsy, along with some Cotswold locks I had hand-dyed. Granted merino isn't the best yarn to learn to spin on, it is slippery. I had in mind that I was going to spin it. But hey, I love it when my kids want to learn something new! I spun a little to show her the movements and turned her loose. She sure did spin up the entire 4 oz. of that batt, into what looks to me like darn good yarn for a beginner.

So Congrats Desirée, and here is a pic of your diligent evening's work.

And, dd#2 made chocolate chip cookies. Yummmmm!