A flimsy and a scarf

I finally finished adding the borders to my Triple Four Patch quilt.  I would have finished sooner but I had several busy days with non quilting things. Monday the weather was good to drive so we dropped off my Bernina to be fixed and it turned out to be a long day of driving due to taking the long way home. I didn't feel like doing any sewing after dinner.

You can see my Janome Gem lightweight traveling machine in the lower corner of the photo. It is a nice little machine for piecing and has a much nicer straight stitch  than my Bernina but I am eager to ransom get my Bernina back with all the features I bought it for. Maybe MY straight stitch will be better too.

I can't get back any farther in my room and right now I can't move the machine any farther away from the design wall due things that don't belong in my room taking up space.












I added 2 sides and mitered the corner and the miter looked good but the corner wasn't square. I went on to other 2 side borders and did the miters differently and they came out perfect. I went back and redid the first corner and now they are all square.






I finished my scarf and I like it but there are some things that could be better. It is much shorter in length and makes it awkward  to wrap and requires some fussing to get it looking right. I am not an experienced knitter and know almost nothing about yarn and how to read the labels so when I was shopping for needles and yarn I finally just went with the color I liked and hoped for the best in the weight. All in all  I think I came pretty close but I forgot that I had a second skein of the same yarn just in case I needed it (actually I couldn't find it so I thought I didn't buy it after all) and when I came to the end of the yarn I was 10 notches short of what  the pattern called for. The pattern said to knit to 42 notches or the end of the skein it, it called for a larger skein but I didn't think about whether or not all skeins were the same size. I learned a lot from this scarf. Making all the dish cloths helped me become better at the actual  knitting but this taught me about choosing and buying yarn.

I also learned that I have a lot more to learn.

Some Knitting and one anvil block

I am not much of a knitter. I started knitting again about a year ago after many, many years ( my first attempts were not stellar). I made a stack of dish cloths, like 25 +, I considered them practice. My daughter recently told me that my dishcloth knitting looked pretty good and that I should try knitting something else. I  bought and downloaded this "Hitchhiker" scarf pattern on Ravelry and I went out to buy yard and needles. This is really the same stitch as the dishcloths but a different gauge.  I know nothing about yarn types and I had no idea what fingering yarn is. Another shopper gave me some advice and I bought the yarn for the color. I am about 1/3 of the way finished now. There is an increase of 4 stitches in width for every notch
and there are 42 notches. I think there are 2 mistakes but because of the variegated yarn it is really hard to tell.

I made one Anvil block yesterday. I thought it would be quick as I had all the background squares cut and the "made fabric" squares ready. I am almost never quick. Here it is with the other 12 yellow/orange background blocks in back on my design wall.

I think I had a problem because I was using a different machine and the quarter inch foot has an attached guide on the side;  my light was not positioned to light up that edge. My seams were not straight and not 1/4 inch so there was a lot of unsewing going on. I finally realized what the problem was and moved my lamp.

Here is a close up of the finished block. At our Basement Diva meeting in October Fran gave me some made fabric blocks and that is what I used for this block.
I have more yellow and orange background squares cut so maybe the next blocks will be quicker.
I really have to get my Bernina in soon for service; yesterday I kept moving my right leg to lift the presser foot. Once you get used to the knee lift it is hard to get along without it.