Evil Overlord Scarf

Not much quilting has gotten done lately, but I have been experimenting with knitting and crochet. Above is my Evil Overlord Scarf. For those of you who have seen "Despicable Me" (which is hilarious, by the way), this is just like the scarf the villain/hero Gru wears in the film. I saw it, and I knew I had to make one. I don't much like knitting with needles, so I decided to trying a knitting loom. This scarf is meant to be long and narrow, and it is, quite appropriately, 13 stitches wide. I had to make my own loom spacers to get a gauge this fine, the ones the loom came with gave a stitch that was too loose.




And this is the crochet scarf I started last month. I don't know if it will ever get done. This is the first scarf I tried to crochet, and I did not fully realize just how many yarn ends would need to be woven in when I changed colors so often, or just how long it would take. Or how much of a pain in the @$$ it would be. So, this project is on the slow road to completion. Every now and again I'll pull it out and weave a few tails in. Then I'll give up and put it away again for a while. I have noticed that the ends of the tails I've already woven in tend to poke out again over time, so I keep having to trim them again. And now you know why this project may never get done.

Three Tops

Soooo, some progress has been made, if not in actual completed quilts, then at least in quilt tops, YAY! Here are the two quilt of valor tops that I made from this block set. Still have 12 blocks leftover, but I think I'll put them in a wall-hanging or on the pillowcases I'll make for the QOVs to go in after they are completed. I don't know whether I should really count both of these as done, since the one with the red border has a bit of border ripple. Apparently the numerous seams in the piano-key inner border caused some stretch and I may need to do some ripping and re-sewing on that one. I hate having to re-sew, so I'm going to put it away and not think about it!


This top is a baby quilt for a neighbor. I had the blocks tucked away from an experiment in designing my own rectilinear blocks. I think of them as log cabin pattern variations. I call this design "circuit boards," and I have a set with light backgrounds and one with dark backgrounds. The light ones went into this quilt, the dark ones are still in a stack in my quilt room. I was 4 blocks short, so I made more and put sashing and a couple of borders on when I realized that the baby shower was coming up soon. The mom-to-be told me she wanted to learn to quilt, so I don't intend to finish this one for her. I'll help her learn how to quilt it or tie it (and I'll even tell her about long-armers who will machine quilt it for you if you pay them, in case she chickens out).