Driven to distraction

Today, Branden drove me to distraction. A quilt store, specifically.

We are going to a friend's wedding in about a month and a half, and our traditional wedding gift is a handmade quilt. Can't break with tradition, now can we?

I've been thinking about the need to begin a quilt for a while, but hadn't hit on the perfect one. But, of course, the blogosphere had an answer for me. Cattywampus posted a few weeks ago about her One Block Wonder quilt, and I just had to give it a try. The wedding colors are gerbera daisy and tan, and we found these fabrics.



The orange is a little more muted in person; more orange sherbet-y. I'm not generally big on orange, but this one is quickly growing on me.

And then there was this:



Again, not our typical colors. But they caught my eye because I was looking for orange. And then they said sunshine. And how can you leave sunshine in the store? This is now destined to become a smaller lap quilt for us.

And, because I promised, I have a knitting picture.



I'm not as far along as I'd like on the sweater, given how long it's been on the needles, but I've been taking it as bus knitting, and it is slowly getting done.

It has now become unavoidably obvious that I am going to run out of yarn. I thought that 8 skeins of the Malabrigo would be more than enough. My handy-dandy yar requirements chart said that I would only need 6 based on stitch count and garment size, I think. I thought I would have tons extra buying 8 skeins. But I needed to go down a needle size (to a 4!), and I think that did me in. So, we'll have to make a trip to the LYS to see if they have more of this color. If not, we'll have some creative crafting to do.

The bottom edge is a classic example of I-should-have-known-better. In fact, I did know better. I had every intention of doing a few garter stitch rows to keep the edges from curling. But then when I did the sleeves, they didn't curl at all. So, I figured I was just being fussy and that it would be fine without the garter stitch. Well, it's not really fine without the garter stich, and the bottom hem rolls up horribly. I'm going to have to do something about it. I'm thinking of sewing some grosgrain ribbon in as a facing to stabilize it, but I'm not sure yet. Guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, I'm more worried about running short of yarn...

So, I think that's it for tonight. I need to go be distracted for a while...