One down project down...

So I actually finished something last week. Some old friends in IL have had their 2nd child - congratulations to C&D. I wanted to send a present right off, but with a lot of people having babies, this was the 5th baby blanket this year, and unfortunately it just dragged on. I like making these in Sirdar Snuggly Baby Care, which no one sells around Binghamton. It's 60% acrylic, so good for popping in the washer & dryer, and 40% cotton, which gives it a more genuine softness (unlike the fake and often transitory softness of purely acrylic yarn - yes, I'm a fiber snob). I've been getting it from a lovely store in Harrisburg, PA (http://www.knittersdream.com/Yarn.html ). Now that it's almost November, I think it's nearly impossible that anyone I know (well enough to give presents to anyway) could fit in another baby this year. And, as of Saturday, the blanket was nicely packaged up and sent off to Chicago - yeah!

And this is my beautiful wallhanging from Kaffe Fasset's "Glorious Patchwork." It was years in the making, and I finally finished around my birthday last Feb. I learned hand quilting on this, and added beads in with the handquilting. For this quilt, I could look for interesting pieces of fabric, and then just use a little bit of them. It was made with paper piecing, so the squares & corners are all more precise than I could make them on my own.