Knit Meter

Monday, August 31, 2020

August’s Hat

Here we are on the last day of August and I am so close to having two projects finished. In the meantime I’ll show the hat I made for charity this month.

 


I was not inspired by any of the suggestions in my two go-to groups so I picked an older suggestion that had not previously made. This turned out not to be the best of ideas and was frogged. Back to square one and time running out. OK, an exaggeration, it was only the end of the first week. I could have gone for my standard Better Late Than Never beanie pattern, but chose a pattern that I have made before and requires more concentration because I wanted to quickly crank out this thing.

The pattern is Brain Waves Beanie which I made in 2017. It is not a hard pattern but does require concentration as you are working SC, HDC, and DC in groups in each row. I definitely felt I got into a rhythm this time rather than keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best. The yarn is left over from a hat I made earlier this year and now I have used up most of the dark green. There is still quite a bit of the light green left but it is not recommended to use it for the main part of a hat for Operation Gratitude so it is going to take a while to use it up.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

My Year Quilt is Finished

Last time I wrote about this quilt was February last year when I had finished the last squares and was deciding what to do with them. Looking back at my posts, I am surprised that I have not written anything about my choices and the process.

In my post I said that I had purchased fabric to make the squares all the same size. I started out by adding a small border to the largest square and then sized all the squares to that. As the point of the quilt is the individual squares, I placed sashing between the squares. But I also wanted a quilt I could use so then borders were added and then it was sandwiched and then it waited. Another quilt waiting to be quilted. 

In the end I repeated to myself “finished is better than perfect” and just got on with it. Also I told myself that I couldn’t sew anything else until this was completed. (I broke this self-imposed rule when I had to make masks.) The action of quilting was hard because of the weight of the fabric so each session was no more than two hours. But a little here and there added up and I had a finished quilt. As I was not working on anything else I kept the walking foot on my machine the whole time as it is fiddly to change. (This has made me think that it would be nice to have a basic machine that I can keep set up just for quilting.)

There was no plan for the quilting. Just some circles with the darning foot and a lot of straight lines with the walking foot. As I got closer to finishing I started to think about the binding. The fabric I used for the back of the quilt was extra wide and I had just enough in the length to make a self-binding. I trimmed the backing to ¾”, folded in half, folded this over the edge of the quilt and then machined. As this is a quilt for us I did not miter the corners. I tell you, machining binding is the way to go.

I am really pleased with the result.

 

 

 

Oh, and as the impetus to finish this was so I can make some clothes for the family with fabric I’ve had for a while, what did I do? Start a new quilt completely from scraps!

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Who Is the Most Patriotic?

A common theme I have found in this war of SJWs and anti-SJWs, is that “they” are just not patriotic or “they” don’t love their country.

I find this interesting because, just because someone has a different opinion does not make them any more or less patriotic than you. But is that correct in the true meaning of the word? I decided to look up the meaning of patriotism and came up with some interesting ideas. There was one local government page whose examples of patriots were; military, police, firepeople, police, nurses, doctors, schools and volunteer who helped after a disaster. If you stuck to that definition then there would be not be so many patriots. 

I also found this definition, which I thought interesting.

What is patriotism? [1]

  • Special affection for one's own country.
  • A sense of personal identification with the country.
  • Special concern for the well-being of the country.
  • Willingness to sacrifice to promote the country's good.

The last definition fits in with the description I showed first. But what I find of interest is the third description – “Special concern for the well-being of the country” and this is why I do not believe you can call someone who has different views from you unpatriotic. I would argue that the majority of residents have concern, they just show it in different ways.

But what would the founding fathers think? Yes, I have read this as an argument for sticking with the status quo. I think the founding fathers would think good on ’em, for anyone collecting signatures for a ballot, protesting for change, stopping work. Remember this country (the United States) was founded on a revolution because they were not happy with the people in charge (yes, a gross over-simplification) and they knew that not all citizens would like the decisions that they or future governments would make so in the First Amendment they gave the people “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.

So why is it unpatriotic, when it is a part of the Bill of Rights? 

I have written about hypocrisy previously and, of course, the nay-sayers are just the same as the people they decry because they love to complain about government, it’s just different forms, so that’s OK.

 

 



[1] Stanford.edu