Traveling Through my WIP Pile!

I am slowly getting things out of my WIP pile. In the past two weeks the pile has shrunk from four projects to only two projects and that is only because I almost immediately cast on another scarf after casting off my Noro Striped Scarf.

I decided to take a leaf out of the Yarn Harlot's book and wet block my scarf. It is a shorter scarf that (as my fiance has pointed out) is going to be perfect for spring and fall when I don't want to be wearing my longer scarf just yet. It is also the perfect length to use to tie around my head and wear it as a headband/earmuffs.

I am trying to decide if I want the stripes to be all the way up my next scarf or if I just want the two color striping bits at the ends of the scarf and keep the rest in the main color that I started with. But other than that, I am on a 1x1 ribbed scarf kick for some reason. It is easy and fun and always looks good no matter what you do with it, so I think that is part of the reason why I can't stop knitting 1x1 ribbed scarves at the moment.

I am also back at making my scrappy crumb blocks again. My mom's old sewing machine is acting up again, so I am back to hand sewing the blocks. The top two on the right were completely done by hand while most of the others were done either by machine or half by hand and half by machine.

Ironing the blocks really makes a difference with how they lay. The last block I made was ironed before it was trimmed down to size to make the cutting easier (and it was).

 I also did a very loose Jelly Roll Race Block (the one on the upper right corner) where I took scraps of fabric that were about the same width and sewed them all end to end. Then I folded the ends in half and sewed along one side and cut the fold then repeated that until it was a square block. It sounds complicated, but it really wasn't. I understand why people would like to buy a precut jelly rolls of a fabric line to make a quilt with. It really doesn't take that much time and I imagine that if you were doing that on a sewing machine that it would fly by.

My cotton is growing quite nicely. They finally sprouted and the seedlings are growing nice and tall. I'm not sure a couple of them will make it, but my dad (who gardens a lot) thinks that they might all survive to be strong cotton plants. Hopefully in another week or two they will have their true leaves instead of the seedling leaves. When that happens then I will transfer them to other bigger pots to grow up the rest of the way.

This makes me hopeful that I can actually grow things and that my dream of having a small garden one day will come to life. I mostly would want a small herb garden with maybe a couple of veggies, but I haven't had anything grow like this before. I will report back with their progress in about a week.