New Places

I've started posting most of my stuff over at my new blog-- HERE. Come see what's going on there. (Lots of photography, for one thing.)

Sophia

So I decided to start this quilt. I've been working on it for a few weeks now. It was supposed to be given to my friend in time for the birth of her baby girl, but baby girl came early. So now I'm behind schedule. But I'm still excited about it and hope that it is a loved quilt for years to come. Is that too much to hope for? I'm not sure.

I have wanted to do something with triangles for ages, and found some ideas for quilts in a few of the books I have at home. And then I went to the internet and looked for ideas and just knew I had to do a zig-zag quilt. This is seriously such an easy quilt pattern and it looks modern and fun. There are so many ways you can run with it, too. I made mine all pinks and white since it is going to a baby girl, but there are so many color options for this. Once I got going, I thought of other ways that I could incorporate the zig-zag (like mirroring it, or having it run long-ways down the quilt...).



A couple of shots of it in pieces--

 

And now a couple of views of the completed top:

A little detail shot: 

My little helper:

For those of you that want a tutorial, I found my inspiration HERE and then just did my own thing, but THIS one is also pretty cool. I wanted the freedom to make mine in the proportions of my choosing, so I just got the general idea from these sites and ran with that. Thank you for the inspiration, fellow quilters! 

Now all I have left is to finish the back, quilt it up, and thow in some binding. Should be a piece of cake, right? Wish me luck!

An innocent addiction

My pen collection--
Fountain pens: 7 (one didn't make it into the picture).
Gel ink pens: 16.
Highlighters: 2.
Mechanical pencils: 2.
Other pens: 11.

Why am I bringing this up now? Oh, maybe because as much as I love my Lamy Safari fountain pen, I felt the need to buy a new nib for it. The Fine nib wasn't cutting it for me, so I just purchased an Extra Fine nib. (As wonderful as the ink flow is, I just felt like I had to write bigger than I like to with the Fine nib.) As it turns out, in order to get free shipping from JetPens, you need to have $25 of merchandise in your basket, and the one nib didn't quite cut it. So I may have bought a few more pens and a few ink cartridges. My excuse? I journal several times a week, and I've started writing real life letters again. I also sketch from time to time in ink. (Which I feel like I need to do more.) So I need a bunch of different pens for my different uses. Like I have one pen exclusively for writing on envelopes. (I bought it to address thank you notes.) I'm really excited to get my package in the mail, and can't wait to try out a few more ink colors.
My favorite ink colors? Thus far they are Noodler's Heart of Darkness (because it is SUPER black), the gray of my Zebra Sarasa (it almost looks like pencil lead on certain papers), various browns, and blue-black inks. However, I've also been won over by my Uni-ball Signo's Lavender Black ink. I usually shy away from overly darling colors, but this is not middle school purple. It is grown up and sophisticated.
So there you have it. I'll probably share which of my inks and pens are my favorites and why at some later date. Consider yourself warned.