Spring Cleaning

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance. --Erma Bombeck

I had an extra long weekend this weekend. I was grateful for it because I really felt like I needed to give my brain a break. The forecast also showed that we were going to get a lot of rain, so I was looking forward to having an excuse to stay inside and work on a few things inside.

Friday was the sunniest day. We went out and enjoyed the first of the spring blooms:

Seymour even deigned to pose for a springtime photo... but only if I held a treat in my hand:

Then, it rained and rained for two days straight. Seymour settled in for cuddles and tv:

I have a project all lined up to start, but I am waiting for some supplies to arrive. I was going to start something else in the meantime, but I realized that I have way too many half-finished projects lying around the house. I figured this would be a good time to start clearing them up. I started by finally finishing up the spinning I've had sitting on my spinning wheel. This is what 400 grams of merino/alpaca/camel/silk looks like all spun up. It was really good for me to do because it gave me the chance to get my singles to be more of a consistent gauge. These three skeins are all of different weights, but I don't mind: it will be a joy to finally knit this up into something soft and cushy:

I also decided it was time to finally do something with this panel of knitting that I did a few years ago. It was an experiment with cables and lace which has been sitting in my basket for a while now. I thought it might make a nice wall hanging, but it never made it up on the wall. For a while, it was a cover for a footstool, but it's far too pretty to have your feet on it. So I finally made up my mind to make it into a cushion:

It's not of a regular pillow size, so I dug around in the linen closet and unearthed a couple of cotton pillow cases that have never been used. I cut open the seams and gave them a wash and then pressed them:

And since this is not of a regular pillow size, I had to make my own pillow form. I used a roll of fabric that I bought some time ago which has little holes in it that make it "breathable." I've used it a lot for pillow forms in the past. I cut it to size and stuffed it... and man, that is a big pillow! I put it next to Seymour for scale:

After a few false starts and one major rip-out event, I cut the old pillowcases to size and fashioned them into a pillowcase large enough to fit the knitted panel. I stuffed the pillow form into it, which made hand-stitching the knitted panel onto it much easier:

I even managed to figure out how to make a foldover panel so that I wouldn't have to fuss around trying to put a zipper on:

And I finally got to use these beautiful buttons which I've been holding onto for the perfect use. Also: check out those button holes! I just LOVE the buttonhole foot for my sewing machine. It makes me look so competent:

So that's out of the way... and my supplies have not yet arrived. I've gone out and cleaned the dead leaves off the strawberry plants in the yard, moved around some plant boxes, bought some new plant pots, and rearranged my yarn stash... I am itching to start a new project, but I will hold firm! I still have some unfinished spinning to complete...

But my eyes are drifting to my yarn stash every day. Must. Hold. Firm...

Have a good week. Keep your fingers crossed that I can keep from starting yet another project in the meantime...