A Finish, and A Good Beginning

 Wow, I can't believe this is finally done! (Well, except for running in the ends. That's another day's work!)

I started this throw, the Absolutely Fabulous Throw using Colinette yarns, back around 2005. It's been in and out of rotation being worked on over the years. There are 9 different yarns in it, 3 colors of variegated mohair, a tape yarn, a chenille, a wool, a couple of boucles.

It was the project I brought with me when I did a Relay for Life event with a group called Stitchers for Life. The booth had a couple of rocking chairs and featured people sitting and knitting.
So, instead of walking laps overnight, another knitter and I rocked and knitted from 10 pm till 8 am.

Yes, that was a 10-hour stint of knitting. You can see why this was the perfect project--kept the lap warm, and there wasn't a chance I'd get even close to done overnight!

I did manage to give myself a good charley horse in my shoulder though.

And now, it's finally an FO, ready to be put to use, and one BIG project bag emptied. Yay!

Now on to the next project!

Shyla. I do too have a second cat!

 Still prepping for the Jumping Jax Flash quilt I'll be working on at Asilomar. The foundation papers are cut out and sorted into their bags, the templates have been glued to plastic and cut out and sorted into their bags as well.

I went through several boxes of fabric--there's been an influx of project boxes coming "home" from storage--and pulled some oranges and orangey yellows and golds and browns for the stars.

 Of course Mother's Fluffy had to help out in his own way. You never can tell if that pesky fabric might decide to fly off into the sunset if it wasn't weighted down.

Luckily he gets bored easily so I was able to finish cutting the strips for the different star sections,

There was a small error in the math department, but after a second (or was it third?) cup of coffee, I was able to resolve it.

There will not be six of this quilt. It wasn't that kind of math error.

Thankfully!

I had also pulled some dark blues for the first background pieces. These blues are the background to the central stars, and then become spiky rays around each star. The spikes are set against a second background, and there are secondary star patterns that show up when the 12 blocks are finally pieced together.

That's where I am now. The main background is a turquoisey blue with purple streaks--prettier than it sounds--but it's a 7 yard piece, so it's going to take a little more handling. I've got the ironing board set up (another storage run to retrieve it) and if all goes well tomorrow I'll be pressing that giant piece and cutting it into strips.

Then the strips have to be cut into the separate template shapes, tucked into their own little baggies that will go into the big bags. It can all be done with a rotary cutter, thank goodness, and it all has to be done before I settle into my class on the 16th. You can expect a few more posts featuring all this cutting! In spite of the tedium, it really is rather fun, especially if a fellow sufferer classmate can make it over to work on hers!