Baby quilt and new knitting

Last year I made a couple of baby quilt tops in anticipation of needing  baby gifts at some point.  I blogged about them here. Well, my daughter has 3 friends having babies.  I knitted items for two of them and the third is receiving one of these quilts.  I just finished machine quilting--nothing fancy, just stitch in the ditch and some diagonals and now on to the binding.

Also, some new knitting on needles.

A short while back I bought some lace weight yarn from Caroline of SockPixie.  She has an array of yummy hand spun yarn, as well as roving--if you are into spinning yourself, to choose from on her etsy site.

This is what I bought,

Denim colored merino/silk blend.

I usually ball up my yarn by winding it around my hand but with over 1300 yards, I thought it would be too much.  What I needed was a nostepinne.  Well, ok, I don't own one of those so I went looking for something suitable around the house.  Muddler to the rescue!  It is usually used to muddle mint leaves for mojitos (yum!) and so I figured I don't want minty yarn or yarny mint so I wrapped it in plastic wrap.

Not having any children around to press into yarn holding service, I used chairs.  This is considered an "action shot" of the makeshift nostepinne.

All wound.  Now to slip it off the muddler, er I mean the nostepinne.

The start of my new project.  This one will probably take MONTHS! so I will update you every so often on my progress.  What will it be, you ask?

Well, I can only hope I can do this.  Doesn't look impossibly hard so I should be ok. Pattern from the book Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush

Well, that's all for today.  Talk at you later.  Rumi