May 2024 – tierneycreates

ANOTHER HAT

So I finished knitting another hat (same pattern as I always make), even though I can’t wear it until it gets cold again.

Yummy purple and blue variegated yarn from who knows where…

I need to be distracted when I am a passenger in the front seat a car (or I get anxious) so I always have some handwork with me:

Riding in the car is better with a project!

If you’ve followed my blog for a while and seen the endless hats I’ve made in this same “Rolled Hat” pattern, then you know I had to take my photo with the double pointed needles in the hat as it nears completion (it’s tradition!) – ha!

Where is Tierney?

SUNFLOWER GS

I’ve been working through random balls of yarn I find in my stash, some of them left over from making other people gift hats.

With the hat complete and the weather getting warmer (into the 70s F and next week into the 80s F) I wasn’t in the mood to start knitting another hat. I have some crochet granny squares to work on using recycled yarn (see post Plastic Yarn?) but wasn’t in the mood for that standard pattern after already making 3 granny square blankets with it.

So I decided to challenge myself and learn a new granny square pattern – Sunburst Square. Here is the YouTub video I used to teach myself:

The YouTuber does a great job teaching you how to make this granny square

Here is my first Sunburst Square in progress:

In the center photo I am in the car as a passenger working on it!

I love Sunflowers and I just had to make my flowers look like Sunflowers! I will share more progress as I work on them while in the car. We have a couple road trips to explore Colorado coming up this summer so I hope to make lots of blocks then!

“AGRICULTURE REPORT”

What is an “Agriculture Report”? Well I was inspired by @quiteayarnblog‘s ongoing series of posts titled “Agriculture Report” (and this title always cracks me up) that are actually updates of what is going on in her garden. I just had to adopt this same title for updates on what is going on in my garden/my “garden report“…

With the new upstairs patio deck nearly complete (see post Guest Blogger Post: Managing Humans Demolishing and Rebuilding a Deck) it was time to restart my upstairs patio container garden.

It’s pretty much the same as last year – several varieties of tomatoes, hot peppers, herbs and some marigolds to help with pest management.

Oh look I caught the Sunflower block trying to sneak into the container garden…

Those squares are so sneaky…

PICKLES

I’ll just close this post with a pretty giant jar of spicy pickles that John recently made which is sitting on our kitchen counter.

tierneytravels

Springtime in Brooklyn

May 17, 2024May 18, 2024 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

At the end of April my sister and I met up in New York City and spent a couple days together in Brooklyn, exploring the Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-stuy) neighborhoods.

I always get a kick out of the “I love NY” sculpture at La Guardia airport where I flew into from Denver:

(if you check out this post you will see John and Tierney Beastie on this sign on our their way to Ireland a couple years ago – Guest Blog Post: The Beasties’ Ireland Travelogue (Part I))

I do love New York. Although I was born in Pittsburgh, PA, I grew up in New York State, living in Long Island and in Upstate NY. I’ve been to NYC a zillion times and I remember being 14 and taking the train with a friend all the time for the day from Long Island to NYC (I wonder if parents nowadays would let their teenage daughters do that?). I always feel like NY is my home state, it holds a special place in my heart. When my late husband Terry died, I did consider moving back to New York State and explored with my sister Tarrytown, NY on the drive back from the celebration of life with Terry’s family in Upstate NY. (For some not-light reading…me as a new widow in late 2018…about the road-trip across 7 states with my sister here is the post – Stories from the Road, Part I)

But it seemed Colorado was calling me and besides John was waiting for me in Colorado (smile).

While visiting the NYC area my sister and I stayed at an Airbnb apartment in Bed-stuy and we had these hysterical narrow and steep stairs to climb to get to our apartment. Here is my sister doing the climb (we got use to it after a while):

We spent a day at the Brooklyn Waterfront/DUMBO area shopping, checking out the Brooklyn Bridge, and enjoying delicious food.

We spent a couple days wandering around the Williamsburg Brooklyn area and found the best little tea shop (which we visited twice!) as well as a wonderful indie bookstore. We were naughty and enjoy some amazing pastries at an exquisite bakery.

We also explored the Bed-stuy neighborhood and had a wonderful breakfast at an outdoor French-style cafe as well as got to see Director Spike Lee’s original studio.

The name of this Vegan eatery in Bed-stuy made us laugh- Slutty Vegan!:

It was definitely Springtime in NYC and we enjoyed seeing lots of flowers (and lots of tulips). I also went for a walk through one of the parks in Brooklyn and ran into a woman walking two adorable miniature schnauzers on a beautiful Spring day.

One evening wandering around Williamsburg, we stopped at an Irish pub for a pint of Guinness and met this awesome Willimsburg based couple that we spent the evening chatting with and sharing a meal. They might be visiting Denver in the future and we plan to connect again.

New Yorkers are definitely my people – I connect so easily with other New Yorkers!

It was a memorable trip and I just enjoy hanging out with my sister!

I’ll close this post with a poster on someone’s window in Williamsburg that made us smile:

I did ask my dog Mike but he is not ready to start up his Presidential campaign just yet…

Adventures in Paper Piecing, Fabric Scraps Obsession

All 99 are finally done!

May 12, 2024May 12, 2024 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

I’ve been blogging about this quilt for 7 years, it is my oldest UFO. I won’t even bother linking previous posts as there are a lot of tierneycreates posts about this English Paper Pieced quilt, I will just give you the history and bring you up to speed.

In October 2016 the first issue of Quiltfolk Magazine (which was about Oregon quilters and I lived in Oregon at the time) was published and I fell head over heels in love with the quilt on the magazine’s cover:

I was determined to learn English Paper Piecing (EPP) so I could make this quilt and I purchased a book about how to do and enlisted the help of several quilters with EPP experience. My late husband Terry helped me punch out the hexagon templates from scrap card stock paper and in 2017 I began the journey to make 99 hexagon flowers (each one has 6 EPP hexies, so 594 hexies were needed) to make this quilt. I primarily used fabric scraps to make the hexies.

After a while I became proficient at making the hexagons or “hexies” to build the hexagon flowers for each block, and assembling the hexagon flowers. Over the next 7 years I would sporadically work on this very portable project. This project has been around the U.S. as well as to Ireland in various little project sacks I’ve stored it in.

In late April I went on a trip to New York City with my sister (separate post to follow) and finished the last of the 99 hexagon flowers at a tea house in Brooklyn that we frequented during our trip.

Tea and Hexies in Brooklyn

Here are the 99 completed hexagon flowers:

Some of the hexagon flowers configuration are repeated because I had a lot of those scrap fabrics to work with such as the piles at the top of this image below:

And some have few to no repeats such as these solid color hexagon flowers at the bottom of the image below:

And finally I used up the left over hexies in various colors of solid color scrap fabrics to finish up the hexagon flowers (see the bottom of the image below):

So now that the 99 are done, I will use fat quarters to put together coordinating background fabrics to each hexagon flower.

If you are interested in learning EPP there are lots of free instructional website and videos online like this one:

A Crafter's Life, From the Woodshop, Guest Blogger, Miniature Schnauzer Adventures

Guest Blogger Post: Managing Humans Demolishing and Rebuilding a Deck

May 9, 2024May 10, 2024 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Well you haven’t heard from Tierney in a while so I figured it’s time once again for me to step in and update you on what we’ve been up.

This is Mike the Miniature Schnauzer who lives with Tierney and John, who despite not having opposable thumbs is able to write a guest blog post from time to time.

Tierney and John had an upstairs deck that was on the verge of collapse. John had tried bracing some of the rotting sections a couple years ago but they were one crazy human-deck-dinner-party (you know if the humans started jumping up and down on top of the deck while dining) from a total deck disaster!

Their awesome friends from Bend, Oregon (where Tierney and I used to live) MJ and J (J has a lot of deck building experience) came and visited us last week; and thus began 4 days of deck demolishing and rebuilding.

MJ and Tierney documented the whole 4-day long project with photos; and I am going to share some of their photos (it’s impressive enough that I can write without opposable thumbs, taking photos with a smart phone would be nearly impossible…but with the right dog treats offered, I could try…) in this post.

First they had to take the existing deck-of-terror down:

The backyard got to looking crazy and there was no place for them to play ball with me (humans are thoughtless)!

Plus they kept chasing me back inside because they didn’t want me to get any splinters in my paws (perhaps that was thoughtful…but I wanted to play ball!!!)

Luckily and I had Tierney and MJ (the female humans) hostage in the basement den binge watching television shows and eating snacks while paying attention to me:

Here I am with MJ, one of my favorite humans in this world (she is lucky I love her!)

John and Tierney made sure the visiting humans ate well, making what looked like delicious breakfasts each morning; and what looked like tasty dinners in the evening like the Chicken Piccata with homemade pasta and Caesar Salad they served one night:

I did get nervous while they were working on the deck as it looked like the humans working on it could fall at any time. They of course made sure I was safe (which is what is most important).

Tierney and MJ helped out the male humans John and J by running some errands including a trip to Home Depot for something called “shims”. Of course Tierney and MJ took me with them and I had to help them find the shims:

You might notice Tierney has a bandage on her thumb – it’s not from working on the deck but carelessness while chopping carrots…

I was concerned when there was an attempt to scan me twice while we were in Home Depot – don’t they know the cash value of me would break a price scanner?!?!?!

We also took a trip to Target to buy J some additional clothes as he had “Man-packed” where he forgot to pack all the clothes he needed for the trip. Little did MJ and Tierney realize that there was a “Service Dogs Only” sign in the entry of the store (oops!)

No one said anything to MJ and Tierney about how I didn’t belong in there as they wandered around the store except to say “cute dog”. Well I guess that was my one and only trip to Target unless I pursue a career as a Service Dog (but I am too grumpy to do that).

By the 4th day the male humans finished up the deck and they were so happy! Here are photos of the last stages of putting the deck together and making it livable again:

The deck is not completely done. John has to order something called “matching trim” for the deck, add post caps (whatever those are), and do some painting. But the deck is now very usable! The humans could even have a crazy human-deck-dinner-party if they wanted.

The last day of the project, the humans went out to dinner and then relaxed in the basement den for a movie night. If you look closely at the lower right hand section of the photo below, Tierney is actually working on the quilt she is hand quilting (see her post Hand Quilting Go Boldly) and perhaps sometime this year she will finish it!

Note: J and John are only snuggled as a joke for the photo, they did spend the 4 days working hard, not snuggling.

By the time we took MJ and J back to Human Storage aka “the airport” as humans call it (see the blog post “Human Storage” and Airport Lore) I was pretty tired because managing humans is so exhausting!

On the way to drop them off in Human Storage and then when I returned home

Well that catches you up on major recent events in my life. I will work on getting Tierney to blog on what she has been up to (before the deck project she had just returned from a trip to New York City with her sister) and to have her work on catching up on all her blogging buddies posts!