New things and not so new

I'm knitting these days and the items are all a surprise so I can't show you just yet. I hate to admit it but I bought some yarn. I am using what I have also and so it's not that bad. I think I will use up more than I buy though. I keep finding some really nice things to knit. Every yarn manufacturer has free patterns on their web site so one needn't purchase patterns. It just takes time to browse the patterns, print them off or save them for the future.
I think I'll go sew a few things now since my sewing list is being added to constantly.

On the quilt front, here are two quilts that I will be putting into the York Heritage Quilt show in November.

This one I have shown before. I named it Spring Tulips and it was the result of a Spring Mystery Mailout from The Quilt Patch, a quilt shop in MooseJaw, Saskatchewan. They have a Christmas (winter, actually) Mystery Mailout that you can sign up for right now. The quilt is only available through the mail.

This one, called Fantasy Flowers, was a result of a challenge that my quilting buddy Judy and I came up with. We both purchased black and white charms and we were allowed to cut them once only (we could add other b/w charms if we wanted/needed.) Three other colours could be added in any shade (I chose green, purple and turquoise) and black and white were not considered colours so we could add as much as we wanted. There was no size limit. It was fun coming up with guidelines for the challenge and we did it on the subway coming home from the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival which is now just called the Creativfestival.

 This was Judy's quilt. She showed hers in the Lindsay Quilt Show two years ago and I was surprised that we both used turquoise. We have another challenge that we gave ourselves and that's another quilt which has no size limit. It's an African theme and we have exchanged fat quarters of animal prints and African-themed fabrics but we are not limiting ourselves on what we use. Neither one of us has started yet even though we've had the fabrics for a couple of years. These are long term projects (obviously) since we both have other quilts we want to work on. They will get done when they get done and we remind each other of them every once in a while.