Purl Mia Loggia

What I Learned from Neiman

2012-01-25T22:12:00.012-05:00

Neiman by Ann Weaver

Reynolds Whiskey in Light Grey (031) and Raspberry (131)

1. I kind of like crunchy yarn.

2. Grey is a much more complicated color than one might think.

3. I swatched, but did not wash and block the swatch. Next time I swatch for a sweater, I will. My sweater grew a bit in length. Fortunately tunics are coming back. And if I had washed and blocked my swatch, I would have been knitting on US 1s...cray cray. The sweater would have been scrapped before it began.

4. Short rows are not just for heels. Short rows at the neck line saved this from being Flashdance Fair Isle. Love this design, but really wish that designers would keep in mind that just because a girl is big doesn't mean that she has linebacker shoulders or a melon head. My boobs may be bodacious, but my neckline doesn't need to be bigger than anyone else's.

5. Ceiling fans and Shamwows really speed up drying time when blocking. And when the cat wads up your sweater to make a nest, the sweater is dry enough to wear.

6. Finally, I really wish that I had purchased lots of Whiskey while it was more widely available. Think I will be haunting the destashes on Ravelry. It is really too bad that Reynolds is no longer in business.

Kitty Litter

2010-04-22T15:08:00.015-05:00

Last year, I made one of my kitties for my sister to give as a baby shower present. Kitty was of course a huge success. Another friend of the mother-to-be contacted me and asked if I could make a bunch for her as presents for an upcoming babyboom.

I, as a matter of course, procrastinated. And the last few months have been really lacking in any artistic mojo. I almost procrastinated my way out of the thrifted wool sweaters that are my main component.

I use the felted sweaters as the upper body of my kitties. Thrift shopping for cool wool sweaters is really getting hard. Everything is nasty acrylic and ramie, bleh. And I have a hard time, when I find a nice wool sweater, justifying felting something in perfect shape that someone could wear out of the store. I did manage to find some that were interesting and fortunately made nice soft felt.

Ajax was pretty interested in all the bits and pieces on the sewing table. Nothing got carried away.

When I first developed the pattern, no real practical thought was given to construction. This has been a real source of frustration with every single one I have made. Finally, while watching a nature program on giant octopuses, this odd solution presented itself...really odd...no, truly odd.

So, here are my wee babies, turned right side out, stuffed with fluff and tarted up. I love that they all are different and unique.

And for the most part made of recycled materials.

Happy Earth Day!

Snow Day

2010-02-06T16:02:00.002-05:00

Today was the second largest snow storm in Philadelphia's recorded history. We got over 2 feet of the fluffy white stuff.

I love my city in the snow. Everything is so quiet, only the sound of people laughing in the streets and the scrape of shovels on the walks.

Rittenhouse Square is magical in the snow. The square was packed with squealing children learning the rules of snowball warfare and dogs bouncing and frolicking in the new snow. I wish I could experience that pure joy rather then just watching and appreciating it.

When I came home from my walk through the streets, I saw the unbelievable. There was a raptor hanging out in the ginko tree in front of the house. Wish I could have gotten a better shot of him, but the damn batteries in my camera were dying and he flew off just as I returned with fresh ones.

Ajax has been chattering away all day. He is very concerned about all this white stuff on the deck. The drift against the door is so deep that the poor thing has to stand on his hind legs to see out the door.

Blue Skies

2009-11-03T11:10:00.003-05:00

This the shawl that I knit for my church's Harvest Festival Silent Auction. I am happy to say that the church raised $13,500 for Steppingstone Scholars. Steppingstone Scholars is a Philadelphia based organization that helps under-privileged children prepare for college.

The pattern is the Lavellette Shawl, which I first saw when my friend Andrea did a test knit (RAV link) for the pattern. It was an easy lace pattern and made a very elegant piece. I used one skein of Tess' Superwash Merino Lace Weight. I think of the color as being Virgin Mary Blue, but my Catholic friends have corrected this Presbyterian girl. Oh well.

Most importantly, I chose it from my stash because it reminded me of Nan Somerville, the force of nature that started the Harvest Festival and ran it for 30 plus years. Nan passed away this past year and left a huge hole in our congregation. Her daughter, Margaret, stepped into the breach and did a brilliant job organizing this year's festival. This blue was one of Nan's favorite colors and I know she would have approved. And then asked me, "So what are you going to make for next year?"

More Picots, Please

2009-10-31T14:24:00.004-05:00

When I first became aware of the Landscape pattern I only knew it as a huge shawl, not a scarf. As a shawl, I had zero interest in the pattern...endless stockinette, endless seed and moss stitch... ick. Then Marissa the Marvelous started knitting the scarf version. She was using lots of Koigu millends, some of which I had enabled the purchasing. I'm a good friend like that.

We were having coffee one afternoon and she was knitting away on it. I had never done picots before and was a little fascinated by them.

The pattern calls for picots on every other row. Marissa, who thinks that more embellishment is always better, was putting them on every row. I too became a little obsessed.

She kindly and trustingly let me wear her scarf one afternoon. I loved it. She pried it out of my hands before we parted company. And I began planning my own.

I dug into my cache of millends and selected a bunch to mix together. I started knitting, randomly switching yarn and using a Russian join for the transitions. Love that Russian join!!

Mine also had to have a bazillion picots. Knitting them is so much fun! Particularly in Koigu, because you are always looking to see what color they are going to be. This is one time where surprise in knitting is a wonderful thing.

I love my little scarf...so jaunty...so insouciant! My friend, Suzanne, thought it was pretty cool, so I made on for her too. I cannot wait for her birthday! This time I upped the needle size a smidge and hers has better drape.

You would think that after all these picots that I would be done. You would be wrong...Bring'em on! I have been eyeballing the Boneyard Shawl's (Rav Link) picot edged version for some beautiful alpaca lace weight that I scored at Rhinebeck. Now I just need to be disciplined enough to get my Christmas knitting done before I cast on. I'll let you know how that goes...

A First Time....

2009-10-22T11:53:00.007-05:00

...some good, some questionable, some weird.

Many, many thanks to my dear friend Anj, who invited me to drive up to Rhinebeck with her and stay with her delightful Aunt Judy and Uncle Wynn at Herron Farm. I got to pet the llamas, feed the alpacas, check out the chickens and threaten to make soup from the rooster who woke me up every half hour both mornings. Who knew that roosters come with a doze function?

The weather report for the weekend was grim and it looked like the Nor'easter was targeting Rhinebeck. Amazingly the rain skirted the festival...not a drop landed. The sky was overcast, but the lack of sunshine meant it was cool enough for all of us to show off our hand knits!

Not all of the hand knits were equal. Dude, I hope your friends don't see my blog. How could you let her do that to you? Guess we know who wears the pants in that family.

I spent a lot more time with the animals then I ever have at MDS&W. There were tons of cute sheep, goats, alpacas and llamas. I got in some serious heavy petting...met a new boy friend, Buster Brown. I was too busy petting him to take his picture.

A couple of us made out with this llama, Biscotti Chips. She was pretty promiscuous and doling out kisses to everyone. I think Judy was trying to figure out how to get this cutie into her car. First time I have ever had llama kisses or seen one so affectionate and approachable...to everyone.

I fondled a lot of yarn, but bought very little, just enough to not feel deprived and not too much, so no feelings of guilt. I try very hard not to mix guilt and yarn.

Now, on to the downright weird. Have you ever seen an egg that didn't have a shell?

It was a little old by the time I got to see it. It was shriveling up and drying out. The membrane felt like really fine grit sandpaper.

They have had other egg anomalies at the farm. One of the eggs had three yolks. Does that mean it has triple the cholesterol?

I am already looking forward to returning to Rhinebeck!

Scraptacular

2009-10-13T16:58:00.003-05:00

Pattern: James Dean Hat (Ravelry link) - designed by Lisa R. Myers

Yarn: Noro Kureyon ( one gallon ziplock bag full of scraps leftover from the huge Hexagon Blanket....yup, a lot of spit-splicing in these babies! God knows how many colorways are in the mix.)

Needles: US7 24" circulars

I whipped these hats up in a few days for donation to charity. It was the perfect use for my ziplock of scraps...some only slightly longer than a yard. As I said above there was a lot of spit involved. When I was all finished I had about a yard left over.

This is a great pattern, and my first time knitting it in the intended gage. I have knit tons of these using Koigu and giving them away as baby gifts. Those are always a hit.

Its a fast knit, but not entirely mindless. The skills needed for the project are a provisional cast-on, short rows and a 51 stitch Kitchnered finish. The good news is that you jump into the kitchner groove at about 7 stiches and cruise from there.

A huge thanks to my oh-so-fabulous models that I met in Rittenhouse Square. BTW, they lovvvvved my hats!

Intro

2009-10-11T19:57:00.005-05:00

The girls who knit, know that I haunt the window at Rittenhouse Pet Supply. They use their window for kitty adoptions and I love me some kittehs. When I was working and having a horrible day, I would stop by and hold a kitten. Purring kittens make all evils go away.

There have been many close calls, when I thought yes this is the one I want to add to my family. And many times that I talked myself out of it...wrong sex...bad timing...whatever. Then I saw this little man in the window. Adopted yet? No- Check! I asked, boy or girl, with my fingers crossed. Little boy- Check! And the second I picked him up he started purring loudly. He was totally at ease and content to hang out in my arms, staring up at me. I was smitten.

The night I brought him home, he went to knitting circle first and met his knitting aunties. He got passed around the room and everyone got a chance to hold him. Everyone approved my choice.

Coincidently my mother and I both hit on the same name, Ajax. Think hero of the Iliad, not the cleanser. Its hard finding a good boy name...pull out Bullfinch's Mythology and give it a try.

Here he is checking out my fathers mustache for leftover dinner morsels. Mmmmm....is that mushroom soup? Maybe a little au poivre sauce? Delish!

Ajax was the only boy left in his litter when they were in foster care. They would all curl up in a kitty pile to sleep and he was missing his sisters. Artemis is not the snuggling type, but he has high hopes for Toscabelle. This is Ajax in the middle of a yawn and roll--his goal is spooning with Toscabelle. On his next roll she bopped him on the head with a mighty hiss and sent him running.

She still will not snuggle with him- poor lad. But they do have a fabulous time chasing each other around the apartment. Its pretty funny. Now that he is completely at home he has also found the voice that no one heard at the pet store. He talks more than Artemis and Tosca combined...nonstop. Its such a funny little voice for a kitty with so much swagger.

I love my little man!

Hexagon Finale

2009-03-05T18:41:00.008-05:00

Once upon a time a talented designer, Megan Rogers, got the Noro bug and knit a hexagon blanket. I was mauled by the bug...badly. My hexagon fascination grew by leaps and bounds. There was no stopping me.

I knit through mountains of Noro and thought I was only going to make this blanket the size of a couch throw. It was wonderfully warm knitting it this fall with Toscabelle often nested in its folds.

Well, the blanket was a Christmas present for my parents. It was not quite finished on Christmas morning, but almost. This beast, even when I thought it was throw size was too big to block in my home, so I knew it would be unblocked under the tree. Washing this blanket was a huge challenge...several trips through the bathtub with Soak and a spin cycle in Mom's front loader.

Blocking was a family affair-- mom, Muffy and I stretching and pinning, EB supervising. It grew and it grew. The finished product was big enough for a twin-size bed.

Here's EB happily snoozing under his new blanket! Snug as a bug...

I don't think I will ever invest the time and huge amounts of dough into making one for myself, but my fixation with hexagons continues. Now that a crochet hook has been put back in my hands, I have visions of small crocheted Koigu hexagons wrapping my neck.

And for those who love Meg's designs...check out her two new patterns in the Spring Twist Collective.

Hearts and Flowers

2009-02-14T11:07:00.006-05:00

Happy Valentines Day, everyone! Valentines Day is traditionally not my favorite day, probably because I am without a sweetie...le sigh.

I have however finished my Hedgerow socks. Yeah, it took me almost a year to finish these. I cannot tell you why. Love the color--just look at this yumminess. It is Socks That Rock light weight in "Bleeding Hearts". I will confess to being a bit disappointed that after very little pooling on the ankles that it did start doing way funky things once I turned the heel. Next confession is that I managed to screw up a simple four row repeat, but at least I was consistent through the whole pair and they still look great. The socks are comfy and warm. I am now looking forward to knitting up more of my STR stash. Next time I will go down in needle size just a smidge...Addi's vs anything else in 1s. And I will go toe-up, I have short feet, only size seven and the cuffs weren't particulary long, but I finished with only about a yard to spare. It was a nail biter!

Well, no sweetie in sight, but these beauties arrived yesterday...

Tosca was very appreciative.

And no, I did not mug a delivery guy on the street.

Thanks, Daddy!

Comfort Continued

2009-02-10T21:55:00.006-05:00

So, in the midst of this freakishly warm weather I am still in comfort mode. I am a realist and know that by the end of the week I will be back to mad layering. Last year Marissa made fabulous leg warmers from Noro Silk Garden in a handful of colorways. I coveted those leg warmers and settled for making my own. I am using Noro Kureyon for mine in two colorways, 188 and 207. I am doing mine in a k2p2 rib and knitting two rows of each color ala Jared Flood.

I knit them long enough to pull flat over my knees or pushed down slouchy below. They are knitting up fast and that is a good thing...I may need them this weekend.

Comfort part deux has come in the form of food. I am not sure what has come over me, but I have been cooking. First I made a killer batch of chili in my slow cooker. Next came two dishes of pumpkin chocolate bread pudding. I took one to my first attendance at Anjeanette's Fiber Night. Anj and her wife Sue are fantastic hostesses. I was really impressed with the bread pudding if I do say so myself. I found the recipe on Epicurious.com, it was from the October 2007 issue of Gourmet magazine.

Ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs plus 1 yolk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of ground cloves
5 cups cubed (1-inch) day-old baguette or crusty bread
3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted

1 generous handful of chocolate morsels (this is my twist...everything is better with chocolate, right?)

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.
Whisk together cream, pumpkin, milk, sugar, eggs, yolk, salt, and spices in a bowl.
Toss bread cubes with butter in another bowl, then add pumpkin mixture and toss to coat. Mix in chocolate morsels. Transfer to an ungreased 8-inch square baking dish and bake until custard is set, 25 to 30 minutes.

Comfort

2009-01-29T23:08:00.006-05:00

There has been a little too much comfort food this week. First I read Pozy Gets Cozy and became obsessed with her Coconut Custard. I have never baked a custard before--can it be done and still jiggle abit? Apparently, yes...

Turns out that it sets up after being out of the oven for a bit. (Its so good to have an aunt who is a cooking whiz!) The recipe is easy-peasy and really yummy. Bake up a bit of comfort for yourself.

Wednesday for dins, the girls and I went to Devil's Alley. I indulged in their mac and cheese. So so fabulous...my arteries are clicking shut just thinking about it. The crowning touch to their mac and cheese is tomato jam. I know a lot of people serve stewed tomatoes with theirs, but I often find the tomatos really acidic. This was sweet yummy bliss.

And because I cannot seem to get enough coconut this week, I had to stop at Brown Betty Petite and get a cupcake...chocolate with cream cheese icing and coconut. Somebody please stop me.

Fortunately not all comforting things this week were food related. I knit up this cozy hat using some of the alpaca from the visit to Southwind Farms. The pattern is Felicity (Rav link) by Wanette Clyde. Super quick knit, nothing tricky--my only suggestion is that it seems to run a bit on the small side. I got gauge (I know!) but ended up ripping it out and going up a needle size so the hat wouldn't shoot off the back of my head. I might give this another go, adjust for a chunkier yarn and add a little more length in the top to give it more slouch.

Oh MY!!!!

2009-01-18T13:57:00.001-05:00

David has a huge unit!

(giggle, giggle)

Cuckoo for Cowls

2009-01-11T18:02:00.003-05:00

They are everywhere, everyone is knitting them, and Ravelry has a zillion patterns. What could be better for a quick, cozy Christmas gift? Oh yeah, and an excellent stash busting exercise as well!

Here is Sherry, modeling the Tamarind Cowl (Ravelry link). I knit this using one skein of Manos del Uruguay. This is a free pattern download! Loved knitting this, very easy, quick and visually interesting. The recipient loved its lipstick red color...Philly in the winter needs some punchy color.

Cowl number two was knit with one skein of Manos as well. The pics of this, not so good. This is the Darkside Cowl (Ravelry link). Not a bad knit, but I am not certain that this was the right pattern for the right yarn. Love the color, but it might have needed a yarn with less substance and more drape than the Manos.

This is the Aibhlinn, knit with some modifications. The original pattern is for a very loose drapey cowl that you could pull up over your head, like a smoke ring. I cast on only 101 stitches to make a much closer fitting cowl. The yarn is from the fabulous alpacas of Southwind Farms, that I scored on last year's New England road trip with the girls. It is so soft and smooshie, I have started knitting a hat with some other yarn I got there. The other thing that I love about this cowl is the bobbles...my very first! Now I am almost as much of a bobble fan as Marissa. Okay, maybe not quite as bobble-crazed, but I am working on it.

Having knit three for girlfriends, I decided that I needed some for myself. This is the Stacked Eyelet Cowl. I bought this skein of medium weight Socks that Rock in the Hard Rock colorway several years ago. We had a love/hate relationship...so ugly that surely it was cool. I couldn't visualize this as socks and had no brilliant ideas on how to use it. Then this cowl came along and it looked like the design would hold up well to a high contrast yarn. I zipped through this one, and really love the results with one small catch. When I washed it, all umph left the yarn and now I have a yarn necklace rather than cowl. I'll be ripping this back and taking about 2 1/2 inches out of the circumference. There was a ton of yarn left over, so I made myself some wrist warmers to match. They have been a big hit since I have the heat turned down low.

This week's cowl is a modification of the Bubbles & Cables Cowl (Ravelry link), knit in Plymouth Suri Merino. The color....why Lisa Blue...of course! I have been wearing this all week. LOVE IT! Alpaca, Lisa Blue and bobbles, what is there not to love?

I don't think this is the end of my cowl kick. There are way too many great patterns out there, and lots of yarn in my stash. And right now I can use some instant gratification in my life.

...More Christmas

2008-12-30T17:47:00.004-05:00

I missed all my knitting buds so much while I was up in Connecticut, slaving away for my mom! I have been dancing in the streets of Philadelphia, celebrating being home.

While in Simsbury I did get a small chance to interact with knitters. I went to the Simsbury Stitch'n Bitch at the Starbucks and spent some time with Rachel (rav link) who was knitting a snazzy fair isle beret. I also had what Jeannie called a "play date" with Bev. I had such a great time with her, hopefully if the girls do a road trip to Stitches in Hartford in the fall, you'll all get to meet her. And Julie (rav link) from Creative Fibers stopped in to Say Cheese for some fromage...I immediately recognized a fellow knitter from her sweet fuzzy armwarmers. She told me about Creative Fibers after-Christmas sale. Jeannie and I dutifully went shopping and did our best to relieve their inventory!

Part of my Christmas present to Muffy this year were some ornaments for her tree. I knitted up a bunch of covered glass balls with leftover sock yarn and gave her a few.

I also made her some adorable garland from recycled Christmas cards and clear nylon thread. The garland is super easy...I used a huge circle punch that I bought at Michael's. You punch out the circles, use glue stick on both back-sides and sandwich the nylon thread between.

I spaced the circles out about 3 inches. Its green and every other color under the sun. Some of the circles were fussy cut, so there are cute little faces, etc. on them. They give a great splash of color to a tree short on ornaments! Start saving up your Christmas cards...

While at the parents, Muffy and I rummaged through drawers in the guest room closet and found bits and pieces of our childhoods...an AEPhi sweatshirt from college, my graduation dress from high school, Paddington Bear, Raggedy Ann, and my much loved, lumpy baby doll Drowsely. Drowsely once had beautiful silky yellow blond hair. Much love and over attention had turned the 'do into a Don King look. Mom tried to salvage the hair years later...now she looks like a deranged monk. I think she should have stuck with the Don King 'do!

Finally, a white Christmas

2008-12-29T21:21:00.007-05:00

Its been a long time since we have really had a white Christmas in CT. Days before Christmas we had two big snowfalls, great for the holiday visuals, bad for retail. I spent the weeks leading up to Christmas working at the cheese store my mom manages. I now know more about cheese than just Velveeta...I can even recommend a strong flavored brie or a milder one...how 'bout one with mushrooms for an earthier cheese. Are you impressed? I certainly am!

My parents have tons of deer in the woods behind the house. This visit, they frequently came down into the yard. Artemis and Tosca got quite a show...these guys are seriously bigger than squirrels!

Artemis is all about being in the center of the Christmas morning festivities.

Tosca is terrified of Christmas and for the second year in a row hid upstairs all day. She even refused to come downstairs for some attention and admiration when the guests showed up for wine and cheese before Christmas dinner.

This little guy has been in our family forever. His paint is disappearing, a side is broken in...but he still makes me smile. I love him.

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and Santa brought you everything on your list!

Its all about me.

2008-12-23T21:42:00.005-05:00

Dear friend, Jen, has commanded me to titillate you all with seven things about me....mwha ha ha...

My senior year in college I rounded up a bunch of co-conspirators and sorority pledges and made lime jello in the fountain at the Cathedral of Learning. FYI, it took 4 cases of jello.
I can recite from memory the Gashlyc rumb Tinies by Edward Gorey.
My one cat, Artemis, was never properly weened. After 14 years, she still sucks on my left ear....slurp.....slurp....slurp.
I was born at the beginning of the baby boom after the JFK assassination.
I have arches in my feet that you could drive an 18-wheeler under.
I once got stuck at a one-star "hotel" on top of a Swiss Alp, trying to view the Matterhorn. It was the beginning of July and there was a blizzard. For the record, I don't actually think the Matterhorn exists. Its just a painted cardboard set that they occasionally pull out of storage and photograph....I'm just sayin'.
I am currently amongst the ranks of a bozillion unemployed Americans. Anyone know of an opening for a SAP business analyst?? I hear its all about networking...

I choose Robin, Andrea and Mick to play along.

Washoe

2008-12-02T18:57:00.002-05:00

Last Thanksgiving this sweet bag of bones showed up at my uncle's home in Nevada looking for some attention and food. He had no collar and a bad case of fleas. If it weren't for the fleas and a holiday schedule at the vet's, there is a good chance that he might have ended up in a suitcase bound for Philadelphia. My uncle lost a black cat, Midnight, several years ago. I think Midnight sent this fellow to fill in the gap. The kitty stopped coming around shortly after I returned home. Broke my heart, cause I thought he was so close to being let in the house.

Well, he made it through the winter and started coming back around late this spring for some grub and conversation. He is quite talkative. By the end of the summer he'd been in some bad scrapes and needed emergency surgery at the vet.

All fixed up, he is now completely in control of the house. No longer scrawny, he looks like a bowling ball in a fur coat. My uncle has named him Washoe. He is a great cat, full of love, with a great purr. He also has no shame and not a trace of kitty aloofness.

It was great to get to know him over Thanksgiving. I am back to a trio of black kitties to love!

Meme time, meme place

2008-11-17T17:25:00.004-05:00

I have been tagged for this Book Meme by Robin, the intrepid traveler.

The rules for this meme are:

Grab the nearest book

Open it to page 56

Post the text of the sentence on your blog along with these instructions.

Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the closest book.

My book is Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon. The book is hanging out on the shelf by my computer awaiting its fate...sold on half.com or passed on to a friend to read. Let me know if you are in the mood for a fun, charming murder mystery.

The fifth sentence on page 56 is: "Not for the first time in his career, Brunetti reflected upon the possible advantage of censorship of the press."

I'm now supposed to tag a few other bloggers to do the same:

Wendy

Sherry

Fun with Jeannie...

2008-09-22T17:11:00.007-05:00

or how not to wear a beret*

Golf anyone?

Snoods are back in fashion, aren't they??

Don't have a paperbag or lampshade handy?

French chef hitting the wine or eyepatch alternative?

The Queen from Alice and Wonderland

Ahhhhhhhh, now that is so much prettier!

*Berets are Ysolda's Gretel and the Purl Bee Beret

Lago Atitlan

2008-09-14T22:29:00.003-05:00

Returning to our previously scheduled adventures in Guatemala...

Muffy and I spent the night of my birthday at a very special place, the Casa del Mundo on Lake Atitlan. The guide books love this place and who can blame them? Truly, if I were to return to Guatemala, the Casa del Mundo would be why. The only flaw we found with the hotel was poor lighting in our room. Oh, and the huge, HUGE muffin sized spiders that were hanging out on the wall by my bed. The booklet in the room said not to worry, they weren't poisonous. Just really massive.

The hotel is very eco-friendly, even the water is solar heated. So in the spirit of the place I chilled out, and became spider friendly. I know, rather surprising isn't it? As I said before, Guatemala was a growth experience.

The hotel is so relaxing...hammocks on porches, terraces, a wood-fired hot tub, books to borrow, games to play and really yummy food. Dinner at the Casa del Mundo is served family style and all the guests sit down together for a candlelight meal. The experience was lots of fun and so civilized after the prior day's chicken bus trauma.

This Lace Ribbon Scarf was my choice for travel knitting. Who knew this scrumptious soothing shade of Mini Maiden would be the same color as the beautiful Lake Atitlan?

And that with all the wild bright colors of Guatemala, this lovely shade of blue would be the one to follow me home and take over my knitting? I have been very busy since coming home, working on adorable DC's Trellis Lace Capelet in Rowan 4-ply Cotton. Funny how the color reminds me of something.

Tree of Happiness Meme

2008-08-24T19:07:00.003-05:00

We interrupt the previously scheduled installment of Lisa and Muffy's most excellent Guatemalan adventure to bring you this short meme...

I have been tagged by the crafty Carina to do the Tree of Happiness meme. I sort of forgot to do the last one she tagged me with, so I am trying to be a better blogging friend :) I am tagging these lovely people: Marissa, Andrea, Minders, Sherry and Jen. The Happiness Tree sayeth that you must list six things that make you happy. These are six of my happy bringers:

1. Beautiful weekends in the city, when nothing is so pressing that you cannot spend the day on a park bench in Rittenhouse Square reading, knitting, watching the dogs and their owners and gossiping with the other "regulars."

2. My two little furry balls of love, Artemis and Tosca. Yes, Artemis, I still love you even though you bit off the skein of Mini Maiden and buried it in my bed the other night.

3. Hamburgers...medium rare...caramelized onions...I'm just sayin'

4. My girlfriends. You all know who you are! And am including a shout out to those too, that I have only met in this electronic world.

5. The Olympics. I have been an Olympic junkie for as long as I have memories. I love the wild pageantry of the opening and closing ceremonies, the drama of the competition and the heroic achievements of the athletes. Its a big two week emotional drain for me. Boy, am I wiped out. I am also happy that tonight is the end, now I can look forward to 2012.

6. And today I met and fell in love with my friend Amy's little girl, Danielle. She has really grabbed my heart. Sorry, Jeannie, I listened carefully, but there was zero ticking of the biological clock.

Chichi and the Chicken Bus Ride from Hell

2008-08-21T19:59:00.002-05:00

or the continuing saga of Lisa and Muffy's most excellent adventure.

Chichi, emmm Chichicastenango, is famous for its large Mayan markets held on Thursdays and Sundays. We left Antiqua on Saturday afternoon for the 5 hour trip up into the highlands.

Unfortunately, we had to take two chicken buses to reach Chichi, with an absolutely horrific transfer in the driving rain that left us soaked to the skin. Our first bus was fortunately a cushy ride to break me in gently. The connection found us on a bus with people three deep in each seat and packed like sardines in the aisle. We were the tallest of the sardines...I know...Lisa tall?...how could that be? Well, Mayans are rather short in stature. So that put my bottom directly in their faces...nice, huh? For three and a half hours, I not only had to hold on for dear life, but concentrate on not farting in any one's face.

The highlight of the chicken bus ride to Chichi happened when rounding a curve way too fast. The lady sitting directly behind me did not just brace herself against my ass, but grabbed a whole hand-full and held on way too long. Muffy and I cracked up, she was mortified.

Once we made it to Chichi we changed into dry clothing and headed out for dinner. Lots of yummy tortillas, chorizo and the best hot chocolate.

We got an early start at the market, kind of walking the perimeter, before diving into the heart of it. The market is not just handmade items for sale to tourists, there is also a lot of commerce going on in raw materials for the crafts, like this yarn stall. Beautiful colors, but it was really crunchy.

Chichi was my first introduction to street/market food with a tamales for breakfast. What I wish is that I had a picture of the hurt expression Muffy adopts when haggling with vendors...the you wound me to my soul by over charging me look...priceless!

Unquestionably, my favorite part of our visit to Chichi was sitting in the Iglesa di Santo Tomas. Listening to the quiet prayers of families, watching the rituals of lighting candles for the dead and leaving offerings of flower petals and liquor. It was so calm and peaceful compared to the pushing and shoving crowds outside in the market.

There are more Chichi pictures here.

Guatemala, Part I

2008-08-18T18:52:00.003-05:00

I have just returned from Guatemala, where I was traveling with my sister, Muffy. She was there for two months, studying Spanish and traveling; I joined her there for a week.

It was quite an adventure, and certainly more of a growth experience than relaxing vacation. Muffy has pronounced that after this, my friends are no longer allowed to call me prissy. Are you all taking note?

The Guatemalan countryside is gorgeous. This is the rainy season, so everything was so lush and green. The countryside stands in very sharp contrast to most of the towns and homes that you see. It seems that this is a country with an extremely small upper and middle classes and an overwhelming amount of poverty. It has really put my life and how lucky, blessed, or however you want to put it, I am, into perspective. It also gave me an even greater respect for my sister and the time she spent in the Peace Corps in Benin.

We spent my first night in Antigua. This was a gentle insertion into the country...very touristy and not very crowded. We stayed at the UmmaGumma Hostel, a colorful funky little place. I had my first encounter with a Guatemalan spider hanging out in our sink. I squealed, I shrieked, I let it live. See, I said it was a growth experience.

For me, the most beautiful part of Antigua was its ruined churches, victims of numerous earthquakes. La Merced, one of the city's main churches was undergoing a renovation inside. The altar area was a blinding display of gold and silver gilt...way over the top for my taste. We did watch some of the restorers at work on one of the side altars and it was cool to see the new gilt being revealed. La Merced though was not to my taste and confirmed my love of Pisan-Romanesque churches.

There were some lovely homes in Antigua that seemed to be hiding even more lovely courtyard gardens behind their walls. I loved this orange flowering plant that covered this rooftop. There are more pictures here of my time in Antigua.

Stay tuned for part two!

Maude

2008-08-04T20:21:00.002-05:00

An allegory for knitting my Maude...

Yup, after a rocky midpoint...brain farts, an inability to understand directions and the english language in general...Maude and I have been running joyously down the hill, arms flailing wildly, and giggling maddly.

Knitty D, darling, get over it, embrace your Maude and run headlong down the hill!

Blogger is not letting me post her pictures...booo...come see her at knitting circle.

Mutant

2008-07-28T18:21:00.002-05:00

What a wonderful weekend I had! Saturday I met Stacey at the Ant's Pants Cafe for a yummy brunch, with mandatory sweet potato fries. Then we headed over to La Va for some knitting. Our Maudes are looking lovely, but how can you go wrong with acres of Koigu? I am almost at the half way point and the short rows. Hope I don't mess it up.

Andrea came over on Sunday for brunch and sewing. She made scrumptious blueberry muffins, and I tried my hand at an impromptu quiche.

I figured how wrong could you go with six eggs, milk and a ton of swiss cheese? I took my cues from swiss cheese fondue and threw in a bunch of nutmeg and a glug of Kirsh for a little whooo-hoo. The thing puffed up like a huge souffle, absolutely brilliant. Fortunately it tasted pretty good too. So, that is not the mutant of my subject line.

I cut out a layered skirt by Amy Butler and Andrea played with the serger. The machine was misbehaving in embarrassing fashion. The back loop stitches were all loosey goosey and sluttish. We threaded and rethreaded, tightened the tension, loosened it, and called Jeannie for her advise. She recommended a repair shop.

Andrea got it working within her acceptable limits and finished off one of her Piddleloopish bags. She gave me a 5 minute tutorial and fled. I was left with my prepped fabric and a third of a bottle of champagne. Well, champagne should never be wasted.

WARNING: never drink and use a serger. All mistakes are permanent. Here is my mini mutant.

It's actually quite cute, despite the goof. Fortunately it was on my second corner so I could repeat my error and make it symmetrical.

Despite its odd shape, it still held a big ball of sock yarn, and almost a whole sock on DPNs. I think it would be much better with circular needles. Guess I'll have to take up the Magic Loop!

What's making me happy...

2008-07-20T21:00:00.005-05:00

Friday's experience as the "human pincushion" turned out

not to be an issue on many accounts:

No shots in the bum(yeah!)

The cutest male nurse with the best touch...

what, you're done already?

No bruising, no soreness.

Turns out knitting is an excellent way to

keep your muscles moving to disperse the vaccines. Who knew?

And the best (sorry, Robin) it cost me zip, not even a $30 co-pay!!!!!!!!

On the way home, I stopped at Eastern Mountain Sports.

Another charming young man (and you know how I love them)

helped fit me for a backpack for the trip.

Guatemala here I come!

While I was tromping around the store with a weighted backpack,

I found these adorable shoes!!

OMG, they're Crocs...

Sherry, I think your hubby would let you

out of the house in these.

Uber uber comfortable.

I may buy more...just sayin'

And I have finally conquered the Baby Surprise Jacket.

Take that Elizabeth Zimmermann!

Feeling Good

2008-07-14T19:57:00.002-05:00

Love, love, love, Nina Simone!

Aux armes, citoyens!

2008-07-13T12:19:00.005-05:00

Yesterday the good citoyens of Philadelphia celebrated Bastille Day. Yes, I did say Philadelphia.

Philadelphians celebrate by storming the Eastern States Penitentiary. The rabble comes armed with many things... muskets, single shot pistols, pitchforks and pool skimmers. The festivities kicked off with God Bless America, followed by a rather weaker rendition of the Marseillaise. We really needed a french Kate Smith to lead the way.

The banter between the leader of the peasants and Marie Antoinette (with her huge bon-bons) was particularly funny this year. Or the sound system was better so I heard more of the punchlines. The script is always very current, possibly written that morning. They did note a drop in local joke potenial now that John Street is out of office.

We are still waiting for Marie to meet her end, not at the guillotine, but by toppling drunkenly from the ramparts of the prision. But please, Marie, for the love of all things French, what are you doing swilling Korbel? This is your last day...wouldn't you want to go out with a bottle of Perrier Joeut Fleur de Champagne?

Every year Marie's wig gets a little wiggier. I think she's been hanging out a lot with drag queens this year. I wish my pictures showed all the birds, mardi gras beads and assorted unidentifiable stuff tucked into it.

Madame de Farge's knitting celebrity has been eclipsed abit by the likes of the Yarn Harlot, Ve-Ve, Eunny and Elizabeth Z (damn that Baby Surprise). Regina, Marissa, Robin and I let her know that we still thought she rocked the knitting world. She very graciously took some time out of her demanding beheading schedule to pose with us for a picture.

This little girl's costume was awesome. She looked fabulous. And now I know what to do with all the left over scrap quilt batting that I have shoved in my trunk/coffee table.

But the absolute bestest part of the day...Tasty Kake is back!!!! Gone are the horrid Twinkies of the last few years, ta-ta Hostess, hello butterscotch krimpets. The little cakes hurt like hell as they hurled down to earth from the ramparts. But the sugar high was worth it, sans doubt.

A Matter of Preference

2008-07-10T21:11:00.004-05:00

The design element of the empire waistline came up as a topic last night at knitting circle. I have always pronounced the term ahm-peer, the French pronunciation, not the English way, em-pyre.

My sister Muffy would normally have told me I am being pretentious, but she's not around this summer. Kate stepped into the vacancy and called my pronunciation douche baggy.

Uhm, that's douche baguette to you, missy...

Turning Japanese

2008-07-07T17:20:00.002-05:00

My weekend's highlight was a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's new Perelman Building. I love that the PMA has acquired this cool building, that was empty for several decades. I am a huge fan of recycling the beautiful empty buildings in our fair city.

Some gal pals went to see two exhibits, Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan and Hello! Fashion: Kansai Yamamoto, 1971–1973. Quite the fun contrast.

My apologies for the sub-par photos, however they are remarkably good considering they are from my crackberry!

These two kimono were amongst my favorites. Both are hand tie-dyed using the shibori method. All of the lighter areas were created by tying off tiny bits of fabric....thousands of them. Talk about anal detail. The effect is stunning.

The Kansai exhibit was funky, baby! I wish they had more pieces on display, but they did have a wonderful video playing of a Kansai fashion show from the 70's. (BTW- nice to see models with a little meat on their bones.) The mannequin below is wearing a knit turtleneck bodysuit with a Kabuki mask on it....anyone relieved that I didn't see that in Vogue Knits when my taste was less refined?

2008-07-05T16:28:00.004-05:00

I am an intelligent person who can count to 100.

I have been knitting for many many moons.

I have knit many baby sweaters.

I love to knit with Koigu.

Many of those baby sweaters were knit in Koigu.

I think garter stitch shows of Koigu brilliantly.

All of my Koigu baby sweaters were knit in garter stitch.

So why am I getting my ass kicked by Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket?

Hubris.

Mary, Mary...

2008-06-10T21:12:00.003-05:00

....quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

Oh, my...I'm verging on needing a 12 step program. Watch out Meg, I am catching up to you!

Pesto?

2008-06-05T20:09:00.003-05:00

Basil Part II has been off the needles now for weeks. This one took me a fraction of the time it took me to knit the first Basil. But true to Lisa-form, I really dragged my heels on blocking the blanket. And then dragged them again on posting my final pictures.

I think this pattern would be wonderful knit in most any finer gauge yarn. There is however an undeniable magic to knitting it in Koigu. Anyone else want to have a baby, so I can knit another?

I'm a Goner

2008-05-26T10:13:00.002-05:00

Two Easters ago I visited Winterthur Museum to see there quilt exhibition. A majority of the quilts were single fabric tops or trapunto quilting, which is lovely, but not my thing. There were a few patchwork quilts that were gorgeous. The best was this hexagon quilt below.

About the same time, Jan was blogging about her Grandma's Flower Garden hexagon quilt. This really appealed to me. It is vibrant, gorgeous, full of fabulous fabrics (not in my stash.)

So, in my obsessive fashion I decided to make my own hexagon quilt. The obsession quickly faded though. Hexagon quilts are hand-sewn. There really isn't just an easy way to do this on a machine, blech. And as alluded to above, I really wanted Jan's stash, not mine. Honestly, I am pretty tired of my stash, double-blech. So I only made two "flowers" before setting the idea aside.

Then along came Meg and the tantalising pictures on her blog of a blanket made of knit hexagons in Noro. I had to make this blanket and stalked her blog until the tutorial was posted. The very same day I supplemented my stash of Noro Kuryeon at Rosie's and cast-on.

It's addictive...very very addictive. Noro has always been my one of my favorites because of the beautiful color progressions and this blanket optimizes that.

Bye-bye entrelac. I have a new obsession.

2008-05-19T12:13:00.003-05:00

It was a lazy, fun weekend. It started with breakfast at Sandy's, my favorite diner. After my "usual" french toast, sausage and tea, I decided to hang out in the square and do some quality people watching and knitting, duh.

On the way, I did stop at Loop to score these sparkly little faceted ball buttons for my Martha (Ravelry link). The color is identical, but I think the sparkle factor makes these work beautifully without detracting from the rest of the sweater.

Martha is up to her armpits! She is just sooooo pretty and I am in love with the Manos Silk Blend. It feels great to knit with and has great stitch definition.

As you can see, supersaturated colors are dominating my world lately. The amethyst of Martha is so intense, but almost pales next to my Optic Waves Shawl (Ravelry link). It was glowing in the grass.

I worked on it while taking in all the activity in Rittenhouse Square. This shawl got a lot of attention! Almost as many people stopped to pet it as I got to pet dogs. My heart went to an adorable Corgi mix who decided he'd much rather hang out with me then his dog sitter. I almost felt bad for the dog sitter cause my new friend started to cry every time the sitter tried to leave.

And my extra bonus for the day was getting to meet Mindy's parents. I let them know from all the peeps how important she has become in record time to our group of friends. Seriously, Mindy, its going to be hard letting you go to NYC, but a lot easier than TX!

Sunday found Marissa, Regina and moi basking in the presence of the Yarnharlot, aka Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. She was part of the Free Library of Philadelphia Book Fair. Stephanie was a lot of fun and I am really hoping that she does eventually post her talk on her blog. Our hands were too busy knitting to take notes. My disappointment was with the turn out. Philadelphia knitters really let her down, this is the Yarnharlot, folks! Where the hell where you? Only really superlative excuses will be accepted, doing laundry...not a good excuse...husband graduating from overpriced business school? We'll let you slide. I saw lots of advertising for the book fair, but not a lot for Stephanie.

Oh, and she totally loved the name Degenerknitters!!!

Catalogue of my Literary Pretensions

2008-05-13T22:43:00.000-05:00

I've seen this meme on a few blogs and it piqued my interest to see how my reading stacked up.

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Miserables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

.....so, I think I do much better on the classics rather than contemporary works. What surprised me most was the omission of any Camus. I was hoping for bonus pretension points for reading L'Etrange in French. Ok, so I read it in French and understood zippo. Give me a break, what high school junior gives a crap about or understands existentialism? At that point in our lives, don't we all believe that are destiny is controlled by fascist vice principles and college guidance counselors?

Wow, did I digress...

So soft and juicy

2008-05-10T17:27:00.003-05:00

The Tenley Circle Studio Sock yarn from the Neighborhood Fiber Co. really grabbed my attention, but adding the Alchemy Haiku in Kai's Goldfish is the "BAM!" If only I could add Haiku to everything in my life.

The Optic Waves Shawl from Clara Parkes, The Knitters Book of Yarn is a really easy lace pattern and so far a really satisfying knit. I was really disturbed to hear that the sample shawl from the book had been stolen at MDS&W from the Brooks Farm booth. And so in honor of shawls gone by I cast on, and am having trouble putting it down.

Bunch of the gals met up this afternoon for a some knitting and spinning 101 in Rittenhouse Square. The weather let us down a bit, it was chilly and very cloudy, but at least it didn't rain.

The weather may have let us down, but there was much laughter and fun. We also attracted a group of wee would be knitters who got to play with their first bits of Koigu...start 'em young on the good stuff!

Before we hit the park, some of us stopped at Rosie's and dove into the Koigu mill-ends. I brought some of my stashed mill-ends from past years to see if I could flesh it out for some projects. These fab pinky orange skeins are going to be a Baby Surprise sweater for Amy's newly born daughter, Danielle Rae.

And because a lovely new crop of full skeins came with the mill-ends, I swapped some blue skeins for these lovely green ones. I have a little green Koigu thing going on these days! I have Maude in mind for these lovelies.

Speaking Rowan

2008-04-29T20:09:00.004-05:00

Last Wednesday at knitting circle, Stacy asked, "Does any one speak Rowan?"

I laughed. I may not be laughing for long. Basil is finished in record time and off the needles (pictures are coming after I have blocked my little beauty.) And Martha from Rowan Studio has been cast-on.

Admittedly, before I was willing to cast-on, I heckled and pestered Wendy a bit to finish her Martha. OK, Wendy, a lot. What can I say, I am a follower...I like to have my friends work out the tricky parts first. From what I understand there can be quite a few tricky parts in Rowan patterns.

So with advise from Wendy and seeing what was out there on Ravelry, there are already modifications being made. Right off the bat both fronts and the back were cast-on together to cut down on the seaming. That makes for a long row of stitches, but I am through the bottom band of patterning and ready to slog into a lot of stockinette. Turn on the autopilot for a bit!

Instinct

2008-04-24T19:36:00.009-05:00

Ok, so I know that these really look like two totally different pieces of knitting. They aren't.

Indoor light vs natural light.

Blue binding vs light green.

Over thinking your color choices vs going with your first instinct.

Questionning my color instinct, which I actually think is usually pretty damn good, I returned the light green Koigu I originally bought and bought the Caribbean Blue Louet's. It looked like a good match for the blue splashes in the yarn. In reality it was horrible. In lights other than Rosie's it wasn't green enough. The contrast was too great. And with all the varigated Koigu it was too solid.

Ripping back my knitting ranks right up there with unmedicated root canal. It hurt like hell, but I am incredibly happy now...reunited with my light green Koigu.

Growing Basil

2008-04-17T19:40:00.005-05:00

Geez, Lisa, are you knitting that again?

Is anyone really surprised? I seem to have acquired a bad rep for knitting the same pattern over and over...two Lady Eleanors, two Koolhaus, two Beatrix, two Clapotis and a handful of Fetchings, Purl Berets, Emily Infant Mitts and baby James Deans. Okay...okay...now that it is catalogued; I am guilty! But sometimes a sure thing is best.

My first Basil was brilliant. Why not repeat brilliance? Easy to remember lace repeats coupled with oh-so-lovely Koigu and you have yourself a winner. And in this case, throw in a little of my other newer fav, Louet's Gem fingering.

I think this may be the last of the major babies in my life for a while...that is until Muffy or Marissa start popping them out (sorry, Mariss, couldn't help myself.) Amy, my dear friend and soror is the mother to be. Once again, continuing a trend, not a girly girly pink person having yet another girl baby. When is someone going to let me knit with pink koigu for a little girl?

My pictures are not doing the yarn adequate justice. Amy and her husband live in Breckenridge, CO and this yarn has all the colors I remember from my visit there. Not traditional baby colors, but I am sure that she is going to love it.

We all cook with Basil. Why not add this recipe to your repertoire?

Anemoi Mittens

2008-04-08T22:07:00.002-05:00

Eunny Jang's Anemoi Mittens knit in Louet's Gems. I stayed true to the pattern...practised my mad tubular cast on skills...knit the cuffs on 0s, probably should have used 1s...did the pain in the ass three needle cast off.

Loved knitting with this yarn. Every wonderful thing I have heard about it was absolutely true.

Best of all, this time Muffy's lovingly handknit mittens fit, fit perfectly. Now maybe she can give up the tatty old gloves with the chenille worn off in patches.

Thanks Mindy for acting as the mitten model!

Orange is the New Blue

2008-03-27T18:50:00.004-05:00

Juliet is done! She is the new favorite-don't-want-to-take-it-off sweater. Okay, so I have lovely biggish abalone buttons for her, that have not been sewn on, but the whole button-loop thing is just not a priority right now.

I think if I had the sweater to knit again, a medium would actually fit better. The bottom is a bit more voluminous than ideal. But she is so soft and warm and cozy and lots of other wonderful adjectives.

There was a blue Juliet, a blue Gretel and blue Crocodile gloves...winter blues? Well, spring is here and I have moved out of the blues and into my orange period.

Muffy's Anemoi mittens in grape and orange were my transition. More orange came home with me on Friday. Since then, Artemis has been busting into the bag and lovin' on the yarn. Saturday morning she buried a skein of Neighborhood Fibers Studio Sock in my bed. Then she dropped a skein of Haiku on my face at 4 in the morning. And tonight I came home to find her curled up with one of the wound skeins. Clearly she wants me to ditch all other WIPs and swatch for the Optic Wave Stole. Smart kitty...enabling kitty...I love this kitty...minus the drool on the mohair.

Stopping Traffic

2008-03-22T19:51:00.003-05:00

Friday evening, Miss Mindy and I attended the cocktail party and book signing for The Knitter's Book of Yarn by Clara Parkes at Loop. Being Good Friday, I think the crowd was much smaller that I would have expected. That gave those of us who came an excellent chance to meet Clara and interact with her.

I have had my copy of the book for several weeks. As soon as the Friday Night Knitting Club (ehhhh) hit the stores, people who know I am a knitter started buying it for me. I accepted their gift and joyfully traded them in for a copy of Clara's book. The book is a great reference to help you choose the proper fiber for your projects. It satisfies both those who like to read about knitting and those of us who are all about the patterns. Norah Gaughan's Cabled Swing Cardi (rav link) was what first caught my eye, and then I discovered there were many more fab patterns in the book.

While chatting with some new knitting buds I spied these two skeins of Studio Sock from Neighborhood Fiber Co. in the Tenley Circle colorway.

I snatched one up. After all, all things orange are Sherry 's thing and I thought she might swoop out of the ether and snatch it away. It was sooo juicy... it could happen! Any who, back to Clara. She was lovely, warm, fun and down to earth. She was also a world-class enabler and I should know, having something of a reputation as one myself.

I thought the juicy orange/red would be lovely knit into the Optic Wave Shawl by Sheila January. Clara thought it would be even more lovely stranded with Alchemy Haiku in Kai's Goldfish. Next thing I knew I was clutching both skeins of Studio Sock and two skeins of Haiku like my life depended on it. So much for self-control.

Hi, my name is Lisa and I am powerless in the presence of yummy yarn. But I will be stopping traffic come fall!

Deck Debut

2008-03-20T18:04:00.002-05:00

It took ages. Seriously, years to get everything in place to have my roof-deck back. And then it happened and the deck was built in nothing flat. The downside being that it was finished at the beginning of the winter. And the winter, while mild, has been dragging on forever.

Monday morning I left for work and the deck was empty. I came home and my bedroom was kinda empty and the deck was getting spiffed up. My dear handydude, Bill had moved the furniture back out onto the deck and reinstalled my repaired windchimes. Love to hear them in the wind.

And on the table? Muffy's mitts are making some progress. I think there will be a thumb fitting on Sunday. Spring has officially arrived, but it looks like if I hurry up she will have a few days left to wear them.

That is great for the mittens, but bad for the deck. I really want to sit out on my deck again and enjoy the sunset.

She likes it...

2008-03-13T17:44:00.003-05:00

...she really likes it!! And it doesn't even have a thumb or mate yet.

I am knitting Eunny Jang's Anemoi Mittens for Muffy. The yarn is Louet Gems fingering weight superwash merino in Grape and Citrus Orange. I told her that I was going to knit mittens for her as an early birthday present, but I wanted the design to be a suprise.

There is some history involving Muffy, mittens and moi.

Many years ago during a period of unemployment I decided to make all of my Christmas presents. That included a pair of lovely navy and red Norwegian mittens from Flying Geese & Partridge Feet by Robin Hansen for Muffy, then 9 years old. The mittens were lovely and a triumph considering they were my first time knitting on double points, first time knitting fairisle, and at the time I did not know how to knit continental, so both strands were carried in one hand.

My good friends will know that even with all of that, the ending was not as happy as it should have been. She unwrapped them Christmas morning, loved them, tried them on. They were HUGE. Nothing like giving a nine year old a pair of mittens that would not fit for ten years. Saddly, now that they would fit perfectly, no one knows where they are.

So, with history...and my gauge issues only being marginally better, I decided to forgo suprise and make sure that they would fit. The fit is great and she loves the design and colors. Who said history is doomed to repeat itself?

Had to include this picture of pretty little Toscabelle. She was sitting in the window watching the little boy across the street try to skateboard. I swear I heard her giggle when he wiped out.

Rich

2008-03-01T22:56:00.002-05:00

I am a very lucky person. I own a lovely home...dominated by two loveable cats. There is a job that does not often spill outside the company doors and pays the bills. I have three wonderful parents and a little sister I adore. Beloved gadgets fill my purse and my apartment is overflowing with beautiful things.

But my life is richest in the wonderful women who are my friends. While some of my other friendships have been tested and wounded me lately, you have all rallied around me and lifted me up. I love you all.

Today we gathered together at the Ten Stone...Sherry, Magda, Regina, Marissa, Emily and Mindy...

there were matching cabled berets...thank you Sherry, for letting me knit mine in the same color as yours, then rescuing me when I was short on yarn. Now there is a true friend!

Lots of yummy food was consumed, washed down by ciders and beers.

And even a little knitting was accomplished...loving these socks!

Comfort

2008-02-23T15:59:00.004-05:00

What is comfort on a cold grey dismal Philadelphia Saturday?

Muffy and I headed down to the Reading Terminal Market today for brunch/lunch. They were having a special event called the "Souper Bowl."

We drifted around and tried some of the yummy free samples, had some soup... ok, but something was missing...

apple dumplings from the Dutch Eating Place. Amazingly there were two seats available at the counter. We hopped up on stools and split a warm apple dumpling with heavy cream (yes, that sound you hear is my arteries clicking shut!) Now, this is comfort food.

Comfort also comes in the form of yummy knit wear.

These are Pear Tree's Crocodile long fingerless gloves, knit in their divine 4-ply merino. The only mods I made to the pattern was to knit them in the round, and the length of the hand and thumbs. My hands and fingers are rather short so they would have been way over the tips of my fingers if I followed the pattern.

So many of my sweaters and tops have 3/4 length sleeves, so I always have a drafty gap between my gloves and sleeves. No more...these fill the gap perfectly. And they are uber toasty and comfortable. Thank you marveous Magda for getting me hooked on these gloves and lending me the pattern.

Hope you all had a Saturday of tasty treats!

in the 'burgh

2008-02-19T21:49:00.003-05:00

I spent this weekend in Pittsburgh with my father, celebrating his retirement. Free at last, free at last....

Our first stop was the exhibition of Dale Chihuly's art glass at the Phipps Conservatory. I expected to be impressed by this exhibition, but I my jaw dropped to my knees before even entering the building. This amazing chandelier was glowing into the night through the glass dome over the visitors' center.

What I didn't expect was that the glass would be so beautifully integrated throughout the conservatory. Every room but one very formal garden room had installations of glass. Each item carefully placed by Chihuly and his team. An employee of the Conservatory told me that it took eleven days and a ten man team to do the installation of the exhibit. I think this huge Fiori was one of my favorites. The scale of some of these pieces is really impressive.

If the exhibit weren't closing this weekend, I'd encourage everyone to hop a plane to Pittsburgh. A special thanks to Gryphon's Feather's posting that brought the Chihuly exhibit to my attention.

The Phipps was a big part of my Pittsburgh childhood. My mom would take me once a year to roam the gardens. It was particularly magical to me in the winter...surrounded by lush greenery, flowers and warmth.

Another important part of my childhood was the Carnegie Museum and its collection of dinosaurs. As I remember it from my memory, it was a cold stark white marble hall packed with dinosaurs. The new dino exhibit is in a much expanded space and they have plenty of room to separate the bones by period. The exhibit has all the interactive bells and whistles to round it all out. Saddly the T-Rex is still being put back together, so I couldn't visit my old friend. The most impressive thing about the new exhibit is the new armatures for the fossils. They have managed to construct them so they are as unobtrusive as possible.

We made a stop that was not part of my nostalgia tour, but will be a sure visit for all future trips, Pamela's P&G Diner. The pancakes were thin, crispy and divine. Thinking about them is making me drool. They have a bunch of locations in Pittsburgh, skip the long lines in Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, head straight for the Strip District where there are two larger rooms with tables. Thank you Christine for insisting that I have breakfast there!!!

B is for Basil

2008-02-10T19:02:00.000-05:00

I love Edward Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies, but that isn't the Basil I'm thinking of.

This Basil is a baby blanket designed by Courtney Kelley of the Smith Island Pattern Factory. I knit this beauty out of Koigu KPPPM. This colorway is so scrumptous I almost unraveled the blanket to make a shawl for myself.

Basil was knit for the brand-new son of one of Muffy's bestfriends. It was a good deal, she handed over the cash, helped pick out Koigu in a color combo I loved, and I got to knit a pattern that interested me. This was my first experience knitting lace with Koigu. The knitting is fabulous, but the blocking really elevated the WOW factor of the blanket. It in no way resembles what the mother thought was a baggy lace beret when I was knitting at the shower.

Want an easy lace knit? Go with this baby! I wish I had taken pictures of the binding...a K1, K2tog row at the fold makes a lovely picot edging. The bind-off is fiddley but takes care of the hemming at the same time as the bind-off. The binding makes an edge with just the right weight...don't skip it!

A Blue Period

2008-02-06T11:23:00.000-05:00

When I was much younger and I would tell my mother I was depressed. She would tell me I wasn't depressed, just in a funk or feeling blue. Now I know that I really was suffering from depression. At the moment, I really am feeling blue. Not to worry my friends...spirits are high, but the knitting is blue! Juliet has staged a comeback and is at the same place we left her before frogging (I'm still a little dizzy!)

I was on a real finishing kick, but last night I succumbed to the need for more variety in my life. I swatched...I know, hard to believe, but I did. First I swatched for Gretel on 7 DPNs. The yarn is uber lovely Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk Aran. My gauge looked a little off and no 8 DPNs, so I put that aside until knitting circle, when I could take some 8s for a test drive.

Not to be discouraged, I pulled out my Pear Tree 4-Ply Merino and knit another gauge swatch for the Crocodile long fingerless gloves. That was a bust, went up a needle size and voila! Cast those puppies on and started knitting while watching the CA Super Tuesday returns. I am loving these!! One of the best things about this yarn aside from the beautiful sheen and amazing softness is the slubbies that occasionally pop up and add some character.

What else put a big grin on my face? Being awarded this by Andrea, my favorite frogger...

The rules are to give the award to up to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel so happy about Blogland! Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so that they can pass it on. Beware! You may get the award several times!

Here are the 10 people that make my day or inspire me:

Marissa, Sherry, Jan, Dacia, Wendy, Emily, Kate, Jennifer, Carol

And of course right back at you, Andrea!

Brunch is calling

2008-02-03T16:30:00.000-05:00

There are few gatherings that I enjoy more than weekend brunches with friends. This afternoon Marissa, Madga and Moi hit up A Full Plate Cafe on Liberty Walk in NoLib....YUM.

So, my phone has a crush on Magda's phone; it calls her all the time. It called her phone today while we were having brunch. Last weekend when Magda couldn't have lunch with Mindy, Marissa and myself, my phone called her's 23 times and left voice mail messages that were little snippets of our luncheon conversation. Almost like being there if you listened to all the messages. Yup, there is a little stalker activity going on here.

Full Plate is so cute and the food is really delish. The real winner was the Cinnamon Bobka French Toast, OMG...so tasty.

I showed off my finished Endpaper Mitts. Don't they look fab? My only disappointment is that I took so long for me to finish them. Once I got past my past my completely irrational phobia of all things Kitchner, I was good to go. Mitt #2 was knit in a flash!

And do you see there to the right, part of Marissa's waffles with banana cream, strawberries and coconut?

Not much left when the feeding frenzy was over...just a lot of laughter. Good times, my friends, good times!

A Tragic Tale

2008-01-31T22:21:00.000-05:00

...okay, not so tragic.

Basil is finally finished and ready for blocking. I'll post pictures when it no longer looks like there is a boob in the center. It was time for me to get back to knitting something for me, about damn time! Even though beautiful Debbie Bliss silk alpaca arrived to knit Gretel, I resisted casting on something new.

I have lovely items already on needles. First I picked up my Endpaper Mitts. They had stalled right at the Kitchner/Tubular cast-off on the first mitt. I turned on the high power magnifying lamp, pulled up the tutorial on-line, gritted my teeth and plunged in. It was a bit painful but I got through it. Then I knit and cast off the thumb. And spured on by my success I cast on for the second mitt. Yes, the Italian Tubular Cast-on, which was not so difficult this time, only four or five false starts. Now I am happily cranking my way through mitt #2.

Saddly, when I picked Juliet back up, the results were not so happy. Andrea told me to make the large, but I think I had already cast on for the XL. At knitting circle, only about 20 garter ridges in, I decided to try it on and make a decision about whether to make the longer or cropped version. Everyone agreed that it was too big...sigh. I stood with it draped around my shoulders while Andrea cranked the ball winder. Back to the start...rats....rats...rats!

Thank you, Andrea for being so gentle. What a good bud.

Kitchy Kitchy Koo

2008-01-27T21:11:00.000-05:00

Baby super-model, Clyde, prenatally known as Flippy the Bean, graciously modeled my latest baby knits for me. I have hit yet another baby boom -- something in the water 9 mos. ago --thank heavens I was only drinking cider then!

These little hat and mitt sets are seriously the cutest and fastest baby gift around. The little hats are Lisa Myers' James Dean hat knit on 2s using Koigu mill ends. The pattern calls for Noro Kureyon. Clyde's father, Max, was the first to monkey with the gauge and come up with this adorable hat.

The only downer on the hats is the provisional cast-on and 52 stitches worth of Kitchner stitch. Yes, I just said 52 stitches. Before these baby hats my only use of the dreaded Kitchner stitch was 10-12 stitches worth on the toe of a sock. Every single time I have had to call up the tutorial and scroll through picture by picture. Now, 3 baby James Deans completed, I have mastered the Kitchner stitch...even walked away from the laptop and grafted away while watching TV.

I can tell that you are incredibly impressed. Ppphhht...I was.

The adorable little mitts are designed by my very sweet friend Emily. The pattern is posted here. These whip up in no time at all. The only thing that was not super fun about these were the laces...14 inches of i-cord on 0's. I did manage to survive and it was not too tedious.

These sets are gifts for twins Reno Jr. and Sarah Jo, and Tucker. Welcome to the world precious little ones!

Basic Sock?

2008-01-21T22:26:00.001-05:00

Who said that stripes aren't flattering on short fat feet? This was my first ever test knit for Madelinetosh's Simple Socks. I am a very bad test knitter and just reported my results oh so very late. Sorry, Amy!!

These uber comfy socks were knit in Trekking XXL on size 1 DPNs. The socks could use a bit more negative ease. I am not sure if the fault lies with my measurements, gauge, the yarn etc. They are however really comfortable.

And they are loud, definitely the loudest pair of socks made to date. And I only possess one other skein in my stash that comes close to competing.

Any one have a suggestion for this skein of STR? I think it may be too wild for a pattern to show well. What was I thinking? Regina, you may be replaced this year as my Maryland Sheep and Wool shopping chaperone.

I'm just sayin'...

So Kool

2008-01-13T19:01:00.000-05:00

...Koolhaas that is. My Christmas knitting is finally done and gifted. And it is only mid-January. I may be a little a head of my norm here.

Years ago I knitted a fleet of scarves for my friends as Christmas presents. Harold got a quilted flag wall hanging instead. He loved the flag, but I know he has always been wondering when I was going to knit something for him.

This year I knit the boys (Harold and Pedro) the hat du jour, Jared Flood's Koolhaas from IK's holiday edition.

This was a super quick knit, even with the pesky cable needle. I tried doing without the cable needle and have arrived at the conclusion that I am either missing something important in the tutorials, or it is just as easy to do it with the cable needle.

I knit the hats with Berrocco's Peruvia. This was my first time knitting with this yarn and I absolutely loved it. The yarn is nice and soft for a hat, not itchy and the boys said they were really toasty and comfortable. The colors were lovely too, with lots of dimension and interest. Stitch definition was also really good.

The only thing I was not completely thrilled with is that they were a bit long. I should have done 4 repeat rows instead of 5 that the men's size calls for. The boys loved their hats though and that is what matters most.

A Confession

2008-01-08T18:55:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday, at Allison's Knit 'n Knosh, I confessed to one of my more egregious knitting offenses. In my own defense it was committed during college and that would have been in the early 80's. (I know, I know, I don't look like I could possibly be that old. You are so sweet to say so.)

This was one of the last sweaters I ever knit. And beside my gauge issues, there were techniques I now know that would have improved the sweater's technical merit. In retrospect nothing could have helped the design. It was a Vogue pattern and back then I considered any criticism of Vogue to be a heresy. I also know now not to spend a fortune and lots of time knitting an uber-trendy sweater.

The sweater was knit in an aran weight cotton. It was a very long (mid-thigh) vest with a very deep v-neck and long armholes. The main color was a hideous mustard/gold with... wait for it... wait for it... large scale intarsia tropical fruit on it. Yup, I knit a vest with a half a ruby-red grapefruit on my left boob and a banana cradling the right boob. A lemon, a lime and an orange segment rounded out the fruit salad. And I thought I was the shit in this thing!

Of course to finish the outfit, there was a white Petite Bateau t-shirt, white leggings and thrifted hot pink alligator low heeled pumps. Alison asked me if there was a belt involved...there wasn't...my grandmother always taught me a proper lady gets totally dressed and takes one thing off. It should have been the sweater vest. Atleast my hair was not huge, thank heavens for some shreds of good taste.

Oh, I wish I had a picture for you...I should have had Marissa sketch it for me...but I know that you all have vivid enough imaginations to make up for this short coming.

Catching up on Christmas

2007-12-27T21:51:00.001-05:00

I wanted to share with my friends a little of the Christmas tree at my parents. Our tree is of the highly eclectic variety. My mother was quoted as saying this year, "There is always room on the tree for 10 or 12 more (ornaments)..."

The felt Lucy...one of the first indications of the crafty greatness yet to come in my future. The whole Peanuts gang is on there, in various stages of coming unglued. I think there will have to be a serious Elmers glue intervention in the near future. I love that Muffy and my childhood art projects still take center stage on the tree.

Below Lucy is Mother Jones in a Santa hat holding a tree. We have three of those on our tree- got to have Mother Jones!

These vintage paper mache ornaments are part of my earliest Christmas memories. They are signed De Sela. I have seen other ornaments by this artist on eBay, but none as cute as the ones we have. When it comes time to divy up the Christmas ornaments there could be war, thank heavens some of them are doubles. This little doodlebug is my favorite!

Maybe I'll let Muffy have this little grasshopper?

Angels and snowmen are multiples, so we each get one!

There is this sweet little worm munching on watermelon and another little worm chomping on a juicy pear.

A real struggle may occur over the little orange angel. My mom thinks she is ugly and has been trying to get rid of her; Muffy and I adore her. The only reason she still makes an appearance each year is because Muffy and I dig her out and plunk her down in the middle of mom's angel collection on the piano. I will try to be generous and share.

It is hard though...my mom and dad bought those ornaments when I was a baby. It is really one of the few times I differentiate between my family and hers. For 14 years these ornaments were my childhood and mine alone. But they have been on the tree for her whole life too, so...she can have a snowman and a little angel and we'll see where we go from there.

Here's mom, aka Jeannie, showing off her Pomatumus socks knit from the lovely sock yarn from Yarn Pirate. Fortunately the fit is perfect, cause I'd hate to knit them again!

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas...that all your knitted gifts were met with delight...that Santa brought lots of knitting paraphenalia...and stockings were stuffed with cashmere not coal!

Cheers to us all having a happy, healthy new year!!!

Herringbone Happenings

2007-12-17T19:08:00.000-05:00

...and happiness...my December has been all about herringbone. Embarrassingly, it took me a bit to realise that my two big Christmas knitting projects were the same stitch, oy. (Are you allowed to have Christmas and oy in the same sentence?)

I am knitting the My So Called Scarf for my uberfabulous handyman, Bill. The yarn is Lorna's Laces Bullfrogs and Butterflies in the Tuscany colorway. It is doing a pretty good faux argyle, which has kept up even though I have two skeins in here. I was so worried that it would stop when the first skein ran out. Love the pops of bright blue that will compliment his baby-blues.

Second up are the Charade socks for my also uberfabulous stepdad, EB. These are knit using Schaefer Anne in Mr. Greenjeans (love the name almost as much as the colorway!) This is the first time I am using Anne for socks and the fabric on ones is wonderful. These are going to be some toasty socks.

Last night I called my mother for a quick size check on leg length. Serendipity struck and I was just where I needed to stop for the ribbing. I love those moments...really love them...those socks were taking forever to knit. Hopefully tonight I'll get to switch the status to finished on Ravelry! I'll post finished pics when EB models them on Christmas morning.

Now, on to why I was being such a dip and not realizing for so long that herringbone had taken over my life. The stitch pattern is written differently on the two projects.

My So Called Scarf's line one of the repeat reads: *sl 1, K1, psso but before dropping the slipped stitch from the left needle, knit into the back of it*

And Charade's line one repeat is *sl1 purlwise, K1, YO, psso knit stitch and YO*

In my humble opinion the Charade version is much easier to understand and faster to knit. Since I have switched to that version, my scarf is growing much more quickly. I might even have all of my Christmas knitting off the needles on time. How could that happen?

Beatrix Again

2007-11-30T21:06:00.001-05:00

My second Beatrix is all finished and ready to be mailed off to baby Alejandra. I am so happy with how she turned out, just lovely. Of course, this one I knit and frogged, and knit again because my gauge was horrifically off. Quelle suprise...

Knit in gorgeous Koigu this is my second Beatrix. I must confess that this was a happy knit because I got to use a non-traditional pallet for a baby girl. Alejandra's mommy is a decidedly unpink girl, so there were no thoughts of pink or pastels for Alejandra. I love the little teacup button closure.

I knit this adorable stripy beret out of the left over yarn. It was part of the bundle that I donated to my church's Harvest Festival. Another mutual friend of her mommy was shamelessly talked into buying the beret as a gift for Carmen, the mom, so they could have a "mommy and me" moment. I am so ashamed that I convinced him to buy it...I cannot see Carmen ever wearing it. Oh well, it was for charity....hehehehe.

Oh, and I had my first sale on etsy! Yippppeeee!!! I wish I had a beret to toss in the air...

Back from the West

2007-11-27T19:55:00.000-05:00

Back from another Thanksgiving in Nevada at my uncle's. It was a very lazy vacation with a lot of lounging, reading and knitting. I finished off the last book in Dorothy Dunnett's series, House of Niccolo. It has taken me a long time to read all eight books and I took even longer with the last book, making it last. Anyone want to have the books to read? They are a great time for any history buff...and they are taking up half a shelf in my closet...really, does anyone want them?

Much progress was made on EB's Christmas socks and the scarf I am making for handydude, Bill. Of course a lot of that progress was made while sitting in the Phoenix airport for eight hours waiting for clearance to take off on the way home.

New additions have been made to the Johnson menagerie. This is India, named for the tawny spot on her forehead that looks like a bindi. Like all kitties she is by turns sweet, wild and ferocious. Its been a while since I was this scratched up and infatuated.

India is not the only new member; there is also Meaghen, who would not sit still long enough for a photo. All were a blur of reddish gold fur. She is a golden retrevier who looks and acts more like a dippy Irish Setter. She has all the potential to be a wonderful dog if anyone had the time and energy to train her.

This beatiful, but dusty boy is hopefully going to be the next member of our family. He doesn't have a name yet. He just showed up in my uncle's drive way and hopped up in his lap when he opened the car door. The cat looks a lot like my uncle's old kitty Midnight. Midnight was the love of my life...you know how I love black cats.

The Friday after Thanksgiving all the lights start popping up in Carson City. This Wal-Mart inspired gem was down the street from my uncle. Wish I had taken the time to learn how to use the movie feature on my camera so I could have captured the Muzak Christmas music that was being broadcast into the night.

This house was nothing when compaired to one of the houses in Virgina City. Saddly I did not have my camera with me to capture the splendor. They had not one, but a dozen blow-up snowmen and other important Christmas figures like Tigger and Pooh. There were prancing light-up reindeers, several Santa's workshops, old fashioned plastic choir boys and more.

Best was the nativity scene with the light-up baby Jesus. Boy, was that kid throwing off some serious lumens!

Our one field trip was to Truckee, CA. A very cute little tourist town, with the standard gift shops and a candy store that was blowing the most intoxicating chocolate aroma into the night air. My fat cells started to sing with glee with one whiff and positively danced after a cup of their hot chocolate.

The sky that evening was so cool looking. A bank of dense clouds where hovering just over the ridge of the Sierra Nevadas, a last bit of light shining through the break.

Imagine my surprise when I tried a different setting on my camera and captured all these "little folk" skiing on the hood of this wagon!

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving with lots of turkey, trimmings and minimal family disfunction.

The Haul

2007-11-18T21:13:00.000-05:00

These are my lovelies that I bought at Southwind Farms. Sadly, I don't know which alpaca's fleece this came from, unlike Marissa and her pedigreed yarn.

I just cannot say enough about how wonderful our visit to Southwind Farms was, love those alpacas! Penny and Jim Mullen are wonderful, warm people.

And this is my Webs haul...Cascade Pastaza for the Cozy V-Neck sweater from Fitted Knits.

Tahki Ghost Prints for Urchin.

And a sweater's worth of Stockbridge from Valley Yarns in light grey to make the Cable Luxe Sweater.

I am off to Carson City, NV for Thanksgiving. Everybody have a happy and safe holiday!

Are We There Yet?

2007-11-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

This weekend, Regina, Marissa, Rhonda, Sherry and I headed up to New England for our own fiberfest. I was first introduced to Webs at Stitches two years ago, imagine my surprise when I learned that they were only an hour away from my parents home in Connecticut. All of that yarn, so close, and I never knew?

A road trip to Webs became a frequent subject of conversation during knitting get-togethers. This weekend, we finally loaded up a rented mini-van and hit the road. Most of the baggage going up were WIPs...there was a whole lot of knitting going on in that van. My "So Called Scarf" is finally making some progress and hit a real growth spurt.

Yes, this is Marissa actually skipping with glee across the Web's parking lot.
And a sweet gentleman in a nifty granny square sweater, who brought his wife to the yarn Mecca; we heard no grumbling. Hmmmm....do we think that Flint, Robert or Mike may mellow like that with age?Everyone was incredibly well behaved. There was no pushing or shoving to get to the yarn. No one fibbed about how a color would look on someone else so they could score that colorway. We all played nicely in the yarn-box of Webs and left with lots of goodies. I'll detail my score later.

While in Northampton we stopped in at Northampton Wools and checked out all of their goodies. We chatted up some very friendly people there. Sherry was even giving spinning pointers and doing her very best enabling. Marissa scored some Jitterbug that was later spotted on the mini-van's dashboard having elicit sex with the yummy tweed she bought at Webs.

This gem of a bumper sticker was spotted on our way back to the mini-van. I think I could live in Northampton.

Today, on our way back to Philly we stopped at Southwind Farms in Watertown, CT and indulged in some mad alpaca love.

At first they were very shy with us, but warmed up as their curiosity grew stronger. The fleeces were incredibly dense and so soft.

Alpacas are incredibly bright animals. In some ways they reminded us of cats...for the most part they knew their names, but would choose to ignore you anyway. They are also very clean animals and not at all barnyard stinky. It was lovely to see the close bond between the alpacas and the farm's owner, Jim.

I loved the handlebar mustache on this gal, just like my dad's. We were told she is a bit ornery and quite a spitter. She was very well-behaved with us, despite Marissa smooching it up with her baby boy.

This adorable little guy is six-weeks old and a future champion alpaca. Watching him bounce and gamble about the enclosure was so much fun.

Lots of soft, lovely alpaca yarn came home with us. Southwind Farms has a nice selection of yarn from their alpacas. A huge thank you to Jim and Penny Mullen for opening the farm so that we could come and visit their herd! If you are wandering through western Connecticut, give them a call and go visit. I cannot recommend them enough.

Another huge thank you to my mom and step-father, Ed, for hosting us this weekend! It meant a lot to me to have my friends meet my parents and have my parents get to know my dear friends.

Tag-Team Quilting

2007-11-08T19:13:00.001-05:00

I am a bit of a control freak, particularly when it comes to my quilts. I have very definite ideas about fabrics, straight lines, and how many stitches to the inch are in my quilting ( there are a lot BTW.)

Then along comes my wonderful friend Marissa with her, and I quote, "lackadaisical and creative" artistic nature. I fell in love with the quilt she made for another friend's adopted baby. And thought hmmmmm....maybe I could use a little loosening up?

Our adorable mutual friend here, I get to show you the reveal!

All the knitting glitteratti gathered at Rosie's to celebrate Flippy's imminent arrival. There was champagne, cupcakes and chocolate cake! Yum! A grand time was had by all and some of us even did a little knitting.

Marissa and I were both very happy with our tag-team quilt. But the expression on Courtney's face when she unwrapped it was the best. Mariss and I are hoping that this becomes the future security blanket, you know, the one that secretly gets packed when Flippy goes off to college.

My quilting mojo may be making a return. Thank heavens, because I have several quilts that need to be finished. How could that be, you might ask?

These eensy tiny baby mittens were knit by Emily. As Kate would say, "they are so stinkin' cute!"

Sock Model Wanted...

2007-10-30T21:19:00.000-05:00

...must be size seven shoe, with slender, shapely ankles. Own supply of adorable shoes to wear with my socks is highly desirable.

Yup, I have come to the conclusion that I can knit lovely socks, but I cannot model them. There is a huge degree of photo envy here. All those pictures on Ravelry and Flickr of beautiful socks in funky maryjanes leave me in the pit of dispair. I used to blame it on the awkward angles and bad backgrounds when I took the pictures myself. Now the truth is glaringly obvious. I had friends at knitting circle photograph my socks on my feet. This was the best shot...ouch.

My mummy used to tell me that my feet looked like some little old Chinese lady had bound them at birth. The only person that ever praised them was my ballet teacher, who said I had the best natural pointe. Unfortunately, add to that high arch and instep, ankles that have been sprained multiple times and finished with a nasty break, and you have a sock modeling disaster.

The socks are lovely on their own. It is the Monkey pattern; knit from Black Bunny Fibers merino.

From Beast to Beauty

2007-10-27T21:20:00.000-05:00

Lady Eleanor was the beauty of the ball, erh...Harvest Festival at 1st Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. I am happy to say that she sold for $300 in the silent auction today! A lot of my items were sold today which makes me extremely pleased.

I have had a problem for a while with the general concept that because it is a church event that hand-made things should all be sold on the cheap. Come on guys this is a fundraiser for charity! Cough up the bucks! There are still plenty of items there, that are the cheesy craft things and oodles of novelty scarves all for those that only want to pay $10 max for any thing. Some of the older women doubted that my things would sell at higher prices. Ppphhhht (raspberry sound) they were wrong! There are people out there willing to pay the proper price for hand-made goods.

So it was a fun day despite the torrential downpours. My stash of finished pieces has been diminished, money has been raised for children's charities in Philadelphia and I have a nice little tax deduction.

Simpsonized

2007-10-22T20:26:00.000-05:00

Oh my goodness, Artemis and I have been Simpsonized. Don't we look smashing?

Blocking the Beast

2007-10-19T19:30:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally stopped procrastinating and blocked the beast. I gave Lady Eleanor a good soaking in Euclan in the kitchen sink and popped her in the washer for a good spin. That much wet wool weighs a ton.

Just for this event I invested in blocking wires. It was a good thing. This would have taken every pin in my possession. I think this incredibly tedious task would have gone even better if both cats had not found it so fascinating.

Now onto the fringing! There is hope too that my first Lady E. will now get finished...

Caution! Under Construction

2007-10-13T08:29:00.000-05:00

Well, here at Chez Lisa, we are under construction. It's the morning of day three and my head is splitting from the noise of saws, drills and hammers.

It is however all going to be worth it. The leak that has plagued my condo from the date of purchase has finally been located and is being fixed. I am also getting a new door frame to the soon to be rebuilt deck and a new screendoor. Its costing a bundle, but if it eliminates all the stress I carry with me every time it rains heavily or walk into the kitchen and see the huge honking hole in the ceiling over the sink, it will be worth it.

Also underconstruction are a bunch of hats for new-borns.

These are knit from Koigu mill ends and are a mini version of the "James Dean Hat" from Rosie's. Thanks to Courtney's Max for the fabulous idea! The hats I am knitting are going up for sale at a charity fundraiser at the end of the month.

September and October has seen a lot of charity knitting. I am waiting to block Lady E for the same fundraiser above. And then there were the vests for afghans for Afghans.

Stash busting for charity has felt great. And addictive, I have more of the alpaca above, waiting to be another sweater for an Afghan child. I hope they keep some kids toasty warm! Thanks to Allison (Ravelry link) for organizing the drive on Ravelry. Some members knit a truly impressive number of sweaters, mittens, hats and socks.

Now I need to get moving on the Christmas knitting!

Making up

2007-10-07T21:01:00.000-05:00

Pomotomus and I have put our differences aside. Our friendship has been resumed and I've cast on the second sock. All we needed was a little time apart to adjust our perspective.

Cleaning Up the WIP

2007-10-01T19:59:00.000-05:00

I have been inspired by all of the projects that Mariss is finishing. And think it is time for me to get with the program.

Finishing is not part of my genetic make-up. My mother makes beautiful clothing and taught me to sew. But, if you go through our closets you will find a ton of safety pins...all in the waist bands of trousers and skirts. Now that I think about it, is it a problem with finishing or a problem with closure?

Whatever?!?

Two berets are finished and blocked. (Big thank you to Kate for the raspberry Koigu rescue!)

Beatrix the second is being seamed. My two vests for afghans for Afghans...one is getting its buttons sewn on tonight...one is blocked and drying.

My second Lady Eleanor is waiting for its chance to be blocked and fringed. Maybe then I will do the finishing on my first Lady E. I admit to be a little wigged out by blocking something so big...and I have blocking space issues.

And work resumed at lunch today on Courtney's Claposhrug. One sleeve to go!

Now if only I could get back to the Pomotomus...sigh.

Totally Tubular, Man...

2007-09-23T19:41:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I heard you groan....but it is totally tubular. Italian tubular cast-on that is. Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts have been on my to knit list for quite a while. I loved the ones Emily made for her wife Y last year. But once again a pattern got sidelined by a knitting technique I couldn't grasp.

The dreaded Italian tubular cast-on is a bitch to learn and yields a great stretchy edge when done correctly. Fluffbuff has posted a fantastic tutorial with pictures and a video clip. I watched the video a bozillion times before I caught on. The toughest part was that she was casting on to a long much larger gauge needle and I was casting on to a "0" dpn... nothing to tuck under my arm. This technique definately requires that you have two free hands. After repeated attempts using the only two hands that God gave me, with needles sent flying across the livingroom, I figured out how to anchor my needle. A big ol'center pull skein of Noro, wedged between my laptop and my boobs, with the needle jabbed in. Now the next problem was getting Tosca to hit the keys on the laptop to forward and rewind the video clip.

It was worth the learning curve. I am really pleased with how my mitt is working out. Love the colors, Kiogu of course, and I am carrying them in two hands. Yup, a plethora of new tricks to use in these mitts.

Serendipity

2007-08-25T19:47:00.000-05:00

This evening I walked down to the Schuykill River to take some photos of the sunset and 7 pm for a Photo-Scavenger Hunt on Swap-Bot. What I found was the Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers Company Performing the Hidden River Project 2007.

The performance started on the banks of the river at Walnut Street and progressed two blocks to Market Street. The performance encompassed the rock garden, ramps, and underpasses.

During the rock garden section the audience was encouraged to walk amongst the Umbrella Ladies. In ways it was like interacting with the human statues that you find on the street in European cities.

Normally, I am not an audience participation kinda gal. I almost rebelled when we had to join hands to ascend the stairs to the pergola at the top of the spiral staircase, but I sucked it up and held hands with two strangers.

I learned that the first name of the river was Ganshowahanna, Lenape meaning "rushing and roaring waters." Schuykill means "hidden river," the name given to it by Dutch trader Arendt Corssen. It was really lovely to be able to enjoy all of this along the banks of the river and not worry about trash and all the things we used to associate with the Schuykill.

After all, Muffy has had two swims in the river this summer and her flesh didn't melt off!

F%*#@ the Pomatomus

2007-07-26T20:05:00.001-05:00

Ah, Pomatomus, that lovely sock pattern. Mine were looking so lovely; knitted in Yarn Pirate's beautiful Sonoma colorway. The yarn is a joy to work with and the feel is so silky.

Until I hit the 2nd graph and the jog in the pattern, I was cruising. And then I spent a week knitting and unknitting rows 5-16 and another week on rows 16-22. Sure, I tried them on and couldn't get my foot into the ankle. I put it down to my fat feet and absurdly high instep. So, I promised them to my mother for Christmas.

Last weekend Muffy and I ventured to the family homestead in CT. I took the socks for my mum to try on. I was heading for the toes quickly and did not want to make them too long. Tragedy struck ...the damn thing was too small even for my mother and her narrow feet with normal insteps. She didn't even hesitate when I asked her if I should rip them out and start again.

You can hear me sobbing as it unravels in a squiggly mound of yarn, can't you?

All of that hard work and I really really love the yarn...now I have to start over and I have promised them to my mother. By the way, this is just the thing that my mother's highly selective memory will remember...sigh...I really want these socks for me.

A gal's gotta have a little consolation in this world, so I stopped by Rosie's on my way home and got the first crack at the freshly delivered Black Bunny Sock yarn. This "Saucy" skein should take away some of the disappointment. Oh, yeah baby!

Allons enfants de la Patrie...

2007-07-17T17:48:00.000-05:00

Judy demands a new posting and I oblige. I was scolded on Sunday for not posting in ages. Life I am afraid has intervened, but there has been a lot of knitting going on. This is the first of two Beatrix, knit for little miss Shayna...

The last five weeks have been spent fighting a vicious case of viral bronchitis. Every once in a while I think my boss is going to throw me a fish for being such a good seal. Before that I was sans laptop, after Tosca danced on the keyboard, then settled in for a nice long toasty nap which fried my hard drive.

Saturday, I rallied a bit to celebrate Bastille Day with my friends. In Philly, the Eastern States Penitentiary stands in for the Bastille...nice, grey and very forbidding. There is even a working guillotine for chopping watermelons rather than Marie Antoinette's neck.

Marie grandly declares, "Let them eat cake!" and the crowd below is pelted with...Twinkies? It used to be so much better when it was Tastycake Butterscotch Krimpets...sigh.

It is fun though to see the little kids there with their catcher mits seeing how many they can grab. This is my editorial Twinkie shot...

But even better was the presence of one of literature's most notorious knitters, Madame Defarge. She was so pleased to show off her knitting and be recognized. Fortunately my name was no where to be found on her lovely scarf. My neck is safe for now!

Are you happy now, Judy?

"Did you run out of yarn?"

2007-03-06T19:13:00.000-05:00

...my boss asked. Duh...men can be such idiots. I just whipped up this adorable shrug and may have to make yet another.

The pattern is Teva Durham's Turtleneck Shrug from Scarf Style. I knit it in the Rowan Kid Classic specified in the pattern. The fuzziness is lovely and really not terribly itchy for mohair. The shrug is very warm considering its total lack of a front or back. I would definitely use this yarn again, but am a little afraid about roasting in a whole sweater.

This pattern was fast, easy and pretty darn close to instant gratification. And you get a lot of bang for your buck. Even non-knitters were complimenting me on it...too bad I could not take credit for the clever design. I have read that some knitters have found that theirs shift around a lot on the shoulders. This one is staying perfectly in place. I did knit it on graduating needles to accommodate my chunky upper arms...started with 5s on the wrist and worked up to 7s on the upper arms. The changes are not at all noticeable when worn.

And I love, love, love this color! Does anyone else hear the heavenly choir singing in the background? Why am I so obsessed with wearing black when I look so adorable in grape? I have my mind set on some of this in aqua for a ballet wrap sweater from Rowan's fall mag.

What Lisa Needs...

2007-02-20T22:50:00.000-05:00

Type your name and needs in the google search bar. First 10 items that come up...

1. Twitter / Lisa: NEEDS a nap. But alas she has a TO DO list that is longer than the nap could ever be. 02:58 PM November 29, 2006 from web ...

2. In Reply to: Lisa needs braces posted by Dental Plan on April 18, 2002 at 05:09:29:. : : what a rollercoaster! congrats with everything!

3. You need a flat, fishes need the sea Lisa needs a tree. Lisa looked all around ... Lisa needs a tree. So Lisa moved to the town With all her family too ...

4. dental plan, lisa needs braces. some guy: "and that's when i realized that my glasses were on my *head* the whole time!" dudes: " .... " ...

5. This 'Mona Lisa' needs a bigger grin and lots more warmth from an overly conscientious Julia Roberts.

6. LISA needs to more clearly communicate to clients how they can benefit from being members of LISA. Up until now, many of its benefits have been ...

7. Amazon.com: "What Lisa Needs in Her Kitchen" A list of products including, Cuisinart DLC-2007N Prep 7 7-Cup Food Processor, Calphalon Commercial Hard-Anodized 2-1/2-Quart Shallow Saucepan with Lid, ...

8. Ethics Report 20 Oct 83 how Lisa needs to handler lower conditions.

9. MySpace Profile - lisa needs more fun, 46 years old, Female, , RHODE ISLAND, US, i like the way you say yes.

10. Lisa needs work... If you haven't heard Top model writers are having a fit about not having no union on the show, but my thing is i didn't know Lisa was a ...

...Silly? You bet!

Now some knitting stuff... my first stitch markers. Aren't these chicken beads a scream? They are for a swap and my partner has a thing for chickens, found these on ebay. I did find extra special lampwork chickens on Etsy, check out these expensive, but incredible beads.

And a new liter of kittens popped out of the Bernina. Two of the kittys are on Etsy.

There is some knitting going on, but no pics. Calorimetry and matching fingerless gloves in Malabrigo are done and in daily rotation. The turtleneck shrug/scarf from Scarf Style.

Open for Business

2007-02-04T18:55:00.000-05:00

I have finally gotten off my tail and opened my Etsy Shop.

Many thanks to the lovely Maris who stood out in the cold today and modelled my handbags for me. Aren't her new bangs adorable!?!

2007-01-23T21:05:00.000-05:00

Yup, there has been a proliferation of cuteness going on in my house. More kitties keep coming out of my sewing machine. I have actually run out of stuffing. Those who have witnessed my trunk full o'stuffing should be amazed.

I am really in love with this gal. She is my first sale!!! A work friend asked me to make a kitty for her granddaughter. The granddaughter is a two-year old, so I had to rethink the button eyes. The embroidered daisy was an inspired idea if I do say so myself.

This kitty is on her way to Tove in Finland. Tove sent me a wonderful yoyo doll in my first Recycled Stuffy swap. While browsing the site I saw that she had not received anything from her partner. I was really upset by this, Tove even sent a mousie for the cats. I wanted to make sure she got some love in return, so off goes this kitty. I know Tove will give her a loving home.

There has been another kitty sighting on Krissy's blog. And check out all the gorgeous red accessories she has for her office from See Jane Work. I stopped by and bought this snappy journal in Lime.

And speaking of cute...did you see the news? A wallabee is on the loose in Berks county?

Fetching, indeed

2007-01-16T23:12:00.000-05:00

Many thanks to Wendy for her enabling words that allowed me to say ppppthhht to 2007 resolutions not to buy more yarn. They came just in time for me to uncover these gems at Rosies. The Anne has such a lovely sheen and the colors are pretty subtle, no pops of hot pink here. The big debate is whether the skein will become socks for my stepfather or moi! The other skein is Autumn House Farms, Alpacita in the Hattie's Zinneas colorway.

The Alpacita was immediately cast on for a pair of "Fetching" fingerless mitts. I confess to being a bit obsessed with this pattern...this is my fourth pair- two for me, one for my mom and a pair for Muffy. I keep tweaking the pattern, the cuff on these is lengthened (to compensate for all the 3/4 length sleeves in my closet), an additional repeat is added at the knuckles and I did a regular bind off. Go on, knit a pair or five!

I have also been hitting the swaps again. This little kitty is for another Recycled Stuffy swap on Swap-Bot. She is headed off to Cielle on the west coast. I hope they have a happy life together...bye sweet kitty!

January 6th?!?

2007-01-06T18:45:00.000-05:00

Could this really be January 6th? In Philadelphia? Are you sure it's not June 6th? Today it soared into the 70s and Rittenhouse Square was packed with people and their dogs. I sat with the cutest duo today, Fred and his husky, Jack. I am smitten. It was the perfect chance to hang out in the park and get my knit on and work on my third pair of socks... Jaywalkers in some scrumptious yarn from Black Bunny Fibers. This is a great sock pattern and I can see why so many of my friends have knit these socks.

Cruisin through the city today I ran into many friends...the fabulous Maris and her friend Olivia, Mike and his partner, Sharon C and Josh, and made some new acquaintances in the crowd at the Mummers Parade.
I lived in this city for many years and held the Mummers in great disdain...grown men strutting down the street in dresses, feathers, and make-up? Now as an adult I now appreciate the Mummers for the fun and wonderful tradition that is so uniquely Philadelphian. Yeah, the crowd can be drunk and rowdy. But I really admire the dedication of those that strut up Broad Street and the hoards of helpers who push props and scenery behind them. And I really admire all the talented sewers who stitch the costumes, sewing all those sequins and feathers.

The one sad part of the day is that my bestfriend, Suzanne's father is quickly fading away. He was diagnosed not long ago with ALS and the disease is progressing much more rapidly than was expected. I am experiencing a mix of emotions...incredible sadness for Suzanne and her family on the loss of a wonderful father and relief that his suffering will not be long and his end peaceful and dignified, surrounded by people who love him dearly. If you are a person of faith, please say a prayer for this wonderful family.

Yowza!

2006-12-16T14:54:00.000-05:00

This amazing Christmas Swap package came for me in today's mail from the awesome Krista in Atlanta, GA. Artemis, as is the norm, was the first to dive in and investigate. There was a mouse stuffed with catnip in the package, so everything smelled good to her. She started rolling in the presents until distracted by her ultimate draw, curling ribbon.

The package was incredibly generous. Everything was beautifully wrapped with ribbons and adorable tags. She really put together a package that was so thoughtful and showed that she read my blog and got who I am.

Inside was a bundle of cool fat quarters, a mushy cushy sparkly ball of fiber bits and pieces, beautiful bags of beads ( I see some stitch markers in my future), a silver frame ornament for a picture of Tosca for the Christmas tree, lots of cool flower appliques and stickers, an assortment of decorative papers, Dale Chihuly notecards, a stash of fun postcards...

a gorgeous mother of pearl pendant and the cutest "Clara Bow"ish button.

And there were a couple of Linder chocolate truffles that I immediately scarfed down, YUM. Thank you, Krista...the smile is ear to ear!

Recycling

2006-12-11T19:20:00.000-05:00

Squirreled away in hidden piles are clothes that I just cannot bear to part with...sweaters savaged by hungry little bastards, pants worn through in the butt, shirts with a big ink stain. They are too ruined for Goodwill, but for some reason I cannot just pop them in the trash. The dream of doing something cool with them has always lurked.

Swap-Bot provided me with the perfect opportunity to wade into my stashed rags and start whacking away. A recycled stuffy swap was hosted on the site.

I went to Plush-O-Rama by Linda Kopp for inspiration and modeled my first ever stuffy after Carly Schwerdt's Moopy Bunny. If you haven't seen this book yet, it is lots of fun.

I dug out one of my former favorite sweaters that had moth holes in places that could not be decently covered by brooches or embroidery. Into the washer and dryer it went for felting. It produced some yummy felt! I also yanked out of my summer clothes a skirt that I loved on the hanger, but looked like shite on me. Snip snip and no more temptation to wear it and look dumpy. It made a pretty dress for the Bun-Bun with a built-in ruffle at the bottom. Her eyes are a bit crazy, but she is a sweetie. Bun-Bun is now happy and living in Seattle...spreading sunshine around.

This little sweetie was sent to me by Tove, all the way from Finland. Tove also included a mouse which has been claimed by Tosca.

I had so much fun with Bun-Bun that I decided to make another for a Christmas swap partner in Australia. Kitka was made from some of the leftover felt, an old pair of jeans, upholstery samples and a vintage green heart button that has tried to be part of so many other projects and failed. It is a long trip to Australia, so I packed her some chocolate and kitty treats to munch on the flight.

I forsee more of these stuffies in my future and hopefully a reduced pile of Goodwill rejects.

Red Scarf Project 2007

2006-12-05T21:16:00.000-05:00

Have you started your red scarf yet? What? Don't know about red scarves? The Orphan Foundation of America is a nonprofit that provides scholarship and support for teenage orphans who have aged out of the foster care system. They are asking for knitters and crocheters to participate in their Red Scarf Project 2007. The red scarves will be in Valentines Day care packages sent to the teens. Help spread a little love to these kids and let them know there are people out there that care. If you really want to get involved they have a virtual mentoring program, please check it out.

All You Need is Love

2006-12-02T18:10:00.000-05:00

...and may be some good drugs! This is a late Thanksgiving posting, but I had to comment on my first trip to Las Vegas.

My holiday was split in two, part one in Vegas with my father and Uncle David and part two in Carson City with them and my uncle's crazy (and not in a good way) girlfriend. Vegas was more fun than I imagined and not nearly as tacky.

We started off on a high note with the Cirque du Soleil's show "Love" at the Mirage. I am a huge Cirque fan and have seen a bunch of their shows in Philadelphia. This was different- Beatles music, costumes that weren't as wild as their norm, and more dancing than usual. It was wonderful and I boohooed through at least the first 20 minutes because I was sooooo overcome with emotion and memory. I wasn't the only one who was swept away, there were tears all around me.

We sat in the first row, not the best place to see the whole show, but we were inches from the performers and they made regular eye contact with us! The funniest for me was during Blackbird when a very cute cheeky baby blackbird crashed back to the stage in front of me and pulled himself right over the edge of the stage. He looked me in the eye and said "Mama?" I replied, "Baby?" before he was whisked away on his bungee. It reminded me of my favorite childhood book, Are You My Mother?

The Octopus' Garden was the most beautiful portion of the show. The aerial artists costumed as jellyfish were breathtaking. If you are ever in Vegas, go see this show...hell, go to Vegas just to see it! That is an order!

Other amazing sights in Sin City where the Venetian, Paris, Mandalay Bay, oh and the Bellagio. The gardens and pool are so gorgeous, I would love to hang out there for days. The glass flower ceiling in the lobby by Dale Chihuly is beyond cool. I want one of these for the next time I have bronchitis and am sucking down the codeine. Talk about a psychadelic experience!

Then we headed off to Carson City...and the turf war began. My uncle's girlfriend only envisions his family as being her, her daughter, and my uncle. She doesn't want one that includes my father and myself. We are a really small family, only the three of us, we are not asking her to share him with the masses. Being around her is incredibly stressful. I cannot imagine how my uncle deals with this 24/7. He has told me that he is going to ask her to move out before Christmas. But then my uncle has talked about this before, and nothing has happened. The sad part really is that the family...my uncle, my dad and I...all really love the crazy's daughter. We would adopt her into the family in a heartbeat. She is a great kid- smart, fun, polite, and she loathes Bush...what more can I say? Can we push her mother over a cliff somewhere? Arrrrrgh!

But now I am home with the kitties and detoxing from too much rich food and stress. Oh, and hoping that my uncle's christmas card is from him only!

Again with the Swapping...

2006-10-20T21:27:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things from my time employed at Penn was the Robert Indiana "LOVE" statue right on the Locust Walk. I was so shocked to find one there, at first I thought it had been moved from Love Park. How could I have missed that in the news? But no, the City of Brotherly Love has two of these statues. The image was one that struck me back when I was a kid in Pittsburgh and it was on the stamps I licked for all my mom's Christmas cards.

I signed up for a fabric postcard swap on my new favorite site, Swap-Bot. My swap partner is in Germany, so I thought I would use one of Philly's iconic images as my inspiration for my postcard. (Sorry, Mr. Indiana, but you really should have copyrighted the image.) And also love, or rather the lack-there-of, in my life has been much on my mind lately. Pretty damn cute isn't it for someone not so hopeful about the subject. I hope that it arrives in one piece.

Did I mention, that the Ken-Doll (former boyfriend) showed up drunk on my doorstep yet again? A classic, this time he was there to apologize for being a dick and showing up on my doorstep drunk a year ago (strangely almost to the day). Oye! What is it with me and seriously damaged men? Please any one who would like to introduce me to a nice sane non-alcoholic man, please do so...pretty please. I even promise that I won't whine if he leaves the seat up.

This is the postcard I received yesterday from my swap partner. The underlying material is really cute with its "Mischievous Monsters." She has machine appliqued flowers on top, some of them with beading. Unfortunately the beading had some damage, I think it got caught in a machine as it was a bit dirty there too. I love that she gave the tiny blue monster in the upper right corner a bouquet of flowers.

In the last few weeks I have also participated in a few CD swaps. Those swaps were ones with multiple swap partners. In both I had one partner who was a dud. It was quite disappointing. In the second swap one of the people I sent a CD to sent me back a copy of his mix that he sent out to his partners. I love generous cool people, and his mix kicks ass!

2006-09-23T16:21:00.000-05:00

Well this is what came out of the washing machine. Everything is nice and dry and my apartment no longer smells like a barn of wet sheep. I am completely in love with the entrelac bags, the colors are just mind blowing. The temptation not to send off the pink/orange one to the fair is huge. I am really pleased with my improvised striped bag. The stripes were set using the Random Stripe Generator . If you haven't played with this nifty program yet, what are you waiting for? And while not being a huge fan of novelty yarns the red cellphone bag with the long fringy eyelash yarn is really growing on me. It has been dubbed the muppet bag.

Felting this batch of little bags has confirmed a suspicion of mine. Knitting and felting swatches is a waste of time. These little guys felted at a far faster rate then the larger bags I have done. Oh, and much smaller, I might add. Some of these came out barely big enough for my flip phone, much less my monster iPod. I am pretty pleased with them, but they could have been a bit bigger...sigh.

This entrelac bag was knit with merino and an interesting novelty yarn. A complete gamble, because the pattern was designed to have the body in wool and have the base, handles and top band in alpaca. The alpaca felts down much more than the wool and gives the bag a slight bubble shape. I didn't quite get the bubble shape, but the bag is still very cool looking. Two of my favorite little purses are here, the stripe one and the brown one. The picture does not do the brown one justice. Labels are all sewn in and the bags are ready to head off for Virginia. Lets hope I make enough money to pay for my bus fare down there.

Mama is a swap-ho

2006-09-19T18:28:00.000-05:00

Today started out happy, as I boxed up my aqua and red swap package for Jennifer. It was quite the scavenger hunt around the office looking for bubble wrap, etc. All packed up, in the mail and me, extraordinarily happy that I hadn't done my usual procrastination thing.

Sadly, my day went to crap from there. The second sales meeting that I had planned for this fall was cancelled too. Even though it is through no fault of mine, my Calvinist guilt overcomes me and I had an awful time psyching myself up to deal with the canceling at the hotel. Maybe because our folks had put off signing contracts and hey, the meeting was supposed to be the first week in October. And then there was the merge letter from hell. I have done a million of these, and yet today I ran into issues I had never seen before...boss' signatures that are suddenly in red? Whaaaa?

Enough whining!!!! Cause when I escaped and got home I was plunged back into that happy swap glow. This lovely plump envelope was waiting for me...all the way from Israel. How cool is that? Artemis of course got the right of first sniff and gave the package a complete once over.

Inside was a trove of goodies: cool barrettes (one handmade), candles, Israeli candies, stickers, a bag of itty bitty ladybugs and a big ladybug stamp, spools of ribbon, felt squares, beads, a wee fuzzywuzzy notebook. I think this is the most fun I have ever had with an envelope! The chocolate strawberry candybar will be tonight's first victim...yum. Thank you so much to Ilil for making my first Swap-bot experience such a success!!! I hope that she gets a fab package from her partner.

Oh, and Marissa...you got a lot of postin' to do

Good Times

2006-09-18T20:38:00.000-05:00

I have finally jumped into the swap craze. A link to Swap-Bot was on someone's blog as I was cruising the web. Next thing I knew I had gone from a swap virgin to a swap slut...hehehe. See... I should have had sex again before my 42nd birthday, none of this would have happened. Now I am committed to a handful of swaps in the next few weeks. Yow.

My first swap has an aqua and red theme... anything in those two colors. I have been running around acquiring some uber cute objects for my swap partner. While I was putting together my Santas for the Waterford Fair I noticed a bunch of aqua and red scraps in my bag. So I gathered them together and whipped up this little bag for my swap partner. I hope she likes my first swap package!

Two of the other swaps I have signed up for are music swaps. One is a mix CD of cover tunes and the second is a CD of random shuffle music. The cover tune CD has been really fun to put together.

On the topic of music, last night a gang went to World Cafe Live to see the amazingly cool band, Nouvelle Vague (pronounced vog.) They do rockin' covers of 80's new wave to a Bossa Nova-ish beat. They brought the house down with their cover of Bauhaus' Bela Legosi's Dead. Check them out, they're infectious.

Prezzies and Progress

2006-09-13T21:06:00.000-05:00

This post is dedicated to Marissa who reminded me at knitting tonight that I was being a very bad blogger. Hey, it was a busy summer and I never seemed to have a good clean surface to photograph on. How could that ever happen?

Any way I am starting off today acknowledging two fab presents from my knitting buddies. Thank you so much Marissa and Sherry, you ROCK!

Marissa brought me back this adorable bag from her vacation in the Phillipines. It makes the best do-dad bag, it already is filled with scissors, a row counter, darning needle, blah blah blah, oh yea, it also fits a set of DPNs.

Which brings me to the fabulous gadget Sherry made for me. She had fashioned these clever point protectors for DPNs. Your needles are kept neatly together and better yet your stiches don't scootch off the needles!

As you can see, there has been some progress on the toe-up socks. They are taking a break though while I knit like a fiend on other things.

In October I am going to be selling some of my handiwork at the Waterford Fair in Virginia. Like a total boob, I miss read the inventory request they sent me. Now I am trying desperately to catch up. There has been a lot of stash reduction, which is a great thing particularly the wee amounts that I cannot bear to throw away. These are some of the smaller cellphone/iPod purses that I have been cranking out. Hopefully they will be popped into the wash this weekend and have the crap shrunk out of them. I am going to have a dining room table full of soggy stinky wool. Yipee.

These happy little fat guys will be Christmas ornaments, also for the fair. Why, oh why, do I procrastinate like this?

Studio Friday - Who?!

2006-08-24T19:54:00.000-05:00

"I am curious to see/ hear/ read who everyone takes their inspiration from - an artist of traditional media, multimedia, craft world, living or dead. Who would we like to have the chance to meet and speak with, or to thank for inspiring us? " ~ Jo

For a gal who did so miserably in Geometry, it dominates my creative endeavors. Who knew?

The Amish, the ladies of Gees Bend, Denyse Schmidt and Kaffe Fassett are my primary inspirations when working on one of my quilts. Each brings something different to the party...unmuddied jewel tones and near perfection...joyous primitive utility...uncluttered imperfection...riotously unabashed loud prints.

Years ago I was very attracted to Gustav Klimt's paintings because of their mixture of realism and geometry.

More and more, I now find my daily inspiration in the blogs that I read. The people I would like to meet, have tea with, giggle with and quilt are Jane, Jan, Alicia and Blair.

Montreal Part Deux

2006-07-29T22:33:00.000-05:00

These awesome Adirondack chairs were part of the street fair at the comedy festival. I thought, "This is an awesome photo-op!" Ann and Missy were less than enthusiastic. On the second pass I finally cajoled them into a photo with big blue chair. I found out at dinner tonight that I was quite the pain in the ass about it...moi? But hey girls, what did I tell you? Great photo, even if you wouldn't climb up and have a seat.

Good Girls Go to Heaven, Bad Girls Go to Montreal

2006-07-26T19:40:00.000-05:00

...or so the t-shirts say.

Bonjourhello! It was time for the girls weekend. Ann, Missy and I jetted off to Montreal for a few days. We headed off for Canada to escaped the heat and humidty of Philadelphia, but of course we took it with us. Still it was nothing that couldn't be cured with shady decks and pitchers of sangria.

Montreal was a blast. We hit the International Fireworks Festival; gold and white weeping willow shells are my favorite. We went to see Dimitri Martin at the Juste Per Rire Festival and after wandered the street fair packed with performance artists, mini comedy venues and people playing games...pure fun.
We did the obligatory drinks at the Swelligan...ooops Nelligan, with the shi-shi people.

Best of all in Montreal were the men, oh my! Yes, they were short. But, heavens they were something to look at. I think the three of us agree that the award goes to Steve at Eggspectations where pancakes were served with a wink and a cheeky smile. We were three puddles in a booth. And of course a special mention to Sam at the desk of the Cantalie, who took flirtation to an all new level.

Yup, I think that Montreal is worth a second visit!

Studio Friday - Sidekick(s)

2006-07-20T22:02:00.000-05:00

This week at Studio Friday, we were asked about the sidekick(s) that keep us company in our creative spaces. Well, these two have been the topic of previous postings for Studio Friday. But as an adoring adopted mom, I had to share more pictures of my babies, Artemis and Tosca.

My girls look a lot alike, but have very distinctive personalities. Artemis is the older queen bee of the household. She is way too smart for a cat and has a distinct talent for vengeance. My friends and I like to rile her up sometimes so we can get a good laugh over her growling hissy fits, she has quite a temper. She loves it when I quilt; nesting in all the cut pieces, using my lap frame as a kitty hammock, and having lots of doo-dads and spools of thread to casually push off the edge of the sewing table. Most fun, but slightly anxiety producing, is watching her daintily picking glass head pins off of the magnetic pincushion and dropping them back on, plink. She does not have much appreciation for knitting, although she has made off with several skeins of Reynolds Odyssey. Maybe she realized I was losing interest in the project and was saving me from the guilt of a UFO. But as I said she's a vengeful creature and she has gone to great lengths to get to projects and chomp off the yarn, just to show me that she is not too old or fat to get anywhere.

Tosca, aka Toscabelle, is the baby of the family. She is very petite and still has the impossibly soft coat of a kitten. She is the opposite of Artemis in temperament, relentlessly sweet, dumber then a stone, and truly able to leap tall buildings at a single bound (I suspect that she has been aiding Artemis in the stealing of skeins of yarn hidden in high places.) Tosca is a knitter! She loves to curl up on my lap while I knit and knead away at my knitting. I have seen her so enthralled with kneading a skein of slippery cushy yarn that she started to drool as she purred away. She never bites the yarn, just lays on it and kills the tension...sigh. Tosca's second passion is napping on the laptop...so what if my keyboard is jammed? It's so nice and warm.

I don't know if they do much for my creativity, and do tend to leave way to much of a hairy imprint on my work; but there is nothing better in a moment of stress than scooping up a warm sleeping kitty and burying your face in their fur.

Sock it to me...

2006-07-10T21:06:00.000-05:00

...I don't think that this is what Goldie Hawn had in mind. Have to say that other than portability I have never seen the appeal of knitting my own socks. It is so much easier to pop into the Gap and pick up three pairs for $9. But, I am weak and susceptible to peer pressure. If all your friends were knitting socks, would you? Duh...

So, when Lisa from Rosie's announced that she would be teaching a "Toe-Up" class, I caved. And I started dreaming about socks.

On Sunday we gathered to knit socks from the toe-up. My knitting buds Sherry and Marissa were there, along with some other very nice ladies with sharp pointy DPNs. Only one other gal was a sock virgin.

Marissa and I picked the same colorway of Sockotta. Look Marissa...finally a blue stripe!!!!! Our skeins started in different places and it looked like we were knitting on different yarns. Her's was all blue at the beginning, no green; mine was all green, but I picked the yarn because of the blue.

This is the second start for this sock. My first attempt was too big and the stitches too loose. Now my stitches are fab, but the sock is still a wee bit big. Oh well.

My first toe is pretty, let's see how my first heel turns out.

Studio Friday- Family

2006-06-22T20:49:00.000-05:00

"Family history, things that have been passed down from one family member to the next, family values, all influence me as an artist, whether I'm consciously aware of it or not. I wonder how others are influenced or inspired by their families---either past or present. What family treasures might be found in others' studios?"

This pastel portrait of my paternal grandmother hangs on the wall across from my work table. My father and uncle called my grandmother "the Duchess" behind her back. She thought that "the Duchess" was a close friend of her sons- she never suspected. When my grandparents passed away her portrait came to reside with me.

I love it. She looks so glamorous in it. And my friend Harold has identified from whence my "look" has come from. The "look," unfortunately not being her smashing sense of style, but the "I cannot believe you just said/did something soooo stupid look." I have never seen the look myself, but apparently Harold has... heh heh heh...many times.

I also inherited the Duchess's Canton china collection. The basic blue and white china is so classic, but I have been told quite toxic. Does anyone know if orchids can get lead poisoning? Can I blame its refusal to bloom on that, and not my dismal gardening skills?

My life was blessed with three grandmothers, with two of them I had very loving affectionate relationships. But the Duchess didn't do warm and fuzzy well. I always knew that she loved and was proud of me, but personal displays happened rarely. It was made clear to me how much, when in her final days I went to sit with her in the hospital. My grandfather had brought to the hospital some of her favorite things, a needlepoint pillow I had made for her as a child and a picture of me.

Does the Duchess influence my art? Not sure about that, but I often think she is looking down from the wall with a look of approval at my latest creation, if not my gardening skills.

Tag-o-rama

2006-06-04T22:21:00.000-05:00

I have entered my first swap. The wonderful Dacia Ray is running a gift tag swap and was wonderful enough to let me play along, even though she had closed the roles. Dacia's tags are here, Joanne of StarDustShoes's are here and Alicia P. of Posy fame are here. I am waiting my return package with great anticipation. All the tags I have seen on other blogs are all so creative, each special with different techniques.

I thought long and hard about what I was going to do for this challenge. Our family has very limited experience with gift tags. Even at Christmas, the tags are basic at best and ball point pen right on the wrapping paper is the family favorite. Santa's reindeers also give us Christmas presents. How those eight tiny reindeer manage to hold those ball point pens in their tiny little hooves, I'll never know.

So, tag-impaired, I tried to think of something inventive to do for the swap. I thought about knitting little tag cozies. That would be cool- so off I went to the stationary store to purchase blank tags. It was Sunday, they were all closed. None of the drug stores had tags either, so I grabbed poster board as an option. Then knitting with wire and beads hopped in my mind, the bead store was closed too. ( I have gotten there since and picked up supplies...maybe some silver knit cuffs are in my future?)

Back home and all I had was a sheet of poster board. I thought maybe I could do some of my mini foundation pieced flags on the tags. While searching for my paper patterns I came upon a bag of unused log cabin squares from a quilt I had made while mourning the death of a dear friend and sorority sister. The yellow centers represented hope cutting through our sorrow. There were coincidently eleven squares, the number of tags I needed. I stitched these on to the poster board, gave them fabric ties and embellished with buttons from my collection.

Handling these squares again brought a flood of memories and a bit of sadness. I am happy that they were incorporated into such a fun project, hope triumphs! I hope those who receive one of my tags in their package feel the love that pieced these squares.

Space?!?!

2006-06-01T21:49:00.000-05:00

Space? Space? You would think that living alone, all that space is mine. No one else's wardrobe to contend with...Only my shoes... Only my books...Only my hobbies. And yet my home feels amazingly crowded.

They invade every nook and crany of my home. Everywhere I want to be they are- on the couch, in the bed, laying on the laptop, on the work table, oy, even drinking out of the toilet (foul disgusting habit, bad gross Toscabelle!!) How about in the suitcase (ok, zipped in the suitcase while I went to Houston. Bad mommy... stupid stupid Toscabelle. At least Artemis was happy being a single cat again for the day.)

I love my two fur balls, but what I wouldn't do for a smidge of space to myself.

Studio Friday- Contrast

2006-05-19T20:15:00.000-05:00

"...something about contrast, or juxtaposition. it could mean something concrete, like a contrast in colors, textures, or lines. . .or something more symbolic." Laura

This week's topic was a no brainer for me. This past fall I had the opportunity to be on HGTV's make-over show Mission Organization. The subject of the make-over was my living/sewing room.

Yup, I needed help. After a lot of hard work and creative space planning, this is what I happily ended up with.

Treats

2006-05-16T20:34:00.000-05:00

It was a nice treat. It was a really nice treat. My parents were in town for the weekend and I spent Mothers Day with my mummy for the first time in ages. Traditionally, Christmas is really the only holiday we are all together and do really well. I cannot recall the last time I got to give my mom a big hug and kiss on Mothers Day and let her know in person how much I love her.

The other treat was brunch at the Four Seasons. Brunch was scrumptious, the service impeccable, a most civilized event. Even the occasional shreiking child could not ruin it.

Two other unprecedent events occurred...in a family noted for extending the giving of birthday presents to the months following the date, two birthday presents were actually given early! One was the lovely Clapotis my mom has artfully draped over her shoulders. It was knit using the Silk Noir in Plum Loco from Great Adirondak Yarns. The drape on the scarf/shawl is wonderful, an ideal weight for cool summer evenings. The color of the Clapotis is much much better in person, the photo really doesn't do it justice.

Present number two was an early birthday present for me. My mom brought back from Arizona a lovely bundle of fat quarters for my stash. The colors are those of the Sedona Desert, all are handpainted or batiks.