Craft Monkey

- the monkey is a lazy blogger

oricoh

A few weeks back Betz posted about a felt camera case she found on etsy.

 

I kept randomly checking Hine's etsy shop for several days, and snatched this up when it appeared.

These pics are hers; although my camera is supercute nestled in its case, I'm still borrowing other people's computers, and haven't been unable to unload any of the images off it. Which is a shame since its crammed with pics from the beach camping trip last week.

I ended up ripping back the front of the sunrise circle... I couldn't figure out a better way to fix it; the extra rows were at the top of the armhole shaping, so it wasn't like I could just fold up the extra length at the cuffs... I haven't had much enthusiasm for reknitting it since I frogged and rewound 3 skeins worth the other night. 

stat spike

+had a ginormous spike in page views on june 25-- does anyone know why? did this page get linked somewhere?

- was offline when it happened, so its a total mystery...

+my camera takes awesome pics

-yet another computer died, so i can't do anything with said pics

+being offline means i've got a backlog of things to tell ya' about. which will be in no particular order, and scattered across the next couple of posts

+finished the tank top months ago, i think its pretty cute. one day, i'll be able to show it to you...

+am almost all the way through the 2nd front/sleeve piece of the sunrise circle jacket, thanks to hours of plane and car knitting time. i really like the curved striping action

- this sleeve is an inch-and-a-half longer than the first one, so i screwed up somewhere. because the sleeve flows into the front, and i'd have to rip out the entire front to find the mistake. double.ick.boo.

-it's now been shoved into a ziplock and under the bed to be ignored for awhile

+i did not pitch a temper tantrum about any of that

+started a felted bag on the trip to VA, and knit on it straight through bonnaroo. it was the perfect festival project, since it could get completely filthy and gross and it won't matter : i'm just going to shove it into the washing machine once its done

+met up with knitadelphia from ravelry during bonnaroo

+knit in public alot, including on WorldWide Knit-In-Public Day

+found another vendor-knitter the last day

- ran out of yarn before bonnaroo was over

+lots of good music

-not as many sales as hoped for

+got more yarn on the way to a party, and proceeded to learn that i can knit drunk (at least, stockinette in the round)

+apparently i can also knit in my sleep. finished the bag on the ride home from the party, curled up with my eyes closed hands still moving

+got up the next day to discover that i had bound off too

-need to fix breakfast, so i'll finish this later. no, really.

road trip!

+driving Logan to Virginia to visit BJ, Aaron, and Asher for a couple of days
+ Logan is staying with them while we go work at Bonnaroo again
- I can't figure out the new typepad! I have pics of the hairties I made to sell at Bonnaroo, and the housesite, and random blooming things... but I can't insert any of them. I can't figure out how to link either.
-it's abazillion degrees in here
+there might be an informal Ravelry meetup at Bonnaroo
-my chickens keep escaping, and jumping around my kitchen
+it's time to go!

random pretty

butterflies clustered around a small puddle in a vernal creekbed

+got a new camera!
- learning how to use it
-also learning how to use the typepad redesign... i'm a slow learner
+last weeks freaky cold snap/ neverending cloudfest is over
-i have less than 3 weeks to get ready for Bonnaroo. eep.
+the sun is out, so its time to take some pictures
+i got right down in the ground a few inches away from those butterflies, and they didn't budge:)

color week

+some yellow for tuesday, a day late
-I can't fully participate in color week because my camera has been broken for awhile (hence less pics)
+ but I found this one on a memory card of some drawer pulls from Anthropologie's clearance table several weeks back.
+The background  fabric is the placemat I won from mr. monkeysuit ages ago. I love it to bits.
+an excavator was delivered this morning, and b is out there clearing a space for a foundation
-the delivery guy was out there for an hour this morning. There's an uninhabited camper parked on the edge of the property, and I guess he thought that was it and didn't go any further up the road (where he would have found our yome). A few minutes after we woke up we realized that we could here a great big diesel engine running in the distance, and b took off when it registered. Ooops.
+ I'm this close to being done with the tank top
- there are eleventy-billion ends to weave in first. The yarn I used came in ridiculously small put-ups (66 yds each), and I'm on the eleventh ball already.
+it fits!

taxes ate my brain

-Sitting at a coffee shop working on our taxes... 10 minute internet break as a reward.

+chickens are coming to live with us at the end of the week!

+friends are finally moving to the valley then too

- feel like I have no time to work on craft stuff b/c taxes are looming over my head

+put the tank top on waste yarn to try it on, and it's not too small!

- it may be too big, I'm not sure yet. I rewrote the shaping myself

+ left sleeve and front of Sunrise Circle Jacket are completely done

- it's finally spring, and I have no desire to work on the SCJ anymore

+while on the yarn crawl this past weekend, I found 2 more skeins of the Noro I'm using for it, so am no longer in fear of running out

+ Cascade 220 is on sale at WEBS, and Babette is there next  knitalong project (crochetalong?)

- I'm having trouble justifying buying a whole mess of it for Babette since I don't actually know how to crochet yet...

- Bonnaroo is ~60 days away, and I really should put all the knitting aside to work on bags and jewelry and barrettes to sell, but I don't want to

- which brings us back to the whole taxes eating my life thing.

peripatetic!

Long time, no post.... Life got busy with lots of traveling; meanwhile various computers bit the dust, so we're back to no internet at home. I just spent the entire day at the Yarn Harlot's booksigning/knit-in/ speech in Atlanta. So awesome... I drove down yesterday with four of the women from the stitch'n'bitch I'm going to in Chattanooga. We had our own mini-yarn crawl on the way down, hit Ikea last night, then stayed up late knitting and drinking wine in the hotel. All of today was spent at Knitch and at the event itself. April had two of the winning raffle tix at the knit-in, and I think she got some of the coolest prizes they had: 5 different skeins of the Noro sock yarn (sooooooo pretty) and a 2 night getaway at the Knitch cabin in north Georgia for her and 4 friends! Dana gave YH a preeetty skein of her hand-dyed sock yarn, and Knitch might start carrying it too!.

93

It's been a busy week full of mail love, and I've got pics to show you but can't find the camera cord. 28 baby chickens arrived in the mail on Wednesday, followed by an awesome apron from my swap partner Rebecca on Thursday. By the way, Rebecca, if you read this, please out yourself, cuz I have no idea what your blog url is! I'm totally in love with the apron... Yesterday I got a package from Etsy w/ some japanese matryoshka fabric I've been stalking, to go with the bundle of awesomeness Joanna sent me earlier this month. And today we got a buch of movies from the elves.

92

2 weeks without a computer led to loads of knitting time. I cast on for the Sunrise Circle Jacket after looking at a bazillion versions on Ravelry. I'm using Noro Silk Garden. I've seen loads of this design around the internet in solid or tweedy colors, but when I saw the handful of Noro versions on Ravelry it become one of those I-need-to-make-it-NOW-please projects.  The curved radiating stripes were what did it.

Between the color changes in the yarn and the increasing semicircle, this has been flying by. Thats all of a sleeve and part of a front, knit in one piece. The novelty is starting to wear off now that the rows are getting so long (150+ stitches?). I doubt I'll finish this while it's still cold enough to wear it...