Craft Monkey

jotted

logan graduated from story hour. as you can see, he was thoroughly unimpressed by the whole graduating farce. he was later ecstatic over the cupcakes.

I don't think I ever mentioned it, but I've been participating in Project Spectrum. March/April's color was green, and so was the majority of the knitting. Above is the classwork mini-sweater for one of my classes at Stitches, which should get a post of its own.

There was also some work put into an old UFO, that has since been frogged and destashed; Norah Gaughan's snapping turtle skirt from Knitting Nature in the called-for Berroco Suede. I really didn't like working with the yarn (a synthetic ribbon), but stil like the pattern...

When the new Knitty came out last month I was immediately sucked into Aeolian. I stash dove and ended up with some of Danas's Seasilk in Banana Tree. I worked on it furiously through most of Apri, until it was abruptly shoved into timeout the week before Stitches. Indefinitely.

I just wanted to get some quick notes down before the end of the first quarter. The next quarter will be

EAST (May/June)
Color: Yellow
Material: Wood
Season: Spring
Element: Air

I don't think yellow will take over my knitting bag to the same degree green did, but i did grab a skein of yelow merino for the practice swatches i'm working on now...

bunnies on the brain

All weekend, in one form or another.  It started with researching meat rabbits, and different tactics of raising them (colony style? individual cages? hutch? tractors?).  Later, while playing with Logan and his playmobil stuff, he found this in the little catalog, and which led to me thinking about easter bunnies, and ostara, and baskets, and spring... 

 They're so frequently anthropomorphized, its easy to forget they're edible. Seriously though, that treehouse is really cute.

I'm really surprised by how much I like the playmobil toys; I didn't expect to like molded plastic toys so much, but the design is really appealing to me for some reason.

Especially this tree stump fairy. I think they'd be cute with  the swap goodies! ok, I think I've wasted enought time looking at toys now.

glass mushrooms!

from my mother-in-law's iPhone, somewhere in SF

sling

We're back.  The transition back was rough (flight delays! unrelenting drizzle! escaped animals! board meeting! giant kids birthday party!), but today the sun is out and we have friends from Mississippi visiting and it feels better.

I made the bag while we were in California, start to finish. It's this pattern made with prints from the Drawing Room collection, and its been cloudy so I had to use the flash for the photo. It was an extremely well-written pattern and I learned a ton of techniques working on it, including pleats and gussets. The interfacing lends a lot of structure to the bag.  I disregarded the patterns instructed layout for cutting the pieces so that I could play with the flow from pleats to stripes, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I'm looking for more of that stripey print in other colorways to play with some bag ideas of my own-- I think the bag could be smaller, the handle longer, etc. But that should wait til after taxes...

I finished the seaming and weaving in of the ends on Logan's sweater on the flight back, but don't have a picture yet. He wore nonstop for a few days, but its too warm today.  Its definitely a perfect fit now/ won't fit next winter, so I'm glad he gets to wear it at all.  Does anyone have any ideas on stretching out the neckband? It's too tight for his HUGE head. I had to rip and reknit 3 times on larger needles and went up like 4 sizes for the bind-off and we're still having an issue... I'm thinking about soaking it and stretching it while wet around a jug or something to dry.

swap party!

Sonya had a party to sort and pack the little boxes of faux fungi to go back out into the world. There were many cool interpretations of a simple theme.

Elaine brought that amazing Nikki McClure bag to give away, and a little paper or fabric treat for everybody else.

both knitting and photoraphing
and lots of laughing.

  the loot, clockwise from the top left corner by: Kristin, Adrienne, blogless Logan, Adrienne, and Rane, sitting on the gnome bag Elaine gave me.  I'm using the bag to hold a knitting project for the plane of course.

Ok, I need  to go pack now for the flight back to TN.

stitches west recap!

 Left to Right: A Verb for Keeping Warm alpaca/silk blend in "February Sky", Dream in Color Smooshy in"Ruby River" picked up at Purlescence for a Ravelry friend, some ArtYarns SuperMerino from the Knitmore Girls goody bags, a tiny skein of Habu ramie, some Malabrigo Silky Merino, and BMFA Rare Gems that looks a little like  Jabberwocky gone wrong.

I took the Stitch'n'Ride train down to Santa Clara from Oakland. The train thing was kind of underwhelming, but I can see how it would have been cool/useful/more fun if I had been coming from Richmond like I originally thought, or with a friend. Oakland was the last stop and the train was pretty full, so I ended up doing math to try to fix the Noro knee sock I've been working on during the brief ride down.

 I was off by one row when I measured the gauge in that thing, and a hundred rows into the calf shaping that means the sock is an entire inch shorter than its supposed to be, and sagging. My knitting for the day was really just me tinking back a few rows. I'm not done tinking, but that project has been put aside until I'm a little less mad about it... again.

Wandered the market and accumulated pretties for Mary Catherine and myself. That was defintiely an aspect to Sticthes I'd like to repeat again: she sent me a note on Ravelry about her tastes in yarn and things she'd like to tryout that she can't source locally, a bit of money on PayPal, and I got to shop some more without really breaking budget. Turns out I'm not necessarilly attached to keeping the stuff I buy.

Met up with Sonya, the fearless leader of the Mushroom Swap, who then whisked me away to the Verb booth and introduced me to Kristine, Adrienne, and Michael. They were all super nice, and I recognized his voice from the YKnit podcast. I got kind of overwhelmed by all the pretties in the booth, and wandered away again towards the Purlescence booth in the back. Their space was rt next to the snack bar seating area, so it was a pretty great chill space, with several spinning wheels set up, overflowing to the big round tables of ppl chatting. I got to spend a little bit of time talking to Jasmin and Gigi from the Knitmore Girls podcast before their Meet'n'Greet really kicked off, and Jasmin gave me a goody bag with yarn in it that was both good and free, so of course  I love her now.  When I went by that booth again towards the end of the day I spent a little bit of time talking to  Tika, who just began podcasting as well.  She had a press pass and a ca mera, and thus has the only good pictures from the show floor that I've seen here. I stopped trying to take pictures the 2nd time I got yelled at.

I hung out at Verb talking to Kristine and Sonya for a long time while cradling various yarns and trying to pick one to take home. I'm really interested in all the natural and plant dyes that Krisitne uses, and loved listening to her talk about them.  I walked away with something totally unexpected for me, but I love it despite having no idea what I'm going to make with it.

Stitches was basically awesome, and now I'm super-excited about Stitches South and taking classes... less than 9 wks!

green week 4

I have been cranking out the water bottle covers this week. Hopefully I'll get the etsy shop updated this weekend! Still working on a Stitches recap, still in California trying to get things done before we head home Tuesday...

green week 3

green week 2

green week 1

took the camera with out with us today as we went around the city in the drizzle. first tuesdays are free, so we took logan to the deyoung. he was into it for awhile, as long as we stuck to the weirder art like the cathedral made of bullets, or the ginormous dog fireplace. not so much the YSL exhibit (rooms full of dresses). he was super into the multimedia warhol exhibit, which had these pyschedelic moving light components he was chasing around

i sort of forgot what this time of year looked like out here during the rainy season, the contrast of walls of grey skies with this electric shade of green from the hydrated plants. so pretty.

check out more of the green i saw today in the flickr pool