Crafty Diversions

I've moved in!

2008-09-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

Hi, I've officially moved my blog to WordPress and just posted my first blog post on WP.

All the content of this blog at Blogger has been imported to my new blog's home.

Please update your RSS feeds so that you can continue to receive my posts --- I have some exciting news coming up in the next few weeks and months.

My new blog home is http://craftydiversions.wordpress.com/
My website is www.craftydiversions.com

Blog Changes

2008-08-23T00:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

I am in the process of moving and changing the blog and tweaking other aspects of my site. I will be switching over to WordPress soon, so if you are reading this via a feed subscription, please change it to http://craftydiversions.wordpress.com/

Thanks!!

Sozenji Craft Fair

2008-08-16T00:49:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to participate in small craft fair held as a fundraiser at a Japanese Buddhist temple. According to the organizer, this was the first time they opened it up to vendors not part of the temple. I'm used to, and like small craft fairs because I rarely have that much inventory for a large one. Plus, the preparations for large craft fairs are tremendous. I was prepared for small, but not for teeny-tiny. There were only 3.5 vendors. The 0.5 vendor was a guy who was waaaay underpricing pottery but he wasn't even there...his friend sold it for him. This was also the smallest Buddhist temple I have ever been to or seen.

All the people there -- vendors and attendees alike -- were all very nice, but the people in attendance were not crafty-artsy type shoppers and weren't really buying. Basically, the majority of them probably don't go to craft and art fairs at all. They were mostly there to enjoy the Taiko performances. Futhermore, I don't think some of them were prepared to pay fair value for quality handmade items (partly probably not really realizing the hours of work that goes into one project too, because the reality is that in the global economy, most people are used to overseas cheap factory labor.) Anyway, at least I made some money, albeit dismal.

The highlight of the fair was the drumming and Chia, who came out to hang out with me. She had never sat behind a booth at a fair. I invited her to put some of her knitting on my table. Chia managed to sell a mohair shawl that she knit to a slightly eccentric Chinese woman.

For this fair (or rather, small gathering), I painted and upcycled another thrift-find angora sweater into a couple of new Hippie Chicks. I really cute and cool Taiko drummer named Susie bought 2 of the fatter chicks. In fact, the ones she bought were the ones I submitted to Sweater Surgery.

Sweater Surgery Book Contributions

2008-08-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know I'm lame, but I'm finally getting around to posting my contributions to the Sweater Surgery book. (Disclaimer: I purposefully blurred out the instructional text because of copyright issues. Besides, that way, you can go buy the book. :-) Or, if you're interested, I'd be willing to teach any one of these projects at your shop or party. I also teach knitting and dyeing.)

The instructions are just for the Twiggy Headband (page 63)...it's the rainbow colored one. The other two headbands are featured in the book's Gallery section on page 131 and do not include instructions.

Nine-to-Five was also flashed in a quick 1-second clip on DIY Network's "Uncommon Threads." Originally, my friends and I were also supposed to demo this project, but the producers realized that they didn't have enough time, so we just worked on Shelly.

Everyone loves the Hippie Chicks! I came up with the idea when I was experimenting with dyeing a recycled angora sweater. I love the way the publisher styled Opal and Sunshine. Recently, I sold both of them to a very cute and enthusiastic Taiko drummer named Susie.

Violet Flower was such a labor-intensive project. Well all of the featured projects are, but this one takes the cake with the size ratio. This is made from a recycled, upcycled sweater sleeve that I felted. Then I dip-dyed it (not as easy as it seems because you have to hold it to get saturation and try to control the colors to make sure that it seemed more fluid), hand-stitched the purse and the lining and did the embroidery edges. Each petal is also individually laid out and sewn. The center of the flower also is the closure.

Shelly has an extra cameo on page 14, and has her own Gallery photo on page 127. I had posted about Shelly before and my experiences on Uncommon Threads in September 2006 (Geez, has it been that long?)

These two hats (page 130) are featured in the Gallery section as well and do not have any accompanying instructions. Gwlana was originally intended to be an artsy-ish woven bowl, but then Zona commented that it could be cute as a kid's hat -- and I agree! Cosmopolitan is made from cut pieces of a felted wool sweater. I used the texture of the sweater fabric to create interest in the hat.

YIPPEE!

2008-07-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

I've been sitting on my good news for a little while now, just in case I was dreaming....I received an email from Amy Singer of Knitty that my recent submission was selected to be in the Fall issue.
Woohoooooooo!

I have several things coming out in the next few months:

a pattern in Knitty's upcoming fall issue (Sept. 2008)
a pattern in Luxury One Skein Wonders (Oct. 2008)
a pattern in Interweave Knits (Winter 2008)

Last month, I finally received my copy of Sweater Surgery for my many contributions. I haven't had time to scan and post about my contributions yet, since as you can see, I've been busy with designing, Handicraft Café, and visiting in-laws.

I'm also currently working on two projects for a book that is due out next year, but I don't want to get my hopes up because I had some concerns about the contract. I already contacted the editor to discuss some of my questions, and she was very willing to chat. I was supposed to receive a draft of some proposed changes, but I haven't received it yet. I need to call and follow up tomorrow.

If this book thing doesn't go through, then that will make book #2 that has led to some disappointment.
This project is already on hiatus. I haven't received any information regarding its status for a long time now, but to my understanding, it is still undergoing some negotiation with the publishing company and I am still under contract for 2 designs, so I can sell them elsewhere.

No doubt I am happy to have been selected in the first place. They were my first attempts with a book contribution, and to have been selected for each of the 3 books that I submitted patterns to is a great joy and validation of my work and ideas. I really try not to get my hopes up or get too excited, because I am also a realist and know that sometimes things just are beyond one's control. However, when a project doesn't go through for one reason or another, it will always a slight bubble burst and somewhat of a personal disappointment. I must say though, that everyone that I've contacted and worked with in my submissions have been kind, professional and talented. Really. The only situation where it wasn't very professional occurred 2 years ago with a now debunked knitting e-zine.

* * *

A couple of weeks ago, my knitting group gathered with other local groups for a knitting in public event at Whole Foods Market in Costa Mesa. We knitted in great company and smothered ourselves in gluttony with all the yummy foods at the various delis inside the store. My favorite was the gelato and dessert bar.

Aubrey showing of her triple brownie lollipop with her robo-arm.

Huntington Gardens

2008-07-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

I took my in-laws to experience the wonder of Huntington Gardens and the Rose Garden Tea room last Monday. As usual, the gardens did not disappoint.

It was a leisurely walk around the gardens, though not so much for me because I was trying to make sure that the in-laws were okay and not getting too hot, tired or overheated. I also was trying to keep an eye on my mother-in-law, who really wanted to take a cutting off some of the plants to take back home to plant (she lives in Southeast Asia).

She said, "I should have brought a larger purse." Ai-yah! I told her that we'd get into a lot of trouble if she did. She did look around for fallen clippings or broken succulents that she could pick up and take, but to her disappointment, there were none.

I took them for afternoon tea for lunch. I knew that the food wasn't really something they're used to, but nevertheless it was an experience that would be memorable for them. They really liked all the fresh fruits, especially strawberries, which are hard to come by and expensive in their country. They weren't too keen on some of the sandwiches or cheese and my MIL remarked that the cheese didn't really taste good or special. Good cheese isn't really available where they live, nor is it a common food -- I think Velveeta is probably gourmet over there. The smoked salmon sandwich with caviar and the cheeses were among my favorites, so I set aside any possible embarrassment of my own gluttony and ate plenty to make up for what the in-laws didn't eat! ;)

My mother-in-law had to take several breaks along the way due to her health, so I took some of those opportunities to take some silly self-portraits with my knitting. In trying to take some of the photos, I unraveled my stitches several times and had to start over with my cast-on at least twice. Oh well. The orange yarn is some cheap superwash wool that I bought a while back. I'm thinking that this will be a sun hat project, but I think the reality is that this project will probably be untouched for the next few months. :-P

Handicraft Café is Live Online!

2008-07-10T00:43:00.001-07:00

After lots of hard work and some delays, Aubrey and I are proud to announce the Beta launch of Handicraft Café!!

The launch means that we are open for online shopping! We're still constantly uploading and entering inventory and photos. And of course, some tweaking to the site here and there. There are still some missing photos and some photo distortion in the thumbnail view, but everything else seems to be in working order.

One of the most exciting features of the site for me is the multiple search functions and options. You can search through the customizable drop-down menu (pink), the keyword search (green) or through our detailed category lists (purple):

Another feature of the shop that we're very excited about is that we're going developing symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationships with artists of all kinds, with the majority of artists located locally to us. Zona Sherman, aka TwirlGirlFibers on Ravelry, has bravely volunteered to be our ~~guinea pig~~ first fiber artist tester. So far, we have uploaded and processed 6 of her yummy yarn creations. Future developments for the consignment section include adding more artists and bios of participating artists.

Acknowledgments: Many thanks to our friends, especially the wonderful local knit community and our special friends at All Things String for their constant support and encouragement, to Ben for helping Aubrey with all the Photoshopping, to Anna for our logo and to Mike and Derek for all the hours of web design programming and debugging! And of course, extra thanks to our significant others for supporting us in doing our own thing (and continuing to write those mortgage checks).

Strange, but True

2008-07-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

My in-laws are visiting again from overseas. They come at least once a year to visit their 2 youngest sons. My brother-in-law recently moved from NorCal to SoCal, making my in-laws very happy (less traveling for them). They are very nice people and are generally easy-going, but I do get some anxiety when they visit. Even though I'm a modern empowered and self-assured woman, there are certain cultural practices and customs that have been drilled into me as a kid, which I feel compelled to observe to a certain extent.

There are 2 main sources of my slight anxiety: One, I feel the need to clean my house from top to bottom, chauffer them whereever they want me to take them (except Vegas, which is hubby's job), and cook for them when they stay with us. I generally try to be a good hostess with any visitors, but with in-laws there is generally another level in that I try to be a good daughter-in-law. Two, I feel the need to at least eat some of the food that my MIL cooks or bring over.Number 2 doesn't sound terrible, unless you account for the fact that she brings meat and seafood on about a 24-hour transit (not to mention that it's illegal). It's true.

I certainly cannot blame her for wanting to make goodies for her children who are 1000s of miles away from her, and they certainly miss mom's cooking. Having a more sensitive and spoiled American stomach than my hubby's family, I can not stomach the thought of bacteria growth, literally and figuratively (no pun intended). She cooks things that are her specialty, like these shrimp cake roll, some sort of shrimp and chicken thing in a special sauce/coating, and her ultra signature dish: shark fin's soup. Out of respect, I may eat one or two pieces of the shrimp cake roll, because it's fried before serving. I don't really eat a lot of fried things in the first place, but I figure the high heat kills off bacteria. I don't touch the shark fin soup at all. Sometimes she brings the fins and some ingredients and then cooks it while she's at our house. Sometimes she brings it pre-cooked at her home country. A few years ago, hubby and I finally had to tell her that I don't eat shark fin soup. If you've never tasted it, it's crunchy cartilage in seafood broth. I don't eat it because I don't like it, and more importantly, it's cruel the way the fins are harvested. I used to be a Peta member and a vegetarian for over 10 years, so that part is hard to get over for me.

Luckily, I haven't gotten sick from the smuggled meat products, but then again, I barely eat any. However, I can't say that about my husband who got sick eating some suspicious chicken curry, which I had warned him about. My MIL didn't bring any curry this year, and in fact, seemed to have brought less food.

Anyhow, as part of my organizational and cleaning efforts, I decided to build me a new compost bin. For several years now, I have been using kitty litter buckets. I drill holes into the buckets on all sides, including the bottoms and lids, and stacked them near the kitchen door leading to the side yard for easy scraps and waste dumping.

The problem with my recycled buckets is that they are small and fill up quickly. And as of late, some raccoons have been tipping them over, thus making the dumped partially composted scraps a pain in the ass to clean up. So I decided to clear out an area that would not run off into the pool, and build myself a compost bin.

It was very easy to make. I bought some chicken wire, and some stakes (the ones that come in a package, or you can buy them at about $0.70 per piece) so that I didn't have to cut the wood myself. I then roughly measured the size I needed an made 2 L-shaped sides using a staple gun. I then linked the 2 Ls together using some cable holders I found in my toolbox and some extra wire that I bent to form latches (3 in each corner). That way, if I ever needed to move it, or to access my compost, I can easily disassemble it all. I marked the crude latches with some blue tape so that I can see it easily.

Car Knitting and Impish Gnomes

2008-06-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a secret project that has an early July deadline for publication in a knitting magazine. Since I currently have about 6 secret projects going, I'm going to give this one a pseudonym of "Leaf Pelfriffs."(Sorry I can't reveal more info at this time). Anyway, the hubby and I were on our way to my BIL's house to welcome my in-laws who had just flown in from overseas.

In my infinite and ambitious wisdom, I decided to work on my project during the dark 40 minute drive (9:30 p.m.). "Leaf Pelfriffs" is designed with cables and some stitch patterns in it, so I was really proud that I didn't drop any stitches in the car (or so I thought), so I continued working. This morning, and about 12 inches later, I discovered that I was missing a stitch. I apparently dropped it while knitting in the car in the dark. Ai-yah! It was far down enough and in a weird spot that it was not an easy fix with some unraveling and a crochet hook. I had to riiiiiiiiiiipppit. ::sigh::

"Leaf Pelfriffs" calls for buttons. I have some fantastic chunky buttons, which includes this chunky bone button at left. But alas, I cannot find my awesome buttons because apparently Impish Gnomes have decided to have a wild party in my craft room.

Luckily, my small jar of various buttons, including some vintage ones were not affected. However, I don't think any of them are exactly right for the this project. (see photos at the top)

I would try to look for my nice bone and tree nut buttons, but as I mentioned, the darn Impish Gnomes partied in my craft room. They must be tiny short gnomes because they don't seem to mess up anything stored above 4'.

I don't have any photos of the floor, because frankly, I'm embarrassed at all the fabric and yarn scraps that got strewn around like confetti by the partying Impish Gnomes.

Ugh, I really hate my white walls. I couldn't decide on a color when we moved into the house, so I thought I'd at least paint it white to cover the original puke-colored paint. I also thought that I could easily re-paint when I do decide on a color. Um, does anyone know how to exterminate Impish Gnomes and hire me some House Fairies?

These two photos above show my bags of knitting UFOs. If you go to the set in my flickr, you can see the notes to identify the baggies.

I swear that once in a while my craft room is organized. You can see the hints of organization behind the labels on my containers. I guess I'll have to find a way to banish those Gnomes once and for all.

The BEST WWKIP Day Ever

2008-06-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

Clockwise: 1. Marie, Melyssa and Abraham with Christine grilling corn with her hubby in the back; 2. Seven our new alpaca friend; 3. (l-r) Holly's pooch, Holly, Michelle and Denise L. from the Anaheim Hills group photographing me photographing her; (l-r): Gloria, Victoria, Renata and Rachel chatting in front of the prize table.

This past Saturday was World Wide Knit in Public Day! Many groups in and around Southern California held WWKIP events. Of course this year, my knitting group held our annual picnic to coincide with WWKIP. We invited other knit and crochet clubs from Orange County, Long Beach, Los Angeles and anyone else to join us in the festivities. I think we had the very best WWKIP event. In fact, I think we may have had the best event all around! Okay, so I may be a little biased, but I don't know if the other groups say the following about their WWKIP events:

We had jugglers and spear throwers who brought juggling and a unicycle. I didn't get photos of the jugglers, but Christine from Long Beach SnB did here!

We had vivacious knitters that tried to knit while hula-hooping!

Above: Zona trying very hard not to drop her hoop and her stitches!

Above: Rachel also trying to keep up her hoop and stitches.

We had animals at our picnic, including an alpaca! People brought their dogs, some kids brought their surprisingly cute rats and new ATS members Amanda and Margo brought their alpaca Seven, named so for his 7-7-07 birth date. I was really resisting stealing him away in my car, and since he's small, I was thinking that I may be able to pass him off as a rare dog breed or something. ;) Zona snapped a photo of the kids playing with the rat right above my head - eek!.

Clockwise: 1. Some kids playing with a pet rat. Rat is on the long-haired girl's shoulder; 2, 3. Seven the alpaca showing off his cute face and new haircut for the camera; 4. Seven smiling for the camera.

We had musicians singing for us with their guitars. Zona also has a picture of Jeff and his guitar.

Jonathan and the kilt-wearing Jeff singing some tunes for us.

We had several games and contests including a speed knitting war and a mystery fiber game! I didn't snap photos of the finished war fish, but Denise L. did here and here. Zona has a photo of the prize table.

Clockwise 1. Robert and 2. Chia working on their Knitting War projects, trying to kill each other off; 3. & 4. Courtney, Shawn, curious boy and Zona check out the Mystery Fibers.

We had lots of spinners too, including a few very handy and crafty kids who got the hang of spinning in no time!

Clockwise: 1. Kristi spinning some luscious green wool ; 2. Jamie gets the cutest apprentice to help him spin some undyed wool from a small mill; 3. Me spinning some silk; 4. Aliza wanted to learn to spin, so I let her try out my wheel as her brothers watched.

We had customized name tags! I made about 30-35 name tags for the folks that I knew from ATS and the Anaheim Hills Knit Night. I'm just a little bummed that I forgot to take photos of two of my favorite tags that I made. I made a "King Snark" for Robert, who is undoubtedly the bitchiest and snarkiest member of our group. (Robert wore his tag with pride, btw.) I also made one for Zona's very understanding hubby (Jeff the guitar-playing kilt dude). I gave Jeff a club of his own: S.P.O.O.F. (Supportive Partners Of Out-of-control Fiberholics)

All in all, we all had all the ingredients for a stupendous WWKIP event. We had good food, great people, fiber, prizes, laughs, good weather and an alpaca. Really, what can one ask for? I have more pics uploaded in my Flickr (lots more of Seven).

All this fun would not be possible without our group's fearless leader, Renata who did most of the arrangements, from the park permit to the pop-ups, tables, banner, jugglers and spear throwers!

Clockwise: 1. Karen and Debbie ; 2. Me, Rachel and Zona; 3. Abraham working on his needlepoint while Jamie knits.

I Don't Have A Penis!

2008-06-11T15:15:00.001-07:00

To the obviously-phallically-obsessed that keep sending me cleverly disguised spams and ads that sneak past my spam filters:

I don't have a penis, have never had one, nor do I want want one (especially since it seems so prone to dysfunction). So, your ads about penile enlargements and viagra or psuedo-viagra miracles will likely be better received by people who have or want a penis. Your ads are wasted on me and my non-existent penis. Seriously!

Oh, and as for your breast enlargement spams and ads... well, erm, the running joke with my friends is that I stole my girls from other Asian women, hence left others flat. I definitely don't need or want any more boobage. In fact, I have more than enough to spare and may topple over at the slightest zephyr if I get even a smidgen more.

Ah, and don't misinterpret this and start sending me ads about weight loss either - my voluptuousness is not due to my weight. My weight falls into the average weight range for my height, and I am comfortable with my body because I also have a healthy body image. Thus, I have no need or desire to lose any excess weight, and you certainly cannot convince me otherwise.

Now, if you have a miracle cure about how to shrink my girls naturally, then I may not be as mad at you for sending me crap.

Sincerely,
Boobalicious Penisless Healthy Gal

Happy Happy Joy Joy

2008-06-09T17:51:00.000-07:00

Guess who I called me??? Read on as I keep you in suspense a little longer with my verboseness. :)

Though I have nothing I have been able to show or share publicly, I have been keeping myself very busy over the past 3-4 months with knitting. The reason is because all the things keeping me busy are knitting designs that I submitted to various publications. All that good stuff has to stay a secret until either (a) I get rejected and decide to self-publish or (b) I get accepted and the pattern gets published.

Since I started knitting not so long ago, I toyed with about 3 patterns that I randomly submitted to e-zines. Recently, I decided to take things to the next level and submit for real. I began reading public forums and researching how to submit designs.

My first attempt at a book submission occurred in December 2007 and it proved well, since 2 of my designs were selected to be in the follow-up to the successful Sensual Knits book. Currently, there is some delay with the publisher, but all the contributing designers are hopeful that all goes well. With any luck, I will resume work for this project soon.

More recently in the past few months, I submitted designs for 2 other books, 2 traditional print magazines, 1 e-zine, and a yarn company. I don't mean to be vague about to whom and what I submitted, but typically, one cannot and should not be divulging any specific or juicy details about pending projects unless thus granted by the companies or publishers.

The yarn company wanted 4 of my designs. I've completed and was paid for one, and the yarn company is holding off the others for a later date as they work on additional things for their company.

Two weeks ago, I received news about my submission for a book about summery knitting -- 2 of my 3 design submissions were selected for the book. I have since received the yummy yarns and am nearly halfway done on the first of the projects, due in June. The other project is due in July. The yarns and colorways for these projects are truly divine! I really wish I could post photos of the yarns.

This past Monday, I received a voice mail message and an email from the editor of a superb knitting magazine saying that she wants to publish one of my designs. Woohoo! I was so excited from jumping up and down that I think my cats might have thought we were having an earthquake. It was my first "real" submission to this magazine. I just received the yarns for it (so lucious!), but I still haven't talked to the editor about the details of the project, which makes me just slightly nervous especially since the deadline is rather tight. -- I have less than 30 days to finish it. I know I will definitely meet it, but I think I'm just being a little more neurotic on this one because I want to make sure that I plan my time well in order to anticipate any unforeseen snafoos when working on multiple knitting design projects with overlapping deadlines.

Wait, I have more good news!

Just 3 days ago, I received a packet from the publisher of the 2nd book containing news about 2 of 3 designs I submitted. The packet contained 1 rejection letter for the lace beanie shown in the photos, and 1 acceptance letter for the other project. The best part of this bit of news is that I already did the work so other than signing the contract, I don't have any deadlines to meet! I am now eagerly awaiting news on the 3rd submission for this book.

The "reject" hat is called Geode. In all honesty, I was not happy with it, but I didn't have time to rework it for the book submission, so I am not at all surprised that it was rejected. As for the fate of this design, I will definitely be self-publishing it though I have not decided whether to offer it as a free pattern or to rework it a bit and sell it.

Googling Myself

2008-06-02T22:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I tried to Google myself. Then today, I read an email from my friend Jean, who apparently found out a bunch of stuff about my crafty stuff when when googled me.

I hadn't really googled my name before. I have googled "crafty diversions", "homemade yarn swift" and some of my other patterns before just to see what people were writing and blogging about them.

So, curiosity got the best of me and I googled myself. There's still a lot about what I did in my former job, where I did a lot of public speaking. There are some blog mentions and apparently a previous post by another yarn shop.

Then I happily discovered that the editor of Craftzine had posted about my Buccaneer's Booty pattern in a post way back in October 2007. I had NO idea!

Silk and Clay

2008-05-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

After months of not spinning, I restarted again, albeit very sporatically, after an invite to Jerry and Debbie's home for some spinning. I had some crappy stuff that I was spinning just to get rid of it, but I really got bored of it, so Zona gave me some of her hand-dyed silk hankies to spin!

It's my first time spinning silk and I'm really enjoying it! The concept of pulling the layers and strands of fibers from the hanky is a little strange since I've only pulled from commercial rovings and rolags that I combed. The downside is that the cap of my spool popped off, so I have to glue it back before I can resume.

My artist sister came to visit yesterday. We bond over many things and are close in age, however sadly, she does not knit, spin or is crafty in the way I am crafty. ;)
She's a wonderful artist though and has designed and laid out many logos and publishing things for me though.

When she arrived, I submitted her to a facial, complete with a mud mask. She's a virgin when it comes to facials. Her mask matches her dress so well, doesn't it?

Metamorphosis

2008-05-15T04:05:00.000-07:00

My long promised makeover for my blog and site is finally getting started. First of all, I'd like to apologize to my readers and cyber friends who linked or bookmarked my blog and patterns on their sites. Those links will no longer work since I moved reorganized the directories. Sorry!

I'm definitely remedial when it comes to setting up websites, but I'm hoping to make everything more organized and prettier. (There's no way I could do any of this without the hubby's help and without the aid of FrontPage, which the hubs was smart to install for me. Otherwise, I'd be calling for his assistance every 5 minutes or so.)

I'm trying to "match" up the pattern layout design and logo that my sister designed for me. It's a good thing she's my sister, because otherwise, I'd be paying more than a pretty penny for her services (which IMO are totally worth it). She's a professional artist/medical illustrator.

Mother's Day

2008-05-07T11:44:00.000-07:00

I don't think anyone who has lost a parent can go through any holiday without some reflection and some feelings of sadness. For me, this holiday is Mother's Day. I can't seem to escape all the reminders, especially since it has been so commercialized. Everyday, every commercial and almost everywhere in the 4 weeks, I see advertisements on Mother's Day as if it were blinking in neon in my eye.

Last year, I posted an archived photo of my mother. I've decided to do the same this year. Maybe that'll be my tribute. Here's a photo of her on her wedding day back in the 70's:
My dad is putting earrings on her as they are getting ready for their ceremony. The lady with the horned-rimmed glasses in the back is my paternal grandmother.

May doesn't just remind me of Mother's Day. For many years, May 10th was my mom's fake birthday. I have no idea why she said it was her birthday. Her legal sun-calendar birthday is in October. For a while, she told my sister and I her lunar birthday occurred in early May, and that we should just celebrate both around the same time, but later she said it was May 10th. The funny thing is that the lunar calendar and the regular sun calendar do not vary by 5 months!

May is also my sister's birthday (we're 13 months apart), and the month of my wedding anniversary. Here's a photo of my mom and me on my wedding day.

The Mohair Ripper Strikes Again

2008-05-04T02:51:00.000-07:00

Remember my CATastrophe? Okay, nothing really horrible has happened, but Whitey Coyote, aka Mohair Ripper, aka Yarn Thief has been stealing yarn and then giving it to me as presents for a few months now. She struck again tonight, and with some pretty funny results.

First of all, some background info: the Thief has expensive taste in yarn (kind of like her mommy). She likes the good stuff, the ones with higher price tags. She's so discernible that I have baited her with cotton and cheaper wool yarns with little success.

Damned Thieving Cat! She looks so innocent and cute in the picture above, but if you look closely, she's sitting on 2 hats made of a blend of merino/silk/cashmere.

Anyway, her new "surprise mommy with yarh presents" thing started a few months ago, when she dug up a small ball of handspun that I purposefully buried under handcarders, bobbins and a rubber mat, away from her. She somehow dug out the yarn, and dragged it from the family room, all the way upstairs to my bedroom.

Granted, I have to admit that I sometimes I miss a ball or two when cleaning up, but the cat has gotten so clever as to open my purses/bags. (Like any proper knitter, I usually have at least 1 project and some random yarns and needles in all my bags, just in case.) If there are 2 balls of yarn in my purse or around the house, she will take the more expensive of the two. Luckily, I take extra care with my projects and keep them better protected than the balls in my purse, although once, she did "gift" me a test sock with all the dpns still attached.

As her thieving skills improve, I take more care to hide the good yarns. But now, I think in her desperation to bring me yarn-gifts and the seemingly rare occurrence of good yarn accidentally laying around now, she has resorted to snatching yarns she does not like, but she still knows yarn values.

Once, though there were smaller remnant yarns in my knitting bag, she somehow opened it and stole a whole unused skein of Lamb's Pride Bulky and dragged the whole thing upstairs. The skein is almost half her size! She left the entire thing intact, because I guess she wasn't that interested in playing with it. She's even resorted to picking up large balls of cotton yarn, which she has ignored for the past 3-4 years, and drags them all the way upstairs. And last week, she even attacked some Knit Picks Cadena, which she does not like, and has ignored for a very long time -- I left that yarn for her as something she could play with when she started stealing my yarns, but she wasn't interested and it sat on a coffee table in plain sight for at least 3 months!

Tonight, she struck again -- this time she stole 2 skeins of yarn I handpainted and put on top of a TV on a narrow counter in the kitchen because I was about to mail it out. I thought my yarn was safe, because it has been kitty-free and really out of the reach of paws, but apparently I was wrong. After finding my "present" in the bedroom, I was just going to put it away as I do with all my yarn presents. But then I got a closer look:
At first I just thought she lost her collar. Then upon closer inspection, it was clear that her collar got stuck to the loosened hank that she dragged from the kitchen up to the master bedroom. And in the midst of trying to get herself untangled in the yarn, the yarn wedged into the split ring that holds her tag. When the safety release finally snapped, she got away, but not without leaving a chunk of fluffy evidence from her neck, which also managed to get caught in the split ring.
Silly cat.

Designing

2008-05-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

I just finished writing a pattern for a very exciting accessory item. I really wish I could post the photo and talk about it, but I am planning on submitting it to Knitty or another knitting publication. I can't post a photo, but I suppose I can post a small swatch teaser and tell you that the yarn is a fantastic yarn, and one of my top faves: Savannah DK by The Fibre Company (50%Merno, 20% Orgainc Cotton, 15% Linen, 15% Soya Fiber)The photo is a small snipped of the completed item, unblocked.

For the past few days, I have been sketching and swatching for another book submission. It took me a lot longer than I had expected because I had to chart everything first, as if I was actually writing the pattern to 2 of the designs I submitted. The charting was very laborious and tedious. So in the end, I only submitted 3 total, although I had originally planned to submit double that. I figure that the more I submit, the likelihood that one of them would be selected would increase.

Since I'm still new to the whole design and submission process, I haven't really yet figured out how to do all of it smoothly and in a timely fashion. I start by a rough and horridly ugly drawing or illegible description of my ideas. I then narrow them down for the submission's theme and do a better color sketch of my idea. I then work one or two swatches as necessary for the design. After all that, I photograph or scan the swatches and the sketches, digitally clean up the scanned sketches and add typed details. Then print or convert everything into a PDF packet, and send everything off.

I don't really have anything more recent I can show on the blog because they are still pending, but below is an example of something that I did designed for a charity raffle for my previous employer. As you can see, I knit much better than I draw.

OTHER NEWS AND UPDATES

For those of you wondering about the progress of my projects for Sensual Evening Knits (follow up to Sensual Knits), I still have no updates on the status of the publication. I can't really reveal or say more than that because I'm still contracted to them and have to keep everything secret.

In other recent news, I petitioned to join and was accepted as an associate member of the Association of Knitwear Designers. I haven't really navigated the site and all that AKD has to offer, but I did request a mentor. My mentor is Kim of Dolce Hand Knits. Kim has been a great help and responded to my many questions about the design business while she was on vacation! The ironic thing is that I actually met Kim when I attended TNNA this January. We were both taking a techniques class with Melissa Leapman, crochet and knitwear designer extraordinaire . Aubrey and I later "stalked" Kim at one of the booths and talked to her about her designs and about our shop, Handicraft Cafe. I'm glad we didn't scare Kim off and that she agreed to mentor me. ;)

Patttern: Rio Dances on the Sand

2008-04-22T18:00:00.001-07:00

I crossed out one pattern on my long list of patterns to complete and publish. I just finished and posted Rio Dances on the Sand onto my Ravelry Store. I also sent a copy to all the people who worked on the project for JayJay's baby. (I hope I didn't miss anyone!)

I keep saying that I'm going to do a mini rehaul of Crafty Diversions to include pattern sales on this site, but I don't know when that will be. (Yikes! I'm a liar now!) In the meantime, Rio is available in my Ravelry store, and I'll probably also sell it on my Etsy Shop, when I get around to creating a new listing.I decided to provide images of the pages of the actual pattern so that people can see how neatly arranged everything is. Of course, to protect some of the proprietary details, the images are saved in a very small resolution, and if necessary, I covered some of the images.

I also discovered (doh!) that I could put password-protected protections on the pdf files, including creating a password for people to open the file, and limiting access to the file, such as limiting the copying of images within the file. I'm definitely learning as I go. While I did not require passwords for the Ravelry sales, I have since required passwords to files I sell/send via Etsy sales. Also, now all my pdfs, including the ones available for free downloads have been secured with limitations on editing, printing and access.

Right now, I am working on a bunch of other patterns -- some of which are essentially done, but I'm just waiting for good photos. I also have a hat I'm working on and hope to try again and submit to Knitty.

I Just Turned 29

2008-04-19T16:15:00.001-07:00

Yep, it was my birthday yesterday, and I turned 29 yet again.

I really am not a big birthday celebrator. I didn't celebrate or have a party when I turned 30, when I most wanted to, but then again, there were family issues and responsibilities that took priority and precedence. This year, my birthday was a little more celebratory than before, but still low-key. A surprise that I received this year was the number of Ravelers that private messaged me happy birthday wishes due to the little cake that pops up on people's avatars when it's their birthday.

Last night, my husband and I went to Roy's for dinner. Yum! The husband ordered the sushi while I ordered my favorite from the restaurant: butterfish. The very nice and exuberant waitress, upon finding out that it was my birthday, took a photo of us. She later remarked how lovely we looked in the photo and how I looked "like a model...and like a young Kristi Yamaguchi." I was a bit taken aback. I was certainly a nice compliment, since Kristi Yamaguchi is a beautiful and talent person, but the comparison was strange. Maybe she's one of those people that think all Asians look alike or that all black people look alike.

Now, if she had compared my appearances to Ming-Na, even though I don't think I look like her, the reference has been made by more than one person, including my own mother who said we kind of looked alike when I took her to see The Joy Luck Club and some of my husband's former coworkers. One of the stranger comparisons to the actress occurred on my honeymoon in Kauai 7 years ago. I was attending a lei making class in one of the hotels when a woman with young daughter asked me, "Are you an actress?" No. "Oh...you know, you look a lot like that actress from ER. Do you know who I am talking about? I forget what her real name is, but she's Dr. Chen. I really like her." Yes, I know who you are talking about. I think her name is Ming Na Wen. Thank you. "You're not her, are you?" No, no. Are you sure that you're not her?" Yes, I am sure. I'm not even an actress. (several seconds of silence) "Oh...you really look alike..."

Throughout the rest of the class, the woman kept looking at me. Then after the class, she and her daughter kind of followed me for a little bit as I walked from the the place where they were holding the class, through the hotel lobby and through the courtyard. They stopped once I got onto an elevator. I guess they wanted sure I wasn't the actress.

Anyway, the exuberant waitress at Roy's sent us a complimentary delicious and fabulous macadamia tart for dessert. It totally made up for the Kristi Yamaguchi look-alike comment. and Overall the service was great, however the food took a while and it made us quite late to meet my friends at the Napa Rose for drinks and dessert in the lounge. Zona and her husband ordered a Scharffenberger Chocolate Pate with a chocolate shooter. It was sooooo yummy. I also had two deliciously mixed lemon drop.

Needless to say, the dinner, desserts, drinks and good company made me and my stomach very very happy. I was relaxed and actually made it to bed by about 1:00 a.m. and I slept through until 9:30 a.m. Sleeping through 8 hours is remarkable for me. I usually don't sleep for more than 5-6 hours, and for the past week, I've been averaging 4 hours. I think this is a sign that I should go out and eat more yummy desserts and have at least 2 delicious cocktails.

Her Name Was Rio

2008-04-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

and she dances on the sand...

Rio Dances On The Sand is what I think I'm going to name the baby blanket I designed for JayJay and her bundle of joy. This project has been top secret for a while and since that it has been gifted as of yesterday, I can now post about it!

Since finding out that JayJay was expecting, my knitting buddies at All Things String and I decided that we should organize and knit a baby blanket for JayJay. So, I went to work on designing a blanket and came up with a knitted quilt in some ocean/sea colors to coordinate with JayJay's planned decor. It also ended up being quite appropriate and serendipitous since the baby's name is Rio! (We were all in the dark about the baby's name until after her birth.)

Aubrey, Amanda, Marie, Melyssa, Renata, Zona, Rae, Rachel and Jenn contributed to the project. We all knit various squares and triangles that were later pieced into squares. For the most part, everything went rather well, but there were a few wrinkles in the process.

The original idea and design layout was to have a substantial blanket using a total of 42 squares. The squares were either comprised of random right-angle stripes, or comprised of two 2-color triangles that were sewn together to form a square. We even had a seaming party where we arranged all the pieces, checked the numbers, pinned them together in the original layout and then sent folks home with some piecing "homework." Then the mystery started.

I discovered that we were missing 3 of the triangle squares, with no idea of how this happened. Everything seemed okay at the seaming party, and I'm pretty sure that everyone gave me their "homework." I even went to pick some up from Zona when she was not well. Furthermore, I stored all the yarn and blanket pieces in 1 large bag in my craft room, away from pets and untouched until I had everyone's pieces. In the end, I had to rearrange the design and make it a 36-square blanket, which still turned out great.
Aubrey helped me piece and seam the final blanket together, and to weave in what seemed like 100s of ends. After seeing how unattractive the back was, we decided that we should back the blanket. So, while I went shopping for some cotton fleece (which Zona recommended after a frantic phone call from me), I washed the blanket in my front loader on gentle cycle. After the washing, I was flabbergasted when 3 of the triangle squares split open in the center, where the triangles were sewn together to form a square. It appeared that whoever seamed those triangles together did not do a good job of weaving in the ends, or simply just forgot, hence the splitting upon washing. Luckily, that was an easy fix.

Pattern: Rio Dances on the Sand.
Yarn: 15-16 skeins of Cascade 220 Superwash, 100% wool
Needles:US 7 (4.5mm) needles, or needles to obtain gauge
Notes: I'm working on formatting the pattern onto a pdf document right now. The backing is cotton fleece, first tacked and tied with yarn and then attached by hand-sewing a blind running stitch.

Threesome

2008-04-03T12:08:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I finally sent off the pattern and yarn to my test knitters for "Threesome" for Handicraft Café. Several months earlier, Zona and her family were kind enough to volunteer to be my models for the original hats. I specifically designed the pattern so that a knitter can knit 3 hats with 3 balls of yarn and get 3 very different looks. The resulting hat ensemble is a coordinated set for a family or to be distributed among friends.
My wonderful testers, Amy and Veronica, were not only speedy, they also gave great constructive feedback and did a wonderful job on the hats.

Over the weekend, I brought the fabulous hats to at get-together at Aubrey's. A couple of friends loved the hats so much that they immediately put them on and struck some fierce poses. In particular, they loved the color combination that we had Veronica knit. The impromptu photo shoot yielded a slew of fantastic, silly and funny photos. But unfortunately, it was a little dark and the results were not superb, even with some photo editing.

Derrick and Julian even dressed an orange with the baby hat and mounted it on a bottle of Heineken. And after working hard to show off his debonnaire style and poses, Aubrey thanked him with a massage, which resulted in a rather pornlicious snapshot.

As fabulous as some of these photos turned out, I don't think we could use them in the final print pattern - the resolution is not good enough for print, and they may just be a little too risqué for more conservative folks who want to knit a tame family project. However, some the the photos may end up on the Handicraft Café site as we continue to work on the programming for the search functions in the e-shop and the rest of the website. I think Derrick just started a new trend for all our future photo shoots. We may just have to enlist his modeling skills for the hats Amy made and some other upcoming projects. :)

Glad To Be Back!

2008-03-28T18:14:00.000-07:00

I must apologize, for the blog disappearing act. The hubs had to upgrade some server stuff (stuff I don't understand), so I wasn't able to post anything for a while, nor were folks able to access the site. Thanks for all your patience and for blog readers/visitors who emailed me about your inability to access the patterns and for waiting.

The most exciting update that I have is that I FINALLY finished editing Twister and posted it for sale on Ravelry. I'm still working on adding more, but please do visit my Ravelry Pattern Store, where you can find Twister for sale, and some of my free patterns on a handy and pretty pdf download.

I also reformatted and added new instructions for the Yarn Swift on a pdf. The formatted pdf swift pattern is only $1.99 and contains an extra set of instructions for a lazy susan swift not available in the html version. Don't worry, the html version is still available on this blog for free, but I decided to charge the miniscule amount for the pdf version because of the time it took to reformat (not to mention all the hours spent writing it in the first place), and hopefully, it'll help pay for some of the website fees.

For non-Ravelers, I also posted Twister for sale on my Etsy shop. Hopefully, soon I will be able to figure out how to post the pattern for sale on the blog as well. I guess I have to learn really quickly how to do that.

Beta, Baby

2008-03-05T00:43:00.000-08:00

Woohoo! After much anticipation, sweat and hard work, the beta version of Aubrey & my side project is finally launched!

Check out the Handicraft Cafe Shop! There are still things that we're fixing, tweaking and editing, such as the search menus and some of the icons. We are also continuing to add products and photos, but it is definitely functional.

We are also still working hard on finding a storefront for our physical store, which will be a even bigger event and accomplishment. In the meantime, it really feels great to finally have something tangible to show for all the time, research and sweat we've put into making our dream a reality.

And the Winners Are...

2008-03-04T17:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks again for everyone's participation in the Twister Contest on this blog and on Ravelry.
The winners are Bethany of hookedupknits, So KnitPicky, and SJ of KnitWit.

I will send you the pattern very soon!! I sill have some minor edits and review to do.

Twister Contest

2008-02-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who commented in my blog post, on Ravelry and emailed me about your opinions and thoughts to my question about the Twister patterns. The contest is officially closed now. I will continue to consider all your input and weigh that with my goals for my patterns and the various delivery methods and options.

I'll select and announce a winner in the next week or two. I should have all the test knitters reviews in by then. Thanks again!!

Ariadne

2008-02-21T11:04:00.000-08:00

According to Greek mythology, Ariadne was the daughter of Pasiphaë and King Minos of Crete. Ariadne fell in love at first sight with Theseus, a man who volunteered to kill the Minotaur living at the center of Mino's Labyrinth. After he killed the Minotaur, Ariadne helped Theseus by giving him a ball of the red thread she was spinning, and a sword to enable him to mark his path and find his way of the labyrinth. In some versions of the myth, Theseus abandons her and she later marries Dionysus who makes are immortal and a goddess. My Ariadne is no goddess, but she comes close and is a beautiful as one. I really don't have that much time to spin right now, especially with all the things I'm doing in designing and for Handicraft Café, and with my tendonitis that has been flaring up. Oh, my poor Ashford has been so neglected. However, when I saw Ariadne, I could not resist!

I bought this wheel from a woman who has a small farm with a couple of horses and 3 alpaca. I had to drive pretty far to get the wheel, but it's totally worth it. I couldn't even find information or photos on this wheel in an internet search, and I don't read Dutch, so searching Dutch pages was certainly out of the question.

According to the previous owner of the wheel, this is made by a company in the Netherlands called Ariadne. She lugged this wheel all the way from the Netherlands 2 years ago, in hopes of learning to spin alpaca fiber sheared from her own animals. Because I had driven so far, she gave me a small discount from her price, threw in a set of vintage carders, a vintage nostepine, and a giant bag of natural white alpaca fiber. Because I have many other spinning friends, I also bought a giant bag of natural red alpaca fiber from her so that I can give some fibers to my friends. The only catch is that the bags if fiber are dusty and need to be washed and combed, for which I will need a industrial dusk mask if I don't want to get shipped to the hospital for an asthma attack.

Isn't she beautiful? According to someone on a spinner's group, Ariadne started production around 1975, so it's not exactly an old or vintage style wheel, though the owner had advertised it as "antique." (But many people just think all spinning wheels are antique.) One of the features that I love about my Ariadne is that the lazy kate sits on the wheel and can be turned out (as shown) or more towards the wheel for more compact storage. The tensioning system on this one is interesting, and it took me some time to figure it out. I don't know if you can see it from the photos, but there's a metal hook holding the flyer. Underneath the hook is a screw and a spring used to tighten the flyer onto the wheel by clamping down on the hook.

::grumble::grumble::

2008-02-14T00:23:00.001-08:00

Argh! I have spent the past day and a half unhappy. I put out free patterns for people to use because I want people to use them for their personal enjoyment. You'll also notice that there is a very clear copyright notice and statement at the bottom of each page. What part of "personal use ONLY" do people not understand? Crafters who sell their crafts even on a small scale should be aware of what a basic copyright means. Even people who don't sell, knows. Now, granted the depth of knowledge can vary.

Prompted by a request by someone asking me to grant him permission to sell swifts based on my yarn swift pattern for a very very small royalty for every one he sells, I decided to look on a certain website to see if other people were not so kind and did NOT even bother to request permission. Lo and behold, what did I find?

I found 2 sellers on this not-to-be-named website. One seller just listed this month and has not sold any swifts. This first person has altered the design a little (changed the look of the base), but it still eerily resembles my pattern and the options I discuss and provide in it. The second person, has sold about 20 swifts. I would say about 98% of it looks like the ones in my photos and the construction definitely is a spitting image of my design. The only thing that the second person didn't do is put in the CD that I used as a stabilizer in Version 1. You actually don't even need a CD, stabilizer or block spacer if you have nice tools that drill straight, but if you don't you'll need one. I think I may have mentioned this in a previous blog post or in the pattern itself.

I'm still on the fence right now about reporting the first seller. (edit 2/14/08, 1:59pm: I should note that the reason is that I was on the fence about it at the time of my blog post although it is similar, I do realize that it is possible that people can come up with similar ideas and designs. When I woke up this morning, I have decided not to do anything about the first seller, because I think the design is different enough that I don't think that this person used my plans.) However, I just shot off a notice to the second seller to remove all listings, and I reported it to the administrators of the website.

This has thrown me off a little because, though I know logically that there are always people who choose not to care about someones creative right, I chose not to believe it in my heart because I so love the knitting community and most of the people I have met through this community.

I do have some plans to sell swifts from my pattern at some point, but I don't have the tools or the time right now, especially since Aubrey and I are still working hard at Handicraft Cafe, which should be launched in the beta phase very very soon. We hope to be able to contract with someone to produce the swifts for us to sell. But this is not the reason for me getting upset about these people selling swifts. It's the fact that they are trying to sell and pass something off as their own design. Now, if they want to design their own easy-to-make, cost-effective and portable swift and then sell it, by all means they should -- just come up with their own plans and ideas! The other upsetting part of it is that I spent a lot of time writing and revising it so that people will benefit and be able to use it, and their violation of that is disheartening.

Oh- please be advised that no part of this post may be printed or distributed without my expressed written permission. This post is for your personal and non-commercial use only. :)

On a happier and related note, I just reformatted the swift pattern onto pdf in my new layout and included the long-awaited instructions for making it on a Lazy Susan! If you are on Ravelry, here is the link. If you are not, again, I am sorry, you will have to wait. I have plans to reorganize this website and don't want to have to upload and rearrange it twice later.

Outtage

2008-02-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

Argh! As some of you may have noticed, the blog was down this entire weekend!! (It was actually 3 days). I was extra bummed because I know that there were additional people trying to post their thoughts and comments regarding my Twister contest. Sorry if it did not work for you. The good thing is that, it's now back up and running!

Sneak Preview

2008-02-01T09:17:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to put all my patterns in an attractive layout, including my free patterns. So I asked my sister to design a simple but attractive layouts for my patterns. My sister is a professional artist (medical illustrator) and has done some lovely non-medical freelance work, including the logos for Sugar Apple Creations and Handicraft Cafe.

I'm still converting my patterns to the new layout and learning InDesign as I go along, but I do have one completed for your sneak preview. I converted Buccaneer's Booty, which still lives here as html. The new pdf file has already been uploaded onto Ravelry as a free download. The link that the Raverly file is here. For those who aren't on Ravelry, unfortunately, you won't be able to access the download yet. My apologies to you. You'll have to wait a little, but here's a photo preview in the meantime:

If you're interested in having your patterns laid out, I highly recommend hiring a professional to do it for you. It's worth the investment for may reasons. It's something you'll be using over and over. You don't even need a professional program. Initially, I had asked my sis to do something that I could do in Word, but then because I have lots of stuff and am starting business, I figured installing InDesign would be better. Anyway, my sis is a medical illustrator, so her site, Anaphase Studios, is a portfolio of that type of work. She hasn't updated it to reflect other freelance design work yet.

Twister update & Contest

2008-01-29T09:47:00.000-08:00

Quite a few people have been messaging me on Ravelry regarding Twister (previous blog post here; Ravelry link here), and inquiring whether it's ready. ALMOST! A great artist (my sis) is making new template layouts for me to make my patterns pretty for pdf, and I've already started converting my patterns, including the freebies and part of Twister to the new pdf format.

2 of my test knitters are done. THANK YOU!! Visit their blogs and/or Ravelry pages to check out their handiwork.
Tinker's blog
Tinker's Rav. page
CraftyCanadian's blog
CraftyCanadian's Rav. page

::CONTEST:: We all love them, don't we? All you have to do is to read through the rest of this post and then answer the question at the end of this post either by posting a comment or emailing me. I will do a random drawing of all who answer. There will be at least 3 winners (number of winners to be determined at my discretion). Winners will receive a final color laser- printed copy of Twister, Super Twister (being tested, see photos) and/or Mega Twister (in development) in protective plastic sleeves. Super Twister is Twister on bulky yarn, and Mega Twister is Twister done on polar/super bulky yarn. And if I happen to be having a good day, I'll send winners some yarn too. Contest ends: February 15, 2008.

Prototype of Super Twister. Yarn: Misti Alpaca Chunky.

Midway through the testing process, I wrote an alternative way in which the hat could be knit, using a provisional cast on and knitting on 2 circulars. CraftyCanadian knit hers the original way, while Tinker's version is a combination of the original way and new way -- the main hat is the old way, and her brim is the new way. A third tester, BunnySquirrel, will be doing hers using the new way. Actually, CraftyCanadian is starting another one using the new way, and her eagle eyes has caught some of my draft errors.

So what's the difference? The difference lies within the construction. I don't think there are true "pros" and "cons" in either way, because I think it's a matter of skill level, preference and how easy do you want to have it when working the pattern. Nonetheless, here are a few points that I think would/could be applied to each method:

The original way: the hat starts with a spiraling rib (so that it doesn't curl), then the rest of the body is the twisted stitch pattern. The brim is worked separately by picking up stitches along the cast on edge, shaped and then sewn together. Skill Level - intermediate. Pro: No pesky needles (except than the double points) to get in the way; easier to work than the new way. Con: Although there is an illusion of continuity from brim to crown that one can't really see unless they are a pro with eagle eyes, it's not seamless and "perfect".

The new way: The hat starts with working the brim, then the hem and the rest of the body is worked. There is no sewing of seams, and there's no spiraling rib pattern. Requires working on 2 circulars, off of 3 needles, and provisional cast on. Skill Level - advanced. Pro: True continuity of the spiraling stitch pattern from brim to crown; no seams between hat body and brim; built-in hem. Con: Working the brim first may be annoying, as it may get in the way when starting the hat body, can be confusing/challenging for a less experienced knitter.

Two versions? I was thinking of offering Twister as 2 separate patterns - one for intermediate, and one for advanced. Right now, I can't wrap my head around how to combine both options into one pattern without it being totally confusing to the end user, especially since the way you start and cast on is so different between the two. If I were to offer only one version, I think I'd do the advanced version, but that may turn away (scare off?) less experienced knitters. ETA: As CraftyCanadian stated in her comment, the skill set required to work the advanced version is quite different than the intermediate version. The difference is not just a matter of working on dpns versus 2 circulars. It includes casting onto 2 circulars provisionally more than once, and working a hem with 3 needles.

What do you think? Would you like to have the option of having an intermediate method and an advanced version of the pattern? Or would you hate to see someone selling 2 versions of the same pattern separately, albeit utilizing different techniques?

ETA: If you'd like to part of the drawing, please make sure that I will be able to contact you in case you win and include your email or blog address. This is especially for non-blogger users. I am unable to reply or find out who you are if you are not commenting through a blogger username/account.

EDIT #3: Moving my comment here for better visibility. ..Oh wow! Thank you all for your thoughts, comments and suggestions so far! You've definitely given me options that I had not thought of before, but will definitely weigh. Here's another question based on your comments:

So for those in the camp of packaging the 2 separate patterns together as a set, would you be willing to pay a little more for it then? I'd still have to format and figure out size/cost, but hypothetically, say, I was planning to sell at $6 for most single patterns, would you pay $9 for the set then? If I were to combine a package clearly labeling the 2 separate pattern & pattern techniques, it would drive my cost up, not just the amount of work, but also in pdf (file size, storage, photos, uploads, memory) and in printing, if I were to also sell paper patterns (paper, printing, ink, protective sheet costs. Thanks again!

Thanks!!

Special Vodka

2008-01-25T11:06:00.000-08:00

Vodka-based drinks are my drinks of choice. I especially love vodka-based martini drinks, such as a nice dirty Grey Goose Martini or a spicy and horseradish filled bloody Mary. And for my sweet palette, I like apple martinis and lychee martinis.

Knowing this, my thoughtful friend Aubrey sent me a link to a wonderful and unique infused vodka recipe. Sweet of her, right? I bet its not a recipe any of you would think of. But don't you spend time thinking of ways to make meat-flavored drinks such as Bacon Vodka?

Eww. I've been feeling brackish since.

ETA: After first posting this, I then thought, "Are there people that actually make meat elixirs?" So after a quick search, I am even more nauseous and thoroughly disgusted. I guess, to each's own, right? Here are the finds: Hot Dog Vodka, discussed more here. Thank goodness there aren't that many meat-infused liquor enthusiasts. Otherwise, I may have vomited all over my laptop.

I grabbed the bloody Mary photo under CC from Argyleist on Flickr.

Twister at Whole Foods

2008-01-24T14:15:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday, my blogless friend Rachel organized a public stitching event at the Whole Foods in Tustin. Folks from at least 3 different local knit/crochet groups attended. It was a fabulous event where we were able to socialize with people we otherwise don't normally see or come across, and where we were able to meet new people. Another rather fabulous part of the Whole Foods experience, is all the yummy foods! The dining area of this whole foods is right behind the chocolate and dessert bar, so I was surrounded by some of the most wonderful smells in the world: wool and chocolate. Yum.

While at Whole Foods, CraftyCanadian of One Too Many Projects brought her newly finished Twister that she was test knitting for me, modeled here and here by her friend. If you are on Ravelry, then CraftyCanadian's Twister Project page is here. CraftyCanadian used Socks That Rock Heavyweight yarn.

If you are not on Ravelry and don't know what it is, the best way to describe it is that it is like MySpace for fiber artists, but 100 times better due to all the wonderful special features of the site. Warning though -- Ravelry is really well done and easy to use, so it can be very addictive.

TNNA Goodies - Part 1

2008-01-20T22:33:00.000-08:00

Technically, this was not my first TNNA attendance. Aubrey and I went to the one in Phoenix this past summer. The summer one is much smaller and there seemed to be way more needlepoint than yarn. We did meet some really nice and fantastic people in Phoenix though, including David and Terri of Ozark Handspun, Janice Rosema who does some fantastic freeform crochet, and Karin Skacel of Skacel Collection.

We ran into all those folks at this TNNA, which is a stark contrast and a much much much larger event compared to the Phoenix one. We also met some new and very nice people, including knitting and crochet celebs and LYS owners from around the country. I'll start with the celebs, because that what y'all want to hear, right?

For me and Aubrey, TNNA started on Wednesday morning (Jan. 9). TNNA had some educational classes scheduled from Wednesday through Saturday morning, and the market opened from Friday through Sunday. I am so glad that I registered us early, because I got to take 2 fantastic sock classes with Cat Borhi. If you know me, you know that I am not a sock knitter and was not very happy knitting my first sock. And even though I wrote and knitted Buccaneer's Booty, it was only my 2nd pair of socks ever. Anyway, because I am not a sock knitter, Aubrey and I thought that I should hone my skills and take Cat's classes. I truly am happy that I did. Cat is a fantastic, dynamic and fun teacher! She structured the classes very well, with lots of tips, tricks and stories. The first class I took was a Coriolis sock class, where we made baby versions of her Coriolis sock.

The second class was more geared towards making up your own sock pattern by combining different forms of sock architecture. The techniques covered in the class are covered in Cat's book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters and in the supplemental You Tube videos Cat put out to support the book. But of course, sometimes learning in person is very different and better than learning from a book. In the end, I walked away thinking that sock knitting can be fun and enjoyable, especially teeny tiny baby socks. Now I don't know if I'll ever make a pair for myself, since I personally don't wear socks that much, and would feel bad trampling on my own work, so to speak, but I think if my sister the sock lover or my hubby asks me to make her/him another pair, I think I would say yes with enthusiasm instead of mild dread.

In addition to Cat's classes, I also took some business classes and a technique class taught by Melissa Leapman focusing on pleats and gathers. I'll talk about that class in my next post.

One really fun aspect of TNNA is running into knitting celebs and all the book signings. (We tried to go to as many as we could, but we weren't able to go to all the signings because we had to shop and purchase inventory.) There's no dirt to spill on anyone because everyone we met were very friendly and nice.

The first knit-celeb we met on the show floor was Wenlan Chia of Twinkle. We had stopped her booth because we want to stock Wenlan's Twinkle yarns by Classic Elite. She was also there to promote and sign autographs for her new book, Twinkle's Weekend Knits. On the day of the book signing, I wore my Twister cap. Wenlan complimented me on the hat and seemed quite interested in how I made the twisted stitches -- she said she didn't know this technique. So, as to not hold up the line, I promised to stop by her booth again later to show her, but alas, she was busy talking to some people the two times I attempted to stop by and teach her. And on the last day of market, Aubrey and I had to finish some business and did not have time to stop by again. Though I tried, I was disappointed that I didn't fulfill my promise to show her how to do the twisted stitch. I guess I will email her the instructions later and if she likes it a lot, maybe she'll buy my pattern (which will be available after I get feedback from all my test knitters). ;)

In fact, I was so elated to have received so many compliments on Twister from various show attendees, including vendors, other designers, Cat Bordhi and other people from whom we received autographed books, that I felt all warm and fuzzy inside for the rest of the weekend.

While standing in line for one of the book signings, (was it for Debbie Stoller's Son of Stitch n Bitch?), we spotted Cookie A., who we flagged down to ask about buy and selling her patterns for our soon-to-be business, and about possibly teaching a class or two when we do open. It turned out that Cookie was lurking in the vicinity because she was looking for a ticket for the book signing, but there were no more tickets available. (The vendor that sponsored the book signings would hand out a limited number of tickets on a first come, first serve basis.) So, Aubrey, being the kind and generous person that she is, offered hers to Cookie, who was reluctant and hesitant to take it, but Aubrey insisted. It wasn't a big deal to us, since I was getting book too, and we were requesting that the authors sign the book to Handicraft Cafe. I found Cookie to be very cool, nice and down-to earth, and we had a nice chat with her in line.

Yeah, I know this is getting boring because everyone was nice and there's no dirt or gossip to share with y'all, so I'll share the rest of the TNNA details in another post. Next post: more swag, Shannon Okey, Melissa Leapman, etc.

Needle Holder

2008-01-17T22:31:00.000-08:00

Since I still don't have the yarn yet, I can't start my designs for the follow-up of the Sensual Knits book, I decided to spend my waiting time designing other things. Last night, I worked on finishing "Super Twister," which I started 2 days ago. I worked in bed as I do many nights, and as always, I'm always looking around the floor, on the bed, between the sheets, etc., etc. for my needles, pens and other knitting things. I always find them eventually. However, no matter how much I looked, I could not find one of my dpns. I thought maybe the snoring hubby or the cats were sleeping on it, but after flipping them all over, I still found nothing. I finally gave up and decided to finish my hat with my remaining dpns, then I brushed my teeth and went to bed.

A few hours later, I awoke to something poking my chest. It turned out that my dpn had fallen in my shirt and decided to snuggle between my bra and boobs. (Since I am abnormally large, especially for an Asian girl, I am afraid of sagging when I get older, so I do wear a bra to sleep on most nights.) Anyway, I pulled my needle out and went back to bed. I don't know why I didn't notice it before. Thank goodness, it was a 5" US #10 (6mm) dpn
instead of something like a #1 dpn -- I shudder at the mishaps that could happen with such a tiny needle. From now on, I will be looking at my boobs the next time I lose a needle.

Sensual Knits

2008-01-14T08:20:00.000-08:00

Have you seen the book? It was just released this month. Isn't it great? I admit I have not knitted anything from it yet, but I love the selections and patterns in this book. The patterns are modern yet classic, fitted and the photographs are great. In addition to the jacket featured on the cover, there's a lovely cabled cardigan that I'd like to knit.

The follow-up to Sensual Knits is already in the creation process. Guess who's going to have her designs in the follow-up book? Yes, me!!!! So, the sequel is even more destined to be fantastic too, right? ;)

As you can imagine, was quite elated when I opened an email from the editor last week that they had selected not one, but two of my design submissions for inclusion in the book. I wanted to post it everywhere, and tell everyone, but at the same time I wanted to keep a level head and didn't want to post anything without checking with the publisher. So, I apologize for the tease, but I am not at liberty to give you much more details about the book or my design at this point --- you'll just have to be patient and wait to see. The other reason that I don't want to get too giddy is because, until the book actually gets published in a concrete and tangible format, there's always the chance that nothing will happen (ahem, speaking from my past experience). So, I'm trying hard not to get too excited and trying not to count my chickens before they hatch, so to speak.

One of the things that I have to do as part of the design process is to select and recommend yarns and colors for the project. Even more fantabulous is that for the last 5 days, Aubrey and I have been attending TNNA, a needlearts trade show, so the timing worked out great, and I had lots of goodies to touch, smell and buy. But picking out a couple of yarns for the book project among thousands of great (ok, yes there were some not so great) yarns was a lot harder than you'd think!

I do not have any photos from TNNA, which was held in Long Beach, to share with you because we were not able to take photos in the exhibit halls. However, I promise to take photos of my loot (freebies and samples) later this week and tell you about our adventures including which yarn and knitting divas we ran into.

Twister

2008-01-07T19:41:00.000-08:00

I've been playing so much on Ravelry that I almost forgot about my blog. Ha! I didn't really get what people were talking about at first when I heard my knitting friends rave about the site, but I GET IT! It is very well organized, easy to set up and navigate, AND the folks on the forums provide a bunch of wonderful and helpful information. I'm still catching up on updating my stuff, including my knitting projects and my patterns.

One of the projects/patterns that I listed is my Twister cap. I designed and finished it about 1 year ago, but I didn't post any photos or talk about it because I was trying my hand at submissions. Unfortunately, both Knitty and Interweave Knits rejected this project. After some hemming and hawing about whether I should try and submit elsewhere, I finally decided that I wanted to self-publish and sell the pattern. So, thanks to some lovely volunteers, Z's Momma, Bunny Squirrel, and Crafty Canadian, Twister is getting test knitted. No matter how many times I have knitted it (counting many prototypes and samples, it's at least 6+ total) and checked the pattern for errors, there's no way that I can catch the same errors and typos that test knitters may catch for me. Furthermore, it's a way to see if the instructions that I wrote are clear and concise.

Anyhow, as soon as I get the comments back from my lovely test knitters, I will officially release the pattern, which I'm really excited about. Now if you'll allow me to toot my own horn for a little bit: Since posting it on Ravelry about 2 weeks ago, to date, the project and pattern has been marked as a favorite by other Ravelers a total of over 30 times. This totally strokes my confidence to see that people like my work, and though I'm really not afraid or upset by rejection at all (I mean, seriously, the editors do have a difficult job of picking from 100s and 1000s of great designs to suit their respective publications.), it does make the slight disappointment seeing the words "we are sorry" all go away. Thanks y'all!!

Now, if I can just figure out and learn how to set up a shopping cart and pdf download system on this blog...

Argyle Skullcap

2007-12-31T10:24:00.000-08:00

My knitting friends accuse me of being a little crazy and too ambitious. Am I really?

For the last several months, I've had the idea that it'd be cool to knit an argyle hat or cap with skulls in it. Not that I'm into skulls or argyle, but it'd be interesting, no? Especially since those are 2 of my sister's favorite patterns/motifs. I never thought I'd try it, because I knew it'd be hellish to knit.

Then, one very late night (surprise, surprise), about 4-5 days before Xmas, I dug through my bucket of leftover yarn and came up with some yarns that are similar (but not quite exact) in gauge and stayed up to start charting for Argyle Skullcap (working title).

The next day, I went to the knitting group with my chart and 4 yarns in tow. Fast forward lots of tangling, untangling and tinks, I began to see some results. In the end, I did screw up some one of the colors, but I was too lazy to undo it by that point, and it looked almost intentional. I am happy with the results considering that I had very little time to do it, and I just found leftover yarn that didn't quite match in weight to do it in. I finished it about 3 hours after my sister drove in from San Francisco on Xmas eve, and I think she really likes her gifts -- a big tin of gourmet cookies, a pair of argyle tights and the Argyle Skullcap.

I would show y'all photos of the fair isle nightmare inside, but I forgot to document that. I don't know if other knitters are also masochists and would want to knit this, but it there is enough interest, I think I will rework the gauge and chart and release it as a pattern. If you're on Ravelry, it's here.

Oh, and ironically, my sis was wearing her skeleton t-shirt the night I gave her the hat. It was not planned.

Petrified Pussycat

2007-12-28T12:07:00.001-08:00

Oh the humiliation! This Xmas weekend, we had a special visitor - Lola, a rambunctious 8 month old pit/lab puppy.

Our cats, who have never ventured more than 50 feet outside of our door were not happy with a strange animal they have never encountered in the house. After about 1 day and a half, Brownie and Fat Maggie were not as scared anymore. They still kept their distance but would perch by the window or couch and hiss at Lola whenever the dog got close. However, not our resident bully, Whitey Coyote, who hid behind our headboard in the bedroom whenever she heard the dog in the house. As it turns out, this big bully (who likes to play alpha-cat and beat up on her siblings), is the biggest scaredy-cat of all.

As she was hanging out in the living room one day, poor Whitey Coyote was caught off-guard when the dog was allowed back into the house for the evening. With nowhere to go, she wedged herself between the wall and couch. To further the humiliation, everyone in the house came to laugh at and document her predicament.

Poor Lola was so sad and disappointed that her feline cousins would not play with her. At her house, her best friend is a kitten, so she thought that these feline cousins would play with her. My sister, her boyfriend and Lola have now left to camp in Death Valley. Before their departure, I made Lola a little scarf out of some recycled felted sweaters. The toggle button is also a felted sweater piece. Doesn't she look mighty fine?

Craft Show: Yays and Nays

2007-12-23T00:33:00.001-08:00

The handmade craft show I did this past weekend ended up being kind of slow. I have no idea why. There were street signs and ads in various papers. I suspect that one reason is that there was a similar one 2 weeks prior in the same area. Plus, being that it's the holidays, there are lots of shows during this season.

Regardless, I did okay. Enough to cover the fee, and make back my investment for inventory for this show and some chump change. Yay! I had no expectations of how much I would make, especially since I was contacted about this show 2 weeks before it was scheduled, but I actually had thought there would be more people. Anyway, it was fun. I met some great local Etsyians, and have some inventory to list in my shop (when I have the time!). I offered my friend Zona space at my table to peddle her lovely items, so she hung out with me all day and sold some of her hand-knits and handspun yarns.

I didn't dye any yarn for this show, but used some stuff other handpainted yarns I had in stock. I sold a few skeins of yarn, one of the customers was another vendor who kept coming to my table to look at the yarn. She bought 2 skeins at the end of the day -- she lucked out because another customer was debating between the ones she wanted and 2 other skeins. I must also thank JayJay, Marie and Pam from my knitting group who came and supported us.

As far as all the silk scarves I painted, I think the trees with the tiny blossoms are my favorites. I also like the green one on the far right quite a bit.

I did some shopping as well. I bought some YUMMY jam from this guy who makes his own jams, jellies and chutneys, which are mostly made from fruits that he grows! I got a plum chutney -- the best I have ever had (I have bought many at various farmer's markets before) and a jalapeno jelly.

Here's a Nay. Actually, it's a big BOO. There was a girl who sold some screenprinted t-shirts, bags and some hand-knits. She's the kind of hand-knitter I scoff at at these craft shows and fairs. Why? No, it's not because she was selling fuzzy fun fur scarves. Fun fur scarves only make me cringe a little, not scoff. The boo on this vendor is not something that's a matter of personal taste. She was selling the Kittyville hat! The only difference in the hat she sold is that she omitted the earflaps. Everything else looked exactly the same. This type of selling bothers me, because it is a form of copyright infringement. Really, the least anyone can do is to do it in another weight yarn and alter the gauge, or even change the type of stitch used. Even then, I would feel weird about selling it, but that's just me. Maybe I'm being too harsh. All I know is that I would be very irked if I caught someone trying to profit from my original patterns, especially if it's one as distinctly noticeable as the Kittyville hat.

Stained Fingers and Silk Painting

2007-12-12T11:16:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, someone contacted me after seeing my etsy shop and asked if I was interested in doing a Handmade Craft Show that's a fundraiser for a local high school. It was short notice, but I decided to do it. Afterall, it is just around the corner from my house and it's for charity.

I had some handpainted yarns but didn't have a lot of finished products to sell to non-knitters. Since I didn't have time to knit a bunch of items in less than 2 weeks, I decided to dye and paint silk scarves. In addition to the scarves, I will be selling some of my headbands and baby onesies, which still have to be completed.

I've spent the last few days creating a disaster in my kitchen and dining room. My hands, arms and fingers are stained with dye.

I started out painting on my dining room table. Don't worry, there are layers of protective covering on the table. I'm totally Asian in the way that I have a vinyl covering on my table most of the time. My rationale and reason is that I have cats that will jump on it and scratch the finish. I would not be covering it if I didn't have cats -- really.

Anyway, when painting directly onto the surface didn't work out that well (the resist took forever to dry and got really gummy), I built my own makeshift frame. It's just 2 pieces of wood that used to be ugly valances the previous owners of my house put up, some nails and some coated plastic laundry clips. I drilled holes into the clips and then hooked it into nails I drove into the wood. To prevent the clips from moving around too much, I also held them down with some wire.

It has been tiring and time consuming, but nevertheless, I had fun and I am happy with what I've created so far. However, I can't say that I look forward to cleaning my mess. Right after my craft show on Saturday, I am hosting my knitting group's annual holiday party, so I have LOTS to do before Saturday.

Ravelry

2007-12-06T00:08:00.000-08:00

I've finally caught up with other knitters and joined Ravelry, and I am so glad that I did! The site is very well designed and very user-friendly. The only downsides are (1) I will have to upload a bunch of stuff onto my account, and (2) I can totally see myself spending lots of time on there.

One of the fantastic Ravelry features include the ability to find a endless myriad of patterns in one place AND see what other knitters have done with those patterns. This saves a ton of time doing multiple internet searches. I used to have to search using various search engines, blogs and various crafting/knitting forums for variations, yarn substitutions and photos of patterns. With Ravelry, this is a cinch!

When I first logged on, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that other Ravelry users had already uploaded my knitting designs into the site's pattern compendium. I've since updated all the information and added photos to the patterns.

Other superb features include yarn index (although most, but not all yarns are on there), LYS serach index (it's also a work in progress, so it's not complete) and the ability to manage your projects (present and future), yarn stash, library and designs.

Although I am tempted to list and post some of my past projects, I think I will hold off for the time being, since it is such a time-consuming task to do so.

Stuffed

2007-11-26T19:17:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, it's not the kind of stuffed that you get post-holiday. Out of control allergies + cold from flu shot = major cold. Boo! I thought that at least being in bed I could catch up on some knitting, but my head and chest is so clogged that I can't really do anything requiring coordination and concentration.

I did have a nice holiday though. A friend from high school with whom I recently reconnected came over on Thursday night. Then, a bunch of friends came over on Friday for a dumpling / potsticker wrapping party. We even made the skins from scratch!

The one productive thing that I did today was to relist some stuff in my etsy shop. I've been severely neglecting the shop and have not posted anything new. I do have stuff, but I haven't gotten around to photographing them. You'd think that relisting is simple, just clicking a button. It generally is, but I have been without internet for nearly 2 days! waaaahhhh! My wireless connection decided to go kaput and I've been trying to fix it in between naps to no avail. I'm not computer whiz, so I just now discovered and realized that I can plug my laptop to the network.

Anyway, I relisted some of my buttons:

Roasted Garlic Rosemary Mashed Potatoes

2007-11-20T20:06:00.000-08:00

Every year, for Thanksgiving and other holiday feasts, I try to have people over for an "orphan" feast. Basically, I invite friends who aren't going home, don't want to or don't have family for a feast. I've been making my signature Roasted Garlic Rosemary Mashed Potatoes since I was about 20. I've decided to share my recipe! The only thing is that I don't really follow a set recipe and I don't really measure, and every year I make it a little different. So, use this more as a guideline and adjust to your own tastes.

I think fresh and organic always better, so I buy as much from the local farmer's market and organic as possible.

Serving Size: A big giant bowl of potatoes

Ingredients:

4-5 whole heads of garlic
3 large russet potatoes; whole, washed and unpeeled.
3-4 small to med. yukon gold or red potatoes; whole, washed, unpeeled.
1 large bunch of fresh rosemary; washed and dried.
1 tsp rosemary, very finely chopped (minced)
4-5 tbsp butter (or more if you like yours super buttery)
1 pint half and half (you won't be using all of it)
extra virgin olive oil
salt
pepper
parsley
optional: cream cheese, sour cream, parmesan and/or mozarella cheese

Roasting the Garlic (prepare this ahead of time):

Cut off the top of the garlic heads so that you expose the cloves. Don't cut so much off that you waste all your garlic. For the odder shaped heads, sometimes I take a paring knife and cut off the tops on the cloves that grow weird on the side.
Place 3-4 sprigs of rosemary on the bottom of a baking dish then put in the garlic heads with the tops facing up. I use a medium-sized glass baking dish, about 8" in diameter.
Drizzle olive oil over the garlic heads, so that nearly all the rosemary is covered. Cover the dish with heavy foil (or double layer a thin foil) and bake in the oven at 375 degrees until garlic is tender, brown and a little carmelized. A toaster oven works for this too. It usually takes about 30-40 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool.

Making the Potatoes:

Boil the potatoes in a giant pot with some salt and the rest of the rosemary until the potatoes are done and a fork can piece the potato easily. Be sure to check the potatoes and take out the smaller ones first. Don't overcook them. Let the potatoes cool a little bit and peel the skins off. Be careful, because the potatoes will still be hot. A paring knife helps me lift the skins so I don't burn all my fingers.
Put the potatoes in a big bowl. Squeeze out the garlic from about 2.5-3 heads, add butter, salt, pepper and some of the oil from the roasted garlic. The garlic should come out easily, if you have some trouble or don't want to get your hands all oily, use a cocktail fork to aid in this process.
Start mashing the potatoes and slowly add half and half until it reaches the consistency you want. I think lumpy potatoes go best with the roasted garlic.
Then add additional garlic, salt and pepper as necessary to taste. Stir in the finely chopped rosemary and parsley.
Optional: Sometimes for extra flavor or richness, I add a little bit of sour cream, cream cheese or any other cheese to the potato mixture. If I add cheese, I usually make the potatoes a few hours or a day ahead, then I top the potatoes with a little more cheese and then pop the whole giant bowl (make sure it's oven safe) in the oven for about 1 hour at about 300 - 350 degrees.

I usually have more garlic than I need, which I set out also for guests who like to spread the garlic on bread, turkey, and anything else on the table. The roasted cloves will also keep in the fridge for few weeks -- simply place in a small jar with a little olive oil. The garlic can be used with fish, chicken, pasta, or anything else (ok, maybe not dessert)!

Sweater Surgery

2007-11-14T22:00:00.000-08:00

Sweater Surgery is a book that is due to be released in May 2008. Guess who has some projects that will be featured in the book??

Yep. Me! The author, Stefanie, was looking for some ideas a while back, and I submitted several ideas, including Shelly. Stefanie said she remembered Shelly from our episode appearance on Uncommon Threads. Yay! I don't recall how many projects I ended up submitting -- probably around 6-7. I would've come up with more, but it was kind of a last minute thing. Anyhow, I think 2-3 of my projects were selected for the book, but I can't be sure exactly how many made it all the way through until I see it. Who knows? Maybe they did some last-minute editing. I sure don't want to get disappointed though, like with Magknits.

Oh, if you're intererested in making your own Shelly, you can get instructions here. A viewer recently emailed me about making a bunch of mini-Shellys for her grandchildren for the Holidays.

The book image from Amazon.

Relative

2007-11-10T21:28:00.000-08:00

Excuse my recent absence from blogging. For the past 6 weeks, I've had a variety of visiting relatives from out of town, including in-laws from overseas. So, I've been playing the nice dutiful daughter-hostess. I haven't done much knitting during this time, and I only managed to sneak off to my knitting group once. I was getting serious withdrawals from not seeing my knitting friends. Having some sort of routine is actually refreshing, especially when it involves a wonderful hobby like knitting, and good people like the folks in my knitting group. Also, seeing my knitting friends always cheer me up, even when sometimes I feel so down that I don't want to leave the house or go. It's especially helpful this time of year, when I am reminded by my mother's passing and the passing of my childhood best friend, who died very tragically shortly after her birthday and right before Christmas when we were in 9th grade.

Anyway, my relatives have left and I can now resume my weekly knitting group meetings. Yay! And, I can work on my crafty things! Well, I was not totally devoid of crafty activities during these few weeks, I've been doing stuff like preparing for me and Aubrey's business ventures like ordering yarn (yay! how exciting!) and writing business operations policies (okay, not as fun). I will post some photos and share with y'all all the yummy yarns that have come in fairly soon.
For some time now, I have been talking about a pattern that I had submitted to Magknits, to which the editor had emailed me and said that she wanted to publish it in February or March 2007. When it didn't publish, I emailed the editor, who said that she was going to publish it in April. April, May and June came and went. After that I emailed the editor 2-3 more times -- all those emails were ignored and I received no response. I have no idea why she did not respond, and I certainly understand her perogative to change her mind about publishing my pattern, but all I wanted to know was whether Magknits had changed its mind and/or when my pattern was going to be published. Anyway...I think I will self-publish this pattern. I already formatted it and everything, but I think I want to test it on a different yarn. Here are photos of the lantern purse. I call it "Fu" for the character depicted on the lantern. Fu means fortune or luck in Mandarin Chinese.

Staying In

2007-10-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

Luckily, my home, my family and the area in which I live is safe from the multiple fires burning rampant in Southern California. However, even with all the doors and windows closed, the winds are blowing all sorts of allergens and irritants that sneak through the tiniest of crevices into the house. I already suffer from terrible year-round allergies and mild asthma, and all the dust and smoke is knocking my entire body out of whack, even with a slew of drugs. Thus, not wanting to aggravate my lungs and sinus further, I think I will remain a shut-in for the majority of the week.

Last night, instead of going to spinning group with my fiber friends, Carolyn came over to my house and spun on her Ashford Traveler. I had already finished plying "cotton candy" (but haven't yet blocked it) and didn't want to spin undyed roving, so I worked on the lace stole for my stepmother instead. It's going slowly, but I've completed half of it already. I contemplated doing 2 separate halves and then grafting it together, but the pattern is small enough that I don't think it'd obvious which way is which, and so certainly, not worth the trouble of trying to graft over 100 stitches.

I also tried to dry a couple of hats a little before I attempted to block by laying them on a towel on my kitchen table. To my surprise, I found one of the cats on the hats. I had not expected one of the naughty ones to bother with the hats because they were wet, but I guess I was wrong. The gray hat is a gift for a Buddhist nun, so now I have to re-wash it and pick out all the cat hairs. Damn cat!

This is another one of the photos I scanned Sunday night. I'm not sure when it was taken, but I'm estimating that my mom was probably about 20-23 years old in the photo.

Memories

2007-10-22T00:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, I've been in the dark ages. I never used a scanner until tonight. Instead, I've been handing things over to hubby to scan things for me. My dad's birthday is coming up soon, so we got him a digital photo frame. I started uploading some digital photos I had into the frame, but then I thought it'd be nice to scan some old photos of my sister and me and upload those as well. I don't think hubby would appreciate scanning hundreds of old photos that have no personal meaning to him, so we finally hooked up a scanner for me tonight.

I couldn't find the baby album that my dad put together for me about 10 years ago. I think it's still somewhere in our garage from our move 3 years ago. Yep, like many people we still have unpacked boxes. Anyway, I still managed to find several old photos and proceed to archive all of them. Once I find my baby album, I intend to archive everything.

Going through the photos was somewhat bittersweet. My dad's birthday is coming up next week, but this week is also the 2nd anniversary of my mom's passing. I don't want to go into details about feelings and all that, since I still want to keep this a mostly-crafty blog, but I think I can sum it simply: it really bites.

Since we scattered her ashes, I haven't visited the locations (half in Texas Hill Country, half in the woods of Northern California). My sister made a special visit last year (she lives a lot closer to the location). Perhaps I will make a trip next year. In the meantime, my visits will be in spirit and via my memories.

Cotton Candy

2007-10-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

A while back, I had purchased some Brown Sheep mill end rovings at a craft fair to which I dyed some happy-go-lucky colors using some dyes leftover from another dye job. Having temporarily given up on spinning lace weight alpaca, I started spinning the mill end rovings during my knitting group's beach knitting day. My knitting friends thought the roving looked like cotton candy, especially the ones that I had combed out into rolags.

Regarding the lace alpaca that I have been trying to spin for the last several months -- I actually had no choice but to stop, because combined with the cobweb-thin spinning and my lack of skills, the yarn constantly broke. For the last few months, I have been unable to find where it had broken off. The end somehow disappeared onto the spool. I've even recruited multiple people to try to find it for me, and I have even tried picking at it with a wire a multitude of times. Anyone have tips on how to find it? *sigh*

I managed to finish spinning the "cotton candy" during some down time while my family was visiting. All I have to do now is to block the yarn and decide what to do with it.
Fiber Content: approx. 95% wool, 5% mohair (I tried to remove and separate as much mohair as possible)
Dye/Color Method: Randomly applied colors using leftover dyes from another dye job; done over the stove using Jacquard and ProChem dyes and citric acid.

Butterflies

2007-10-08T10:46:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some back-breaking cleaning everyday for the past 2 weeks. You see, I have many visitors: my in-laws from Southeast Asia, my dad and stepmother from Texas and my godmother from Taiwan. All my visitors are very nice people, but still...there is some stress and anxiety from having out-of-town visitors. I worry about making sure that my house is clean and meticulously orderly (I'm not horrible, but this area is not my forte), and I worry about places to take them. Needless to say, I haven't been crafting or knitting much.

For the last several weeks I have been working on this stole. It's my own design. I custom hand-painted it in shades of navy and blue from my stepmother. The larger center panel is a modified snowshoe lace, but it reminds me of butterfly cocoons. The photo is a little overexposed and it will be much better after I finish and block it. I'm not sure when I will be able to finish it -- I certainly won't be working on it much this month. Also, I've had to rip many parts of it out already. That's what I get for trying to knit lace at knitting group.

Several days ago, I took some of my visitors to the San Juan Capistrano Mission, where we took in the splendor of the building and the beautiful garden. We were lucky enough to see lots of monarch butterflies fluttering happily with the wind. We even spotted some cocoons, and I managed to get some macro shots of the monarchs.

Frogs

2007-09-27T01:26:00.000-07:00

When knitters use the term "frog" we generally mean the act of ripping our WIPs, not the actual slimy amphibian creature. Unfortunately for me, and perhaps amusing to you, this post is not about the knitting frog.

Tropical frogs like this green and blue one are cute, but it does not make me want to hold and cuddle them. Furthermore, as a former vegetarian of 10 years, I certainly would not eat one. Hell, I still have problems eating beef, pork and even some chicken.

Last night, I went to eat with my godmother at a wonderful LA restaurant known for its spectacular dim sum and seafood. My godmother ordered a chicken clay pot dish. When the dish came out, I took a piece of the chicken. I thought that the pieces were cut rather small, even for the small wing that I selected, but I ate it anyway. I was surprised that the chicken was tough and cooked differently from other chicken clay pot dishes I had before. It wasn't very good, so I didn't eat anymore of it. Several minutes later, my godmother realized that the waiter got the order wrong (either that, or his Mandarin was not very good) and had sent us theFROG clay pot instead! Ewwww! I tried not to think about the tiny "chicken wing" I ate and focused my attention on the conversations and the yummier food on the table, like the lobster.

However, as I drove home by myself after dinner and without other distractions, I could not help but think that the wretched piece of "chicken" that I ate was more akin to this ugly thing. I felt so queasy. My hubby's response to my frog-eating experience was "yummy," because he's a frog-lover. Having been duped into tasting it, I can say that it is horrid and does not taste like chicken at all. (Hubby and other frog-lovers have told me that frog tastes a little like chicken.)

Ugh. The reminiscing is making me feel icky again. I think I'd prefer to suffer the pain of frogging an entire sweater than to eat another tiny frog leg again.

Beach Knitting

2007-09-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday, my knitting group had our 3rd Beach Knitting Picnic. Our previous events were held at Heisler Park in Laguna Beach, which is on a small cliff right over the beach. Due to some renovations at the park, we had to change the location to Aliso Beach. Aliso Beach doesn't have a grassy park, but there are some fire rings right on the beach and it's a rather quiet and lovely beach, as you can see from the photos.

It had poured the night before, and in some parts, it rained pretty heavily Saturday morning as well. Luckily, after a brief shower, the beach was the epitome of a quintessential sunny California Beach. What made the picnic even lovelier were the fantastic ocean waves that resulted from the storm system.

Due to the rain and the location change, we had a smaller turnout than the previous 2 picnics. We still had a lovely group of folks and I even brought my spinning wheel and spun with good company, great weather, and the sounds of crashing waves behind me. And in a classic "Oh, Aubrey!" moment, Aubrey, who is known for losing things, somehow dropped her wallet about 10 feet away from our pop-up tent. I don't know how much time had passed (at least 10 minutes) between her dropping it and me spotting it, but had the beach been more crowded, I have no doubt that someone would have swiped it within seconds. Tsk, tsk.

After the picnic, I went over to my friend Rachel's for a dinner party. Unfortunately, after a couple of hours, I felt an allergy-induced pre-asthma attack coming on. I was allergic to something in her apartment -- maybe her cats, maybe something else. My chest began to tighten as my throat itched and my sinuses swelled. I excused myself from the party and thankfully, by the time I got home, some of the itchiness subsided. I thought I was in the clear-- then,l my right eye started feeling weird and itchy. Uh oh!

When the allergy gets in my eye, the white part of my eye usually swells up, as if it's a giant hive. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst eye allergy I've had, and 1 being a mild short-term irritation, this one rated about a 5, because I although my vision blurred a little from the constant watering, it didn't hurt. I only get 10s when I'm in Houston without my drugs. The worst one lasted for more than 2-3 days, watered 24/7, blurred my vision and hurt so much due to the extreme swelling of the white part that I could not sleep or barely open it.

All in all, despite the allergy and having an eye that looked like I had been smoking pot all night, the Saturday turned out pretty fantastic and lovely, especially the beautiful crashing beach waves.

Arrrr, Aye Matey!

2007-09-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

Ahoy! Being that today is talk like a pirate day (whoever came up with that??), I decided to go with the them and post my skull sock pattern that I designed for my sister.

I put in instructions for a men's size, and although I think it's correct, please be forewarned that I have not yet tested it.

I don't think I possess any pirate energy in me, but perhaps it's dormant. You see, after reading some historical studies on Taiwan, a part of me wants to believe that I am descended from pirates. Whether that can be really be established or verified is another issue. However, consider this: I belong to the 10th recorded generation, which would date us back to the 15th-16th century. Historical information shows that many pirates used the island during the Ming Dynasty and some had later settled. In the 1600s, after driving away the Portugese, the Dutch established colonial posts and ruled the island. Pirates still surrounded the island, so the Dutch entered a treaty to ensure the safety of their ships with a pirate leader. According to "Island in the Stream," a pirate subordinate with my last name led a revolt with the people of the island in 1652.

I don't know if anyone in my family will be able to give me more information, but I do like the idea that there's a possibility that there are pirates in our past. I mean, saying that you're descended from pirate explorers does have a nice ring to it - it's exciting, isn't it?

Pirate fantasies aside, my next fantasy is that Knitty will select my pattern for their winter issue. Maybe the third time is the charm. I can't post a photo or the pattern that I submitted, while it's being reviewed, and I don't want to jinx it too much. But I guess it's safe to say that I submitted a versatile knitting accessory that can be adapted for both men and women. I knitted it in one of my favorite fibers -- an alpaca and silk blend. yum!

I'm also happy to announce that I recently sold the yarn swift that I had made for a joint Etsy and Instructables contest. A very lovely woman purchased it for her daughter's birthday.

Help Search for Steve Fosset

2007-09-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

As the post title suggests, this is no ordinary crafty post. As you may have already heard via your favorite news source, adventurer Steve Fossett has been missing for a week now. Steve Fossett is actually the uncle of one of my knitting friends, a wonderful woman who started the knitting group to which I belong.

Family, friends and volunteers are assisting in the search. If you'd like, so can you. Due to fabulous technology and Google Earth, many people are able to volunteer and assist in the search by reviewing satellite images. It's easy! All you need to do is to download Google Earth, and sign on to your Amazon account to start. Follow the instructions here and hit the "accept hit" button to start.

Information on the satellite image search is on Steve Fossett's website.

Thanks for your help!

Muy Caliente

2007-09-04T11:23:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I'm not the only knitter suffering in the summer heat. There's been a sizzling heat wave in Southern California. However, the heat certainly is no comparison to places like Arizona and Texas, but the it's definitely crampin' my style!

I know some knitters take a mini vacation from knitting in the summer, or only work on cooler projects. I've already done some cotton projects and baby stuff, and I no longer have any more hot-weather-friendly WIPs. So, what am I knitting? A project meant for winter -- terrible in this heat -- I can hear my friends now: "Well, Anne is a little crazy." -- And as luxurious and soft as baby alpaca is, in this hot weather, the warmth and heat created by the soft fibers is my lap in rather torturous. I could turn on the A/C and be super comfortable, but then I'm trying to be thrifty and energy efficient. I've also been getting weird looks from people when I whip out my thick winter project in public. Such was the case when hubby and I waited for our table at The Melting Pot this past Sunday night in over 90 degree weather.

I haven't done much spinning either. I'm still working on my alpaca lace spinning project, which has not progressed much at all. This blue one I did a while back, but I never got around to documenting it. It's my second plied project, and 4th spinning project overall, spun from a hand-painted Australian Merino on Aubrey's Ashford Kiwi.

What should I make from it? hmmm...

Brrr it's cold.

2007-08-20T15:48:00.000-07:00

I just came back from chilly San Francisco, where I visited my sister and some friends. It was pretty cold up there -- a stark contrast to the heat in Southern California.

I hung out first with my friend Pipe ("pee-pay") who was visiting from Laredo, Texas where he grew up and currently works. Pipe has a deep fascination for Japan and Japanese culture and history, especially samurai history and old-school anime, so we spent quite some time in Japantown. On his last day, we went to the Asian Art Museum, where there was a special exhibit on Tezuka Osamu, father of anime and creator of Astro Boy.

After Pipe left, I visited with some other friends, including Cristina of String Theory. Cristina came with me, my sister and my sister's friends to a neighborhood garage sale. There were some fabulous items -- like antique sewing machines. Unfortunately, I didn't think I could haul those on the plane, so I settled for 1 slightly used and 1 new pack of heavy duty sheet protectors for $7. The used pack still looked like there was at least 30-40 sheets left in the pack. All in all, it was a great deal, and my beat up knitting patterns will surely appreciate the protectors!

Later, Cristina and her hubby treated me to a yummy late lunch at Burma Superstar. Boy do I miss all the fabulous restaurants and good eats in San Francisco! Don't get me wrong -- there are great eats in L.A. and O.C., but everything so spread apart, going to a favorite haunt sometimes seem such a chore, especially with the notorious SoCal traffic.

Anyway, as for the slippers I made for my sister, I ended up felting it a 3rd time. I don't think she likes it that much -- she complained that the sole was a little floppy and folded under when she walked in them. I think she just walks funny. LOL! I tested them at home and at her house, and I had no problems.
Pattern: House Slippers from Knit2Together by Mel Clark and Tracy Ullman
Yarn: SkiFoggy Yarn from Japan, using 3 strands
Needles: As recommended in pattern - US 11 and US 13 circulars
Notes: I felted the slippers 3 times to get the right size, but I have a front loading washer, so that may have something to do with it. Working the toe and the back lip can be a little awkward. on the circulars. It may be a little less awkward to incorporate dpns when working around the tight curves. Although the felting gives the slipper structure, the sole still can be a little floppy for some people. I'd also suggest using rubber rug spray or puffy paint on the sole for some traction and safety, especially when trying to walk on tiled or wood floors.

My sister really liked her socks. I'm still editing the pattern, so I'll do a separate posting with the pattern link later.

Hats and Headbands

2007-08-13T22:11:00.000-07:00

Since I forgot to photograph the Hunter's Orange hat that made for Linh's husband, she took some for me. It turns out that Nick's head is huge. I had already made it big, but apparently I erred.

Being a hunter who grew up in a village in Arkansas, I guess I half-expected that I'd get a photo of Nick posing. However, this photo really makes me cringe and uncomfortable, no matter how much I love Linh and Nick. That's one large hunting arrow -- too big for this former 10+ year vegetarian who still has problems eating some meat.

On a lighter note, my sister and her friends were sweet enough to model the reversible headbands they had bought from me. Thanks!!

Slippers for the Fat Cat

2007-08-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

After two wash cycles, I blocked and dried the slippers for my sister. As you can see, Maggie the Fattie wanted the slippers all to herself. I caught her lounging and trying on the slippers. She was even smart enough to pull out the paper balls that I used to block the slipper so that she has a little room for her giant paw.

I'm still not happy with the felting, so I think I'll have to throw them in the washer again before I'll proceed with embellishing it.

I decided to make a skull sock for my sister instead of an argyle. This is the first sock, unblocked with lots of ends to weave in.
The other photos is the inside of the sock.

After I finish both socks, I plan on posting a Free pattern on my pattern page. I'm not sure what to name it. So far, I've thought of 2 names: Skully Socks or Buccaneer's Booty Socks. What do y'all think?

Worldly Swift Love

2007-08-04T00:20:00.001-07:00

Recently, I've received a bunch of requests for permission to publish the content of my homemade swift instructions. The first request was made by the West Toronto Knit and Crochet Guild's president, Terry, who wanted to print the instructions and the link in their guild newsletter, Ravellings. The second request was made by the editor of a knitting newsletter, The Smart Knitter, who asked me to write an article about how I came up with the idea to make my own swift.

In June, I received a very nice merci beaucoup with a link to the yarn swift Nath made from my instructions. I wish I understood French, because it appears to be a nicely organized and written blog. Look at all the pictures of the lovely FOs! Then about 1 month later, I received a request from Michel, a webmaster for a French spinning forum, to link the pattern instructions. Of course I said yes. I've noticed people linking, but never had I received such a nice request.

Way back in April, Susan from Canada sent me a photo of her yarn swift, to which her dad made and adapted using a small lazy susan from around the house. (side note: I found some lazy susan hardware several months ago and have been meaning to put up another yarn swift version using the hardware. But as usual, I've been procrastinating. Maybe next month.)

Although not related to swifts, I want to highlight Gloria (?), a Brazilian blogger, who I found while perusing my blog visitors' sites. One certainly does not need to read Portuguese to admire and appreciate amazing ginormous crochet lace projects like this and this.

I'm so glad that people are able to make their own swifts!

Slippers for a Yeti

2007-07-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

In a couple of weeks, I will be heading to San Francisco to visit my sister and meet up with some friends. As a housewarming gift for my sister, who just got a house, I decided to make her a pair of house slippers from Knit 2 Together, which I bought for an awesome price of $5.50 on Amazon!

The pattern in the book calls for some of my favorite yarns - Manos del Uruguay or Rio de la Plata yarn. However, I decided to use some Japanese yarn I got from a swap instead. The yarn feels like a virgin wool yarn, which would be good yarn for felting. For the life of me, I could not get the same exact gauge, but I used it anyway -- it was close enough. The pattern gauge is 8.75 stitches per 4" of garter stitch using 3 strands of Manos/Rio yarn on US13 needles. I tested the gauge of my yarn using double, triple and quadruple stranding and US 11, 13 and 15 needles. The closest gauge I obtained was 8 stitches per 4" of garter stitch with US 13 needles and triple stranding.

The slipper was a quick and easy knit, although picking up and working stitches from the sole was a little awkward at the toe and heel. As I was working the last 4 rows of the second slipper, it suddenly dawned on me that maybe the yarn is superwash. Even though I don't read Japanese, I should have done a spit-felt test! Oh well, if it doesn't work out, I'll leave the slippers in a forest for Bigfoot. Time for the washing machine!

I'm also planning on knitting my sock fanatic sister a pair of socks. She has lots of socks organized very neatly in OCD fashion in a drawer, but she's never had a pair of hand-knitted socks. She has never asked me to knit her a pair either. I haven't decided whether to knit a pair of argyles or a pair with a skull motif. My sister loves argyle socks, but I don't know if I'm ready for knitting argyle socks - plus, I'm having a hard time finding a nice pattern. Since the age of 13-14, my sister also has had an inexplicable (in my mind) obsession with all things skull. I'm leaning towards the skull thing, but either way, I'm sure she'll be pleased.

When's Your Turn?

2007-07-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

Within a month of getting married, my mother-in-law called to ask if I was pregnant yet. We've been married 6 years, and the questions have not stopped from family and family friends. Most of my friends know better than to ask, because they know that the question is redundant and that they will get a scowl in return. I'm not so fortunate with some family friends who insist on asking me and telling me that I should have lots of babies, though I've repeatedly said "no." The tricky thing is, due to cultural reasons, I can't very well tell them to shove it, no matter how annoying it is.

My dad is okay about the B-word, and respects my personal life and decisions, but he could not help himself recently when I told him that my brother- and sister-in-law just had a baby girl. With some (not much) self-restraint, he finally asked "so, when's your turn?"

For my brother-in-law's baby, I sent them some onesies that Linh and I made when she visited. We borrowed some ideas and created our own as well, and then I designed and edited the images on my Photoshop program. We printed the images on some transfers I had purchased to make sewn labels for my stuff. Because my BIL is a huge soccer fan, I made one to resemble a player's jersey, with Barcelona's logo in front and the last name on the back.

In addition to the cute and personalized onsies, I also knitted my new niece a pair of T-strap booties and a matching hat out of some yarn. I didn't have enough of the right kind of buttons for the booties, so I improvised and put different buttons on each side.

Pattern: T-strap Baby Booties (my own) and Hat set
Yarn: 1 skein hand-painted fingering yarn, 50 %wool, 50 %silk (I purchased from a local yarn supplier that does not have a national or commercial label, nor does it carry this yarn anymore.)
Notes: I'm working on finalizing the pattern and trying it with other more commonly available yarns. I haven't decided whether to post here or sell on my Etsy shop, but if you're interested in it, email me and I'll let you know when I'm done with it.

I wrapped the gifts in some tissue paper and tied it with a really cute farm animal ribbon. I still haven't heard whether my BIL and his wife received or even like the gift. However, I'm sure they're too busy with their first baby, all the dirty diapers, and trying desperately to catch up on sleep!

My mother- and father-in-law will be here sometime in August and through part of September. I don't think I will be able to escape that dreaded question. Maybe they'll be so excited about the new baby that they will forget to ask. Well...one can hope.

Esty/ Instructables Contest Entries

2007-07-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

I just entered the Etsy and Instructables SewUseful Contest. I think judging will be based on views and ratings on BOTH Etsy and Instructables. The contest required that we post instructions on how to make an item on Instructables, and then post the item for sale on Etsy. If you like my stuff, please help me click away on both site links, add a positive rating, and help spread the word. Thanks!!!

My first Instructables entry is a yarn swift; the corresponding Etsy listing is here. My other Instructables entry is a recycled sweater flower brooch; the corresponding Etsy listing is here. I wanted to do more (3 entries max per person), but didn't really have time to come up with lots of ideas.

We Don't Have A Dog

2007-07-19T00:38:00.000-07:00

For the will and not the gift makes the giver.
-- Ephraim Gotthold Lessing

My husband came back from a business trip with an unexpected gift in tow. Apparently, he wandered into a NYC bookstore and happened to see a knitting book on sale, sot he go this for me:

For many reasons, I was quite surprised and a little puzzled by this gift. First of all, my husband has never bought me anything knitting related of his own volition, and this was certainly a nice gesture. (He did begrudging go to an LYS to find me some knitting needles upon my request once.) Secondly, we don't have any dogs, nor are we planning to get one in the near future -- 3 spoiled cats, 0 dogs and some ugly black widows lurking in our yard. Thirdly, my husband has not really asked me to knit anything for him -- he once requested socks, but at my prompting, and as a joke, he once asked for a pirate's eye patch for the fat one.
My husband doesn't really wear sweaters either. The only time he bought sweaters in the 7-8 years we've been together was when Amazon had a great sale on them. Knowing him and his sense of humor, he probably thought getting this book would be ironic and funny, and that I'd probably appreciate anything knitting. However, just to be sure, I asked him if we wanted one of the sweaters in the book or if it was a hint for me to knit him a sweater. He doesn't want one.

Thankfully, he didn't waste his money, even if he meant it as a joke. The patterns in this book don't look as crappy as the title sounds. There are some nice sweaters and many cute doggie things, like the ones in the photo below. Maybe the cute dogs camouflage some of the uglier ones, like the hat on the cover or the variegated yoke pullover on page 32.

Well, whatever my husband's reason for getting this book, I will cherish it and appreciate his first knitting gift to me. Perhaps he or my dad will want me to knit them a sweater one day.

Oh L'Amour

2007-07-16T22:36:00.000-07:00

Oh L'Amour, Broke my heart
Now I'm aching for you

Everyone who knows me, knows that I'm stuck in the musical 80's new wave/alternative. (Fortunately for me, I didn't fall too prey to the regrettable fashions back then -- I was too nerdy to!) I'm totally dating myself, but some of the top 80's bands for me, in no particular order, are Depeche Mode, Erasure, New Order, Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, Psychedelic Furs and The Smiths.

I was momentarily brought back to my youth when we recently attended the True Colors concert, organized by Cyndi Lauper, at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. It was Zona, her hubby, my hubby and me. Unfortunately, due to a family emergency, Aubrey and her hubby could not go at the last minute. Unfortunately, we could not find someone available to go to a concert at the last minute, so those poor tickets went to waste.

If I recall correctly, The Cliks performed first. In my opinion, the band sucked overall. The lead singer sounded like a dying hoarse dog. Sorry if this sound harsh or if you're a fan. Actually, Zona and I both agree that the music had a nice sound and power to it...now if the singer could be replaced, or just tuned out, it would've been superb.

Second to play was the 2-member band, The Dresden Dolls. The DD put on a great show, was entertainingly theatrical (guy in a dress) and had great energy. I enjoyed their unique sound and music, but I have to admit, to no fault of DD, I didn't enjoy them as much because I was itching and anticipating Erasure.

Introducing the bands and keeping us all entertained before and after each act was funny woman Margaret Cho, know for some her raunchy jokes. Another guest comic was Rosie O'Donnell, also funny and entertaining, and certainly took the chance to poke fun at The Donald.

The next act up was Blondie herself, Ms. Debbie Harry. Don't get too excited. She didn't really sing any of her Blondie songs. And up her olden age, she really should not have been doing some of the rocker moves. She was waaaay out of practice. Even if I did have a fresh mind (slept 4 hours last night), I still would not have the words to describe her fluttering -- you simply had to see it yourself.
That's a crappy photo of her though. Here's a better one from the SF Gate.

Enough about Debbie. The next act was ERASURE! This is actually the first time I've seen them in concert. Really. Andy Bell and Vince Clark were fabulously entertaining and were fantastic to watch live. Although they looked older, they surely did not act like it. Zona and I danced our hearts out and sang our voices hoarse. Our hubbys must have thought we were temporarily possessed. If you haven't visited their website yet, there an interesting photo gallery, which seem almost more like a photo diary, from 1985 (!) to present.

I was never really into Cyndi Lauper, but after seeing her finale act, I have new found respect for her and her music. She is a fabulous entertainer, and also like Erasure, she still seems to have an abundance of energy and could still rock, unlike Debbie Harry. A rather odd sight of her act was Rosie O'Donnell playing some drums to the right side of the stage for a few of Cyndi's songs.
For the finale all the acts came on stage. They first sang Erasure's cover of Abba's "Take a Chance on Me" and made it extra festive withe all the colorful giant balloon. The final song (surprise, surprise) was Cyndi's "True Colors."

Jeepers Creepers

2007-07-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

As part of my fantasic purchase, my spinning wheel came with a set of hand carders and some roving. The roving was old, nasty, wiry, rough and had lots of weird vegetable matter in it. Needless to say, it got tossed. But before I could practice hand-carding, with better roving, I had to clean out some of the residual roving and vegetable matter (or so I thought) from the carder teeth.

I meticulously picked off the fibers between the teeth with a toothpick and ended up with lots of gross fuzz all over my table and my clothes. Besides sneezing at the annoying bits of fiber, I really didn't think anything of it until I saw that one of the little vegetable matter bits had legs!! Gross! I almost threw up at the thought of inhaling the microscopic remnants of these dead bugs. It was very hard to finish getting all that crap out of the 100s of teeth in the carders.
I can't believe that the original owner actually sat there to comb and brush dirty fiber, complete with bugs. Ewww.

Aside from those nasty bugs, I had slightly creepy experience of a different kind this Wednesday. As I walked across the parking lot towards Starbucks for my Wednesday knitting group meeting, I noticed a guy in the donut shop 2 doors down grinning and waving from his booth inside the shop. I ignored this, since I didn't know the guy. But then the aggressive waving and grinning continued...who is he waving at? No one was walking towards the donut shop, not even in the parking lot, and no one was driving away. Then I noticed that he was looking at me, with his body turned in my direction. The waving and sheepish grin was a little odd, but I quickly brushed it off.

Feeling a little bored and loser-ish, Rachel and I decided to depart early, since we were the only ones who showed up to knitting on July 4th. Outside, some teenage skateboarders were praciting there tricks while an older man (in his 40s?) sitting on the edge of a flower bed wall chatted and watched the boys. The older man seemed short and had a slightly rotund protrusion in his midsection and appeared to be Latino. I thought this guy was related to the boys, maybe one of the dads. I walked past them without any interaction and headed towards my car. As I opened my car door, I saw someone waving out of the corner of my eye. I got into my car and waited for a car behind me to pull out, and the man sitting with the skateboarders continued to wave with a grin. Then I realized this was the donut man! He kept waving at me and grinning until I left the parking lot.

I never waved or smiled back at the donut man, because I didn't want to encourage it. I am still perplexed as to why he was waving like that. I guess could just appreciate that someone was trying to make a connection and may have found something attractive or interesting in me from yards away. But, it was so odd! He didn't even say hi, when I walked by, and he sat outside while Rachel and I knitted. All he did was wave fervently and grin. Weird.

Hunter's Orange

2007-06-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

Have you ever tried to find yarn in hunter's orange? It's certainly no easy task. A few weeks ago, I scoured my well-stocked LYS in search of a superwash wool in Hunter's Orange, and even with the help of the shop owner, we really didn't come up with more than 2-3 yarns in the appropriate shade.

Why that particular shade? Linh's husband Nick is a hunter. *gasp* Just the word "hunter" does not sit well with me, since I was a strict vegetarian for 11 years. (And although I am no longer a vegetarian, I really don't eat much meat, and when I do, it's usually just chicken and seafood.) Nick requested that I make him a hat with earflaps for him for the chilly early morning hunting outings with his friends and family in Arkansas. If they weren't such good friends, I surely would've said "no."

Most oranges were more rust and a few scary neon ones. I couldn't find any superwash, but I finally settled on a worsted weight virgin wool that was the perfect shade, albeit not superwash. There was some Anny Blatt superwash that came as a close second, but the color still was not right. I ended up knitting the hat by double stranding it and working it on US #7 so that it's extra thick. For the earflaps, I continued the double stranding and thrummed it with some merino and alpaca roving. Nick will surely have warm ears! Because the virgin wool is a little scratchy, I soaked it first in hair conditioner and then later with Soak wool rinse.

Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph the hat. Even more unfortunate is that Linh reports Nick's head is super large and the hat is a little snug. Bummer. Maybe it'll be tight enough to distract him and make him miss shooting Bambi and Mama Deer.

She's Done It Again!

2007-06-20T22:35:00.000-07:00

My secret pal in SP10 has done it again! She's spoiled me rotten! 1000 thanks to my pal, Becky, who is from my home state and an avid sock knitter. Becky has been spoiling me from day one of the swap. My final package did not just contain one, two or even three yarns, I got a giant bag full! Some of the other fantasitc goodies in my box included sour candies, and my favorite popped rice green tea. If you've ever had this tea, you should definitely try it. It's called genmai chai. If you live in and around the San Francisco area, I recommend supporting one of the local cooperatives and purchase the tea at the fabulous Rainbow Grocery, which has a regular and an organic version. If your're not that fortunate to be able to shop at Rainbow, then you can get the tea online at Adaigio Teas. A lovely pendant from a fantasitc etsy seller features beautiful artwork sandwiched between glass. It's a little heavier than one would expect, but it's quite a unique piece. The only thing I'm worried about is chipping the pendant, since my secret special talent is breaking glass.

New Toy!

2007-06-18T15:13:00.000-07:00

I teased y'all two posts ago regarding the unveiling of something new. Here it is!!
Yep. I got a spinning wheel last week! I did a random search on Craigslist and came across an ad posting for a spinning wheel for $200. After contacting the seller, I decided that this wheel (and price) was worth the 1 hour drive through L.A. traffic to see.

This wheel is slightly rickety and it was missing the drive band and the spring set-up for the Scotch tension brake, but it is otherwise in good condition. It's nothing a screwdriver and some light elbow grease can't remedy. After a smooth haggle, I became the new owner of this single treadle Ashford Traditional, along with the 4 bobbins, lazy kate, drop spindle and a set of Clemes & Clemes carders, for a great bargain of $150!

According to the seller, who is a non-knitter and non-spinner, her mother bought this wheel about 10 years ago. However, upon closer inspection, I think this wheel was bought and made before 1990 (or sitting in a store since). According to my research, wheels before 1990 only had a 2 flyer ratios, just like mine. I don't think there's anything wrong with the 2 ratio flyers, it's just not as versatile as the 3 ratio flyers. The flyer update, although not necessary, would probably cost around $32.

With a simple trip to the hardware store, I bought some springs and rigged my own Scotch tension brake. It's not the same kind of spring that Ashford puts on the wheels, but it works. For the drive band, I'm using a really thin cotton yarn. Everything seems okay so far, except for a few more loose screws and some oiling. I can't complain for the price I got, except for that I think I prefer a double treadle. After having played with Aubrey's double treadle Ashford Kiwi, I think the double treadle system is better and the single treadle. The double is faster and seem more natural for my feet. I have to check with the manufacturer for compatibility first, but eventually, I'd like to purchase the double treadle conversion kit for my wheel (but it's $70).

Is It Really Interesting?

2007-06-14T16:13:00.000-07:00

I don't usually do memes, just like I don't do chain letters. But since I got tagged from Prof. JayJay for the 7 Interesting Things About You meme, and I'm trying to procrastinate, I guess I could give it a go.

The Rules: Tell seven things about yourself on your blog, then tag seven other people to do the same. List who you are tagging on your blog, and leave a comment on their blogs to let them know they've been tagged. I don't know if this is all that interesting. Some probably in the more embarrassing category, for sure.

I'm ambidextrous. I was born left-handed, but where we were at the time, it was not as socially acceptable to be left-handed. Honestly, I just think the right-handed people were jealous that left-handers are smarter and tried to squash us lefties. Anyway, I was behaviorally conditioned with candy. I can do most things with both hands, except use a chopping knife. I almost sliced off my thumb once when I tried to use a knife with my right hand. I write with my right, and although my left handwriting is slower and not nearly as nice, it actually is neater than most peoples' regular writing.
I speak 3 languages pretty fluently and/or proficiently. I also speak a little Spanish and minored in German in college. I barely speak any German now. And of course, like many people, I know bad words in over 10 languages. It's a special skill, I tell ya.
Once at a party, with the fog machine blasting, I walked really fast into a patio door. I couldn't tell that the glass door was shut, and I think the verberation of the impact was lower than the loud music. My friends on the other side didn't even come in to see how I was -- they just laughed until their stomach almost burst and pointed out the large noseprint on the glass. The worst part was that an asshole of an ex-boyfriend was at the party and I think he saw the whole thing.
I have double jointed elbows. I can make both rotate almost 360 degrees without moving my hand or shoulder.
I was voted "Miss Prim and Proper" in the 6th grade. Honestly, I was so boring and nerdy that I don't think the teachers could come up with anything good. I wore giant pinkish-red rimmed glasses and wore uncool dresses my grandmother made. No on believes me that I was anywhere near prim or proper and that I was painfully shy until I was about 20-21 years old.
I can't believe I'm actually daring enough to divulge this one. :-/ I have/have had a total of 7 names/nicknames that family and friends actually called me. Including my given, naturalized and married names, I have had 4 different "official" names. At one point, some nuns at a school in Brazil called me Suzy. It's a very long story. My parents had a nickname for me, and one of my best friends, Tedd, calls me Bo-Bo (I have no idea how he started calling me that, but he's the only one who calls me that and usually will choose that over my name). The most unfortunate nickname was dubbed by a former "banana" classmate with bad Chinese skills. He called me "Pot," short for "Pot of Germs," a very twisted and badly translated homophones of my Mandarin Chinese name. Luckily we only hung out about 1 year - I'm sure that all my chemistry classmates who heard me being called "Pot" thought I was always getting stoned or something, and if they heard him call me "Pot of Germs," well...I guess it figures why no one in my chem class asked me out on a date. If any of my friends reading this ever calls me the latter, be forewarned that there will be dire consequences!
When I was in 4th grade, I got really mad at my sister for being a brat and for gettting me into trouble for no reason at all, so I scraped off some soap and put it on her toothbrush, then I put on a thin layer of toothpaste to hide the soap. She tought I was being nice by pre-loading her toothbrush for her. Of course, she cried at the nastiness in her mouth. I swear, I only did it once and never did anything else that mean to her. She doesn't even remember this incident.

Who shall I tag next? I don't have that many blogging friends, and even less who'd humor me on this.

In Recovery

2007-06-13T23:20:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought I was finally nearing the end of my recovery from Aubrey's wedding, I got hit with some crafty deadlines.

First of all, the wedding, veil, and flowers all turned out fabulously. Of course, the bride was glowing, gorgeous and flawless. We were all relieved and elated that the famously klutzy bride did not fall or trip on the uneven grounds of the nature preserve -- not once! Whew! Seriously, this is a lady who trips on air on a flat level surface. However, the bride did not lose a special Aubrey touch: She lost her garter, which slipped off her leg somewhere, and she lost an earring, which she later found with a flower from her bouquet inside her bra.

Above: me and Linh. I don't have any photos of the gorgeous arrangements. I hope Linh blogs them soon!

Above: The knitters! It was really nice seeing some of the knitters dressed up for a change. We rarely see each other looking spiffy and not covered in yarn and fiber fuzz.

Soon after the wedding, I realized that I had an upcoming deadline for a contest that I wanted to participate in. Did I ever mention that I'm trying to do something for an Etsy contest? I had originally planned on entering the 3 maximum allowable entries per person, but it looks like I will only be able to do one before the June 15 deadline.

As I was planning out the contest entries, the author of an upcoming book on recycled sweaters contacted me about some of my project/idea submissions. She and her editor liked the things I submitted and they requested that I send them finished projects and descriptions ASAP. So I spent the week after the wedding getting the projects finished and mailed off. In all, I think I sent in about 6-7 projects. From what I can tell, it appears that the book will be some sort of anthology of projects from various crafters/artists. Hopefully, they will select at least one of my projects.

Wish me luck on both (I think the Etsy contest is a longshot though.)!

Things finally appear to be slowing down a little from the recent flurry of miscellaneous crafty activities. Maybe now I'll have more time to devote to knitting and spinning. I haven't done much of either. I had been making great progress on a double knitted hat and was near-ready to decrease. Then, I realized that my image was not right. I failed to check as I knitted and knitted. What's more is that I lacked foresight in planning the design image, so I ended up with a backwards design on one side. *sigh* That's the Zen of Knitting.

Not having time to knit also means no time to spin -- I still don't think I have more than 6 yards of the alpaca lace I started nearly 4 weeks ago. I DO have some new spinning-related news though! I will keep you all in suspense until I can photograph the great news. ;)

Well, before I get to do more spinning and knitting, I do have to do more sewing. I need to make more headbands for the shop. In the next couple of weeks, I will also be making more of my Fortune Cookie purses (like this one I made for Aubrey) for the shop and for two custom orders I received at the wedding.

Frenzy

2007-05-29T22:06:00.001-07:00

My apologies to my swap pals for being a little slow to post the goodies I've been receiving. I received this earthy-color themed package from my Secret Pal 10 swap pal a couple of weeks ago. I absolutely love the fancy fabric, and the colors of the cashmere yarn! The chocolate is also to die for -- I actually bought and ate a couple bars of this chocolate when hubby and I went to Belgium for the Soccer World Cup last summer.
From my Dye-No-Mite swap pal, I received an adorable and thoughtful card with cute and furry sheep on it.

Since Aubrey's wedding is fast approaching (this Saturday!!), I've been helping her with wedding sweatshop (photos here) and other wedding things. I just finished making her chapel length veil, made of silk chiffon trimmed with a rat tail lace at the bottom and a pearl and rat tail trim to match her fancy lace dress. Aubrey hired my friend Linh, who's staying with me, as the florist, so we've been running flower-related errands as well. The wedding is days away, and I still have yet to alter my bridesmaids dress. I have to shorten the straps and take it in near my armpits. Luckily, the empire waist means that I don't have to take in the rib/waist as well. I had to buy a size larger to accommodate my abnormally endowed bosom, which my friend Tedd claims that I stole from all the other Asian girls we knew in college.

As far as my other crafty activities, I'm trying to be an overachiever and spinning lace weight alpaca as my 3rd spinning project. Needless to say, the yarn keeps breaking on me -- I keep underspinning or overspinning and somehow failing to spin somewhere in between. This spinning project is testing my patience and tolerance! I don't think I have more than 15 yards on the spool at this point, and I started about a week ago.

I've also been dyeing the past two weekends. Last weekend, I painted some yarn and rovings for by of my swap pals in the Dye-No-Mite swap and Secret Pal 10 swaps. I also handpainted and listed this in my shop:

Then, this past Sunday, I hosted my 5th Wine, Dye and Knit party. No one got drunk, but my klutzy talents did not fail me -- I spilled half a bottle of red dye on my blonde bamboo floors and all over Robert's (from my knitting group) shoe. Oops! Luckily, I didn't spill on anyone else -- I guess it was a good lesson on what not to do for the 3 dye virgins that came. I'm fortunate that only one tiny spot on the floor turned a little pink, but it's barely noticeable. I'm actually pretty proud of myself because this is only my first major dye accident.

And last but not least, I finally remembered to photograph the purse I made for Aubrey's bridal shower gift.

The inside has 2 pockets, 2 magnetic snaps and a key ring hook.

If Only for a Moment

2007-05-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

I woke to this morning to find one of my items featured on the front page of Etsy. Unfortunately, being on the front page can last from a few hours to 1-2 days, and I think mine was a few hours. It's no longer on the front page, and I failed to capture the image. Darn! Here's the image of the collection that was featured though:

Lately I have been sewing away, not just in Aubrey's sweatshop, but also in my own. I've spent the last 2 weeks designing and tweaking a couple of purse patterns. I made one for Aubrey, but I forgot to take photos of if before giving it to her.

These two bags below are for my godmother and my stepmother. I decided to let them decide between the two of them which one they want:

I'm call the first design "Gigi" and the second one "Fortune Cookie." I currently have another "Gigi" in the same striped outer fabric but with a fun martini print lining in my etsy shop.

I also made these 2 headbands for the shop, but of course, I also made 2 additional ones for myself to wear. :)

Lucha Libre!

2007-05-09T13:37:00.000-07:00

I was perusing some bloggers from the Dye-No-Mite swap and came across Teresa's. She had a weird looking picture, which was apparently from this website from the Netherlands described as "a fine collection of random stuff such as cool inventions and people with really bad days."

Well, part of the collection (#26) included some knitted masks that look like lucha libre masks! This is my favorite from the knitted mask collection. The masks were created by artist Chrystl Rijkeboer, who's work centers around her "astonishment about human life." She describes on her website,

"My work is figurative and recognisable but shape and proportions are not necessarily correct or 'beautiful', what matters is the sensation they evoke. You can always view my work in two ways: kind, pleasant and innocent, or frightening, condemning and guilty."

Not only are the artist's art and projects creative, odd, intriguing and ingenous, they are provocative and progressive. Many of her projects are made from human hair. Yup. Here are some film stills featuring human hair getting spun into yarn from her 2005 "Stolen Identity" project. She has so many intriguing projects that it's really hard for me to select a favorite...There's the hair-covered medicine cabinet highlighting the vain consumer in all of us, the odd hairy balls with teeth illustrating society's fear of immigration and multiculturalism, the gnome army symbolizing the violence in peacekeeping and occupation, and there's this hairy chair which was the artist's commentary on social and sex discrimination:
There are so many things to show, you might as well go to her website and check it out yourselves!

Gluttony

2007-05-08T00:06:00.000-07:00

1000 apologies to my swap pals. I was preparing for a weekend of gluttony and did not post the lovely things I received from them. First, I must thank my SP10 pal, who got me a generous $25 gift certificate to Earth Faire for my ~~30 something~~ 29th birthday. It was frustrating trying to order, as I came across many snafoos and glitches in their online ordering and coupon redeeming process. However, Ellen, who runs the shop, was very responsive and tried her best to be helpful. I ordered a bottle of Soak, Opal yarn and some yummy beads.

My second thank you goes to "Pippins," my Dye-No-Mite pal, who sent me the lovely package below. It's a good thing that hubby prefers milk over dark chocolate. Otherwise, we'd sure have a fight over the mouth-watering dark chocolate in my package. My pal also included a skein of Henry's Attic Kona that she dyed herself, and a bar of handmade natural soap with tea tree oil.
Whitey Coyote and Brownie just had to inspect and supervise my photo-taking. After taking the photo above, Whitey Coyote drooled over the yarn and rolled and rubbed herself in it when she thought I wasn't looking. Of course, she pretended to be innocent and disinterested when she realized that I saw her. Sneaky brat.

Gluttonous Weekend
I spent the weekend with Aubrey and her freinds at her bachelorette party up in the Santa Ynez valley. It almost felt like a college vacation, especially since we stacked ourselves in the rooms like sardines. Although I must say that the nice beachfront hotel with heated pool was certainly more preferable than the cheap motels my friends and I stayed during our excursions. If can can recall correctly, we drank, ate, drank, ate, toured wineries, drank, drank, drank, ate. And as if we didn't have enough already, prior to driving back, a few of us had mimosas and bloody marys during brunch. A few of the many highlights of this festive weekend:

Left: Sadie, the winery pooch, with whom I fell in love and wanted to dog-nap. Right (l-r): Me, Kim, Aubrey, Derrick and Sadie.

Above: We spotted this baby goat in the back of a truck driving in front of us. This cutie looked frightened, tense and very unsteady in the back of that truck. With every little bump in the road and bounce of the truck, the poor goat looked like it would topple over the side. I couldn't help but think that the accident would be imminent and the poor goat would end up under the wheels of a passing car. The goat looked tied and appeared to be blocked in by a bale of hay, but as you can see from the photos, there were no other safety features (like a rail) to prevent the goat from falling off the truck. :(
Above: The beautiful bride-to-be in a vineyard.

Above: At our last vineyard stop, I spotted this amazing tree with beautifully angled and twisted branches. The leaves seemed to glow with the sun shining through, and when I looked up, the branches looked like they were preparing for an intimate embrace.

So Early!

2007-05-03T14:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, finally, proof that I am not a liar. The first episode we shot for Uncommon Threads is airing at 7am on HGTV PT/ET. I hope we don't look dorky on TV, but I don't know if that many people will see it anyway, since it's airing awfully early.

:: sigh ::

2007-05-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

Well, Magknits never published an April issue, and as I said before, waiting sucks. So now it's May. The May issue is up, but my pattern is not in it. I did not get an email about why April was never published, nor did I get one about why my pattern is not in the May issue either. I sent an email to the Magknits editor again this morning and am waiting for a reply. If they're going to publish it, I wish they'd do it already or let me know their intentions, instead of letting me hang. I very much appreciate courtesy emails. If they've changed their mind about publishing it, I just want to know so that I can either self-publish or submit it elsewhere.

I'm starting to wonder if people think I'm a liar. I submitted the pattern to Magknits in November 2006 and still have nothing to show for it. In September 2006, my friends and I taped 2 episodes of Uncommon Threads, which started airing in March, but they stopped the airing schedule midway. I don't know when they will resume, but our episodes belong in the unaired batch. Knitty Gritty probably won't air for some time either (but that's not too big, since I was only a knitster). Well, at least I have this.

You do the Math!

2007-04-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

Aside from spinning, I've been working on Aubrey's Wedding Sweatshop as her steward. Literally. She's getting married in June at a nature preserve where there are park benches she cannot move. So, we're covering it up with table cloths and custom sewn bench cushions. How many you wonder? A LOT!

29 picnic tables @ 7 feet long each
58 bench seats (2 benches per table)
58 box style bench cushions
580 cut pieces of fabric (58 tops + 58 bottoms + 116 long sides + 116 short sides + 232 straps)
116 foam inserts to cut (2 one inch inserts per seat cushion)
Over 70 yards of fabric = 1000 lbs (well, it felt like it!)
4 sewing machines
1 bloody finger

We "opened" this sweatshop this past Saturday, spending 5 hours cutting and sewing. The good news is that we've managed to cut about 3/4 of what we need, and we started sewing some of the pieces together. The bad news is that we still have more to do, and I think I saw blue and white fiber fuzz when I blew my nose. The bloody finger belonged to JayJay, who somehow stabbed herself as she cut one of the 580 pieces. Luckily, there weren't any other injuries.

The 5 sweatshop workers that showed up are all of the bride-owner's knitting friends, and I was the only bridesmaid. I bet Aubrey now knows who her truly dedicated friends are now! ;)

"A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably."
~ William Penn

Spinning Fever

2007-04-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

In a post on the Dye-No-Mite Swap blog, I talked about my suckiness in dyeing roving. The color was definitely not what I wanted and the fibers got a little matted and felted (not too bad though), so it was definitely not giftable. I borrowed Aubrey's wheel for my first spinning group meeting last Monday and started spinning my semi-matted and salmon-y roving.

It was a little hard to spin at first, since I didn't try to re-comb the fibers and it was my 2nd attempt at using a spinning wheel, but I was happy with the overall results (i.e., no huge slubs). The next evening, I finished spinning the rest of the bad-dye-job roving, including another half that had some blues and some of the same salmon-y colors. After a quick call to Zona about plying, here's what I ended up with:
Although the colors are not what I wanted or what I would actually wear myself (it's the wrong shade of orange for Asian skin!), I think I did okay. I'll have to knit something with it for Aubrey, since she's letting me keep her wheel for a couple of months. I'm getting this idiotic joy from the fact that my busy bride-friend has no time for extra crafty things, because selfishly, I am benefitting from her bustling wedding-planning schedule. ;)

Since I don't have my own wheel, I am making the most of my borrowed one. Last night, I started to spin the Australian Merino that Karrie dyed for me in a swap. This one is soooo much easier to spin, since the fibers seem a little longer and it's... *ack-hem*... not matted. Karrie sent me a large amount of roving, so this is only about half of it.

A close-up:

Sneaky , Sneaky

2007-04-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

Before she and her hubby left for San Diego and the Grand Canyon, Linh gave me a super fantastic birthday present. It's a crafting apron! It's made in a really soft and sturdy cotton twill fabric in a earthy color. The trims and straps are also made from the same twill fabric in lovely earthen shades that reminds me of the Grand Canyon. Look at all the cool pockets for all the crafty tools. I will definitely have to wear this when I sew. I am always misplacing and losing my seam rippers and measuring tape under piles of fabric.

So, as I was trying to get a close-up shot of the pockets with my camera, I noticed a little square outline in one of the pockets...My sneaky girl hid some birthday money in one the pockets! Thanks Linh - You really didn't have to! I loved having you and Nick as my houseguests! I bet she hid it knowing that I would not take it, especially since they already gave us a nice purple clematis and bougainvilela to grace our front door as a lovely thank you gift. Sneaky girl. Thanks, Linh. You know that you are always welcome at my house. I miss you already. :)

Dalai Llama

2007-04-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, that's not his name. His name is Cinnamon, and he's a bonafide camera hog. Cinnamon (right) is one of several llamas that Aubrey's future mother-in-law has on her property. The news on the grapevine is that Cinnamon and all his friends are due for a haircut soon. You know what that means, right? Llama fleece and fiber to play with and spin!! Lots of fiber! The other llamas are pretty friendly as well, or so they seem. I was a little wary of making any sudden movements, because getting spat on by a llama is certainly not on my to-do list.

This past Thursday, hubby and I went to a Galaxy game with JayJay and her spouse, and my friend Linh and her spouse. It was in the middle of a sudden cold windstorm, only we were all too stupid to bring a jacket. If it weren't for all the freebie t-shirts, we would've frozen. It was a nasty windstorm that knocked out the power in many areas. We really could've used a llama fleece for warmth! While the boys enjoyed the game, the girls without the sexy David Beckham to oogle, turned our attention to knitting -- well, as best as we could with our frozen fingers. JayJay and I both worked on baby hats, and Linh (right) worked to finish her very first knitting project, also a baby hat.

Halfway through her visit Linh decided that she wanted to learn, so of course, I was more than happy to oblige. She wants to be able to knit clothing and accessories for her future children. She's a pro already-- here stitches are all pretty even and she really only dropped a 3-4 times. Not bad for a first time, especially working on dpns!! And as you can see to the left, Linh resorted to wearing her unfinished baby hat due the sharp winds. Good thing wool is stretchy!

As far as my own recent crafty endeavors, this past week, I made 3 baby hats for my inventory stockpile for future craft fairs. I'm otherwise stuck in between knitting WIPs. I ran out of one of the yarns for my entrelac stole, so I can only admire it in its unfinished state for now. I'm also working on a lace stole for a friend, and am attempting to write my first lace panel design. We'll see how that goes -- it doesn't seem very promising at this time. If I am itching to knit, I guess I could always try to tackle the many old UFOs....nah!

In shop activity, I also recently listed these:

Left: Reversible fabric headband featuring different Asian prints on either side. Right: Fabric -covered buttons

Left: Fabric covered keychain with a genuine Indonesian batik fabric. Right: A fully lined and stabilized wristlet clutch with 2 interior pockets.

Left: Another Liana kit in Hot, Hot, Hot! colorway. Right: A Dye-No-Mite Surprise Yarn pack. I'm offering people a handpainted yarn package deal If you buy, what you get will definitely be at least 25% less than buying it separately. Details here.

Waiting Sucks

2007-04-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

I hate waiting, don't you? I've already waited since November! So then I waited for February, and when the pattern didn't show up then, I waited for March. The March issue didn't go live until the 4th, if I recall correctly, and it didn't have my pattern in it. I was wondering what happened to my pattern, so I emailed Magknits editor Kerrie Allman, who apologized for forgetting to notify me, but that they were thinking about putting my pattern in the April issue. It's already April 11, and the April issue still isn't up! I wonder what's going on with the publication? I checked Kerrie's blog, and certainly seems that she's been swamped with a new baby, a family passing and new yarn line for her shop, but I didn't see any mention or announcement about Magknits or the reason for the delay in releasing the April issue. If they do end up publishing an April issue, and with my pattern in it, it would be such a lovely birthday present. Boooo, I hate waiting.

Seeing Red

2007-04-09T17:20:00.000-07:00

There is a good reason why red is a symbol of love, luck and prosperity in most Asian cultures. Red is just beautiful, inspiring, stimulating and bold. I was showered with red this week.

After a gluttonous food outing with my visiting friends a couple days ago, I was greeted by a package sitting at my door. It was from my SP10 pal. I opened it and saw oodles of lovely red everywhere. I opened the box up and this is what I found:
Ok, there were also a box of cute ladybug milk chocolates and a bar of Green & Black's Organic Dark Chocolate. I gave hubby the milk chocolates and selfishly ate the dark chocolate. I love organic dark chocolate. Yes, they were gobbled up and didn't survive long enough for the photo.
The yarn in the package is a silk/mohair by Alchemy in the loveliest shade of red and is so buttery soft. The book is The Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting. There are some beautiful projects in it, including a much better rose circle shawl than the one in A Gathering of Lace. (previous post) I'll have to take extra time to review and post from the book later. My package also included a journal, cloisonné bead stitch markers that my SP made, a pair of US 8 Lantern Moon needles, a Hello Kitty pez and a handmade necklace that is a domino on one side,

and a bird on the other side:

A bad close-up photo of the red cloisonné bead stitch markers.

I hope the Year of the Pig continues to be good.

Surprise Visitor

2007-04-03T23:57:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I received a call from my friend Linh at the same time I was about to pick up the phone to let her know that I'd be sending her the baby booties she commissioned me to make as a gift for her pregnant sister-in-law. Her response? "Don't bother sending them...I'll pick them up in a few days." Huh? She's in the Windy City! As it turns out, she and her hubby decided to take a month-long road trip, with southern California as their primary destination. I love it when my good friends come for a visit.

Today, Linh and I dragged her hubby with us to a massive fabric store. Then I helped Linh, who has no sewing skills, execute a prototype for dressing a vase for a wedding she's doing. There was lots of hammering and grommets too. Tomorrow, I will be "forcing" them to go to my knitting group with me for a little while so that we can get the yummy gelato made daily at a local cafe. Yum! Also, Linh will be offering her expertise and creativity to assist Aubrey in figuring out wedding florals for Aubrey's pending nuptials.

In crafty news, I picked up my entrelac scarf/wrap again and am making steady progress (prev. post). I'll have to remember to take a progress photo and post. I'm also nearly done with a swatch of the sunspots lace in Barbara Walker's 3rd Treasury for the Walker Treasury Project (WTP). The WTP is such a great idea, so I volunteered to do 4 pattern swatches for the WTP, but I haven't even finished the first one. Kind of sad, isn't it? In my defense (not a real defense, more like carelessness), I've had to undo many many rows as I worked the swatch. It's definitely not something you can knit mindlessly. Well, volunteers get 3 months to finish their swatches anyway, so I have 2 more months to complete all the swatches. I also donated some stuff for the WTP contest. So if you are thinking about signing up to do some swatches, you should do it this month!

Today, I sold a couple of items, but it seems that my customers were having problems with PayPal. Weird. So, technically, I haven't gotten paid yet. I also finally just got around to posting these fabric buttons in the shop. The purple flower one is from a genuine cotton batik I bought in Indonesia. The yellow flower one is from an Asian print fabric. I will be posting some needle cases later this week as well.

Project: Baby T-strap booties
Pattern: A modified mary jane
Yarn: Valley Yarns, Goshen in Ballet Pink; 48% Peruvian Cotton/46% Modal/6% Silk; 92yds/50g
Needles: US #6
Notions: 4 pretty little buttons.

Yarn Storage Solutions & Hiding Places

2007-03-29T01:57:00.000-07:00

So, after reading JayJay's post and hearing about her yarn storage dilemma at ATS today, her problem inspired me to give y'all some of my storage ideas. ;-) Many of these storage solutions could also be good ideas for hiding places, in case your significant other ("SO") is keeping a keen eye on your fiber spending:

Open a seam in your futon or couch cushion where it's not really noticeable. Remove some of the foam and/or stuffing. Remove the evidence immediately if this will be your hiding place. Then re-stuff the cushion with your yarn.
The above will work for throw pillows too.
If your storage totes are full, and you have stacked them to the ceiling and there's no more floor space, consider hanging your yarn on the wall -- instant wall art and storage. This is especially good if you live in chilly places know for the teeny tiny apartments, like NYC or San Francisco. The yarn on the walls also act as a insulator and can help warm your apartment, thus saving you some $ on heat. Just switch to cottons and other summer friendly fibers was the weather warms.
You can enhance your bohemian and artsy decor by hanging hanks of colorful yarn over the doorway, lik those beaded curtains.
Stuff balls of yarn into the pockets of coats and jackets hanging in your closet if your closet is already pretty much crammed to the brim.
Toss some of the socks in your sock drawer. You don't need that many. Your SO probably won't even think to look in your sock drawer. Also, you know how your laundry machine eats socks, leaving you with mismatched singles? Well, stuff yarn in the singles. Your SO will just think that you rolled up your socks. But this will only work for small balls, like Debbie Bliss.
If you have more than one bathroom, declare one off limits and use the tub to store your yarn.
You can put yarn in a plastic bag in your hamper. This works well as a hiding place, especially if you're the person who does the laundry. Or, insist that you and your SO have separate hampers. You'll just have to do laundry more often.
Knit or crochet yourself a net. Tack the corners to your ceiling and store your yarn there. This is a quick and neck-saving solution if you need to paint your ceiling anyway to cover some unsightly water stain or to make your popcorn ceiling more attractive. Instant ceiling art.
String together all your balls of yarn, like a garland. Hang on your mantle or around the entire perimeter of your room. It'll look really festive, and like you're always having a party.
Stop buying bulk toilet paper from Costco. The storage space you save will make room for more yarn.
Downsize your pantry. Canned foods have high sodium content, taste tinny and have preservatives in there. Fresh is always better anyway. Besides, the local farmer's marker always needs your support. (Please, I hope you don't have those nasty vienna sausages in a can!) Anyway, yarn can go in the pantry.
You know that bread machine you never use? Isn't there a big cavity in it where the bread is suppose to go? Better yet, sell it and buy a small tub and more yarn, then store it where the bread machine used to go!
Use the suitcases stilling idly in the garage, waiting for you to fill them up for a vacation. I'm sure you have more than one. You probably just need to reserve the small one for your business trips. Heck, stuff them all. Don't wait until you plan to take a trip to stuff them.

I think that's enough for now. It is afterall, about 3 a.m., and this insomniac has got to try and go to bed.

The Kindness of Strangers

2007-03-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

This is amazing. I started this blog because it was a vehicle for me to document and show off my stuff, since I'm away from a lot of my friends. I did not expect or hope for much from the blogging, except maybe that I would get a few visitors.

Since I've started, I have "met" many nice, creative and interesting people and have had many visitors. A couple of weeks ago, I "met" Julie, who emailed me to thank me for my yarn swift how-to. Her friend made her one from my instructions, saving her from ever having to wind her yarns on a chair back again. Her thoughtful thank you note was already more than enough. It's always nice knowing that people are enjoying the stuff I put out there on the www, whether they post a blog comment, or talk about it in forums or in their own blogs.

Anyway, Julie went above and beyond and sent me some lovely gifts:

A Snow Patrol snow globe! Isn't that wild? I would never have thought that a rock band would have snow globes, but then when you think of the name of the band, it makes sense!

Julie also sent me a tour book. Now I actually have decent pictures to remember the concert.

Again, THANK YOU JULIE. *hugs*

Whew! Yarn Swift Instructions Complete!

2007-03-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

After a lot of hard work, I just finished updating my homemade yarn swift plans, complete with photos and detailed instructions for each step. Here's the link to the swift pattern/plan. Because I've been staring at this for a while, I may have missed some typos/errors. If you see any, please let me know! For those of you who've been waiting for this, especially those of you who emailed me for the insturctions, thanks for being patient! Enjoy!

Swag

2007-03-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

Here's what I just got from my swapper in the Cool Crafty Chic Swap (see photo at right.) My swapper is Karrie of Girl on the Rocks. She spoiled me with some merino roving she painted with such lovely shades of blue, indigo and violet, some of her own button creations, a hand-woven pouch and some awesome vintage magazines that I have never seen before! Thanks Karrie!

I spent the weekend making a portable needle roll for my swapee in Italy. Since she lives in Italy, I went ahead and sent her what I had until I had time to make something and so, she'll also be getting this from me:

Here's what it looks like without all the stuff on it, and with it buttoned up:

And finally, I got around to taking some photos of some cashmere yarn that I dyed about 2 months ago for projects commissioned by my friends/family. This one will end up being a scarf or wrap for my friend Pamila:

And this will end up being a rectangular shawl for my cousin Amber (which will take me a while to get to and finish):

These are yarns that I painted/dyed a while back but never got around to processing. I plan to post them on my shop. Ugh, I still have lots more to process and photograph:

Clockwise: "Minty," Kid mohair; "Wildflowers," Merino wool; "Jewels," 60%Cashmere/Merino; "Purple Haze," 40%Angora/40%Merino/20%Rayon

Amazon Gift Orders & Secret Swaps

2007-03-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

I wanted to send my secret pal a gift from Amazon, but I started wondering if my secret spy identity would be leaked by Amazon via the billing name/address on the packing slip. Last night, I called Aubrey and Zona to ask them, but neither of them knew. So, I decided to email Amazon, per Zona's request. I know that many of the visitors of my blog are swappers, so here's their response, FYI:

"We do include a packing slip with gift orders, so the recipient can verify that the correct item was received. For items fulfilled by Amazon.com and designated as gifts during the checkout process, the packing slip will not list any prices. It will be enclosed in an envelope that has "Don't Ruin Your Surprise!" printed on it in large letters.

When you mark your order as a gift, you will be prompted to enter a billing address. This will not result in a bill being sent either to you or the recipient, but your name and address will appear on the packing slip so that the recipient will know who sent the gift."

So, if you want to keep your anonymity, don't ship directly from Amazon, even if you select the gift option. You'll have to resend.

Swap Happy

2007-03-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

Secret Pal 10
SecretPal 10 officially started when the hostesses assigned pals last night. Boy, was I in for a surprise when I got home! Not only did I get a very nice "hello" from my secret pal, she sent me a gift certificate from Adagio Teas! I'm sure I'm the first to get something in this SP! I ordered 3 different Japanese green teas, including genmai cha, which is similar to the one I got in SF (blogged here), except the one from SF is organic and doesn't have popcorn in it. I can't wait until it arrives. Thanks secret pal!

Dye-No-Mite!

I'm really looking forward to this one. There is a decent number of people currently signed up for my 1st foray into swap-hosting and organizing. Yay! (I really didn't expect hoards of people to sign up for a brand-new swap they've never heard about, unlike the 600+ for SP10.) I hope we get a few more people before the sign-ups close on March 21. I really wasn't sure where to advertise Dye-No-Mite!, except to put it in my signature block on Craftster. I did try to contact a moderator to see if I can advertise the swap, but the mod never replied. However, I did post (and got per permission to) on Knitty's forum. Then a couple of days ago, I had the idea of posting Dye-No-Mite! on swap-bot, but I'm asking people to sign up outside of swap-bot because I'm afraid that swap-bot might reveal the secret pal before the pal is ready to do it themselves, and I want to try to match people up by commonalities/ interests, if possible. We'll see how that turns out.

Swap-bot

I recently completed 2 swaps on swap-bot, a ribbon swap and the Crafty Chic Swap. I haven't received anything from my pal in the latter swap, but I sent my package out to my assigned pal, who lives in Italy. This swap required that we include many small things, including something vintage and something knitting and craft related. My package included 2 vintage napkins, some origami paper, chocolate, Japanese gum, beads I made, and I dyed some yarn in colors that she said she liked. I also threw in a couple of extra little things, including my buttons, some vintage beads and 3 tiny origami cranes.

Chunky and Lace

2007-03-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

I just ordered and received Twinkle's Big City Knits by Wenlan Chia (and fellow Taiwanese) and A Gathering of Lace by Meg Swansen. They are a bit of a juxtaposition of one another, since Twinkle is based on Chunky yarns, and we all know that lace yarns are thin and delicate.

Both books are well-put together, feature fantastic photos, and some really nice projects. Of course, with every book, there are certain projects that shine, while there are those ones you know you would never ever make, much less wear if someone bought them for you. The latter is the problem with a lot of books for me, so I don't buy them. I mean, there are lots of gorgeous and wonderful knitting books, but as a frugal and discerning shopper, I try to buy books if they will increase my skill set and/or if I like or feel inspired by at least 50% of the patterns in the book.

In my opinion, these are one of the two most beautiful projects in A Gathering of Lace:

left: A Rose is a Rose Shawl. Isn't it amazing? The only thing I don't like is the "A Rose is a Rose" around the circumference of the shawl. It takes away from the beauty of the shawl and cheapens it a bit, in my opinion. I think that the shawl would be so much more elegant if some leafy (or anything else!) lace pattern replaced the lettering. right: Frost Flowers & Leaves Shawl. I think this is the prettiest shawl in the book and would consider making this for someone special, or for myself.

From Twinkle's Big City Knits:

left: Balthazar Vest. Once I turn some of my WIPs to FOs, I think I want to make is very cute, and most importantly, not boxy vest. I figure, by the time I square away my long list of UFOs and WIPs, it'll be fall/winter, and perfect time for me to work on this. right: Incredible Skirt. Now, this has a truly fitting name. I love the colors Wenlan chose for this, and the way the colors are worked in. The only thing is, I don't think I would every wear or make a knitted skirt. I envision a cape, shawl, sweater or purse using this as inspiration.

Yarn Swift Instruction Requests

2007-03-10T23:29:00.000-08:00

Wow. I never expected so many emails in such a short time! A few months ago, I disabled the link to my instructions on how to make your own yarn swift for under $10-15, but not the uploaded file, so nothing happened. I really didn't expect anything to happen because people could still access the file through a saved link or an internet search. However, about a week and a half ago, I deleted the uploaded pdf file from the server. Wow. In this short time, I have received emails from several people requesting the swift instructions, stating that they could no longer find or access the link.

If you are looking for the instructions, I am revising the instructions and will be reposting in the patterns section of this blog. I should have it back up soon, so check back in a couple of weeks. Sorry for any inconveniences.

From my infrequent traffic checks, I know that many people come to this blog from an internet search on "how to make yarn swift" or through a link from other bloggers. I also know that in the past, my instructions were recommended on Knitter's Review and other forums. Thanks for all those that recommended and linked the instructions. :) Hmmm...I should check who's visiting and linking to this blog more often.

Snow Patrol

2007-03-06T14:25:00.000-08:00

I had fallen in love with Snow Patrol a couple years ago when I heard Run from Final Straw. Subsequently, I, who rarely actually go out and buy new CDs since I'm stuck in my old love of 80s music, went out and got Final Straw and Songs for Polar Bears. Because I really like Gary Lightbody's style, I also got Reindeer Section, which was one of his side projects. And even though my poor Hubby has to compete with knitting, yarn, Gary, and my other hobbies, he ordered Eyes Open for me when it released. Furthermore, when he realized how disappointed I was when I missed them at their gig at the Wiltern last September, hubby got us concert tickets for this tour.
So, this past Friday, hubby and I went to the concert at the Gibson Amphitheater. Of course, I brought my knitting and knitted through the drive up and through the opening acts Silversun Pickups and OKGO. OKGO was okay -- I thought they'd be more fun and interesting, given their creative videos and high jinks at the Grammys.

Left: Gary Lightbody and Nathan Connolly (I think). Right: Gary

The band did not disappoint and gave a wonderful performance to a packed theater. The Gibson is many times larger that the Wiltern. I supposed, that the band's success and exposure on shows like Grey's Anatomy, and ER and movies The Last Kiss did not hurt their ticket sales at all! Hubby says they have a song on some video game too.

A wide variety of people and age range attended the concert. Lots of gay couples too. In fact, while I was in the long line to get my martini fix, there was a group of super fun gay men behind me having a grand ol' time. One of them told me he loved me and my name, and kept hugging me. Aww...they love me. People like that make concerts and the world more fun and colorful. The only bummer to the concert was this girl who sat in the row in front of us, a little to my left. There was now way I could *not* see her, since she was in front and definitely part of my peripheral view. The girl was gyrating to her own rhythm and shaking her ass in her bf's face. Now, I'm all about people expressing themselves and having a good time, but her movements did not go with the music and it was a little distracting since everyone else in my field of vision was moving in similar rhythm to the music. Her gyrations seemed more like she was trying to dance along to some sexy and fast beat Beyonce song in the privacy of one's budoir. I bet if the gay guys behind me saw that, they'd have more than something to say.

If I recall correctly, I took the two pictures above during Run.

Crafty Buttons

2007-03-03T01:10:00.000-08:00

My new buttons! I posted them on my etsy shop before I left for Stitches West.

All are 1.5" in diameter and have a mylar coating. The ones in Sheet B are miniature (real) patterns on a button. Thanks to Zona, for giving me the idea to do this. These are the same buttons I gave those cute old ladies at Stitches. I have many more ideas for crafty buttons and other button in general, but I figure I should keep the focus small in limited for the time being, unless someone orders or commissions a custom design.

Catty

2007-03-01T12:15:00.000-08:00

My sister had requested some fitted fingerless gauntlet gloves with claws sometime ago with a matching kitty hat like the one in Stitch n' Bitch. After being rejected by Knitty, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to try a submission with another site or publication. I've now decided that I'll just post the pattern here. I'm currently working on a new patterns page for this blog, so Catty will be up soon. In the meantime, here are some previews:

My friend Ann modeling for me for the Knitty submission.

My sister is exuding her inner cat above.
Pattern: Catty
Yarn: 2 skeins of Manos del Uruguay
Notes: For the elbow length gloves, you'll need 1 skein plus a small amount from a 2nd skein.

Pattern: Kittyville hat from Debbie Stoller's Stitch n' Bitch book
Yarn: 1 skein of Manos del Uruguay
Notes: I modified the hat to account for the larger gauge of the Manos, but I still cast on too many stitches for my sister's smaller head. Apparently, I have a large head.

Lupita, my sister's cat that likes to groom people's head and her bf's beard. gross!

Stitches West: Sensory Overload

2007-03-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

The minute I walked in, I got a bit befuddled from the the crowd, and from the abundance of colorful stuff!

Saturday morning started out rather quiet and mellow. Aubrey and I went to Rainbow Grocery with my sister, where we bought an assortment organic and wild mushrooms to cook for brunch and one of the best green teas I've ever had. Because the tea was priced at $59/lb. (organic green tea with organic toasted rice), Aubrey and I each got a measley bit, but the tea is so earthy, rich, and definitely worth the price. I love Rainbow and wish there were more Rainbows, especially where I live!

After lunch, not only did Christina come to pick us up , she also brought some knitting books for us to peruse during the 45-60 min drive. How thoughtful! Christina also gave me some nice vintage crafty stuff (see photos at right). Once we got there, we were so disappointed that photography was prohibited. We thought about sneaking photos, but that would've been difficult.

There were many many many booths from all over the country, of course there was good representation from shops in the SF Bay Area. My favorite booths were the cashmere and alpaca vendors. I molested a lot of those yarns. There was also an Alaskan vendor specializing in qiviut. At $70 a tiny tiny ball (1 oz, approx. 210 yds), this is definitely for the bold and undaunted, and not for the faint of heart. Even though I have confidence in my knitting abilities, I don't think I'm worthy enough to knit with qiviut yet, even if I win the lotto and can manage to cough up the dough. Imagine, you'd need about 20 or more balls for a sweater!

Since Saturday was a dizzying blur, Aubrey and I headed back to Stitches on Sunday. We talked to many nice and friendly people at the booths, including the owner-family of SWTC, and an amazing artist specializing in traditional Japanese painting and dyeing techniques. I also had several people stop me to comment on my Laced scarf, including a group of 3 sweet elderly ladies. They were so adorable I decided to give them each my Laced scarf pattern on a button. I hope they have magnifying glasses!

Seemingly, there is a trend among ladies over 50 at Stitches: shockingly bright hair. We saw a woman who looked like Violet from Willy Wonka, except she was a grape from head to toe. Yes, she had bright purple hair to match her purple sweatsuit. Then there was a woman with hot hot neon pink hair and another with neon teal hair. I didn't spot any younger persons with brightly colored hair. Apparently, like all the folks under 50, Aubrey and I just are uncool and did not stay ahead of this neon hair trend. This might be something novel to do when I'm 50.

Here are my purchases:

Aubrey and I collectively bought the spinning fibers above for Renata, fearless leader of our knitting group. From L-R: Hand-painted merino roving, Cotton Cloud roving, hand-painted silk hankie.

Left: A bag of 80/20 Alpaca/Silk from Webs and a bag of cotton roving I want to try to paint. Right: One of the booths had an already decently-priced Misti Alpaca Bulky on 30% off.

Left: from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I love the strand of brown yarn plied into the yarn. Right: some vintage patterns Aubrey and I purchased. We got the bottom two for the funny 80s kitsch factor.

Secret Pal 10 Questionnaire

2007-02-27T09:56:00.000-08:00

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
I love natural fibers and am an admitted yarn snob. I refuse to work with acrylic, nylon, novelty and other synthetic fibers. I don't even use acrylic yarn to make charity knits, even if it has a 20% wool blend.

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
Needle rolls I made.

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider your skill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced? Taught myself from a crappy book 3 years ago. Am intermediate.

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list? Amazon

5. What's your favorite scent? Lavender

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy? Yes! Dark chocolate is the best! I also like Jelly Bean Sours and fruity candy (no banana or pineapple).

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin? I am slowly fixing up my house by myself (hubby doesn't like or do DIY). I dabble in many crafty things, but lately it's knitting, sewing and a little beading (stitch markers!). I've been borrowing a friend's wheel to practice spinning.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if your buddy wants to make you a CD). I listen to a variety of stuff. I love 80s alternative/new wave music. Also like Cowboy Junkies, Norah Jones, Manu Chao. Don't know the names of a lot of new stuff, but I like Snow Patrol, Radiohead. Don't listen to rap. Don't like country at all.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand? Red, earth tones, blues. Don't like pink.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets? Married, 3 felines (one is supersized at 23 lbs; one is an average 11.5 lbs but acts like a dog), no human children

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos? scarves

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit? Don't have one.

13. What are you knitting right now? lace shawl, entrelac wrap, scarf, baby booties, hat...and lots of other UFOs

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts? yes

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic? Both straights and circulars have their own purpose. Bamboos, birch and Addis are my favorite needles.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift? I have 2 homemade swifts and a store bought ball winder.

17. How old is your oldest UFO? 3 years

18. What is your favorite holiday? Don't really celebrate any holidays. Used to like Chinese New Year, but now that I'm older and married, I don't get red envelopes and money anymore.

19. Is there anything that you collect? Does yarn and knitting tools count? Actually, I like antique and vintage crafty things. I have antique wooden shuttles and a vintage Sears sewing kit.

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have? Don't have subscriptions to any crafty zines, except Readymade.

21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn? Shaping when working with lace patterns.

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements? No.

23. When is your birthday? April 18

Stitches West, Here We Come!

2007-02-22T10:36:00.000-08:00

Aubrey and I will be trekking up to SF this weekend for Stitches West. Woohoo! We'll be crashing on the floor of my sister's tiny apartment in SF, then I'll be stealing her car so that we can go down to Santa Clara. I used to live in Santa Clara, so hopefully, the ways of the road will come back to me and I won't get discombobulated and lost. Part of our itinerary includes checking out Craft Gym and meeting up with my friend Christina, who will be going to the Stitches Market with us. And if we have time, maybe revisit some of the SF LYSs.

Now what will I pack? Nah, clothes aren't that important...for a knitting weekend, I think I need LOTs of room to bring back yarn and other goodies that might acquire. I will also need to bring some WIPs. I think I will bring my latest new WIP, an entrelac scarf/wrap made of handspun yarn by Zona and chocolate and rust colored baby alpaca. I think I will bring one of my handpainted yarns for Christina. I should also make some buttons, in case I find people who want to buy some. I've come up with some cute and original button designs. I just need to list and photograph them.

Needle Organization

2007-02-21T12:47:00.000-08:00

As I get more involved in this "little" hobby of mine, I have discovered that my needle supplies need better and more efficient organization. When I first started knitting, I made this needle roll below, which was more than suffice and fit all my stuff rather well. It was made of various remants I had from my curtains.

Then when I joined my knitting group, I needed something portable, so I made this green one out of some sari fabric (bought on ebay) and some batik (bought in Indonesia). The white thing in the picture is velcro, so that I can keep little things like cable needles safe, but also be able to take the pouch out.

But as my "little" hobby grew, my needles started falling out of my larger needle roll and my travel one started becoming overflow storage. I also had a problem of always needing to search and search for the right sized needles. Whenever I tried to look for needles, everything would get caught in the circulars and selecting needles was like playing your luck in the lottery. Also, I had to sprawl out to do this so my needle roll took up prime real estate on my sewing tables. I needed something better. The first thing I did to solve that problem was to make a holder for my circulars. This one below is a prototype, but the idea is to hang it on a wall or hanger with the grommets. I need to make a better one.

Well adding the circular needle case to my organization still did not help much, as you can see below. All this obviously does not include all the needles on the many many UFOs any dedicated knitter has.

So, I decided to make a better needle roll for all my straights and DPNs that could be portable, if needed, and save surface real estate. The orange dotted one was the prototype, but I had made the pockets a little snug for the more commonly used sizes, where you're likely to have duplicates. This prototype now belongs to Aubrey, who desperately needed something to help her organize her needles.

So after making some adjustments, here's the final one. Yay! It has pockets low enough to fit both 5" and 7" dpns, and pockets wide enough to fit extra pairs of same-sized straights. The roll accoommodates a full set of needles sizes 000-19, up to 13" in length. Now, all I have to do is make a pattern out of the specs I used for this so that I can make some to give friends and to put up on my etsy shop. Ooh gotta go shopping for more fun fabrics too. Yay!

Here it is hanging on my craft room wall. The little zippered pouch is detachable.

Dye-No-Mite! swap

2007-02-16T12:38:00.000-08:00

The swap rules have now been finalized. Check it out here. I'm so looking forward to this; I know it will be fabulous!