Post 95-Not Again

I feel like I'm in High School again, and I swore I would never go to a reunion. A couple of people I friended on Ravelry have not friended me back, so I was forced to de-friend them, I felt I had to because it was kinda wierd not hearing from them. Grrrr. Well, you can tell alot about people from the littlest things.
I finished this:

Did a little pumpkin carving:
BEFORE

AFTER

The pumpkin on the left was a free hand design, but I got the design from the one on the right from a crafty website via Reknit. I love the Day of the Dead look, unfortunately the evil squirrels have nibbled away the heart shape in the forhead, agh!
While driving around and doing errands in Chicago I came upon this:

There were about three or four trees in a row that had been wrapped in knitting, I'm thinking about doing that to the trees in front of my house, they are so sad looking and sickly. In true Chicago style, someone posted over the knitting, I'm so glad they didn't take it down.

Now that the Odessa cashmere hat and silk clutch are done, I must gt back to the sweater I was working on, plus Ihave some jewelry to assemble for a local designer. If you thought pictures of Bella in her costume were too cute try taking her to a IG Meetup group were there were 15 IG's in costume.
AWWWWW!

Post 94-Awwww

Bella is going to her first Italian Greyhound Meet-Up group on sunday, and it's a costume party! Like a good Martha Stewart mommie, I made her costume. The hat I made several years ago for Mona and that was my inspiration. It's amazing what you can do with felt.
Awwwwwww....


Nothing on the knitting front, smelly sweater, X-mas stockings and baby Irish sweater were all mended for customers and the Halloweenie costume took all my creative eneregy today.
Toodles.

Post 93-A-Mazing!

Yea yea, I know it's corny, hehe, pun intended. Saturday I went to a corn maze and yarn crawl with Kate and Katy, uberfun! Pumpkins were bought, cashmere was bought, a good outing for all.
The Llama at the petting Zoo:

The Corn:

The Pumpkins:

Me:

Kate and Katy:

The Cashmere:


On the way home we took the "express" lane in a construction zone and got stuck for an hour or so when there was a car accident and no one could pass, see, that's why you bring your knitting, I got lots done.

On sunday I went to Quiltology to get the lining for the little clutch purse I was making from the Tili Tomas I bought. I was a bad girl friday, after a tough day I needed alittle retail therapy. You know how some days when you wake up and you really REALLY need a cup of coffee, so much you can feel it deep down, that's how I felt, I really REALLY needed some retail therapy, off to Nina's for that Tili Tomas I just had to have.
I made this:



I finished making a tray of stitch markers and drove over to Karen at Knit1 to drop them off.
I gave her this:

The picture's not the best but it's a tray of a variety of hand made artisan stitch markers, something to fit anyone's budget, hint hint. I must be psychic or something because she was just about to call me with three knitting projects. The first is a set of christmas stockings that were made of somewhat itchy wool, but made in Maine, so yea for that! All I had to do was stitch names at the top. They must have been some kind of kit because each had a bit of yarn, needle and graph of the alphabet, so really it was easy, just a little duplicate stitching an two hours later all were done. The one thing that bothered me was that whoever designed these stockings to be bought and embroidered on, did not make it wide enough to get a name with more than five letters on it, I just barely made it. The next project to be fixed was a little baby sweater that was made in Ireland and was developing some holes, easy to fix, I'll just use the left over white wool yarn from the stockings, it matches perfectly! The third project was the worst, a generic man's sweater from Structure, that some guy really loves and had developed holes in the elbow and wanted them mending, easy to do if I don't suffocate from the fumes of his cologne, ick. I'm doing the best I can on this one, but it's tough and really won't last long, it's falling apart. I guess the guy wants another one handmade, but I said hell no, from his description he sounded like a pain in the ass.
So that's it in a nutshell of what I'm up to. I decided to make Grumperina's Odessa hate out of the cashemere. While Bella was getting pampered at Petsmart I ran over to Joann's to get some beads for the hat. My god, what is happening to the world when there is a line a Joann's at 5 in the evening on a tuesday, I don't get it.

Post 92-Twista Weather

Chicago weather, you're pissing me off. All I ask of you is to gradually turn into autumn, gradually go cold. This whole two days of cold, several days of warm and an occasional hellish day of hot has got my inner seasonal knitter all messed up. Today, once I got outside, was warm, almost hot, I was wearing a thin little cardigan and was starting to overheat. I'm so confused. The knitter in me says start knitting, start hibernating. Tonight we are supposed to have a lovely storm head our way; it's weird when it's hot outside and really REALLY windy, I imagine it's what hell must be like. So if we're lucky, the tornado weather will sweep by us in the night, hopefully not knock done as many trees as last time and bring a nice cold front from the north, Canadian knitters are so lucky!
I made a trip to Joann's for stitch marker materials and snapped this pic:
So I've been flipping through the new Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts issue, yea I'm a sucker and bought it this even after last years issues. I flipped through and didn't recall too many of the patterns, I don't think they recycled as many as last years issue did. I'm in love with the little clutch purse that uses the Tili Tomas Disco Lights yarn! I've been wanting to buy that yarn forever but didn't have a project in mind that only used one skein, now I do. Maybe if I'm lucky this weekend I'll come across a skein during the cornmaze/yarncrawl. At first I wasn't going to buy any of their yarn, they pissed me off, and honestly you can get a beaded silk cheaper from Artyarns anyway, but Artyarns doesn't do a sequined yarn, ugh. I heard that Tili Tomas was claiming to be the originator of the embellished yarn, huh? They can't possible think that they are the first, maybe they can trade mark the process, but not possibly the effect, heck, if I wanted I'm sure with a little patience I could figure out a way to spin my own "embellished" yarn. Oh well, like I said if I come across some I might just pulled into the allure of richly dyed silk and sequins. I'm like a ferret, sparkly things call my name.
Next on my lust list, the hourglass sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I'm in love with this book! How could you not love a sweater with a simple flattering design that comes in your size? Only problem is the shear amount of Noro Cash Iroha that would be consumed. I'm not against investing in this yarn, but I would really like to play with a skein first and see how I like it. I do have a bid on e-bay for a lot of it, it's not quite enough for one sweater, but I think it might be fun to add another color or maybe play with texture and add another yarn. I like a good deal and couldn't pass on a lot of 14 skeins, we'll see how high it goes.
I finally took a pic of my hellish Butterfly sweater made of Noro Silk Garden. I wore it last night when walking the dog, and honestly think it's going have to be frogged, the sleeves are too damn long, the collar sits awkwardly, and I don't think it's me, apparently others have had issues, some sweaters are not meant to be. It could very easily be made into the Karalund or faux Karalund. Who knows what may happen on a dark and cold winters' night...

Post 91-Yarn on the Brain

Fims has been down for the last few days so I am just now getting to blog about the very crazy last week I have had.
I dreamed of yarn and can't be the first person to do that? The dream was from a couple of nights ago and all that I really remember is that a group of my knitting friends and I were on horseback robbing a train (go figure) and as the train was pulling away from us I kept yelling "Grab the Qiviut!". What the? I have no idea where that one came from, but maybe I'm watching a little too many Gunsmoke reruns during the day.
On friday my BFF Nora came into the city and joined Rachael and I for a girls night on on the town. The idea was to go to the opening of the Chicago Coral Reef project at the Cultural Center, have dinner at the Weber Grill and then procede to see the new Elizabeth movie. The Coral Reef show was nice, I got there during the last hour which was nice for me because I wasn't up to shmoozing with people I was trying to avoid. The only thing about the show that got me was the pieces I was specifically asked to make, pieces that were not to be part of the larger combined displays but to be on their own with plaqards describing the way the shape changes with different rate of increases, was not to be found! I'm so bummed. I guess it's up to the curator and at the last moment things change, but I hope that as the show travels around they are used in a classroom setting, or something. Blah.

Wall pieces by a UK designer.



This piece was really with the black sand, it really looks like its underwater.


The red drapping thing is a filler piece that I made last week.


The multicolored orange one on the lower left is my first piece and the one I brought to the first meeting at the Hull House.


My new kickass shoes, which lead me to the next story and the second part of the events from that evening.


So the night of the opening I wore a new pair of shoes that I'm still trying to break in, so smart me brought another pair of shoes along to change into just in case my feet started to hurt. When we were finishing up our meal at Weber Grill and were getting ready to pay, I noticed my wallet was missing, it must have fallen out of my bag when I was changing my shoes. I won't go into the long story about my wallet recovery, but it did involve three calls to Chase, an honest woman who found the wallet, a quick trip to Dunkin Donuts for coffee, a 20 dollar reward and a midnight drive to the far south side to Riverside.
I have my wallet back, all is good and my faith in humanity has been restored.

Saturday was YarnCon. I got there kinda late because I had to go to the bank and have my account released, but with some cash in one hand and a coffee in the other I was off. I picked up the new Knitting America book which I was not expecting to see there with the author (I got it autographed!) It's the perfect book to read next after finishing No Idle Hands. The print job is great, lots of images from amazing archives, and lots of color! The only other thing I picked up was a ball of hand-dyed roving, it was a little pricy but I like support indie crafters. I meet up with some people and did lots of networking, a trip to a corn maze and a little yarn crawl are in the works now. Just tonight I realized that there was an entry fee, oops, I didn't know, from where I parked I entered the building from the back, oops.

My class at the art studio is over, that was a fast five weeks! It was a great class, we had lots of fun, I just wish the older lady in the group had grasped it better, I guess you can't teach desire.

So in the last couple of days I knitted a quick pair of angora baby booties for Karen of Knit1, all made from recycled sweater yarn and have gotten back into spinning. That's it.

Post 90-Crochet

I've been busy donating a littl of my time to helping out with the Chicago Coral Reef Project. I made a series of small hyperbolic models showing different rates of increasing etc. blah blah blah. I can't realy put into words what the project is about, it's just really cool, part art part science.
http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/Events/coralreef2/
The show opening party is this friday so I went in the last two days to help make filler coral.
Red Coral Filler

I met some very interesting people there. One lady worked for a curator at the Museum of Science and Industry the I used to work with at the Saudi place. The Double Stitch twins know the jewelry lady I might be doing some part-time work with.

And then there was this artist from the UK who made complete coral pieces for the show, all were really well put together, there's definately a visual difference between the ones some of the artists arranged and some that were arranged by those who are not artistically trained. This is a good one.

So I can't wait to see the show tomorrow and maybe a small group of the girls and I will go see the new Elizabeth movie.
A doggie picture.

Post 89-High School

Addiction, thy name is Ravelry.
Give me a three day weekend, fridge full of food, endless good shows on PBS, free internet and I became a Ravelry junkie. I figured as long as I brushed my teeth, took showers and kept my clothes clean what harm is there?
My history with computers goes back to gradeschool. When I was a kid in the early 80's I lived in Germany, and my dad being a tech geek and Air Force Officer kept us up to date with the newest technology. I had a computer before any of my friends, certainly for at least 12 years, way into high school. Nowadays kids in high school and college use facebook and myspace, I only have basic accounts on both of those sites just to keep in contact with old friends and some cousins. I never really understood the addiction of it, until now. I get so excited to see something in my mailbox! Occasionaly I'll come across and old friend or someone I know in Ravelry and will add them to my friends, but that's only the half of it. To see that person ACCEPT you back as a friend, well, it makes me feel all giddy, because what if they didn't? do they no longer like me, am I not popular. This is really bad, I shouldn't allow this feature in Ravelry make me feel like I'm in high school again, because I hated it the first time around. The stangest part of all is that just now I have realized that I finally have the keyboard mostly memorized and I can type without looking to much at the keys, aw the simple things. The Ljod sweater from Elsebeth Lavold I just started is well underway, loving it so far, but the dark purple color makes it difficult to knit in public. I tried to knit on it at my SNB group and couldn't get much done, and when I dropped in the Chicknits knitting group on thurday, I had fun meeting new people, but still couldn't knit in the dim of the coffee shop.

Post 88-My First

I sold my first item on Etsy! YEA! Some lucky shopper will be getting this in the mail shortly:

Aren't they cute! Of course these aren't to be used as work horse stitch markers, like the ones you might need for the Clapotis, but as the type of stitchmarker used to show the beginning of the round. I just added some more to my store and I'm really proud of them. For those who are yarnsnobs like me and prefer animal fibers versus synthetics, I designed these:

From left to right: rabbit, sheep, musk-ox, alpaca. Too bad my source didn't have silkworms or cashmere goats.