Ethel was always a little bit different than the other sheep.
Ethel was always a little bit different than the other sheep.
Rilla found a Winky Cherry beginner sewing kit on the shelf—one of those things I’ve had stashed for ages and forgot we owned. I used to feel pangs of guilt over forgotten acquisitions, but they so often seem to turn up at exactly the right moment, such a nice surprise. She’s busily stitching away and I look forward to a menagerie of felt critters in the days ahead. Felt is the nicest thing for a beginner, don’t you think? For both sewing or embroidery. No hemming required, overstitch looks lovely, it’s stiff enough not to need an embroidery hoop (for small pieces, at least), and no matter what you do it always looks cozy and cheerful. I love Felt Wee Folk and Doodle Stitching for ideas.
I had all sorts of little stitchery projects going before Huck was born (a mere four years ago), but I put everything aside when he came along and haven’t returned to it since. (To my chagrin: I still owe a couple of quilt blocks to certain VERY UNDERSTANDING members of my virtual sewing circle, and I never even sent out my own fabric for them to magic into something wonderful. IT’S STILL ON MY LIST OF THINGS TO DO, THOUGH.) (I’m shouting at myself.)
We had planned to go to the zoo today to celebrate Beanie’s 12th (TWELFTH!!!!) birthday, but the rain foiled our plans. Perhaps next week. Among all the other delights of the zoo, I want to give Rilla and Huck a chance to pet a real sheep, feel the lanolin in its wool, for a little sheep-to-yarn rabbit trail I’ve planned for Rilla, who got knitting needles for Christmas. With pink cats on the ends! And how’s this for incentive to pick up my own needles: I was sent a KnitCrate package to review for my subscription-box series at GeekMom—it’s loverly. The two yarns they included are to swoon for. I’ll let you know when that post goes up, probably next week.
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I think the bad taste in my mouth is just about gone after that rejection of my (Olympic) Pretzel Rings art by Zazzle (see last post). Onto other, non- unintentional intellectual property rights infringey pursuits! (How's that for a headache - let's just say, onto fresh art and other creative stuff.)
The laptop of my infinite sadness continues to remain broken which wrecks a certain special kind of havoc with my gray cells. To distract myself, I plunge headlong into the silliest news of the week. Let’s see if there’s anything here to console a battered Bird brain (something tells me that didn’t come out sounding quite right…).
“Fox Animation acquires the feature film rights to the kid’s book The Hero’s Guide to Saving your Kingdom, per THR. A fairy tale mashup by first-time author by Christopher Healy and featuring illustrations by Todd Harris, revolves around the four princes from Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. Chernin Entertainment (Rise of Planet of the Apes) is set to produce the movie. Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins Children’s Books release The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom (432 pages) today.”
If y’all haven’t read The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your King
You may remember this sweater and its issues. I started knitting it 5 years (!) ago in what I thought was size 4T for my then-2-year-old daughter. When I ran into problems with gauge, it went on the shelf until last fall, when Little Miss found it and begged me to finish it for her.
Well, I finished it. Only, as you see, it fits me rather than my daughter. Guess the sizing was off even more than I thought!
It’s the first sweater I’ve ever knitted, and even with the sizing craziness and various other flaws, I’m still pretty proud of it.
My daughter has been a really good sport about it. She knows it’s hers as soon as she grows into it.
I like the back the best:
This sweater pattern (free on knitty.com) actually does come in an adult size version, but I’m glad I didn’t start with that, since I don’t think a husband-sized version would get used very often. I don’t fault the pattern, just my understanding of gauge.
In other news, I’m combing through my photos from Spain to share with you soon, and next week I’m participating in Meg from elsiemarley‘s Kids Clothing Week Challenge, which is like a big online sewing-for-kids party.
I haven’t been feeling very inspired about cooking lately (though I did have some awesome food in Spain which I’ll tell you about), so let me know if you’ve tried any great vegetable recipes lately. It’s just the beginning of white asparagus/ strawberry season here in Germany, so hopefully that will inspire me.
Also, slogging away at revisions on my novel manuscript. Off to go slogging.
By Amelia M.L. Montes
Reporting from two places this week: San Antonio, Tejas and Lincoln, Nebraska. This past week-- in San Antonio, Tejas, I was very lucky to spend a late afternoon/evening in Chicana writer Dr. Norma Cantu’s graduate seminar at the University of Texas, San Antonio (UTSA). What an animated, smart, passionate group of graduate students. Orale! We were all quite involved with the discussion on Cherrie Moraga’s new book, A Chicana Codex of Changing Consciousness.
While various ideas and perspectives were expressed, my eyes kept focusing on the swift-moving hand gestures to the right of the table (note the picture below). Those hands are Rita Urquijo-Ruiz’s hands: knitting!
Chicana academic and performance artist, Rita Urquijo-Ruiz was knitting a gorgeous brown winter scarf during the entire graduate seminar while also contributing brilliantly to the discussion. She, like me, was a guest that night. I had brought my writing materials. She brought her knitting loom and yarn. I kept watching Rita’s fingers move up and down the loom while students quoted, argued with, questioned Moraga’s words. <
The CPSA Explore This!7 entries and winners are now online, here.
And the prospectus for the next International Exhibition is here. The deadline is March 31st! Not sure if I will enter this year, but we'll see.
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I just got myself caught up on what happened at the SCBWI Winter Conference, here, on the Official conference blog.
Fun reading!
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I decided to put my etsy knitting shop back up. I really felt like knitting last week, so thought well why the heck not. I decided to go whole hog and even made a Facebook page for it, and may have a blog too, we'll see. If you're interested, you may 'like' it in the widget box down on the left side of this page (the one in black). I don't want to clog up this blog or my other Facebook pages with knitting, since I know not everyone cares.
I may add some yarn drawings to it in addition to actual knitting. One of these days I will meld all of my 'selves' together into one cohesive artistic entity! Maybe.
For now it stocks pieces like this ~
That's all for today. I have to go brave the WIND and get the car smog checked. Life is fun.
I don't understand how people can keep up the tweets. In the interest of sparing you the boring minutiae of my life, I took a hiatus from the blog. But I'm back!
With no news!
Well, a little. I went to a fabulous extravaganza called Vogue Knitting Live in New York a couple of weeks ago, where I practically swooned from the sheer sensory delight of being surrounded by yarns, knitted garments and knitters.
But you don't care about that. How's this? Amy, my pseudonymous book doctor, is, as we speak, poring over the last third of my book with an eye to jazzing it up, as requested by VERY complimentary agent. I await her sage counsel.
AND....I have finally, really and truly, in earnest, started my screenplay. It's fun, and funny and I'm grooving right along. Almost finished with the outline, next I have to write a "treatment" (yes, I am up on my Hollywood lingo).
Oh, and one more thing. Yesterday, I turned 60.
In knitting, sometimes you have to undo a large chunk of a project (or the whole project). This is called frogging (because you rip-it, ha ha ha). So, drawing knitting and adorable amphibians? Just my thing.
Fun fact: the half a sweater I used for the reference photo? Yeah, I had to frog about 7 inches of yoke. I should probably use this power to my advantage and draw someone signing a book contract.
As writers, we spend most of our writing lives in solitude, working alone, lost in imaginary worlds that take us far from our homes, our friends, our communities.It can be daunting, not just the work itself, but the intense solitude that comes with the work, despite the pleasure that the words bring and despite the satisfaction that comes with telling a story, if only to one’s self.But sometimes
I bet everyone has seen brick-a-brac at yard sales made from plastic needle point canvas. In face you may have a Kleenex box holder lurking in your house made by your aunt Bernice. And I have to admit I never gave needlepoint much thought. But I'm loving this One Step camera created by Nicole Gastonguay. Ah, I loved my One Step camera when I was a kid. In fact, I just recently passed my One-Step down to a young friend and photography enthusiast who is still using it.
Check out the rest of Nicole's gallery. The jar of pickles (is that crochet?) is just too cute.
So as I mentioned before, I was frantically spinning before the holidays to make Bradley some handspun, handknit socks for Christmas. I had bought a 1/2 pound bag of roving from Romni, thinking that I would have plenty for maybe 2 pairs. Or at least a pair for him and a smaller pair for me. Or something like that.
After all this spinning, I thought I should do a bit of knitting. So what did I do? Knit something with yarn I bought at the Royal Winter Fair.
It was a soft squooshy 100g skein from Sonny's Llama Farm. I found it in a basket at the Llama display. Now that I'm on Ravelry, it has changed my knitting. It's so great to be able to look up an item and find lots of patterns, even free ones, and then see what it looked like when other people made it.
This hat is my first Ravelry project! Here's the link:
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/needlebook/slouchy-copy-cat-hat
but I think you may need to be a member to view projects on Ravelry.
The pattern was for a slouchy hat but I didn't have enough yarn, so I shortened it to make a regular hat that would use up my skein as much as possible. Finishing a project and having just a short tail of yarn leftover is one of my big thrills in life. I love this hat! The pattern calls for worsted and my yarn was aran weight (a bit heavier) so it turned out really warm and squishy. Also llama yarn can be super warm, so the eyelets should help. The pattern is so easy, once you do the four rows for the first time, you can see where you are and carry on without looking at the pattern. And the eyelet mock cable stitch is very pretty.
In case you're not on Ravelry, the free pattern is here. I made another change in mine which was decreasing in the pattern. I thought it would look nice if I did that, especially as mine isn't slouchy. Here are my notes on that:
FINISHED
Note: I started decreasing after 5 1/4" instead of 8 1/2"
I changed the pattern so that it decreased in the pattern instead of all knit. It worked really well by ending on Row 3 of the Eyelet Mock Cable stitch, then decreasing as follows:
Row 1: K, YO, K, P2tog
Row 2: K3, P1
Row 3: SL1, K2, PSSO, P1
Row 4: K2, P1
Row 5: K2TOG, P1
Row 6: K1, P1
Row 7 on: same as pattern.
Been busy with lots of different things. But that's good, it keeps life interesting.
First up, a building rendering, work in progress. Its barely started, just doing the first pass of sky and trees. I'm trying to work top to bottom to minimize smudging as much as possible.
This is Polychromos on Stonehenge, about 8 x 11 or so. It has an 'artistic' crop, with the tree leaves extending out past the rectangle of the picture. Not much to see yet, but be patient!
Then onto the art show this weekend, and matting and framing some prints. I have no idea how this show will go, or how many people will attend, so am not going 'all out' for this one. Once I get a feel for it, I will know better how to gauge things for next month.
In case you're in the area, its the 2nd Saturday Art Walk here in Sacramento, and this is in the Arden Arcade area, rather than downtown. It will be at La Casa Plaza on Fair Oaks Blvd (near Howe) from 4 - 7. There will be music and a potter doing a demonstration, which should be fun.
I've also been knitting, and have two more pieces in my shop.
Yay! Yesterday it was 100 degrees, and today its raining. CrAzY! But I love it.
Its been a funny week. Not 'ha ha' funny, just all over the place. Plumbing troubles (which got fixed, thanks to some nice guys ~ thanks Nice Guys!). Started some new art, which isn't showable yet. Found out I will be included in a sort of trunk show in October, and am expected to have a lot of knitting to show, so that's what I'm back into today.
SewingKat2 included me in her etsy Treasury today. Look at all that gorgeous knitting!
Thanks Chantal! (I'm in the top row, center ~ my Garden Court scarf).
The cats are all squirrelly because of the rain. They go out, then come right back in, and want to be entertained, but I'm not in the mood. Ahh, kids. I wish I could give them crayons or something. ha
OK, so that's it for today. Nothing too exciting, just wanted to check in. Knitting a "Gingerbread and Fog" scarf which may go into the shop this weekend, depending on the lighting for taking pics, and a few other things. Some hunter green tweed wool is up next, and I think I'll do something really complicated with that. We'll see.
Happy weekend!
I was going to say that everything I have going on feels like its in progress; but then I realized that that's always true, isn't it? LIFE is always "in progress". Sometimes things are just started, or just finished. But usually its just somewhere in the middle of it all.
Which is a round about way of saying "here's what I'm working on".
A building rendering with a lot of lovely stonework in a sort of tan color that actually has a lot of other subtle colors in it. I will most likely spend too much time on that part, and be sorry when I have to hustle to get the rest of it done.
And some knitting that is waiting anxiously to be blocked, then properly photographed for my etsy shop. I'm doing all things with cables, and mostly short scarf/cowl pieces to start things off this Fall. I'm tired of long fringed scarves, and am in love with ones that you can just tuck around your neck or button up under your chin. San Francisco is my inspiration for these ~ cables (cable cars and that big orange bridge), as well as the fog and generally 'chilly all the time' weather. These should start appearing in my shop sometime next week.
I've had an invite to participate in Second Saturday here next month. There's no way I can get a whole portfolio of appropriate art together in that short a time! But I might be able to gather together some prints and whatnot, to at least make a showing. When opportunity knocks you should usually answer, so I guess I'll try to get it together.
And on that note, I'd better go make some fresh coffee and get my fanny re-glued to the drafting chair!
We're making progress on this! Its all squinched up here, and will look different when its been blocked. The edges are rolled up and it will stretch out quite a bit. But you get the idea.
Its slow-going, even with me being a fast knitter. One extra thing to deal with, in addition to the difficult pattern, is to match the yarn when a new skein is joined. Since its a gradated yarn, you can't just start the new skein wherever it is in the color shift ~ you have to find the place that matches where you left off with the last one (if that makes sense).
I will figure out how to do some smaller pieces with similar complicated patterns. I'm obsessed with getting this one done first!
And I'm shooting for September 1 to have my whole 'line' done and in the shop. Wish me luck...
Here's my Phyllo, sleeping in his perch. Does this look comfortable to you?
Is it wrong that I procrastinated in posting my craft slacker project? So this is it. I craft all the time, as you know, and I'm pretty good about finishing things. But I do have my share of unfinished craft projects. Let's call it the basket of shame. For some reason I like to knit bags and pouches - almost as much as sewing them - but I never seem to get them finished.
Sewing the linings and zippers for knitted projects can be pesky. So this is the batch of knitted but not finished things I'd like to finish. The main offender is the knitted bag, which has nice stripes made of blended yarns and I really like it, but it needs a lining. That's it! It's been sitting around for years. I'm guessing it was abandoned in 2005. Well this is it's big chance to get finished.
It's not to late to enter yourself, all the details are on the Toronto Craft Alert website.
i really want to read this one. it looks really cool. plus knitting reference means it must be good.