Messy Beasts

And so it's time...

2010-10-12T14:48:00.000-05:00

My blog has really changed direction and tone and I felt it was time for a fresh start. I wanted a new name and look and so I have transfered all the old posts to a new blog, with a new layout and name Cotton Gin and Tonic, which I felt better expressed, well, me. So I'll thank all of you for coming here and supporting this blog and I'll see you at the new, improved version - Cotton Gin and Tonic, Fanciful Knit for Ladies and Gents.

This blog will stay up for a little while, so everyone can update their favorites, but will be coming down soon.

Susie's Long Stockings

2010-10-01T14:10:00.001-05:00

The test knit for these socks finished on the 19th and it has been a looong ride. It started when I saw these socks in the Christian Dior Fall show by John Galliano. I had to make something similar, I just loved them.

I bought the yarn way back in March and began swatching, which did not go smoothly. I had an good idea of what I wanted the finished product to look like, I just didn't know how to get there. I also had the idea that I wanted to do some of the shaping with needle size changes. I wanted a lot of verticality like the Dior socks. The Dior socks had faggoted rib obviously but I didn't think it would look the way I wanted at the gauge I was going to get out of sock yarn. I tried a lot of lace patterns that had vertical orientations but they all seemed too stretched out on larger needle sizes, I needed it to be polished looking, smooth and sophisticated. After another failed swatch of star-mesh lace from one of the Barbara Walker Treasuries I sat stumped. My knitting buddies liked it but it had too much air, and too much bias to be what I wanted. The ribs on it looked too messy for my taste as well. Then it hit me that a twisted rib might be my answer. It pulls the rib in tight and attractive when stretched out and when you do the purl stitches plain it gives and orderly but slightly lacy look in between. I made a few swatches and KNEW I had it. I also had a pattern that had a sort of diamond orientation going up the side of the legs to get a similar look to the Dior socks. I chose the Vandyke Leaf Lace from the Second Barbara Walker Treasury.

I had to make charts for the beginning of the lace, the ending of the lace and the repeating portion. The difficulty was in writing the chart on a background of twisted rib. I did accomplish it well though and I changed some of the clunkier looking portions of the Vandyke Leaf Lace so that the pattern flowed better to my taste. I used Open Office's spreadsheet program and a knitting font I picked up on the internet. I was also going to do these socks toe-up as it is usually my preference but the leaves on the Vandyke Leaf Lace looked weird going from the bottom up. This probably worked out for the best as the back of the calf decreases I used look really stunning in the twisted rib.

I decided I would make 3 sizes so that almost anyone can make a wear these socks and I also made a video explaining the double decrease I invented so the the decreases stayed in pattern.

I decided that since there was going to be no way for these socks to stay up on their own I should make a hem for some elastic to be inserted. I had seen a folded over hem done on a child's skirt so I just used the same idea, and in pattern. It worked surprisingly well. So I had all the elements I needed and I knit the first sock, and it looked wonderful! I started the test knit after writing it out and doing a preliminary layout. I stalled on the second sock. I had terrible second sock syndrome. I'd already done it, why wasn't I finished? There were other things I wanted to knit! Why did nature give me 2 legs? But I eventually got around to it and took photos in wool thigh-highs when it was 90 degrees outside. I'll tell you though, the sweat really held them in place!
I have to give kudos to my wonderful test knitters who found all the mistakes in my written version of the chart (boy writing that sucked) and various other problems with clarity and and suggested what photos would be most helpful to them. This pattern wouldn't be nearly so great with out them.

Here is the relevant info if you are looking to make these socks:

Yarn : Trekking Pro Natura - 3 skeins
Needles : US 4, 3, 2, 1
3 sizes, s, m, l - Medium will fit almost everyone, small is for size 4 and lower and large is for size 16 and up.

It was really important to me to be inclusive with my sizing, I want as many people as can be to show off their awesome gams in my lovely socks.

Meta Mittens

2010-09-15T15:06:00.001-05:00

On our way home from Buckhorn State Park last month Eli suggested we stop at a yarn store in Madison. I am not one to say no to that so I did a google search on my iPhone and came up with Off the Beaten Path. It wasn't too far from the highway and their website said they had locally produced yarns. I ended up with some crochet thread and some rough, rustic wool that immediately said "make mittens out of me". The yarn was Yaeger's Acres 2ply medium weight wool. I got the natural and the black-brown I felt like I wanted to have something related to knitting or wool on the mittens but I decided a yarn ball would be too abstract. I decided on sheep and did a big google image search on sheep so I could get a handle on what they look like and for illustrations of sheep so that I could understand how they are generally abstracted. I knit up a swatch in the round later in the week. This swatch lied horribly, I must have been knitting incredibly tight because I ended up with 7 sts/inch on US 3 needles which I was never able to replicate. Swatches Lie. Do them anyway. Always make a swatch especially if you are working with a yarn you have never used before, if only to get a feel for what needle size will go with it best.

So once I had my horribly off gauge I went and made some graph paper from my favorite graph paper making website (What? You don't have one?) Incompetech (see it even has a punny name) and input my gauge. The website makes a pdf of the graph paper which I then opened in adobe photoshop. I marked out the parameters of the mitten using the dimensions of a pair of Norwegian mittens I made a few years ago and liked. Then I spent about a day or so dinking around with the chart. The palm was easy, as was the thumb, but making sheep that looked like sheep and made a good composition on the back of a mitten took a bit longer. Once I was satisfied with the chart I knit up a prototype. Which was sized for a child.

Good thing it doesn't take too long to knit a mitten, I thought, I'll just go up a needle size and add a little length and it'll be fine...

Nope!

Still Tiny! Urg! I felt pretty frustrated with myself, but luckily I had plenty of yarn so I didn't have to frog either of them. I went back and counted how many stitches were in that old Norwegian mitten I mentioned earlier and went with those stitch counts. I finally finally got it the right size, yay! Here is a prototype progression photo with a 5" ruler at the side to show how tiny the small ones really are.

So, after knitting 4 mittens, only 2 of which were any good, I was ready to take some photographs. It was 90 degrees outside so bundling up and going outside were a bit out. I didn't want to get heat stroke, even for my work. So I plopped on a matching hat and sat on my workroom couch and used the self timer gratuitously. I think they came out pretty well all things considered

I really upped my game with photoshop on these photos. I generously used the dodge tool to brighten and emphasize the mittens and to make the eye in shadow more visible. Plus I was having a really good hair day. So I wrote and laid out the pattern, I went with a vaguely German, 70s medieval revival sort of style that I think went really well with the mittens and made the pattern pretty to look at. It's for sale, if you'd like to buy now

buy now

Gilly's Big Bow

2010-09-13T13:42:00.001-05:00

Way back in July I was sketching out an idea for a superbulky cardigan and the lady I sketched needed a big bow in her hair.

The next night, deep in the night, something silly was born.

I went overboard. Waaay overboard. The thing weighed like a pound and would barely stay on the headband I put it on. I decided I needed to downscale a bit.

So I finally ended up with this

Yay! It only looks slightly silly! I wrote up the pattern, had it tested, and put it out as a fun little free pattern.

You can download the pattern for yourself here: download now

Camping at Buckhorn State Park, WI

2010-08-03T17:46:00.000-05:00

Last Monday afternoon we took off for Buckhorn State park. This is a fabulous place to camp with many campsites having their own private beaches. When we arrived we set up our campsite made dinner and jumped in the water. I think I spent the most time swimming since I was a kid. The water was lovely and warm.

The next day we rented a canoe for the morning and explored the shore. There were a lot of interesting fungi and tiny moss and lichens. I love taking pictures of little things the best.


Lovely Grassy Forest

Our little red Canoe where we beached it to explore


My silly sun hat!


Adorable mushroom in the moss

This one has grass growing through it!


Phallic

the ur mushroom

It was really really windy when we were out on the lake so we didn't get far and it started to get really hot so it wasn't the best canoeing time ever but it was still fun. Eli didn't like it as much as me, he made faces.

Oh Eli!

I'll post about the rest of the trip in a later post, there are lots of lovely pictures to share.

Lady Jane Gloves

2010-06-23T15:19:00.002-05:00

So I heard back from Knit Picks today that they are going to publish my very first for-pay pattern! I went ahead and uploaded it to Ravelry at the 1.99 price point. I was waiting to upload it until I heard from them so I could decide what price to place it at. The whole experience ended up being really fun. My pattern testers were great, my model was awesome and things just really clicked with the whole project. I think I've learned a lot and have really gained some confidence in my skills. I have also sent 2 proposals to Twist collective that I'm really excited about so I'll get working on them either way once I know if they are interested. So anyway, without further ado, here are some of photos of the lovely Michelle wearing the Lady Jane Gloves.

The photo shoot was fun but it was so hot and humid. I'm glad I didn't do a heavier makeup on her because it would have just run everywhere. The wind was a bit high too, but that just ended up giving the shots some drama. These were taken in the area right outside my back door. I love it because there are so many interesting buildings and alleyways to photograph.

buy the pattern now

I'm Turning Japanese Story and (limited) Tutorial

2010-04-23T19:35:00.000-05:00

So a while back I watched this video produced by artist Takashi Murakami and directed by McG. The video starred Kirsten Dunst dressed like a Sailor Moon type character complete with magic wand dancing and singing "I'm Turning Japanese". (with sparkles!) I have loved the work of Murakami since being introduced to it about 5 years ago by Eli. The colorful characters that seem happy and silly, but always with just a bit off about them that makes it all a bit creepy. The highly graphic and commercial aspects of his work simultaneously revel in and poke at anime and fan culture in Japan. The light bulb went on in my head as I'd been thinking about doing a new project since my McQueen tribute was on hold due to back-ordered yarn.

I decided I really needed to make a Murakami inspired sweater. (Also watching the video about 20 times) Fresh off the toil of Eli's vest I was ready to take on another intarsia project and I thought the graphic flowers that populate Murakami's work would make an excellent motif. So I sat down and began to plan. I did a gauge swatch in some yarn I had left over from Eli's vest as I wanted to use Brown Sheep's Lanaloft Sports weight again. I've been a bit obsessed with this yarn and the colors were too perfect so I went with it. The gauge came out at 6 sts and 8 rows per inch on size five metal needles.   So I went here to get some proportional graph paper to plot out the sweater and make the charts for the flowers. I particularly like this website because you can make the paper vertical or horizontal, can have 2 different line weights and make paper exactly your gauge. My grid was exactly half size of my gauge so when I plotted the shaping of the sweater it was exactly half size. Before I did that with any degree of accuracy I sat down and spent and entire day making the 2 color charts for the flowers. Using photoshop and a googled reference image I made full color charts for myself to work from. I made 1 extra chart of the big flower without the black so would know where to put the colors exactly as I intended on embroidering the black in after.

After making the charts I went to Interweave's waist shaping calculator (which is awesome) and made the required measurements of myself and input them. The calculator is for knitting in the round so I had to do some fiddling with the numbers to make them even so the corrugated rib worked nicely. I also input no ease into the calculations as I wanted this sweater to be fitted. I knew it would relax over time and be very comfortable with a small amount of positive ease. Taking these stitch counts and two pieces of graph paper I printed off I set to work plotting the back and the front onto the graph paper so I could place where and how many flowers were going to go on the sweater. I had a few false starts. I had printed the graph paper wrong the first time so the squares were taller than wider which started to shape up into a very tall sweater. Oops. I'm glad I caught it. When I finally had the back plotted out to the bust I started thinking about the shoulders. I recently bought Ann Budd's book The Knitters Handy Book of Sweater Patterns and I chose the set-in sleeve sweater size that was closest to the stitch counts from the waist shaping calculator. This was a mistake! The ease and size of armscye were huge! The chest size that was the same as mine had a 9in armscye. I'll get to how I fixed this later.

I dutifully plotted out giant arm holes and placed the flowers on the sweater. For the small ones I cut out their size square out of some extra graph paper and traced them onto the sweater until I was happy with the placement. Then I drew some leaves in as the sweater looked a little bare and I didn't want to add more flowers. With the stems and leaves the front and back looked good and I cast on.   I finished the back and realized looking at it and holding it up to my body that the armscyes were way too long! the waist shaping wasn't hitting at the right point the sleeves would have had to be HUGE.   So I took my favorite and best fitting hoodie and measured both the armscye length and the shoulder rise and calculated that into stitches and revised my graphs. Then I fixed the back. The back flower is too close to the top now because of this, but it wasn't bad and I didn't want to reknit half of the back with some of the more difficult color work. I decided I could live with it. If I had it to do again I would have moved down out of the way of the collar.

Another thing I did when plotting out the back of my sweater was to make the back narrower than the front by increasing 4 fewer stitches after the waist than the front. I find that if I do this my sweaters fit better and after some measuring I have figured out that my back is narrower than the my front. Your mileage on this may vary of course, but having a good knowledge of the size of various parts of your body to other parts and of how this may be different than "standard" is really helpful in getting a good fit.

And so I finished the front and the back and sew them together for a fitting and it was good and I was happy. I was feeling flummoxed by how to make the puff sleeves I wanted as I couldn't really find any good info on what shape they needed to be in order to look the way I wanted them to look. So I started on the embroidery and it took what felt like forever. I think my knit buddies wanted to strangle me. I had this terrible compulsion to whine about it, all the time. Silly me!

So I eventually got bored bored bored of embroidery and decided to tackle the sleeve o' doom. Seriously folks I think by the final edit I had done the sleeve about 7 times. Really. I had knit the entire stupid cuff about 3 times and after trying it on deemed it wrong in some way.

So for those of you skimming this for the tutorial here it is. How to make a puff sleeve in a set in armscye by picking up and knitting and short rows. ( Make sure all your seams are sewn before hand)

1. Starting in the middle of the underarm pick up and knit a stitch for every row all the way around the arm hole. For the underarm this will be 1 stitch for every underarm stitch. This is going to give you a lot of stitches and allow the sleeve to "puff"

2. Knit back to the top of the sleeve (in the round) and knit to about 1.5 in after the shoulder seam. You are now going to begin short rows by wrapping and turning every row until you've consumed enough stitches to be just short of halfway down the armsyce measuring from the shoulder seam to the underarm.

3. Now you are going to continue to knit back and forth but instead of wrapping and turning you are going to ssk on the knit side and p2tog on the purlside. Do this for about 1.5 in or so.   This will give the sleeve some length. You may want to do this more or less depending on your arms and where you wan the sleeve to end. I did it 8 times.

4. Now knit plain in the round for about 2 inches.

5. Place marker for underarm stitches and decrease all other stitches by half by k2tog. I used a trick I learned from Sweater Design in Plain English to wrap the ribbing from the bottom of sweater around my arm at the tension I wanted and count the stitches to know how many to have for the ribbing.   Mine was 64 which was about 4 stitches less than I got by halving the stitches not part of the underarm so I decreased the extra in the next row. Regardless of weather you need to decrease a few more stitches you should do another row before starting the ribbing so the great number of k2togs don't interact badly with the ribbing. It can look like there are holes.

And that is how after much trial and error I finished the sleeves. I did a nifty little i-cord bind off that prevent the corrugated ribbing from curling and kept it tight. If you use one color ribbing this wouldn't be necessary.

After finishing the sleeves I picked up stitches in white around the neck to start the collar. I picked them up from the outside in so that it wouldn't show when you look at it. I decided on reverse stockinette with garter borders because it would curl over the neckline nicely and lay flat (because the border) I knit it flat with a circular needle and slipped the edges to make a little bit lacy decorative edge. I increased every fourth row every ten stitches with a lifted increase so it would be as invisible as possible. Its about 2.5 inches long with 4 rows of garter stitch at the edge and 2 edge stitches in garter stitch. I bound off a bit too tightly and make go back and fix it at some point but for now I'm pretty happy with the way it came out overall and it fits like a dream.

So I finally finished that vest

2010-03-22T19:38:00.000-05:00

So I finally am totally done with the argyle! After finishing the first vest and having it come out 4" too big in the chest, and doing it all again in a different color, I am very happy with the result. Eli doesn't like having his picture taken but I explained it was the price he had to pay for hand-knits. For what it's worth I think he's handsome but he loves to make put-out faces for the camera. Here is a nice close up of the vest.

The crisscross lines on it are duplicate stitch embroidered after the knitting and sewing together and pretty much everything was done. It was a bit of a slog, that last bit, I just SO wanted to be done with it! And so I am. I really think this was one of the nicer things I've made. I did make a big modification to the pattern by making it 6 stitches smaller on the front and the back. I basically followed the directions but just decreased the size. The pattern was nicely done but I don't know why you'd want a vest like this to have 4" of ease. My vest of fail showed that clearly it isn't very attractive. Who knows? Do most men really like everything 2 sizes too big? Anyway here are a few more photo's of Eli hamming it up.

Busy busy!

2010-03-10T22:19:00.000-06:00

So I've been obsessively reading the forums on Ravelry and ordered 4 books through inter-library loan and all of this has been about learning to be a designer. I really want to beef up my skills on designing my own garments and learning to make the things I knit fit better. The books I got from the library are Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop, Reader's Digest Knitter's Handbook by Montse Stanley, The Essential Guide to Color Knitting Techniques by Margaret Radcliffe, Sweater Design in Plain English by Maggie Righetti, and The Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt.

I spent the afternoon browsing these books and I think the most helpful one is going to be the Sweater Design in Plain English. It seems like a really straightforward guide to making garments that fit and work the way you want. The other books certainly have value (The principles of Knitting had 30 types of cast on) but turned out to be in short supply of the things I really wanted to know. I used reviews on Amazon to decide what to get from the library because I think I'll likely want to buy the ones that seem most useful.

The Principles of Knitting is out of print and very expensive to get so I feel lucky that another library was willing to send it here so I could take a look. It was very talked up but it seems persnickety (she is convinced that there is only one right way to knit) and somewhat dated. It has a lot of information but most of it I already know and or have for reference in other books. I'm glad I didn't shell out for in all honesty.

Of the books I got I think the Color knitting book is the most useless. There is a little info in there but I think I'd much rather have a book of stranded/fair-isle designs. A lot of what is in the book is god-awful ugly and will make me not want to use it. To be fair it did give me the idea to use shaping to make intarsia patterns more than cross-stitch looking. That was worth walking it home from the library anyway.

On other fronts I've finished the back of Eli's vest and have a few inches done on the front.

I have a few ends to weave in on the back still and of course the argyle lines to embroider on but this vest is very much actually the right size this time. I measured. And measured. The first one I made came out 4" too big and looked like a really ugly argyle sack on the poor man. Maybe I'll feel ok enought about someday to take some funny pictures.

The Alexander McQueen tribute is on a bit of a hold while I wait for more yarn to arrive. I'm terrible at estimating yardage, but it usually works out ok because I work at the Yarn Exchange and live a block away so I just run and get a bit more. This time though I bought all 3 skeins that we had of the Lanaloft Bulky in Cottage White so I'll have to wait until we get more in. I did have to frog a bit of it because of an irredeemable and complicated-to-explain mistake so I took some pictures of my progress off the needles. Its coming along just like I planned! What a good feeling despite the mistake. It was a bit fun to frog it on the floor like that.

Thoughts

2010-03-06T13:18:00.001-06:00

I had a fun moment of magical thinking the other night when the fan in my computer decided to stop working. I decided I would take it apart and see if I could see what was wrong. I finally got it apart (after taking out about 100 screws) and saw nothing wrong but dust and cat hair so I vacuumed it out and spun the fan around a bit and screwed it back together and then it worked fine. *shrug*. Who knows?? The power of randomly taking shit apart I suppose. It's out of warranty now so I figured I couldn't mess it up worse.

The object of irritation!

Location:Illinois 38,DeKalb,United States

Nifty Thrifty

2010-03-03T16:05:00.004-06:00

So I went thrift shopping this afternoon and was rather productive. Uh well I spent a gob of money anyway. I got this lovely tea service with 6 cups and saucers for $15. The only thing missing is the lid to the sugar jar sadly, but I couldn't leave it. Its gorgeous and I didn't have a whole one. So mod. The mark is Melitta, Germany. I got this from Lavish Thrift where I'd been wanting it for nearly a year. It started out at $40 so I don't feel like I've done too badly.

I also went to the new consignment store 2 doors down from me. Its still pretty empty but they had a table full of fantastic jewelry really cheap. Oh I went I bit nuts. I promise I did leave some behind. First up is this lovely pair of gold plated filigree earrings with jade that were $6. I am currently wearing them. They are light and darling.

Next up is the lovely mid century modern sterling fish pin. This guy was sooooo cool. I think he's going to go on my pink cape. He was $7

This is a lovely brass enameled pin that looked really sharp on my green coat. $6

The the most awesome thing was this brass and pearl lapel chain. Oh jeez I saw one of these in a magazine a while back I wanted one bad. Now it is mine! 8$

Then I bought an assorted set of mid century mod drinking glasses and a carafe. They were too much but they make me happy. Plus we've broken a few glasses lately so I think we needed a few that weren't the ugly POM ones. $25 for the set.

Swatches swatches

2010-03-02T22:31:00.002-06:00

I've been working pretty hard on getting everything ready to start the Idea. I've done my calculations wrote a chart for the stitch pattern and made some really large swatches.

The really large swatches were necessary to see how the worsted and bulky weight yarns handled the stitch pattern. I went through my stitch pattern book several times and found patterns that were close to what I wanted but I ended up writing one that was similar to others, but did exactly what I needed it to.

I've also completed the yoke portion. I don't know how happy I am about it. I'm not sure that portion is going to work, but I'm willing to sit on it until I get the skirt done. I just don't know how it is going to look when it gets sewn to the side. Also I need to frog a bit of the back and make it shorter as it somehow got too long.

I've made 30 lower portions of the leaf motif as a cast on for the skirt. I realized at some point yesterday that I was really going to need to buy a 60" circular. OMG. The poor thing is stuffed on it. Good thing it has to decrease pretty quickly. One round takes about an hour at this point so I think this thing will take longer than I was thinking. Also I'll probably need more yarn. Oi. I should have known this would get out of hand. :)

Testing testing

2010-02-25T12:24:00.001-06:00

I am testing this blogger app for my iPhone. I took this picture of Eli and Asuka a couple of weeks ago. Asuka decided she needed to be on Eli's shoulders. Hee.

Location:Illinois 38,DeKalb,United States

It's been such a long time...

2010-02-24T23:06:00.010-06:00

Lately I've been lured away by facebook, getting out all my little thoughts and dramas in succinct and slightly thoughtless blurbs. But I have had an Idea that will not be quelled and I think the process of working through the Idea is worth documenting in blog format. Anyway the genesis of the Idea began with Alexander McQueen.

As you all may or may not know Alexander McQueen killed himself on February 11th 2010. He was one of the most visionary and artistic fashion designers ever to send a dress down the runway and I actually cried when I heard he had died. I found his work challenging and beautiful and was continually inspired by it. I felt moved to examine my grief for his genius by trying to replicate his aesthetic in a knitted work of my own. I felt very driven to do this and haven't had this fevered a desire in a long time. I began by googling for retrospectives of his work and a few images really grabbed and stood out to me.

What really struck me as overarching theme in lot of his work was a certain historicity, body consciousness and emphasis on texture. I played these ideas around in my head and came up with this sketch.

You'll have to forgive my drawing ability, I'm terribly rusty as I haven't done any real drawing or sketching in years. But the idea is there. I feel like the Idea captures the body consciousness and the textural elements that I was going for. I don't know if anyone but me will ever see Alexander McQueen in it, but if I can pull it off I think I'll feel mighty proud of myself.

I have picked out the yarn and have done some swatching. Here are some photos of the yarn and my work area. I'm really wishing I had a dress form these days.

So the yarn I'm using is Brown Sheep's Lanaloft in Bulky and Worsted. Its a soft single ply wool with a lot of stitch definition and loft. The dark grey will be for the yoke and the cream for the lace portion. I think this dress will need some heavy duty foundation garments but I've been angling for a reason to buy the fancy pair of Spanx I've had my eye on. I'm currently in the process of charting stitch pattern that will be what I want because despite having a pretty comprehensive collection of stitch patterns I couldn't find one that was just what I wanted. It gave me a lot of ideas to make what I wanted after I swatched a few that were similar. I think that this dress will need a lot of negative ease for the lozenge shapes to really pop and It will need a good amount of blocking. The yarn I'm using is pretty thick though, so I think it won't take too long to knit once I've planned it. But oh the planning!

Thinking about making this dress leaves me feeling like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff. The yarn was not inexpensive and I'm afraid to fail to accomplish what I want to do. I've had a lot of trouble lately with large projects not coming out the way I wanted or anticipated so I hope this goes well. I'll need to buy a petticoat for this dress too, and I don't know where or why I'd wear it but it wants to exist so badly I can't help but move right along with it.

Halloween fun!

2009-10-31T19:48:00.009-05:00

So I had a pretty good Halloween I'd say, we carved up some pumpkins, which rotted rather quickly, but were cute while they lasted. I made one a kitty and one a face and Eli managed to get the rotten pumpkins so he spent a lot of time cutting the rotten bits off so his pumpkins looked pretty weird.

I dressed up as a woman from the 60's minus the torturous undergarments worn then. I bought some Bumpits to get some nice big 60's hair which I would not have otherwise been able to do myself and some false eyelashes and some black eyeliner. I normally wear brown so I didn't have any. I worked at the yarn exchange and gave out candy to little kids. When I came home I had Eli take some pictures

Two women walk into a consignment store...

2009-03-27T02:27:00.003-05:00

Sometimes when I am at work, I feel like I'm living behind two way glass or that I'm invisible or a robot or a child or otherwise not considered an adult citizen worthy of notice. This is not to say I disapprove entirely. Mostly I like it, I don't want people to notice me, I'd have to give up some of myself, my resources, stories or sympathy. I am selfish and they are mine to keep.

Having this state of semi-person-hood I tend to overhear or eavesdrop on various conversations going on in the store. It isn't very large and isn't a place for private conversations but they happen anyway. Sometimes I get really struck by the things they say, one time in particular it was two women who came into the store. They were late 20s early 30s and were chatty in a way I don't normally pay much attention to, but then the shorter stouter one mentioned to the taller prettier one that she was in 14 weeks pregnant.

The pretty one told the stout one that she was so happy and excited and jealous because she just so wanted another baby but right now wasn't the right time for her. They went on to talk about the various merits of different shirts and other things I don't care to remember and then came the bit that struck me the most and made me remember these women. I had managed to gather that they both already had more than one child and the pregnant one said to the pretty one that her pregnancy wasn't planned but that she was very happy because she was already 30 and her and her partner had agreed to not have children past the age of 30. The implication being that it was much too old. The pretty one agreed emphatically and added that it was because of her own advancing age that she was so jealous of the stout one's pregnancy.

First I thought they were small minded and a bit ignorant. Then it sort of dawned on me like a blow to my head. Here I am working in a shop like I was when I was 17, sitting on the edge of my 27th birthday, no plans for marriage or children in sight. I began to feel a keen sense of loss for a life I would never have, a choice I implicitly made without realizing. Later that day I thought about when I was 19 and I dreamed of a life where I was married by 22 and had all my children early and well. I would have a little house with a tree swing where the children's father would push them. I had a man in mind, but not in body and that dream and many similarly romantic dreams of my future passed away amid the ashes and smoke that was the year 2001.

More than the twin towers went down in flames that year, my family life and personal life also spectacularly exploded in ways I'm still paying for and trying to clean up after. I switched schools to be closer to a home I would never be able to grasp again and to be present for people who no longer wanted me. I changed majors because I found out I wasn't going to be Indiana Jones, I was going to be underemployed, underpaid and bored out of my mind. I had imagined I would be telling stories. Reality was I would be endlessly sifting data desperately, endlessly trying to come to no conclusions at all.

Those women brought me to a startling clarity that I will never have a life where I am young and married with children. I will probably never have a life where I am married with children at all. It isn't to say that I want these things, in the past 8 years I've become harder and more selfish, perhaps more aware of my damaged and self centered nature, resigned that no good would come of me having children to care for when I more than occasionally resent the responsibility of the cat. So I grieve a little for the loss of those choices that used to be so brilliantly shining in front of me. I think about the choices I made without thinking I was choosing. There is a little mourning, too, for a person who could want those things, by the person who runs screaming afraid from them.

On Lying

2009-03-10T22:59:00.003-05:00

So I promised myself that I would write some thoughts on lying today.

So. Lying.

Bad thing right?

Well... everything is relative.

Good lies I have told:

~ Comforting a woman about her color choices for yarn even thought I thought they were hideous. She just wanted to be told that they were good, so I did. I do this all the time. These people don't really want my opinion, they just want someone to tell them they've done ok. I'm alright with this, just another part of life as a shop girl. Having tact is better than being honest most of time.

~ I embellish stories, make up details I don't remember. I'm not even sure that this counts as lying per-se, but I'm usually very aware that I'm doing it. Sometimes I tell about things that didn't even happen to me, but could have, or happened to someone I know, when it is easier to explain that it was me rather than who the person was or is to me and what happened to them. First person experience is more powerful than second-hand so I occasionally take shortcuts.

~ I told an ex that I wasn't cheating on him when he specifically asked me if I was with the specific person I was, about five times. I knew it was kinder for him to think that I hadn't. I think he believed me. The man I was messing around with was a wake up call for me to end that abusive tragedy of a relationship. Not that is was right precisely but I'm still sure it was better to lie to him. He always believed in rainbows and soul-mates and happy endings and it was better for me to prop him up a little then tear him all down. There are other things about the end of that relationship I regret doing, other truths I wish I had shared but that was never one of them.

Bad, no good, stinking lies I have told:

~ Repeatedly constantly, every other week at least faking I was sick so I didn't have to go to school, sometimes for days at a time. I don't think my mother wanted to deal with me so she just let me and I was quiet and spent most of the time reading or sleeping so she wouldn't really know. I did this for all 12 years of my public school education. I also constantly lied about why I didn't have homework or papers done to get extensions. I was clever and bold at it and it was terrible. I played this game with somewhat less success with my professors in college. I was the Queen of bullshit. I did this when I worked for the phonebook too. I invented relatives with horrible problems and medical conditions to get out of working. I don't think the boss believed me but he didn't care enough to scold me. I hated that job. I've left all this behind and have called in sick I think exactly one day since I started working my current jobs. I just can't not work, there isn't anyone to cover for me since there are so few of us, I think the fact that I'm not a replaceable cog, that I'm important and I need to be there keeps me honest. Also I don't hate it so much I feel sick at the thought of being there. I actually quite like my own little corner of retail.

~ When I was 18 I had a little red convertible car that I would constantly pull into the driveway too fast. I parked in front of my dad's old decommissioned pickup. My mother would tell me all the time not to pull into the driveway too fast. One day she was right, I hit the truck and smashed the fiberglass on the front of my car. I told my dad what happened and my younger brother. I told my mother that the car had been hit in the school parking lot. She wanted to call the cops and couldn't figure out why everyone wasn't as upset as her about what happened. Eventually I convinced my dad to tell her the truth and I have a very vivid image of her sitting quietly on the stairs telling me how disappointed in me she was etc. I still think it would have been worse if I'd just told her. I felt pretty terrible for dragging everyone else into lying to her but its still pretty funny to me now. Really funny actually.

~ Being given checks to pay university bills and then just sitting on them for months while fees piled up because I I let it go so long I didn't know how to fix it. Then lying to my father about what I'd done and why, putting him off for any and every reason I could think of. It was some pretty fucked-up behavior I still don't really understand. I was depressed and having anxiety attacks and wasn't functioning. I didn't get help for 3 more years after that. It probably would have been better for him to call me on my bullshit but he had enough to deal with in his immediate vicinity with my younger brother off the rails much worse than I.

A lie I should feel bad about but don't:

~ Telling my parents that I was late or couldn't make it to some family function because of Eli. I know, that sound terrible, but believe me it goes down a lot smoother if they really think that things are beyond my control. I don't do this much anymore because I don't need to. They don't try to control me as much anymore so I don't need to put them off. I feel a little tiny bit bad because it bothered Eli, but that is really the only reason.

So... lying:

I think we all tell them sometimes. Well except Eli, he can't lie if his life depends on it. Even when he should. I don't tell the whole story, I misdirect and I embellish. Sometimes objectively I think I can't be considered a 'good' person. I try to spare people mostly, protect and smooth my way in the world. It might be mercenary, but I think it works mostly.

I've been away

2009-02-23T02:37:00.002-06:00

So much has happened since I last posted. I'll get to it but I'd like to mention that while I haven't been updating my etsy store I have been doing a lot of thinking and have been doing quite a bit of writing. It used to be my way of dealing with the world and with my emotions and I stopped and some point and I'm trying to get back, because it was, and is, very helpful.

So the point being that I'm going to be posting some of that writing here since this is sort of a log of the creative goings on in my life and I've rather neglected my readers (all 5 of you)

So without further ado here is my first blog-piece. It has to do with memory and grief. I tend to mull these things over a lot. I may revise it some more and some point because it is a little rough but I feel like I like it right now and will loose it upon the world for at least a little while.

It wasn't the Scissor Sisters was it?

I asked him if he remembered what the song was, because it was important and I had forgotten and it meant something. He remembered the sombrero, the toy guitar, my impromptu karaoke and the soggy foos-ball table but the song, even the band is lost to history now I guess. I spit it all out in a rush, my question too specific with faked casualness and poor reception on my cell. I knew he wouldn't remember since I had always loved him more than he loved me, but it was ok, it was always so, so ok, because when you were with him it was like you were his only and best friend in the whole world. I never felt jelous.

He would introduce you to everyone, tell you things about them, tell you hilarious stories and he would listen too. He was just so there. He tried to look out for me, he really did when I started going crazy and alienating everyone with wantonness, carelessness and a selfish drive to try very desperately to feel alive while my insides went numb. I was careless and he fought with me and I pushed and chaffed and then he was gone. He moved and so very far in thought and space. In estimation too, I believe. I feel a dull ache in my chest when those happy memories of silly, destructive. and oh-so-drunken behavior come to mind. They were so brief and I miss him and our friendship. Neither of us remember the song anymore.

2008-12-10T12:48:00.005-06:00

So I've gotten myself a new camera! I've been playing with it a lot and it is much better quality than my previous camera. The shutter response time is really quick and some of the pictures I've take are lovely. The camera is a Ricoh Caplio GX100. Its small, light weight and incredibly powerful. Also has a wide-angle lense, which no other compact digi cam offers. Anyway, enough tooting the camera's horn, here are some photos!

This is a macro of Asuka's face! The detail is great and the color is really perfect.
Here is a black & white photo of our dining room. It was taken at a higher ISO so its a little grainy. I think it adds something to it.

Also I went and took photos of all my recent projects and uploaded them all onto ravelry. Some of them aren't the best photos I've ever composed so I'll probably redo a few. Yesterday was really really dark and cloudy all day, not the best photography day.

Having been busy!

2008-10-15T11:53:00.009-05:00

So I just bought two foam wig heads off of ebay to create, display and photograph the hats I've been making recently. I think they are some of the best things I've ever made. Some times when I make things I get outside of myself and what I'm doing and when I finally finish I can't believe I've made it. I stare at the object and think over and over "I made this?" "I MADE this?" " I made this!" I am most definitely strange.

Here are some photos of Castle Rock State Park from when we went there a few weeks ago.
It was lovely and this post needs photos.

So we moved

2008-09-22T12:38:00.002-05:00

So we finally moved out of the duplex half we were renting from Eli's parents who lived next door. It was getting too stressful for everyone. It has taken up way more time and money than I could have imagined and I feel like I've lost my balance, my equilibrium. The old hopeless feelings are creeping up on me and the sinus infection I've been battling is just making it that much worse. There are just too many things that need to be done, and not enough time. I'm going to be a vendor at YarnCon on Oct 4th. I have to have product ready to sell and I am just not getting enough done, I want to cry when I think about it!

I probably shouldn't have moved right when starting a new job. It really feels so destabilizing. I liked doing my work for myself and not haveing anyone to be answerable too. It helped me controll my anxiety. Now I have a good job, working for and with really nice people but the act of having to be responsible and not forget things and get myself in order feels really really hard.
I hope I feel a little better once this sinus shit clears up, I think it will help.

Crowing

2008-08-08T11:58:00.003-05:00

Ooook so I was a big braggy yesterday wasn't I? Something I should mention is that I didn't actually make any sales from this front page listing. My prices were too high I think. So I lowered everything a dollar or so and bam, I've sold 3 items today. Its good to know where the limits are though, I know I couldn't actually be selling things for more make me feel like I'm not ripping myself off. I don't want to do that, I'm trying to make a living.

On the accounting side of things I downloaded a really great spreadsheet from Its Your Money, a blog I randomly found a link to. I'd been looking for something along these lines for a while and I'm overall pretty happy with it, though it is basic, it helps me keep track. It has a catalog section where you keep your inventory and a way to keep month by month sales records that also calculates your gross profit. It also will keep track of any sales tax you've collected, though you have to manually imput most info, its a good way to keep track if you don't have a huge volume of sales. I'll keep looking for some free software for accounting that works on a mac, but I haven't had any success so far. All the good free ones are for windows only. SUCK!

Front Page!!!

2008-08-07T11:20:00.002-05:00

I was in a front page treasury at Etsy today! I didn't actually get to see it but I know it was because one of my items got almost 200 hits and I have 20 new hearts and holy crap. I'm pleased as punch. I knew those pretty photos would get me noticed!
Yay!

Vintage Beauties

2008-08-02T17:52:00.002-05:00

So I've been looking for some vintage 1950s cotton shirtwaist or sun dresses. I like the style and it fits my curvy body better than a lot of things made today which are make for women who look like adolescent men. I have boobs, hips and butt. I have a smallish waist. Voila, 50s. I was looking on etsy but the sellers mainly had things that wouldn't fit me (TINY waists) that were too expensive so I headed over to ebay. Which had a lot more things that were too small and expensive, but also several things which were not. I bought 2 dresses

This one is my size and will look much better on me than on this too small mannequin. I'm rather excited about this one, it has so many cute details. I was the only bidder bc I think the pictures were bad, but I trust my judgment. I am reasonably certain it looks off because the mannequin is much too small. If I'm totally wrong than y'all can laugh at me.

This one is a little more demure but it also quite nice. I like the muted color palette of the stripes. It also has darts in the front to give the fitted appearance I prefer

Some day I hope to get good enough at sewing to make my own dresses like these. For now I'll buy used vintage though. They are very nice.

Navajo Plying

2008-07-29T14:35:00.007-05:00

Today I taught myself how to Navajo ply using the joyofhandspinning.com's video tutorial. Its easier than I thought, and fun. I was very excited yesterday when I unraveled a sweater that was a silk, nylon, and angora blend and it was a lace weight single. I almost never get singles. This presented some possibilities. To the left is a photo of the unplyed yarn on my huge bobbinsand on the right is a a good view of the single before plying.

I decided to give it a bit more spin as it was a little fragile and to make a tighter ply. So I ran the whole bobbin through the machine last night and gave it a bit more twist. Today I plied it and it came out great. I love only having one bobbin to deal with and the balanced nature of the 3ply yarn that results. So here's the skein of the yarn I've made. Its so purdy. The yarn is a really soft and nicely drapey fingering weight now and can actually be used. I think I'm going to do this with the rest of the sweater too. Yay, I love unraveling singles.

Good ways to enjoy fresh black raspberries

2008-07-21T21:01:00.002-05:00

Black raspberries grow really well here and they are really in season right now. A friend of mine invited me over to pick some a while ago and I also have bought some from the farmer's market. They are so ripe and fresh that cooking them seems to be a shame so I have a few ways I like to use them (other than stuffing my face) that let their ripe freshness shine.
I made a tart from a recipe on Epicurious.com the Raspberry Sour Cream Tart.
I made it just as written (with a few flubs on the crust, but all was well in the end) and it was extremely delicious. The lemon juice in the cream cheese and sour cream filling gives it a lovely tartness that goes well with the berries. Its also very easy and delicious to make your own graham cracker crust. I didn't have a food processor like in the recipe, so I just put the crackers in a plastic bag and crushed them with a rolling pin. YUM.

The other think I've been doing with the berries is concocting drinks that involve berries.

Here is my fresh black raspberry cocktail.

4 cans ginger ale or a bottle of your favorite dry white wine
24 or so berries

Wash and place berries in a small bowl or plate. Smash them with a fork until they resemble jam. Pour 4 wine glasses with your ginger ale or white wine. Pour an equal amount smashed berries into each glass and serve. If you really hate seeds you can strain the smashed berry to get rid of them, though it looks prettier with the whole bits of berry swirling around the glass.
Serves four

I'm actually drinking one right now. Its delicious!

Things are going along

2008-07-14T10:41:00.005-05:00

I woke up this morning to the sounds of a construction crew digging up our sidewalk to do something to the plumbing I think. They've been doing it all up and down the street and today was our turn. Can you feel my excitement? Ah well they woke me up at 9:45 so not so much.

I've been working on these socks pretty hard core and they seem to be coming along nicely. I've had a few bumps along the way but so far so good. I nearly had a crisis where I KNEW I wasn't going to have enough yarn to make them knee socks so I scrambled around on Ravelry and I got a very kind person there to sell me a skein of the yarn. The making of the pattern portion is going well too. Here are some pictures of the socks. I've already turned the short row heel and am working on the ankle. I am knitting them 2 at a time using magic loop. I really like doing it this way, the socks are much more similar and this way you don't have to "do" another one when you finish the first. You're just done.
I went to the Fine Line shop on Saturday to buy some fleece to practice spinning with. I bought this Merino lamb brown & white fleece. Its a little rough with vegetable matter but it is super soft and it is fun to work with. I think I'm starting to get the hang of spinning. I really like the electric. Its nice not to have to worry about treadling or how to get the speed I want. And with the GIANT bobbins it comes with I can easily spn as much onto a bobbin as I like.

I have posted a new yarn in the shop, and will post another one today. I need to get working on the boxes for the belt buckles so I can, ya know, sell them? But these boxes seem important to me. I think I'll work on them today. And then maybe I can post those silly things. I have sold the one necklace I put up in my shop, I was a bit surprised as the jewelry portion of Etsy is really saturated. But I'm happy to see it go home. I hope the person likes it.

I am going to be have a a booth at YarnCon in October and I'm going to be teaching a class! Its very exciting, but I am a little nervous. I have a few months to get myself together however. I'm going to be teaching a design your own hat class with an a la carte structure so the students can mix and match different designs and make it their own. I think I will sell a heck of a lot of yarn there as well.

I hope I get a lot done today. I wasn't very productive yesterday due to PMS mostly because I get terrible general anxiety from it. I just end up feeling like a doom is upon me or something. It's unpleasant and makes me unable to focus. But today is better I think. I will be productive!

Toe Up Lace & Cables Socks

2008-07-09T00:54:00.003-05:00

My spinner finally arrived about 7pm last night. I spent about and hour cleaning up my work area so it could fit and then I put it all together. It works pretty good, and I'm starting to get the hang of plying with it. I plied this nice white merino I had into a sock weight and a silk pink cobweb weight into a lace weight. I also plied the strands of some cotton yarn, which makes it easier to work with. The motor is fairly quiet at low speeds but the higher speeds are quite noisy.

So my other obsession lately has been these toe up lace socks I've been DYING to write a pattern for that I finally got to work on yesterday. They are going to have small alternating vertical stripes of lace and cables. So I'm almost to cast on. I have my gauge swatches all set, I have a plan of how to proceed, the only thing I'm missing is what kind of lace panel I'm going to put on the back of the calf for a increase. I need more stitches so I am going to go to the library tomorrow and see what they have for stitch dictionaries and maybe look at the Modern Lace Knitting books again. I think I can get cast on and work on them before I get that set though because it will take a while to get to the calf increase portion. I MAY just chart something myself. We'll see. Something has really clicked lately with my planning projects, I'm really getting how to start with and idea and take it to reality (with knitting)
I like it. And so this post isn't too boring I leave you with a fuzzy web cam pic of my tubular gauge swatch.

I created my first real pattern!

2008-07-04T17:39:00.004-05:00

Today I created my first real finished pattern. It was a pretty easy one for a wash cloth but its the first time I really professionally wrote the whole thing out in a way others could understand. I'm pretty proud of it really. I think I'm going to put it up in my store tonight. Also I'm offering it free to anyone who purchases a cotton yarn from me. I did all the layout in InDesign and I have to say I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. I'm knitting one up now to test it, but I should probably have someone test knit it.

Wheee!

Car Accident

2008-06-27T11:15:00.002-05:00

I haven't made any blog posts about this but on Friday the 13th of June Eli and I got rear-ended at high speed on the interstate. The neon is dead, which is a blessing. That car needed a lot of work and now its gone. We bought a new car (brand new WTF) and its a 2008 Honda Fit. We love the damn thing so much.

Aside from that I've been injured. Its not a terrible injury as far as they go and I didn't have to stay in the hospital or anything. I thought I would be fine for the first few days after the accident I didn't even really feel too bad. Then the neck pain started. Its been crippling me more every day since then, with constant aching pain interrupted by sharp stabbing pain when I try to do normal things like bend over or pick up the cat. My work has suffered terribly, as my capacity to unravel the sweaters has gone way down and I fear I'm making it worse by continuing to try to work. I push my self too hard and injure myself. I do that kind of thing a lot.

I've been to the doctor twice and every drug that they have given me I can't take. They switched out the muscle relaxant that made me doped up and stupid for one that gives me stomach aches, terrible nervousness, and makes me slightly dopey. They switched out the relatively side-effect free ibuprofin for the diarrhea causing naproxen. It feels like I can't win.

I've just started physical therapy yesterday and I'm going again today so I hope that helps more than the other things I've been trying. Yesterday though, I had to cancel going to the farmers market because I hurt so bad afterward. I can't even get a massage because my muscles are so spasmed that I scream when anyone touches them. I've been crying a lot. All I want to do is work. I want to make my business grow and prosper and I was starting to do that and now I've been knocked down. I can sell as much as I can make it seems, but I can't hardly make anything.

This is the first time I've ever been so badly injured. Its really really difficult for me and for Eli. Its hard too, because I don't look like I'm injured, or sick or anything. I look just fine, like I should be able to do anything, but it all causes me so much pain. Even typing this is making my neck kill. I'm beginning to think I would have been better off with a damn fracture. At least with that you put a cast on it and wait for it to heal. Muscle damnage is so very hard to deal with. All the body's compensation methods actually make it worse.

So I'm hoping that I start to heal soon, and that I can have the strength to let myself do so. I hope everyone sends some healing thought my way. I could really use them. Hopefully I'll have a nice post soon with all the lovely projects I've been working on and all the new equipment I've been able to buy.

K'nex Motorized Skein Winder Part 2

2008-06-23T23:41:00.004-05:00

So I've gone ahead and made a little video about the k'nex motorized skien winder I created telling a little bit about how it works and how I built it. I'll get around to making more detailed instructions some day I'm sure.
Anyway here's the vid -

A couple of notes; the skein winder can used as a swift by pulling the motor gear out away from the axle gear. You can also give it a handle if you don't have a motor, they are fairly inexpensive however. Also I think if you use this with a cone I would put the guide at a right angle so it hovers above the cone. You'd get better feed I think.

Enjoy!

Vintage Car Mark Tin Plaque Belt Buckle

2008-06-14T22:20:00.005-05:00

So I started work today on those belt buckles I've been talking up. I started varnishing one to see how the glossy varnish would work and if I should get some satin. The verdict is that some of them will need glossy and some will need satin so I need to go buy some satin. I did my test run on the one in the poorest condition which happend to be the Dodge one. (Have they ever made anything quality?) I decided to varnish them with polyurethane because it seemed the the paint was a little fragile and I didn't want them to get all the paint scraped off if you bumped into something. I've my buckle backs and I'm going to use epoxy to glue them on to the backs. That stuff should last longer than the metal and is super strong so I think its a good, if toxic and stinky choice. So I'll post more about these when I get them more done. All I can think about them is "Damn, these are SOOOO cool!"

OK So I made the k'nex motorized skein winder

2008-06-14T00:23:00.002-05:00

I did I did. And I love it. I can unravel a sweater with the ball winder, then hook the ball up to the machine and in about 5 min I have a nice 2 yard skein. I'm so going to post a tutorial this week I promise. This is TOO awesome not to share.

30's Marital Scale

2008-06-14T00:20:00.002-05:00

So I'm the WORST wife EVER

-4

As a 1930s wife, I am
Very Poor (Failure)

Take the test!

And an AWESOME Husband. I always knew Eli made a good wife...

As a 1930s husband, I am
Very Superior

Take the test!

Need to work on writing

2008-05-31T00:42:00.004-05:00

I need to work on my writing. My ad copy could use work, my explanation of why the hell I started this insane venture needs to be more explicit then "Hmm... well... because I could?" Articulate! If I just keep repeating that maybe I'll get somewhere.

The weather here has been pretty crappy for my allergies and its making me feel run down and tired. I did manage to make it to a few garage sales today like I had wanted. I didn't find too much but I did get about 5 nice sweaters for my trouble. At one garage sale they had these cute vintage dessert plates 7 for $3. They are c. 1975 by the somewhat well know designer Vera Neumann. Here is a picture of one (not my photo I ganked it from google)

See? SO cute. I couldn't pass them up even though I promised Eli I wouldn't buy anything that wasn't a sweater. Now that I have my new kitchen table I want different dishes. I love 70s dishes they are so colorful and can be had for not much money. I like to mix and match things with similar color schemes rather than have everything be a set so it doesn't matter to me if I have one place setting here, or another there.

I should talk about that kitchen table. For the past 6 months or so I've been trawling craigslist for a 50s formica kitchen table in a nice color, ie red, green, yellow, and not grey. I found lots of the grey ones and I almost had a really nice grey one with this adorable apple applique on it but the woman sold it to someone else the night before I was supposed to pick it up. Bitch. Anyway it was a good thing because another table came along that was better. It was THE table. It it vibrant yellow cracked ice pattern on top (in awesome condition) with chrome legs. I had to go pick it up in mundelein on Sunday and it was HOT and my stupid car doesn't have air so I was kinda stinky when I got there but the girl didn't notice. So I inspected it and took the legs off, packed it and headed home. The legs were a bit rusty but having restored a vintage bicycle once I wasn't too worried. The next day I spent ALL day cleaning the rust off with a SOS pad. The legs look almost new. The pitting is barely noticeable unless you look very closely. The aluminum trim shined up nicely too, the SOS pads take the stains off well and polish while they are at it. The aluminum could use a tiny bit more work, but I don't think anyone but me notices. I LOVE the new table. It makes the kitchen so happy. The new little dishes go with it really well.

The house is starting to feel really mine after so long. I've been on a long war of attrition to give back all the furniture Eli had borrowed from his parents. This was not SO much that I didn't like it, but more that his father was so very anal about it. He made up keep an ugly vinyl table cloth on the kitchen table so we wouldn't harm it. I hated that. Now we most have all out own furniture and we can really use it and love it instead of resenting our living space.

Anyway here are the images of the table from the ad. Yes I'm lazy and haven't taken pictures of anything yet :P Also the chairs, sadly, did not come with the table. Thats ok though I think I can find better ones.

So I guess those are the before. I'll have to take some afters to show the work I did. Its great.

I've been doing things OTHER than buy stuff (not too much though Eli and went to tjmaxx last night) I've finished 3 more hats recently and took the seams out of a load of sweater so I can frog them. This is good. I went to knit at the yarn exchange today after garage saleing. I got to talk some with Sandy who it really great. We were talking about machinery and favorite yarns that you can't get any more of. I yakked too much about my business, but then I always do that. Its just SO important to me it pretty much takes over my mind. So Sandy offered to send any sweaters that weren't good enough for encore my way, like ones with stains and what not. This is AWESOME. Free yarn to recycle? Sign me up! So I am very stoked. I think all fibers should be pretty good quality and all. Small flaws that make a sweater not nice to wear don't impact its frogability much.

I have to say something to all the people I have met since I started doing this. THANK YOU!! Eveyone has been so kind and helpful to me that I don't think I would have had the courage without you. Cassie - thanks for contacting me out of the blue to be in the Eco Art Fair.
Kristin - thanks for all the great advice and encouragement.
Knitting group members - you guys are awesome and fun, thanks so much.

Yay!

2008-05-28T13:50:00.003-05:00

Today when I came home from my appointment with Dr. P to find I had sold 6 skeins of yarn on etsy! I was sooooo happy. I made like $50 today. I've been posting a skein of yarn everyday for the last 4 days or so and I guess it has paid off. I also spent a lot of time yesterday putting all of my yarns on ravelry so who knows, maybe that worked. One of the purchasers was actually my first internet sale which was awesome. So now I have a repeat customer. YAY!! Now I have to package it all up and ship it out. I need to unravel some more yarns today too, I wasn't expecting to sell so many so quickly.

For those who are interested next week is the first farmer's market here in DeKalb, so come out and join the fun. Its at the corner of 4th and Grove.

Also next weekend we are having a garage/craft supply fair in which many fine goods will be for sale for excellent prices. We have high quality acrylic and watercolor paints, an excellent wooden easel, yarns, ceramics, beads and much much more. So stop on by 916 Grove St., DeKalb, IL on the 6th and 7th of June. We will probably be there till 5pm.

Trucking along

2008-05-18T22:25:00.002-05:00

So I've gotten the go-ahead from ReNew DeKalb about my farmers market stall and I can't hardly contain myself. I went to the salvation army on thursday and bought some display baskets and table clothes for my stall and this really cool wine rack I'm going to hang yarn off of. I already have 3 folding tables so I am getting pretty well set for my display. I feel really happy that this is going forward, but pretty nervous too. I hope all goes well.

Tonight I went for the first time to the DeKalb stitch & bitch and I had a blast. I gave Carolyn her yarn (which she digs) and had a good time discussing knitting with our guest who was telling us about her fleece and sheep. We also talked about a lot of random stuff including some of us who had memorable incidents with ticks. Yes we are classy thank-you-very-much.

I'm putting out a call for anyone who buys my yarn to send me pictures of what they make with it. I'll post them in the blog, it'll be fun. I'm so curious to see what others make of my hard-won fibers I love so well.

A note about philosophy-
This project is really so important to me. I think reusing and recycling has an big impact so I've chosen for the time being to make it my profession in a way. I think it will be so satisfying to see what comes out of rescuing this yarn. I think commercial sweaters are often boring and misshapen and the consequence of this is a very good product essentially going in the garbage. I get all my sweaters from the salvation army and they have a very high turnover of clothing in the store here because of the volume of donated clothing. A lot of what can't be sold gets thrown away. They make no distinctions in fiber quality or condition. This is where I come in and pick and choose what to rescue. There are somethings I look for such as silk and cashmere which I almost always take but there are some more ephemeral qualities I take into consideration when I select a future yarn such as if I personally like the color or the feel of the yarn.

Of course this all ties back into the name I chose for my shop; defaceReconstruct. I sat down with the idea that raw materials make objects which are themselves raw materials for other things in almost infinite ways and that often times we need to take things apart in order to create. This dichotomy is a large part of what goes into my art and life. So I sat down with this idea and a thesaurus and tried almost every imaginable combination of words till I got the current ones. They just sounded right, almost like when you find the resonance pitch of a room and the tone echos and sings in way that no other tone does. So there.

Things I need to get done
- go on a picking trip I have to get more sweaters my stash is running low.
- Build my kiln
- make labels for & photograph new yarn for sale
- return ill-bought skirt to Target
- Send in booth application for Yarn Con (yay!)
- Think about buying some advertising
- Work on ceramics
- Sign up for dancing classes
- Write hat pattern

Whew! I should get started!

-

I made a flikr today!

2008-05-14T23:59:00.003-05:00

Today I joined flikr. My username is, of course, defaceReconstruct. I'm hoping it will be a good way to promote myself and my work, plus its neat. I'm so behind on all the internet crazes these days. I joined a couple of groups already on flikr and they seem cool. One is focused on recycled crafts which is right up my alley with my recycled yarns. I also joined a ceramics group which led me to a cool vessel contest called the Art in the Round Contest. Its only $25 to enter and that entitles you to submit 3 pieces. The grand prize is $3000. It would be the best thing in the whole world if I would win, but I'm not confident that I could AT ALL. But it might get me some exposure as its run entirely on the internet and judged by internets peoples.

In other news I'm still waiting to hear back from ReNew DeKalb if I get my farmers market stall or not. It makes me a little nervous as my recycled yarn is just in a little bit of grey area as to whether or not they will consider it enough of a craft to let me sell it. I do quite a lot of processing on the yarn to get it from sweater to skein so I am of the opinion that it is indeed a craft and does take some skill. I really hope they let me sell it.

I need to start building my kiln soon and work on some ceramics so I can have some more to sell in June. I hope the kiln won't destroy all greenware as I would like to not have to find a way to purchase an electric kiln. That would pretty well suck. $$$$$$ I'm going to be optimistic and make a bunch of draped slab work (quick and dirty) to test in it. I can't imagine it will take more than a day to set up, but I don't know for sure.

My first sale on my etsy shop finally left me feedback. It was good of course with a nice comment that gave me the warm and fuzzies. I'm hoping that if I keep at it I will get more sales. I'm still trying to think of it as a backup to my local business so I don't get too discouraged if I don't end up selling all that much.

Workin'

2008-05-13T01:29:00.007-05:00

Today I met with Kristin whom I met a couple of months ago when I decided to go to the knitting group on Fridays at the Yarn Exchange. She's a very inspiring girl who runs the blog craftleftovers. The subject of today's meeting was an interview she wanted to do with me about my etsy store and the recycling of sweaters. I was pretty nervous that I would be nervous and awkward, but I feel pretty comfortable with Kristin and it was easy for us to gab about things. It was easy for me to answer her questions because I have spent so much time lately thinking about what I'm doing and why and figuring out logistics and making plans. Its pretty tiring really but I get by.

Kristin is coming by tomorrow to take some pictures of me and my pottery so I think I'll dress up and bit and ham for the camera.

It was funny, she was going to record our conversation so she could take some quotes but she ended up not turning it on. I almost think this was a good thing considering how much I digress about things. I don't like recording moments, like photographing events or videotaping them. I like the fuzzy logic of memory, sifting through what I remember and what others remember and constructing my own stories out of bits of the past. But I'm famously digressing again.

I really can't be happier with Kristin answering my questions today and being so kind and friendly about giving me advice about my etsy shop and sharing her experiences. It is honestly one of the most helpful and kind things that has happened in the whole experience of my business. It definitely gave me warm fuzzies.

After I came home from talking with Kristin I went outside and took more photos of my yarn and prints and took some preliminary photos of my ceramics. I need to take some notes and think about what angles I missed and what might make them look best. The late afternoon sunshine in the back yard is glorious this time of year with all the flowers in bloom. It makes me remember why I like being here. The yarn and print photos are pretty fab though. I think the print ones are especially fantastic. I made a little spiral photo holder with some florist wire and planted it in a little bare patch of ground that was surrounded by very short ground cover with little white flowers and there was a single tulip and the rock bench in the background. Goodness those picture don't even look real.

See what I mean? Photographs are so weird for me. They always seem like something that just happens, not like something I have created. Sometimes I look at them and think, I composed that? I made that image exist? It feels strange. But this was very productive. Then I spent forever and a day uploading the rest of the pictures on to my listing for my store. I sure hope they sell some things!

Wow

2008-05-09T19:56:00.001-05:00

I just read http://elleabd.blogspot.com/2008/05/on-double-standards-and-women-paying.html blog post and I am sickened and saddend by the treatment of the women in the article. SO fucking sad.

Yay!

2008-05-04T22:01:00.003-05:00

I had a great time at the Eco Fair on Tuesday and made a tidy $50 or so. A friend came over afterward and we had a good time chilling out and eating Eli's delicious food.

Today I sold my first thing on my Etsy shop! I'm hoping it will start taking off soon, but I'm not relying on it. I think it will mostly be a supplement to fairs to help build my local customer base. I'm trying to get a booth at the DeKalb farmers market(they're craft friendly) and trying to get myself signed up for some art fair booths to sell my yarn and arts. This week is the last week of school and there is a LOT to do! I have soooo much ceramics to work on its not even funny, but I hope I can sell some of these things once they're finished. I have a couple of commissioned cups almost done for a friend and I want to make more because they are cool.

Here's a sample of the stuff in my Etsy store. BUY SOME!!!

Moving forward

2008-04-22T15:35:00.002-05:00

I've been taking a ceramics class at the community college this semester and its really been encouraging me to do more art. My dad has said he will help me build a kiln in their backyard and everything!! I'm hoping to finish these cups I have been working on soon so I can sell them. I have a commission waiting in the the wings here.

In other news I have been buying up sweaters from the salvation army and thrift stores and making them into skeins to sell. I had an abortive attempt earlier today at the Ars Nova Eco Art Fair but we got rained out. I still made 20 bucks or so in the few hours I was there which was awesome and makes me look forward to our rain date of the 29th.

Yes you heard it, you too can come check out he action there will be free music and food and a grand 'ol time. Its on the lawn in front of the Jack Ahrends Art building on the Northern Illinois University Campus. Its right off of College Ave. The hours are 9am-5pm. It WILL be fun!

I just opened an etsy shop

2008-02-04T23:07:00.000-06:00

I recently opened an etsy shop to try to sell some of the handmade goodies I have lying around. I just love making things. Having other people want these things is what might just make it all work. So check it out. www.defacereconstruct.etsy.com

Eagleman (Freak Dealer) Commercial

2007-09-19T12:52:00.001-05:00

You can't beat those!

Eagle Man Commercial Sequel Eagle Woman

2007-09-19T12:51:00.003-05:00

Look at those Eggs!

Eagle Man Commercial

2007-09-19T12:51:00.001-05:00

This one is extra gross. I love the squish sound effect to the crappy CGI egg laying

Eagleman (The Original)

2007-09-19T12:46:00.001-05:00

The staple of late-night hilarity of my youth - The Eagleman Commercials. Known throughout Chicagoland for their surreal absurdity and poor production. I present them now to you
There were 3 iterations. Eagleman lands on car 1 and 2 (1 is better) and the elusive eagle woman. I only saw this one a few times on tv

NPR Interviews Melissa Cross

2007-09-06T15:11:00.000-05:00

So a few days ago I was in the car and was listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross and they were playing a retrospective of her interviews with rock musicians and industry people and I managed to catch the interview with vocal instructor Melissa Cross.
You can listen to it here.
She teaches hardcore musicians to scream without harming their vocal chords, and I think her instructional technique was really fabulous. Just listening to her short interview I was trying to test out my ability to use my voice in a different way and I think I did to some extent. I made a noise I never made before and started laughing. Eli, who was driving, said it sounded like a weird animal. I considered this a success of course. I'm really enamored of picking up this DVD as I often find my voice hurting after talking for any length of time AND it would be so interesting to be able to control the way my voice sounds better.
I was in choir through middle school and high school and I did some in college, but I was at best, competent at it, though I loved it very much. Hearing this interview made me have a lot of nostalgia for being on stage and singing my heart out. While I don't see myself becoming a great singer or being in a band anymore, learning to control my voice in the way Melissa Cross does is just so appealing I think I have to try it. I'll likely post a review, and maybe some audio of my attempts to scream like a rockstar.
If you want to scream like a rockstar too, you can pick up the DVD from Amazon for $17 or so.
The Zen of Screaming

First Real Post!

2007-09-05T15:48:00.001-05:00

This is my first real post! Its very exciting I'll tell you.
I guess I should give a good rundown of the personal aspects of this blog, locations, and major players.

Eli - My mate! 27 and a computer programmer for the local college.

The Parents: En and Jay own the place we live, a duplex not far from downtown, they live in one part us in the smaller in a not always harmonious fashion.

Asuka - The cat. Currently on a much reviled diet. I took away her kibble and am making her poor starving self eat only nutritious wet food. Natural Balance in various flavors. She whines and whinges constantly for food.

Nibbler - One of the rats. Loves to lick people and run around on the couch. Is very silly.
Baldy - The other rat. Has silly curly fur as he is a rex, and now had a respiratory infection and something going on with his eye. He get medicine for both. He's very sweet but more reserved than his brother. Secretly, he's the boss.

Location: DeKalb, Illinois. I've been making a stink about leaving here for years, but I'm learning to find what is good and unique about this place. Recently there was a flood in town which I'll likely post the photos I took at some point soon because they are entertaining.

So what's the point of all of this? I'm trying to learn to write! The best way to do anything is to practice at it and frankly I'm rusty at this writing thing. I also am using this to try to articulate the ideas that I'm thinking about currently. Recently I finished reading House of Rain, by Craig Childs. In this book he follows the path of the Anasazi Indians "disappearance" from the southwest and comes up with some convincing and engaging ideas about culture, migration and the environment. He literally walked all over the southwest to get an idea of the landscape in which the Anasazi, lived, traded and communicated. I loved this book. I easily could have gone sappy or new-agey, but tread a fine line of reverence balanced with realism that just captivated me. The ideas of environmental collapse and the way that culture had learned to deal with drought and rain cycles really seems to be meshing well with the book I'm currently in the middle of. The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan got a bunch of press a while back and I was going to buy it but opted for Marion Nestle's Food Politics instead. (That was great too) So I've finally gotten around to reading it (go library!) and so far so good. Its very nuanced where it could have been alarmist, though factory farming in and of itself is alarming. I'll post a more thoughtful blurb about it and its connections to other things I'm reading when I finish it, but I think its relevant.

The more I learn about where my food is coming from, and about the way things grow healthiest and best the more I realize that cutting out as much processed food as I can from my diet is a salient choice. There is a 3 prong argument in favor of this.

1. Better for the environment - the less fossil fuels that go into making my food the smaller my carbon footprint, and believe me, a lot of fossil fuels go into processed foods, even organic ones.
2. Better for my health - I think this is the strongest argument I can make! Unprocessed food has no preservatives, less salt, fat, cholesterol, sugar, no random untested chemical additives and has more nutrients and fiber.
3. Supporting local business and sustainable agriculture - buy your food locally, this helps save fossil fuels and ensures the food is picked ripe and chock full of healthy vitamins and minerals.

So I'll probably look up some studies and statistics to back this stuff up at some point, but these are my main thoughts about it. There is a deeper, sort of esoteric undercurrent of simplicity to these thoughts as well. I don't think I can prove it but I feel like eating basic and simple foods will help me be healthier. I've been struggling with the difference between health and wellness. I have seen 4 different doctors in this past month and all of them tell me I am healthy, but I still don't feel well. I'm tired, I get headaches, I feel weak. I think improved nutrition, better eating habits and finding a way to be more active might be the key, but its a struggle.

So thats it for today I think, it was a lot but I think it was all important in some way. I'll get around to posting some pictures of things later tonight or tomorrow.

Hello

2007-09-04T23:22:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the new blog! Gotta do a test post thanks!