Show and Tell

Phew! I’m still insanely busy… our friend Atom comes in tomorrow and will be staying with us for a week, both for leisure and for helping my husband set up his art show which opens this week. (Atom is a talented furniture designer and he helped make some frames, display cases, laser cuts, etc. for the show). I’ve been cleaning alllll day and my back is aching. I swear, sometimes I feel like I’m 60 years old and not 29. And it’s amazing how antsy and irritable I get when I don’t have a chance to knit. It really does relax me and put my mind at ease – even if I only do a couple rows here and there. But today, I was so busy I didn’t even complete a single row and I can definitely feel the difference. It’s late and I’m exhausted but I may try to get a little knitting done before bed just to help me sleep easier!

Anyway, both my husband and I are really looking forward to seeing Atom again and showing him around LA….. but is it horrible of me to fret that I won’t get much knitting done while he’s here? (So selfish, I know!). Well, I’ll be sure to carry some projects around with me wherever I go and hope for some downtime!

Koto-Chan asked about my husband’s show:

It’s his first show and it will feature some of  his work which can be seen at www.wilhelmstaehle.com and www.silhouettemasterpiecetheatre.com. He’s big into papercuts, Victorian style, and macabre humor! I’m very excited for him, but there’s still much to do! I’m helping him print some booklets which we worked on together (www.dollardreadful.com) and I’m working on some stereoscopic images which we’ll display with an old-timey viewer.

Like the View-Master, only old-school! (Remember those? I used to love mine!)

Anyway… heading off to bed now. But just for the heck of it, here’s a couple pics of my Jaywalkers in progress. I’m knitting them with yarn from the WoW sock club in the Long Ears colorway. I love how the yarn looks with this pattern so far!

I still have to finish my husband’s socks. After running out of yarn I ordered a new skein of Beryl… but the new skein is noticeably lighter in color. I’ll have to tink back a few rows and begin alternating yarn to blend them in better. I just haven’t felt very motivated to do so yet…. but I’ll try to get around to it soon.

Blog gripes

First and foremost, I want to apologize to anyone who had to sign up for a Vox account in order to post a comment on my previous blog. My blog was originally on Livejournal, then I moved it over to Vox without really researching it much, and I didn’t realize that this was the case.

That said, I got kind of annoyed with Vox… it has some cool features but it’s missing some crucial elements I really want (the ability to add custom html content, for starters). I’m really regretted not being on WordPress… almost all my friends use WordPress, including my husband. I was debating making another move, but right now WordPress only allows one to easily import blogs from Livejournal and a couple others, but not Vox. Similarly, Vox does not have a feature where I can export or back up my entries (another annoying thing). So I basically either had to start fresh or manually copy and paste each entry into WordPress…. which actually turned out not to be that bad considering I only have like 17 posts to date. In fact, it only took me about an hour to get everything transferred!

I’m going to make this blog’s look different than my last one. The pink was starting to annoy me. It’s so weird… I go through such strong “color phrases” where I’ll love one color one month, and can’t stand it the next.

There was one year I wore almost nothing but blue. Most recently I was on an orange kick. Right now I’m totally digging purple, which is weird for me because that’s never been one of my favorite colors before.

In other news, I’ve ripped out all my progress on my two-at-a-time Belle Epoque socks. I can live with a few flaws in my knitted work, but the mistakes were starting to pile up – particularly in the sort of lacey-cablely part of the pattern. But now that I have a “feel” for the pattern I’m going to start again and go more carefully this time.

I also went to my LYS last night for their weekly Stitch N’ Bitch and somehow found myself walking out with this:

A Namaste Zuma bag in peacock! I’ve been wanting a good knitting bag for a long time and I think I’ve finally found it! I am a total bag-a-holic. While I don’t own any bags that are “designer” or pricey, (this Zuma is probably the most I’ve paid for a bag), I do have a closet full of them. But out of them all, there isn’t one that really works for holding my projects when I’m on the go. The big ones all have zippers or too few pockets, and the small ones are… well, too small.

The Zuma is deceptively small on the outside, but it really holds a ton of stuff. I love the magnet closures and the front pocket has mutliple slots which are perfect for holding my circular needles and iphone. Right now it’s holding my dreaded Avalon hoodie and my Noro striped scarf!

Now I need to plan more outings so I can use it more. (One of the setbacks of working from home is that I don’t get out very much…)

The Never-Ending Socks

I had one goal for this weekend: finish my husband’s socks because I am really sick of knitting them and I want my sock-plate clear for when I start the Rockin’ Sock Club. (Sock plate…. ewww)

But…….

That’s right, I ran out of yarn. I can’t say I was that surprised, but I was in a stubborn state of denial until the bitter end. Even before I turned the heel I began to have that sinking feeling that I didn’t have enough yarn to finish, but I preferred to look the other way and say “I’m sure it’ll be fine – a little yarn goes a long way!” (Let me just say I am terrible at guessing how much yarn is needed to complete something and I was hopelessly optimistic).

Well, a little didn’t go a long way at all. I still have about 5 inches left to knit:

So I’ll have to order another skein and hope that it looks semi-similar to the original skein, which I purchased about 2 years ago. The most painful thing is knowing that the socks still aren’t done. I swear, they are testing my patience and are making me more prone to falling victim to Second Sock Syndrome again. I wish I hadn’t knit the leg part so long because then I’d probably have enough yarn to finish. But mostly, I wish my husband’s feet weren’t so big! Uggh… they will be completed though, mark my words!

Crafting Guilt…

I was getting ready, late last night, to prep some stuff for shipping before Christmas – namely the three market bags I crocheted for my aunts in Pennsylvania. But I couldn’t do it. I just could. not. do. it.

The reason? One of the market bags I made was so hideous, I knew I could not, in good conscience, give it away as a gift. It would be borderline insulting.

I made it using the same pattern as the other two,  but the yarn seemed to sag and grow with every row. By the time I finished, I realized the thing was almost as long as my body! But it took just enough time to make that I was reluctant to rip it out. So I did the next best thing: I stashed it in my closet and didn’t look at it for a month.

Yesterday I pulled it out again and realized that time did not make the heart grow fonder. It was just as awkward and elephantine as I remembered. Plus, it looked really plain… it was just a blah tan color with a dark brown rim and strap. It definitely wasn’t as cute as the other two bags I made.

But, rather than face the problem for what it was, being: the bag was just too big and saggy, I decided to attempt to cover it up by embellishing it. And let me just say that embellishing is not my strong suit.

I crocheted some scalloped lace edge to go around the rim. Let’s just say it looked more elegant in my head than it did in real life.  Still not satisfied, I figured it just needed more bells and whistles. So I crocheted 3 different sized flowers and sewed them randomly on the bag.

I then took photos and couldn’t fight the nagging feeling that I perhaps made it even more ugly with my embellishing.

I tried to justify it by reasoning that the intended aunt is eclectic and has a funky style, so she would probably really like the bag, though deep inside I knew this was a lie.

And my husband only confirmed it when I showed it to him later and he whistled through his teeth and said “Sorry… but that’s really ugly.”

“But my aunt will like it, right? She’s got a sort of cool, mismatched style! Right?” I replied, desperate.

“….Sure…” my husband replied tentatively.

So that sealed it. I knew I could not send the bag to my aunt like this. And even though the Priority Mail deadline for Christmas is tomorrow (talk about last minute), I knew I had to fix it.

So I sat down and took the time to rip out half the bag, add a new border and strap, and add one new flower made of the 3 previous flowers to make a bag that was smaller, simpler, but much better.

I’ll admit … it’s still not my favorite crafted item, and the yarn is still saggy so it’s still bigger than I wanted. But at least it looks like a bag I can see my aunt using and not like a deflated dinosaur bladder!

And now: Comparison photos!

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