Patttern: Rio Dances on the Sand

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

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

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

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

I Just Turned 29

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

Her Name Was Rio

and she dances on the sand...

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

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

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

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

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



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

Threesome

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

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

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

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