YIPPEE!

I've been sitting on my good news for a little while now, just in case I was dreaming....I received an email from Amy Singer of Knitty that my recent submission was selected to be in the Fall issue.
Woohoooooooo!

I have several things coming out in the next few months:

• a pattern in Knitty's upcoming fall issue (Sept. 2008)
• a pattern in Luxury One Skein Wonders (Oct. 2008)
• a pattern in Interweave Knits (Winter 2008)

Last month, I finally received my copy of Sweater Surgery for my many contributions. I haven't had time to scan and post about my contributions yet, since as you can see, I've been busy with designing, Handicraft Café, and visiting in-laws.



I'm also currently working on two projects for a book that is due out next year, but I don't want to get my hopes up because I had some concerns about the contract. I already contacted the editor to discuss some of my questions, and she was very willing to chat. I was supposed to receive a draft of some proposed changes, but I haven't received it yet. I need to call and follow up tomorrow.

If this book thing doesn't go through, then that will make book #2 that has led to some disappointment.
This project is already on hiatus. I haven't received any information regarding its status for a long time now, but to my understanding, it is still undergoing some negotiation with the publishing company and I am still under contract for 2 designs, so I can sell them elsewhere.


No doubt I am happy to have been selected in the first place. They were my first attempts with a book contribution, and to have been selected for each of the 3 books that I submitted patterns to is a great joy and validation of my work and ideas. I really try not to get my hopes up or get too excited, because I am also a realist and know that sometimes things just are beyond one's control. However, when a project doesn't go through for one reason or another, it will always a slight bubble burst and somewhat of a personal disappointment. I must say though, that everyone that I've contacted and worked with in my submissions have been kind, professional and talented. Really. The only situation where it wasn't very professional occurred 2 years ago with a now debunked knitting e-zine.

* * *

A couple of weeks ago, my knitting group gathered with other local groups for a knitting in public event at Whole Foods Market in Costa Mesa. We knitted in great company and smothered ourselves in gluttony with all the yummy foods at the various delis inside the store. My favorite was the gelato and dessert bar.


Aubrey showing of her triple brownie lollipop with her robo-arm.

Huntington Gardens

I took my in-laws to experience the wonder of Huntington Gardens and the Rose Garden Tea room last Monday. As usual, the gardens did not disappoint.

It was a leisurely walk around the gardens, though not so much for me because I was trying to make sure that the in-laws were okay and not getting too hot, tired or overheated. I also was trying to keep an eye on my mother-in-law, who really wanted to take a cutting off some of the plants to take back home to plant (she lives in Southeast Asia).

She said, "I should have brought a larger purse." Ai-yah! I told her that we'd get into a lot of trouble if she did. She did look around for fallen clippings or broken succulents that she could pick up and take, but to her disappointment, there were none.

I took them for afternoon tea for lunch. I knew that the food wasn't really something they're used to, but nevertheless it was an experience that would be memorable for them. They really liked all the fresh fruits, especially strawberries, which are hard to come by and expensive in their country. They weren't too keen on some of the sandwiches or cheese and my MIL remarked that the cheese didn't really taste good or special. Good cheese isn't really available where they live, nor is it a common food -- I think Velveeta is probably gourmet over there. The smoked salmon sandwich with caviar and the cheeses were among my favorites, so I set aside any possible embarrassment of my own gluttony and ate plenty to make up for what the in-laws didn't eat! ;)

My mother-in-law had to take several breaks along the way due to her health, so I took some of those opportunities to take some silly self-portraits with my knitting. In trying to take some of the photos, I unraveled my stitches several times and had to start over with my cast-on at least twice. Oh well. The orange yarn is some cheap superwash wool that I bought a while back. I'm thinking that this will be a sun hat project, but I think the reality is that this project will probably be untouched for the next few months. :-P

Handicraft Café is Live Online!

After lots of hard work and some delays, Aubrey and I are proud to announce the Beta launch of Handicraft Café!!

The launch means that we are open for online shopping! We're still constantly uploading and entering inventory and photos. And of course, some tweaking to the site here and there. There are still some missing photos and some photo distortion in the thumbnail view, but everything else seems to be in working order.

One of the most exciting features of the site for me is the multiple search functions and options. You can search through the customizable drop-down menu (pink), the keyword search (green) or through our detailed category lists (purple):


Another feature of the shop that we're very excited about is that we're going developing symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationships with artists of all kinds, with the majority of artists located locally to us. Zona Sherman, aka TwirlGirlFibers on Ravelry, has bravely volunteered to be our guinea pig first fiber artist tester. So far, we have uploaded and processed 6 of her yummy yarn creations. Future developments for the consignment section include adding more artists and bios of participating artists.

Acknowledgments: Many thanks to our friends, especially the wonderful local knit community and our special friends at All Things String for their constant support and encouragement, to Ben for helping Aubrey with all the Photoshopping, to Anna for our logo and to Mike and Derek for all the hours of web design programming and debugging! And of course, extra thanks to our significant others for supporting us in doing our own thing (and continuing to write those mortgage checks).

Car Knitting and Impish Gnomes

I've been working on a secret project that has an early July deadline for publication in a knitting magazine. Since I currently have about 6 secret projects going, I'm going to give this one a pseudonym of "Leaf Pelfriffs."(Sorry I can't reveal more info at this time). Anyway, the hubby and I were on our way to my BIL's house to welcome my in-laws who had just flown in from overseas.

In my infinite and ambitious wisdom, I decided to work on my project during the dark 40 minute drive (9:30 p.m.). "Leaf Pelfriffs" is designed with cables and some stitch patterns in it, so I was really proud that I didn't drop any stitches in the car (or so I thought), so I continued working. This morning, and about 12 inches later, I discovered that I was missing a stitch. I apparently dropped it while knitting in the car in the dark. Ai-yah! It was far down enough and in a weird spot that it was not an easy fix with some unraveling and a crochet hook. I had to riiiiiiiiiiipppit. ::sigh::

"Leaf Pelfriffs" calls for buttons. I have some fantastic chunky buttons, which includes this chunky bone button at left. But alas, I cannot find my awesome buttons because apparently Impish Gnomes have decided to have a wild party in my craft room.

Luckily, my small jar of various buttons, including some vintage ones were not affected. However, I don't think any of them are exactly right for the this project. (see photos at the top)

I would try to look for my nice bone and tree nut buttons, but as I mentioned, the darn Impish Gnomes partied in my craft room. They must be tiny short gnomes because they don't seem to mess up anything stored above 4'.

I don't have any photos of the floor, because frankly, I'm embarrassed at all the fabric and yarn scraps that got strewn around like confetti by the partying Impish Gnomes.

Ugh, I really hate my white walls. I couldn't decide on a color when we moved into the house, so I thought I'd at least paint it white to cover the original puke-colored paint. I also thought that I could easily re-paint when I do decide on a color. Um, does anyone know how to exterminate Impish Gnomes and hire me some House Fairies?

These two photos above show my bags of knitting UFOs. If you go to the set in my flickr, you can see the notes to identify the baggies.

I swear that once in a while my craft room is organized. You can see the hints of organization behind the labels on my containers. I guess I'll have to find a way to banish those Gnomes once and for all.

The BEST WWKIP Day Ever

Clockwise: 1. Marie, Melyssa and Abraham with Christine grilling corn with her hubby in the back; 2. Seven our new alpaca friend; 3. (l-r) Holly's pooch, Holly, Michelle and Denise L. from the Anaheim Hills group photographing me photographing her; (l-r): Gloria, Victoria, Renata and Rachel chatting in front of the prize table.

This past Saturday was World Wide Knit in Public Day! Many groups in and around Southern California held WWKIP events. Of course this year, my knitting group held our annual picnic to coincide with WWKIP. We invited other knit and crochet clubs from Orange County, Long Beach, Los Angeles and anyone else to join us in the festivities. I think we had the very best WWKIP event. In fact, I think we may have had the best event all around! Okay, so I may be a little biased, but I don't know if the other groups say the following about their WWKIP events:

• We had jugglers and spear throwers who brought juggling and a unicycle. I didn't get photos of the jugglers, but Christine from Long Beach SnB did here!
  

• We had vivacious knitters that tried to knit while hula-hooping!

Above: Zona trying very hard not to drop her hoop and her stitches!


Above: Rachel also trying to keep up her hoop and stitches.

• We had animals at our picnic, including an alpaca! People brought their dogs, some kids brought their surprisingly cute rats and new ATS members Amanda and Margo brought their alpaca Seven, named so for his 7-7-07 birth date. I was really resisting stealing him away in my car, and since he's small, I was thinking that I may be able to pass him off as a rare dog breed or something. ;) Zona snapped a photo of the kids playing with the rat right above my head - eek!.
  

Clockwise: 1. Some kids playing with a pet rat. Rat is on the long-haired girl's shoulder; 2, 3. Seven the alpaca showing off his cute face and new haircut for the camera; 4. Seven smiling for the camera.

• We had musicians singing for us with their guitars. Zona also has a picture of Jeff and his guitar.
  

Jonathan and the kilt-wearing Jeff singing some tunes for us.

• We had several games and contests including a speed knitting war and a mystery fiber game! I didn't snap photos of the finished war fish, but Denise L. did here and here. Zona has a photo of the prize table.
  

Clockwise 1. Robert and 2. Chia working on their Knitting War projects, trying to kill each other off; 3. & 4. Courtney, Shawn, curious boy and Zona check out the Mystery Fibers.

• We had lots of spinners too, including a few very handy and crafty kids who got the hang of spinning in no time!

Clockwise: 1. Kristi spinning some luscious green wool ; 2. Jamie gets the cutest apprentice to help him spin some undyed wool from a small mill; 3. Me spinning some silk; 4. Aliza wanted to learn to spin, so I let her try out my wheel as her brothers watched.

• We had customized name tags! I made about 30-35 name tags for the folks that I knew from ATS and the Anaheim Hills Knit Night. I'm just a little bummed that I forgot to take photos of two of my favorite tags that I made. I made a "King Snark" for Robert, who is undoubtedly the bitchiest and snarkiest member of our group. (Robert wore his tag with pride, btw.) I also made one for Zona's very understanding hubby (Jeff the guitar-playing kilt dude). I gave Jeff a club of his own: S.P.O.O.F. (Supportive Partners Of Out-of-control Fiberholics)

All in all, we all had all the ingredients for a stupendous WWKIP event. We had good food, great people, fiber, prizes, laughs, good weather and an alpaca. Really, what can one ask for? I have more pics uploaded in my Flickr (lots more of Seven).

All this fun would not be possible without our group's fearless leader, Renata who did most of the arrangements, from the park permit to the pop-ups, tables, banner, jugglers and spear throwers!



Clockwise: 1. Karen and Debbie ; 2. Me, Rachel and Zona; 3. Abraham working on his needlepoint while Jamie knits.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Guess who I called me??? Read on as I keep you in suspense a little longer with my verboseness. :)

Though I have nothing I have been able to show or share publicly, I have been keeping myself very busy over the past 3-4 months with knitting. The reason is because all the things keeping me busy are knitting designs that I submitted to various publications. All that good stuff has to stay a secret until either (a) I get rejected and decide to self-publish or (b) I get accepted and the pattern gets published.

Since I started knitting not so long ago, I toyed with about 3 patterns that I randomly submitted to e-zines. Recently, I decided to take things to the next level and submit for real. I began reading public forums and researching how to submit designs.

My first attempt at a book submission occurred in December 2007 and it proved well, since 2 of my designs were selected to be in the follow-up to the successful Sensual Knits book. Currently, there is some delay with the publisher, but all the contributing designers are hopeful that all goes well. With any luck, I will resume work for this project soon.

More recently in the past few months, I submitted designs for 2 other books, 2 traditional print magazines, 1 e-zine, and a yarn company. I don't mean to be vague about to whom and what I submitted, but typically, one cannot and should not be divulging any specific or juicy details about pending projects unless thus granted by the companies or publishers.

• The yarn company wanted 4 of my designs. I've completed and was paid for one, and the yarn company is holding off the others for a later date as they work on additional things for their company.

• Two weeks ago, I received news about my submission for a book about summery knitting -- 2 of my 3 design submissions were selected for the book. I have since received the yummy yarns and am nearly halfway done on the first of the projects, due in June. The other project is due in July. The yarns and colorways for these projects are truly divine! I really wish I could post photos of the yarns.

• This past Monday, I received a voice mail message and an email from the editor of a superb knitting magazine saying that she wants to publish one of my designs. Woohoo! I was so excited from jumping up and down that I think my cats might have thought we were having an earthquake. It was my first "real" submission to this magazine. I just received the yarns for it (so lucious!), but I still haven't talked to the editor about the details of the project, which makes me just slightly nervous especially since the deadline is rather tight. -- I have less than 30 days to finish it. I know I will definitely meet it, but I think I'm just being a little more neurotic on this one because I want to make sure that I plan my time well in order to anticipate any unforeseen snafoos when working on multiple knitting design projects with overlapping deadlines.

Wait, I have more good news!

• Just 3 days ago, I received a packet from the publisher of the 2nd book containing news about 2 of 3 designs I submitted. The packet contained 1 rejection letter for the lace beanie shown in the photos, and 1 acceptance letter for the other project. The best part of this bit of news is that I already did the work so other than signing the contract, I don't have any deadlines to meet! I am now eagerly awaiting news on the 3rd submission for this book.

The "reject" hat is called Geode. In all honesty, I was not happy with it, but I didn't have time to rework it for the book submission, so I am not at all surprised that it was rejected. As for the fate of this design, I will definitely be self-publishing it though I have not decided whether to offer it as a free pattern or to rework it a bit and sell it.

The Mohair Ripper Strikes Again

Remember my CATastrophe? Okay, nothing really horrible has happened, but Whitey Coyote, aka Mohair Ripper, aka Yarn Thief has been stealing yarn and then giving it to me as presents for a few months now. She struck again tonight, and with some pretty funny results.

First of all, some background info: the Thief has expensive taste in yarn (kind of like her mommy). She likes the good stuff, the ones with higher price tags. She's so discernible that I have baited her with cotton and cheaper wool yarns with little success.

Damned Thieving Cat! She looks so innocent and cute in the picture above, but if you look closely, she's sitting on 2 hats made of a blend of merino/silk/cashmere.

Anyway, her new "surprise mommy with yarh presents" thing started a few months ago, when she dug up a small ball of handspun that I purposefully buried under handcarders, bobbins and a rubber mat, away from her. She somehow dug out the yarn, and dragged it from the family room, all the way upstairs to my bedroom.

Granted, I have to admit that I sometimes I miss a ball or two when cleaning up, but the cat has gotten so clever as to open my purses/bags. (Like any proper knitter, I usually have at least 1 project and some random yarns and needles in all my bags, just in case.) If there are 2 balls of yarn in my purse or around the house, she will take the more expensive of the two. Luckily, I take extra care with my projects and keep them better protected than the balls in my purse, although once, she did "gift" me a test sock with all the dpns still attached.

As her thieving skills improve, I take more care to hide the good yarns. But now, I think in her desperation to bring me yarn-gifts and the seemingly rare occurrence of good yarn accidentally laying around now, she has resorted to snatching yarns she does not like, but she still knows yarn values.

Once, though there were smaller remnant yarns in my knitting bag, she somehow opened it and stole a whole unused skein of Lamb's Pride Bulky and dragged the whole thing upstairs. The skein is almost half her size! She left the entire thing intact, because I guess she wasn't that interested in playing with it. She's even resorted to picking up large balls of cotton yarn, which she has ignored for the past 3-4 years, and drags them all the way upstairs. And last week, she even attacked some Knit Picks Cadena, which she does not like, and has ignored for a very long time -- I left that yarn for her as something she could play with when she started stealing my yarns, but she wasn't interested and it sat on a coffee table in plain sight for at least 3 months!

Tonight, she struck again -- this time she stole 2 skeins of yarn I handpainted and put on top of a TV on a narrow counter in the kitchen because I was about to mail it out. I thought my yarn was safe, because it has been kitty-free and really out of the reach of paws, but apparently I was wrong. After finding my "present" in the bedroom, I was just going to put it away as I do with all my yarn presents. But then I got a closer look:
At first I just thought she lost her collar. Then upon closer inspection, it was clear that her collar got stuck to the loosened hank that she dragged from the kitchen up to the master bedroom. And in the midst of trying to get herself untangled in the yarn, the yarn wedged into the split ring that holds her tag. When the safety release finally snapped, she got away, but not without leaving a chunk of fluffy evidence from her neck, which also managed to get caught in the split ring.
Silly cat.

Designing

I just finished writing a pattern for a very exciting accessory item. I really wish I could post the photo and talk about it, but I am planning on submitting it to Knitty or another knitting publication. I can't post a photo, but I suppose I can post a small swatch teaser and tell you that the yarn is a fantastic yarn, and one of my top faves: Savannah DK by The Fibre Company (50%Merno, 20% Orgainc Cotton, 15% Linen, 15% Soya Fiber)The photo is a small snipped of the completed item, unblocked.

For the past few days, I have been sketching and swatching for another book submission. It took me a lot longer than I had expected because I had to chart everything first, as if I was actually writing the pattern to 2 of the designs I submitted. The charting was very laborious and tedious. So in the end, I only submitted 3 total, although I had originally planned to submit double that. I figure that the more I submit, the likelihood that one of them would be selected would increase.

Since I'm still new to the whole design and submission process, I haven't really yet figured out how to do all of it smoothly and in a timely fashion. I start by a rough and horridly ugly drawing or illegible description of my ideas. I then narrow them down for the submission's theme and do a better color sketch of my idea. I then work one or two swatches as necessary for the design. After all that, I photograph or scan the swatches and the sketches, digitally clean up the scanned sketches and add typed details. Then print or convert everything into a PDF packet, and send everything off.

I don't really have anything more recent I can show on the blog because they are still pending, but below is an example of something that I did designed for a charity raffle for my previous employer. As you can see, I knit much better than I draw.

OTHER NEWS AND UPDATES

For those of you wondering about the progress of my projects for Sensual Evening Knits (follow up to Sensual Knits), I still have no updates on the status of the publication. I can't really reveal or say more than that because I'm still contracted to them and have to keep everything secret.

In other recent news, I petitioned to join and was accepted as an associate member of the Association of Knitwear Designers. I haven't really navigated the site and all that AKD has to offer, but I did request a mentor. My mentor is Kim of Dolce Hand Knits. Kim has been a great help and responded to my many questions about the design business while she was on vacation! The ironic thing is that I actually met Kim when I attended TNNA this January. We were both taking a techniques class with Melissa Leapman, crochet and knitwear designer extraordinaire . Aubrey and I later "stalked" Kim at one of the booths and talked to her about her designs and about our shop, Handicraft Cafe. I'm glad we didn't scare Kim off and that she agreed to mentor me. ;)

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. :)

Twister Contest

Thanks to everyone who commented in my blog post, on Ravelry and emailed me about your opinions and thoughts to my question about the Twister patterns. The contest is officially closed now. I will continue to consider all your input and weigh that with my goals for my patterns and the various delivery methods and options.

I'll select and announce a winner in the next week or two. I should have all the test knitters reviews in by then. Thanks again!!

::grumble::grumble::

Argh! I have spent the past day and a half unhappy. I put out free patterns for people to use because I want people to use them for their personal enjoyment. You'll also notice that there is a very clear copyright notice and statement at the bottom of each page. What part of "personal use ONLY" do people not understand? Crafters who sell their crafts even on a small scale should be aware of what a basic copyright means. Even people who don't sell, knows. Now, granted the depth of knowledge can vary.

Prompted by a request by someone asking me to grant him permission to sell swifts based on my yarn swift pattern for a very very small royalty for every one he sells, I decided to look on a certain website to see if other people were not so kind and did NOT even bother to request permission. Lo and behold, what did I find?

I found 2 sellers on this not-to-be-named website. One seller just listed this month and has not sold any swifts. This first person has altered the design a little (changed the look of the base), but it still eerily resembles my pattern and the options I discuss and provide in it. The second person, has sold about 20 swifts. I would say about 98% of it looks like the ones in my photos and the construction definitely is a spitting image of my design. The only thing that the second person didn't do is put in the CD that I used as a stabilizer in Version 1. You actually don't even need a CD, stabilizer or block spacer if you have nice tools that drill straight, but if you don't you'll need one. I think I may have mentioned this in a previous blog post or in the pattern itself.

I'm still on the fence right now about reporting the first seller. (edit 2/14/08, 1:59pm: I should note that the reason is that I was on the fence about it at the time of my blog post although it is similar, I do realize that it is possible that people can come up with similar ideas and designs. When I woke up this morning, I have decided not to do anything about the first seller, because I think the design is different enough that I don't think that this person used my plans.) However, I just shot off a notice to the second seller to remove all listings, and I reported it to the administrators of the website.

This has thrown me off a little because, though I know logically that there are always people who choose not to care about someones creative right, I chose not to believe it in my heart because I so love the knitting community and most of the people I have met through this community.

I do have some plans to sell swifts from my pattern at some point, but I don't have the tools or the time right now, especially since Aubrey and I are still working hard at Handicraft Cafe, which should be launched in the beta phase very very soon. We hope to be able to contract with someone to produce the swifts for us to sell. But this is not the reason for me getting upset about these people selling swifts. It's the fact that they are trying to sell and pass something off as their own design. Now, if they want to design their own easy-to-make, cost-effective and portable swift and then sell it, by all means they should -- just come up with their own plans and ideas! The other upsetting part of it is that I spent a lot of time writing and revising it so that people will benefit and be able to use it, and their violation of that is disheartening.

Oh- please be advised that no part of this post may be printed or distributed without my expressed written permission. This post is for your personal and non-commercial use only. :)

On a happier and related note, I just reformatted the swift pattern onto pdf in my new layout and included the long-awaited instructions for making it on a Lazy Susan! If you are on Ravelry, here is the link. If you are not, again, I am sorry, you will have to wait. I have plans to reorganize this website and don't want to have to upload and rearrange it twice later.

Sneak Preview

I've been wanting to put all my patterns in an attractive layout, including my free patterns. So I asked my sister to design a simple but attractive layouts for my patterns. My sister is a professional artist (medical illustrator) and has done some lovely non-medical freelance work, including the logos for Sugar Apple Creations and Handicraft Cafe.

I'm still converting my patterns to the new layout and learning InDesign as I go along, but I do have one completed for your sneak preview. I converted Buccaneer's Booty, which still lives here as html. The new pdf file has already been uploaded onto Ravelry as a free download. The link that the Raverly file is here. For those who aren't on Ravelry, unfortunately, you won't be able to access the download yet. My apologies to you. You'll have to wait a little, but here's a photo preview in the meantime:

If you're interested in having your patterns laid out, I highly recommend hiring a professional to do it for you. It's worth the investment for may reasons. It's something you'll be using over and over. You don't even need a professional program. Initially, I had asked my sis to do something that I could do in Word, but then because I have lots of stuff and am starting business, I figured installing InDesign would be better. Anyway, my sis is a medical illustrator, so her site, Anaphase Studios, is a portfolio of that type of work. She hasn't updated it to reflect other freelance design work yet.

Twister update & Contest

Quite a few people have been messaging me on Ravelry regarding Twister (previous blog post here; Ravelry link here), and inquiring whether it's ready. ALMOST! A great artist (my sis) is making new template layouts for me to make my patterns pretty for pdf, and I've already started converting my patterns, including the freebies and part of Twister to the new pdf format.

2 of my test knitters are done. THANK YOU!! Visit their blogs and/or Ravelry pages to check out their handiwork.
Tinker's blog
Tinker's Rav. page
CraftyCanadian's blog
CraftyCanadian's Rav. page

::CONTEST:: We all love them, don't we? All you have to do is to read through the rest of this post and then answer the question at the end of this post either by posting a comment or emailing me. I will do a random drawing of all who answer. There will be at least 3 winners (number of winners to be determined at my discretion). Winners will receive a final color laser- printed copy of Twister, Super Twister (being tested, see photos) and/or Mega Twister (in development) in protective plastic sleeves. Super Twister is Twister on bulky yarn, and Mega Twister is Twister done on polar/super bulky yarn. And if I happen to be having a good day, I'll send winners some yarn too. Contest ends: February 15, 2008.

Prototype of Super Twister. Yarn: Misti Alpaca Chunky.

Midway through the testing process, I wrote an alternative way in which the hat could be knit, using a provisional cast on and knitting on 2 circulars. CraftyCanadian knit hers the original way, while Tinker's version is a combination of the original way and new way -- the main hat is the old way, and her brim is the new way. A third tester, BunnySquirrel, will be doing hers using the new way. Actually, CraftyCanadian is starting another one using the new way, and her eagle eyes has caught some of my draft errors.

So what's the difference? The difference lies within the construction. I don't think there are true "pros" and "cons" in either way, because I think it's a matter of skill level, preference and how easy do you want to have it when working the pattern. Nonetheless, here are a few points that I think would/could be applied to each method:

The original way: the hat starts with a spiraling rib (so that it doesn't curl), then the rest of the body is the twisted stitch pattern. The brim is worked separately by picking up stitches along the cast on edge, shaped and then sewn together. Skill Level - intermediate. Pro: No pesky needles (except than the double points) to get in the way; easier to work than the new way. Con: Although there is an illusion of continuity from brim to crown that one can't really see unless they are a pro with eagle eyes, it's not seamless and "perfect".

The new way: The hat starts with working the brim, then the hem and the rest of the body is worked. There is no sewing of seams, and there's no spiraling rib pattern. Requires working on 2 circulars, off of 3 needles, and provisional cast on. Skill Level - advanced. Pro: True continuity of the spiraling stitch pattern from brim to crown; no seams between hat body and brim; built-in hem. Con: Working the brim first may be annoying, as it may get in the way when starting the hat body, can be confusing/challenging for a less experienced knitter.

Two versions? I was thinking of offering Twister as 2 separate patterns - one for intermediate, and one for advanced. Right now, I can't wrap my head around how to combine both options into one pattern without it being totally confusing to the end user, especially since the way you start and cast on is so different between the two. If I were to offer only one version, I think I'd do the advanced version, but that may turn away (scare off?) less experienced knitters. ETA: As CraftyCanadian stated in her comment, the skill set required to work the advanced version is quite different than the intermediate version. The difference is not just a matter of working on dpns versus 2 circulars. It includes casting onto 2 circulars provisionally more than once, and working a hem with 3 needles.

What do you think? Would you like to have the option of having an intermediate method and an advanced version of the pattern? Or would you hate to see someone selling 2 versions of the same pattern separately, albeit utilizing different techniques?

ETA: If you'd like to part of the drawing, please make sure that I will be able to contact you in case you win and include your email or blog address. This is especially for non-blogger users. I am unable to reply or find out who you are if you are not commenting through a blogger username/account.

EDIT #3: Moving my comment here for better visibility. ..Oh wow! Thank you all for your thoughts, comments and suggestions so far! You've definitely given me options that I had not thought of before, but will definitely weigh. Here's another question based on your comments:

So for those in the camp of packaging the 2 separate patterns together as a set, would you be willing to pay a little more for it then? I'd still have to format and figure out size/cost, but hypothetically, say, I was planning to sell at $6 for most single patterns, would you pay $9 for the set then? If I were to combine a package clearly labeling the 2 separate pattern & pattern techniques, it would drive my cost up, not just the amount of work, but also in pdf (file size, storage, photos, uploads, memory) and in printing, if I were to also sell paper patterns (paper, printing, ink, protective sheet costs. Thanks again!

Thanks!!

Twister at Whole Foods

Last Wednesday, my blogless friend Rachel organized a public stitching event at the Whole Foods in Tustin. Folks from at least 3 different local knit/crochet groups attended. It was a fabulous event where we were able to socialize with people we otherwise don't normally see or come across, and where we were able to meet new people. Another rather fabulous part of the Whole Foods experience, is all the yummy foods! The dining area of this whole foods is right behind the chocolate and dessert bar, so I was surrounded by some of the most wonderful smells in the world: wool and chocolate. Yum.

While at Whole Foods, CraftyCanadian of One Too Many Projects brought her newly finished Twister that she was test knitting for me, modeled here and here by her friend. If you are on Ravelry, then CraftyCanadian's Twister Project page is here. CraftyCanadian used Socks That Rock Heavyweight yarn.

If you are not on Ravelry and don't know what it is, the best way to describe it is that it is like MySpace for fiber artists, but 100 times better due to all the wonderful special features of the site. Warning though -- Ravelry is really well done and easy to use, so it can be very addictive.

Needle Holder

Since I still don't have the yarn yet, I can't start my designs for the follow-up of the Sensual Knits book, I decided to spend my waiting time designing other things. Last night, I worked on finishing "Super Twister," which I started 2 days ago. I worked in bed as I do many nights, and as always, I'm always looking around the floor, on the bed, between the sheets, etc., etc. for my needles, pens and other knitting things. I always find them eventually. However, no matter how much I looked, I could not find one of my dpns. I thought maybe the snoring hubby or the cats were sleeping on it, but after flipping them all over, I still found nothing. I finally gave up and decided to finish my hat with my remaining dpns, then I brushed my teeth and went to bed.

A few hours later, I awoke to something poking my chest. It turned out that my dpn had fallen in my shirt and decided to snuggle between my bra and boobs. (Since I am abnormally large, especially for an Asian girl, I am afraid of sagging when I get older, so I do wear a bra to sleep on most nights.) Anyway, I pulled my needle out and went back to bed. I don't know why I didn't notice it before. Thank goodness, it was a 5" US #10 (6mm) dpn
instead of something like a #1 dpn -- I shudder at the mishaps that could happen with such a tiny needle. From now on, I will be looking at my boobs the next time I lose a needle.

Sensual Knits

Have you seen the book? It was just released this month. Isn't it great? I admit I have not knitted anything from it yet, but I love the selections and patterns in this book. The patterns are modern yet classic, fitted and the photographs are great. In addition to the jacket featured on the cover, there's a lovely cabled cardigan that I'd like to knit.

The follow-up to Sensual Knits is already in the creation process. Guess who's going to have her designs in the follow-up book? Yes, me!!!! So, the sequel is even more destined to be fantastic too, right? ;)

As you can imagine, was quite elated when I opened an email from the editor last week that they had selected not one, but two of my design submissions for inclusion in the book. I wanted to post it everywhere, and tell everyone, but at the same time I wanted to keep a level head and didn't want to post anything without checking with the publisher. So, I apologize for the tease, but I am not at liberty to give you much more details about the book or my design at this point --- you'll just have to be patient and wait to see. The other reason that I don't want to get too giddy is because, until the book actually gets published in a concrete and tangible format, there's always the chance that nothing will happen (ahem, speaking from my past experience). So, I'm trying hard not to get too excited and trying not to count my chickens before they hatch, so to speak.

One of the things that I have to do as part of the design process is to select and recommend yarns and colors for the project. Even more fantabulous is that for the last 5 days, Aubrey and I have been attending TNNA, a needlearts trade show, so the timing worked out great, and I had lots of goodies to touch, smell and buy. But picking out a couple of yarns for the book project among thousands of great (ok, yes there were some not so great) yarns was a lot harder than you'd think!

I do not have any photos from TNNA, which was held in Long Beach, to share with you because we were not able to take photos in the exhibit halls. However, I promise to take photos of my loot (freebies and samples) later this week and tell you about our adventures including which yarn and knitting divas we ran into.

Twister

I've been playing so much on Ravelry that I almost forgot about my blog. Ha! I didn't really get what people were talking about at first when I heard my knitting friends rave about the site, but I GET IT! It is very well organized, easy to set up and navigate, AND the folks on the forums provide a bunch of wonderful and helpful information. I'm still catching up on updating my stuff, including my knitting projects and my patterns.

One of the projects/patterns that I listed is my Twister cap. I designed and finished it about 1 year ago, but I didn't post any photos or talk about it because I was trying my hand at submissions. Unfortunately, both Knitty and Interweave Knits rejected this project. After some hemming and hawing about whether I should try and submit elsewhere, I finally decided that I wanted to self-publish and sell the pattern. So, thanks to some lovely volunteers, Z's Momma, Bunny Squirrel, and Crafty Canadian, Twister is getting test knitted. No matter how many times I have knitted it (counting many prototypes and samples, it's at least 6+ total) and checked the pattern for errors, there's no way that I can catch the same errors and typos that test knitters may catch for me. Furthermore, it's a way to see if the instructions that I wrote are clear and concise.

Anyhow, as soon as I get the comments back from my lovely test knitters, I will officially release the pattern, which I'm really excited about. Now if you'll allow me to toot my own horn for a little bit: Since posting it on Ravelry about 2 weeks ago, to date, the project and pattern has been marked as a favorite by other Ravelers a total of over 30 times. This totally strokes my confidence to see that people like my work, and though I'm really not afraid or upset by rejection at all (I mean, seriously, the editors do have a difficult job of picking from 100s and 1000s of great designs to suit their respective publications.), it does make the slight disappointment seeing the words "we are sorry" all go away. Thanks y'all!!

Now, if I can just figure out and learn how to set up a shopping cart and pdf download system on this blog...

Argyle Skullcap

My knitting friends accuse me of being a little crazy and too ambitious. Am I really?

For the last several months, I've had the idea that it'd be cool to knit an argyle hat or cap with skulls in it. Not that I'm into skulls or argyle, but it'd be interesting, no? Especially since those are 2 of my sister's favorite patterns/motifs. I never thought I'd try it, because I knew it'd be hellish to knit.

Then, one very late night (surprise, surprise), about 4-5 days before Xmas, I dug through my bucket of leftover yarn and came up with some yarns that are similar (but not quite exact) in gauge and stayed up to start charting for Argyle Skullcap (working title).

The next day, I went to the knitting group with my chart and 4 yarns in tow. Fast forward lots of tangling, untangling and tinks, I began to see some results. In the end, I did screw up some one of the colors, but I was too lazy to undo it by that point, and it looked almost intentional. I am happy with the results considering that I had very little time to do it, and I just found leftover yarn that didn't quite match in weight to do it in. I finished it about 3 hours after my sister drove in from San Francisco on Xmas eve, and I think she really likes her gifts -- a big tin of gourmet cookies, a pair of argyle tights and the Argyle Skullcap.

I would show y'all photos of the fair isle nightmare inside, but I forgot to document that. I don't know if other knitters are also masochists and would want to knit this, but it there is enough interest, I think I will rework the gauge and chart and release it as a pattern. If you're on Ravelry, it's here.

Oh, and ironically, my sis was wearing her skeleton t-shirt the night I gave her the hat. It was not planned.

Ravelry

I've finally caught up with other knitters and joined Ravelry, and I am so glad that I did! The site is very well designed and very user-friendly. The only downsides are (1) I will have to upload a bunch of stuff onto my account, and (2) I can totally see myself spending lots of time on there.

One of the fantastic Ravelry features include the ability to find a endless myriad of patterns in one place AND see what other knitters have done with those patterns. This saves a ton of time doing multiple internet searches. I used to have to search using various search engines, blogs and various crafting/knitting forums for variations, yarn substitutions and photos of patterns. With Ravelry, this is a cinch!

When I first logged on, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that other Ravelry users had already uploaded my knitting designs into the site's pattern compendium. I've since updated all the information and added photos to the patterns.

Other superb features include yarn index (although most, but not all yarns are on there), LYS serach index (it's also a work in progress, so it's not complete) and the ability to manage your projects (present and future), yarn stash, library and designs.

Although I am tempted to list and post some of my past projects, I think I will hold off for the time being, since it is such a time-consuming task to do so.

Staying In

Luckily, my home, my family and the area in which I live is safe from the multiple fires burning rampant in Southern California. However, even with all the doors and windows closed, the winds are blowing all sorts of allergens and irritants that sneak through the tiniest of crevices into the house. I already suffer from terrible year-round allergies and mild asthma, and all the dust and smoke is knocking my entire body out of whack, even with a slew of drugs. Thus, not wanting to aggravate my lungs and sinus further, I think I will remain a shut-in for the majority of the week.

Last night, instead of going to spinning group with my fiber friends, Carolyn came over to my house and spun on her Ashford Traveler. I had already finished plying "cotton candy" (but haven't yet blocked it) and didn't want to spin undyed roving, so I worked on the lace stole for my stepmother instead. It's going slowly, but I've completed half of it already. I contemplated doing 2 separate halves and then grafting it together, but the pattern is small enough that I don't think it'd obvious which way is which, and so certainly, not worth the trouble of trying to graft over 100 stitches.

I also tried to dry a couple of hats a little before I attempted to block by laying them on a towel on my kitchen table. To my surprise, I found one of the cats on the hats. I had not expected one of the naughty ones to bother with the hats because they were wet, but I guess I was wrong. The gray hat is a gift for a Buddhist nun, so now I have to re-wash it and pick out all the cat hairs. Damn cat!

This is another one of the photos I scanned Sunday night. I'm not sure when it was taken, but I'm estimating that my mom was probably about 20-23 years old in the photo.

Butterflies

I've been doing some back-breaking cleaning everyday for the past 2 weeks. You see, I have many visitors: my in-laws from Southeast Asia, my dad and stepmother from Texas and my godmother from Taiwan. All my visitors are very nice people, but still...there is some stress and anxiety from having out-of-town visitors. I worry about making sure that my house is clean and meticulously orderly (I'm not horrible, but this area is not my forte), and I worry about places to take them. Needless to say, I haven't been crafting or knitting much.

For the last several weeks I have been working on this stole. It's my own design. I custom hand-painted it in shades of navy and blue from my stepmother. The larger center panel is a modified snowshoe lace, but it reminds me of butterfly cocoons. The photo is a little overexposed and it will be much better after I finish and block it. I'm not sure when I will be able to finish it -- I certainly won't be working on it much this month. Also, I've had to rip many parts of it out already. That's what I get for trying to knit lace at knitting group.

Several days ago, I took some of my visitors to the San Juan Capistrano Mission, where we took in the splendor of the building and the beautiful garden. We were lucky enough to see lots of monarch butterflies fluttering happily with the wind. We even spotted some cocoons, and I managed to get some macro shots of the monarchs.

Beach Knitting

This past Saturday, my knitting group had our 3rd Beach Knitting Picnic. Our previous events were held at Heisler Park in Laguna Beach, which is on a small cliff right over the beach. Due to some renovations at the park, we had to change the location to Aliso Beach. Aliso Beach doesn't have a grassy park, but there are some fire rings right on the beach and it's a rather quiet and lovely beach, as you can see from the photos.


It had poured the night before, and in some parts, it rained pretty heavily Saturday morning as well. Luckily, after a brief shower, the beach was the epitome of a quintessential sunny California Beach. What made the picnic even lovelier were the fantastic ocean waves that resulted from the storm system.


Due to the rain and the location change, we had a smaller turnout than the previous 2 picnics. We still had a lovely group of folks and I even brought my spinning wheel and spun with good company, great weather, and the sounds of crashing waves behind me. And in a classic "Oh, Aubrey!" moment, Aubrey, who is known for losing things, somehow dropped her wallet about 10 feet away from our pop-up tent. I don't know how much time had passed (at least 10 minutes) between her dropping it and me spotting it, but had the beach been more crowded, I have no doubt that someone would have swiped it within seconds. Tsk, tsk.

After the picnic, I went over to my friend Rachel's for a dinner party. Unfortunately, after a couple of hours, I felt an allergy-induced pre-asthma attack coming on. I was allergic to something in her apartment -- maybe her cats, maybe something else. My chest began to tighten as my throat itched and my sinuses swelled. I excused myself from the party and thankfully, by the time I got home, some of the itchiness subsided. I thought I was in the clear-- then,l my right eye started feeling weird and itchy. Uh oh!

When the allergy gets in my eye, the white part of my eye usually swells up, as if it's a giant hive. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worst eye allergy I've had, and 1 being a mild short-term irritation, this one rated about a 5, because I although my vision blurred a little from the constant watering, it didn't hurt. I only get 10s when I'm in Houston without my drugs. The worst one lasted for more than 2-3 days, watered 24/7, blurred my vision and hurt so much due to the extreme swelling of the white part that I could not sleep or barely open it.

All in all, despite the allergy and having an eye that looked like I had been smoking pot all night, the Saturday turned out pretty fantastic and lovely, especially the beautiful crashing beach waves.

Arrrr, Aye Matey!

Ahoy! Being that today is talk like a pirate day (whoever came up with that??), I decided to go with the them and post my skull sock pattern that I designed for my sister.

I put in instructions for a men's size, and although I think it's correct, please be forewarned that I have not yet tested it.

I don't think I possess any pirate energy in me, but perhaps it's dormant. You see, after reading some historical studies on Taiwan, a part of me wants to believe that I am descended from pirates. Whether that can be really be established or verified is another issue. However, consider this: I belong to the 10th recorded generation, which would date us back to the 15th-16th century. Historical information shows that many pirates used the island during the Ming Dynasty and some had later settled. In the 1600s, after driving away the Portugese, the Dutch established colonial posts and ruled the island. Pirates still surrounded the island, so the Dutch entered a treaty to ensure the safety of their ships with a pirate leader. According to "Island in the Stream," a pirate subordinate with my last name led a revolt with the people of the island in 1652.

I don't know if anyone in my family will be able to give me more information, but I do like the idea that there's a possibility that there are pirates in our past. I mean, saying that you're descended from pirate explorers does have a nice ring to it - it's exciting, isn't it?

Pirate fantasies aside, my next fantasy is that Knitty will select my pattern for their winter issue. Maybe the third time is the charm. I can't post a photo or the pattern that I submitted, while it's being reviewed, and I don't want to jinx it too much. But I guess it's safe to say that I submitted a versatile knitting accessory that can be adapted for both men and women. I knitted it in one of my favorite fibers -- an alpaca and silk blend. yum!

I'm also happy to announce that I recently sold the yarn swift that I had made for a joint Etsy and Instructables contest. A very lovely woman purchased it for her daughter's birthday.

Muy Caliente

I'm sure I'm not the only knitter suffering in the summer heat. There's been a sizzling heat wave in Southern California. However, the heat certainly is no comparison to places like Arizona and Texas, but the it's definitely crampin' my style!

I know some knitters take a mini vacation from knitting in the summer, or only work on cooler projects. I've already done some cotton projects and baby stuff, and I no longer have any more hot-weather-friendly WIPs. So, what am I knitting? A project meant for winter -- terrible in this heat -- I can hear my friends now: "Well, Anne is a little crazy." -- And as luxurious and soft as baby alpaca is, in this hot weather, the warmth and heat created by the soft fibers is my lap in rather torturous. I could turn on the A/C and be super comfortable, but then I'm trying to be thrifty and energy efficient. I've also been getting weird looks from people when I whip out my thick winter project in public. Such was the case when hubby and I waited for our table at The Melting Pot this past Sunday night in over 90 degree weather.

I haven't done much spinning either. I'm still working on my alpaca lace spinning project, which has not progressed much at all. This blue one I did a while back, but I never got around to documenting it. It's my second plied project, and 4th spinning project overall, spun from a hand-painted Australian Merino on Aubrey's Ashford Kiwi.

What should I make from it? hmmm...

Brrr it's cold.

I just came back from chilly San Francisco, where I visited my sister and some friends. It was pretty cold up there -- a stark contrast to the heat in Southern California.

I hung out first with my friend Pipe ("pee-pay") who was visiting from Laredo, Texas where he grew up and currently works. Pipe has a deep fascination for Japan and Japanese culture and history, especially samurai history and old-school anime, so we spent quite some time in Japantown. On his last day, we went to the Asian Art Museum, where there was a special exhibit on Tezuka Osamu, father of anime and creator of Astro Boy.

After Pipe left, I visited with some other friends, including Cristina of String Theory. Cristina came with me, my sister and my sister's friends to a neighborhood garage sale. There were some fabulous items -- like antique sewing machines. Unfortunately, I didn't think I could haul those on the plane, so I settled for 1 slightly used and 1 new pack of heavy duty sheet protectors for $7. The used pack still looked like there was at least 30-40 sheets left in the pack. All in all, it was a great deal, and my beat up knitting patterns will surely appreciate the protectors!

Later, Cristina and her hubby treated me to a yummy late lunch at Burma Superstar. Boy do I miss all the fabulous restaurants and good eats in San Francisco! Don't get me wrong -- there are great eats in L.A. and O.C., but everything so spread apart, going to a favorite haunt sometimes seem such a chore, especially with the notorious SoCal traffic.

Anyway, as for the slippers I made for my sister, I ended up felting it a 3rd time. I don't think she likes it that much -- she complained that the sole was a little floppy and folded under when she walked in them. I think she just walks funny. LOL! I tested them at home and at her house, and I had no problems.
Pattern: House Slippers from Knit2Together by Mel Clark and Tracy Ullman
Yarn: SkiFoggy Yarn from Japan, using 3 strands
Needles: As recommended in pattern - US 11 and US 13 circulars
Notes: I felted the slippers 3 times to get the right size, but I have a front loading washer, so that may have something to do with it. Working the toe and the back lip can be a little awkward. on the circulars. It may be a little less awkward to incorporate dpns when working around the tight curves. Although the felting gives the slipper structure, the sole still can be a little floppy for some people. I'd also suggest using rubber rug spray or puffy paint on the sole for some traction and safety, especially when trying to walk on tiled or wood floors.

My sister really liked her socks. I'm still editing the pattern, so I'll do a separate posting with the pattern link later.

Slippers for the Fat Cat

After two wash cycles, I blocked and dried the slippers for my sister. As you can see, Maggie the Fattie wanted the slippers all to herself. I caught her lounging and trying on the slippers. She was even smart enough to pull out the paper balls that I used to block the slipper so that she has a little room for her giant paw.

I'm still not happy with the felting, so I think I'll have to throw them in the washer again before I'll proceed with embellishing it.

I decided to make a skull sock for my sister instead of an argyle. This is the first sock, unblocked with lots of ends to weave in.
The other photos is the inside of the sock.

After I finish both socks, I plan on posting a Free pattern on my pattern page. I'm not sure what to name it. So far, I've thought of 2 names: Skully Socks or Buccaneer's Booty Socks. What do y'all think?

Slippers for a Yeti

In a couple of weeks, I will be heading to San Francisco to visit my sister and meet up with some friends. As a housewarming gift for my sister, who just got a house, I decided to make her a pair of house slippers from Knit 2 Together, which I bought for an awesome price of $5.50 on Amazon!

The pattern in the book calls for some of my favorite yarns - Manos del Uruguay or Rio de la Plata yarn. However, I decided to use some Japanese yarn I got from a swap instead. The yarn feels like a virgin wool yarn, which would be good yarn for felting. For the life of me, I could not get the same exact gauge, but I used it anyway -- it was close enough. The pattern gauge is 8.75 stitches per 4" of garter stitch using 3 strands of Manos/Rio yarn on US13 needles. I tested the gauge of my yarn using double, triple and quadruple stranding and US 11, 13 and 15 needles. The closest gauge I obtained was 8 stitches per 4" of garter stitch with US 13 needles and triple stranding.

The slipper was a quick and easy knit, although picking up and working stitches from the sole was a little awkward at the toe and heel. As I was working the last 4 rows of the second slipper, it suddenly dawned on me that maybe the yarn is superwash. Even though I don't read Japanese, I should have done a spit-felt test! Oh well, if it doesn't work out, I'll leave the slippers in a forest for Bigfoot. Time for the washing machine!

I'm also planning on knitting my sock fanatic sister a pair of socks. She has lots of socks organized very neatly in OCD fashion in a drawer, but she's never had a pair of hand-knitted socks. She has never asked me to knit her a pair either. I haven't decided whether to knit a pair of argyles or a pair with a skull motif. My sister loves argyle socks, but I don't know if I'm ready for knitting argyle socks - plus, I'm having a hard time finding a nice pattern. Since the age of 13-14, my sister also has had an inexplicable (in my mind) obsession with all things skull. I'm leaning towards the skull thing, but either way, I'm sure she'll be pleased.

When's Your Turn?

Within a month of getting married, my mother-in-law called to ask if I was pregnant yet. We've been married 6 years, and the questions have not stopped from family and family friends. Most of my friends know better than to ask, because they know that the question is redundant and that they will get a scowl in return. I'm not so fortunate with some family friends who insist on asking me and telling me that I should have lots of babies, though I've repeatedly said "no." The tricky thing is, due to cultural reasons, I can't very well tell them to shove it, no matter how annoying it is.

My dad is okay about the B-word, and respects my personal life and decisions, but he could not help himself recently when I told him that my brother- and sister-in-law just had a baby girl. With some (not much) self-restraint, he finally asked "so, when's your turn?"

For my brother-in-law's baby, I sent them some onesies that Linh and I made when she visited. We borrowed some ideas and created our own as well, and then I designed and edited the images on my Photoshop program. We printed the images on some transfers I had purchased to make sewn labels for my stuff. Because my BIL is a huge soccer fan, I made one to resemble a player's jersey, with Barcelona's logo in front and the last name on the back.


In addition to the cute and personalized onsies, I also knitted my new niece a pair of T-strap booties and a matching hat out of some yarn. I didn't have enough of the right kind of buttons for the booties, so I improvised and put different buttons on each side.

Pattern: T-strap Baby Booties (my own) and Hat set
Yarn: 1 skein hand-painted fingering yarn, 50 %wool, 50 %silk (I purchased from a local yarn supplier that does not have a national or commercial label, nor does it carry this yarn anymore.)
Notes: I'm working on finalizing the pattern and trying it with other more commonly available yarns. I haven't decided whether to post here or sell on my Etsy shop, but if you're interested in it, email me and I'll let you know when I'm done with it.


I wrapped the gifts in some tissue paper and tied it with a really cute farm animal ribbon. I still haven't heard whether my BIL and his wife received or even like the gift. However, I'm sure they're too busy with their first baby, all the dirty diapers, and trying desperately to catch up on sleep!


My mother- and father-in-law will be here sometime in August and through part of September. I don't think I will be able to escape that dreaded question. Maybe they'll be so excited about the new baby that they will forget to ask. Well...one can hope.

Esty/ Instructables Contest Entries

I just entered the Etsy and Instructables SewUseful Contest. I think judging will be based on views and ratings on BOTH Etsy and Instructables. The contest required that we post instructions on how to make an item on Instructables, and then post the item for sale on Etsy. If you like my stuff, please help me click away on both site links, add a positive rating, and help spread the word. Thanks!!!

My first Instructables entry is a yarn swift; the corresponding Etsy listing is here. My other Instructables entry is a recycled sweater flower brooch; the corresponding Etsy listing is here. I wanted to do more (3 entries max per person), but didn't really have time to come up with lots of ideas.

We Don't Have A Dog

For the will and not the gift makes the giver.
-- Ephraim Gotthold Lessing

My husband came back from a business trip with an unexpected gift in tow. Apparently, he wandered into a NYC bookstore and happened to see a knitting book on sale, sot he go this for me:

For many reasons, I was quite surprised and a little puzzled by this gift. First of all, my husband has never bought me anything knitting related of his own volition, and this was certainly a nice gesture. (He did begrudging go to an LYS to find me some knitting needles upon my request once.) Secondly, we don't have any dogs, nor are we planning to get one in the near future -- 3 spoiled cats, 0 dogs and some ugly black widows lurking in our yard. Thirdly, my husband has not really asked me to knit anything for him -- he once requested socks, but at my prompting, and as a joke, he once asked for a pirate's eye patch for the fat one.
My husband doesn't really wear sweaters either. The only time he bought sweaters in the 7-8 years we've been together was when Amazon had a great sale on them. Knowing him and his sense of humor, he probably thought getting this book would be ironic and funny, and that I'd probably appreciate anything knitting. However, just to be sure, I asked him if we wanted one of the sweaters in the book or if it was a hint for me to knit him a sweater. He doesn't want one.

Thankfully, he didn't waste his money, even if he meant it as a joke. The patterns in this book don't look as crappy as the title sounds. There are some nice sweaters and many cute doggie things, like the ones in the photo below. Maybe the cute dogs camouflage some of the uglier ones, like the hat on the cover or the variegated yoke pullover on page 32.

Well, whatever my husband's reason for getting this book, I will cherish it and appreciate his first knitting gift to me. Perhaps he or my dad will want me to knit them a sweater one day.

Jeepers Creepers

As part of my fantasic purchase, my spinning wheel came with a set of hand carders and some roving. The roving was old, nasty, wiry, rough and had lots of weird vegetable matter in it. Needless to say, it got tossed. But before I could practice hand-carding, with better roving, I had to clean out some of the residual roving and vegetable matter (or so I thought) from the carder teeth.

I meticulously picked off the fibers between the teeth with a toothpick and ended up with lots of gross fuzz all over my table and my clothes. Besides sneezing at the annoying bits of fiber, I really didn't think anything of it until I saw that one of the little vegetable matter bits had legs!! Gross! I almost threw up at the thought of inhaling the microscopic remnants of these dead bugs. It was very hard to finish getting all that crap out of the 100s of teeth in the carders.
I can't believe that the original owner actually sat there to comb and brush dirty fiber, complete with bugs. Ewww.

Aside from those nasty bugs, I had slightly creepy experience of a different kind this Wednesday. As I walked across the parking lot towards Starbucks for my Wednesday knitting group meeting, I noticed a guy in the donut shop 2 doors down grinning and waving from his booth inside the shop. I ignored this, since I didn't know the guy. But then the aggressive waving and grinning continued...who is he waving at? No one was walking towards the donut shop, not even in the parking lot, and no one was driving away. Then I noticed that he was looking at me, with his body turned in my direction. The waving and sheepish grin was a little odd, but I quickly brushed it off.

Feeling a little bored and loser-ish, Rachel and I decided to depart early, since we were the only ones who showed up to knitting on July 4th. Outside, some teenage skateboarders were praciting there tricks while an older man (in his 40s?) sitting on the edge of a flower bed wall chatted and watched the boys. The older man seemed short and had a slightly rotund protrusion in his midsection and appeared to be Latino. I thought this guy was related to the boys, maybe one of the dads. I walked past them without any interaction and headed towards my car. As I opened my car door, I saw someone waving out of the corner of my eye. I got into my car and waited for a car behind me to pull out, and the man sitting with the skateboarders continued to wave with a grin. Then I realized this was the donut man! He kept waving at me and grinning until I left the parking lot.

I never waved or smiled back at the donut man, because I didn't want to encourage it. I am still perplexed as to why he was waving like that. I guess could just appreciate that someone was trying to make a connection and may have found something attractive or interesting in me from yards away. But, it was so odd! He didn't even say hi, when I walked by, and he sat outside while Rachel and I knitted. All he did was wave fervently and grin. Weird.

Hunter's Orange

Have you ever tried to find yarn in hunter's orange? It's certainly no easy task. A few weeks ago, I scoured my well-stocked LYS in search of a superwash wool in Hunter's Orange, and even with the help of the shop owner, we really didn't come up with more than 2-3 yarns in the appropriate shade.

Why that particular shade? Linh's husband Nick is a hunter. *gasp* Just the word "hunter" does not sit well with me, since I was a strict vegetarian for 11 years. (And although I am no longer a vegetarian, I really don't eat much meat, and when I do, it's usually just chicken and seafood.) Nick requested that I make him a hat with earflaps for him for the chilly early morning hunting outings with his friends and family in Arkansas. If they weren't such good friends, I surely would've said "no."

Most oranges were more rust and a few scary neon ones. I couldn't find any superwash, but I finally settled on a worsted weight virgin wool that was the perfect shade, albeit not superwash. There was some Anny Blatt superwash that came as a close second, but the color still was not right. I ended up knitting the hat by double stranding it and working it on US #7 so that it's extra thick. For the earflaps, I continued the double stranding and thrummed it with some merino and alpaca roving. Nick will surely have warm ears! Because the virgin wool is a little scratchy, I soaked it first in hair conditioner and then later with Soak wool rinse.

Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph the hat. Even more unfortunate is that Linh reports Nick's head is super large and the hat is a little snug. Bummer. Maybe it'll be tight enough to distract him and make him miss shooting Bambi and Mama Deer.

In Recovery

Just when I thought I was finally nearing the end of my recovery from Aubrey's wedding, I got hit with some crafty deadlines.

First of all, the wedding, veil, and flowers all turned out fabulously. Of course, the bride was glowing, gorgeous and flawless. We were all relieved and elated that the famously klutzy bride did not fall or trip on the uneven grounds of the nature preserve -- not once! Whew! Seriously, this is a lady who trips on air on a flat level surface. However, the bride did not lose a special Aubrey touch: She lost her garter, which slipped off her leg somewhere, and she lost an earring, which she later found with a flower from her bouquet inside her bra.



Above: me and Linh. I don't have any photos of the gorgeous arrangements. I hope Linh blogs them soon!


Above: The knitters! It was really nice seeing some of the knitters dressed up for a change. We rarely see each other looking spiffy and not covered in yarn and fiber fuzz.

Soon after the wedding, I realized that I had an upcoming deadline for a contest that I wanted to participate in. Did I ever mention that I'm trying to do something for an Etsy contest? I had originally planned on entering the 3 maximum allowable entries per person, but it looks like I will only be able to do one before the June 15 deadline.

As I was planning out the contest entries, the author of an upcoming book on recycled sweaters contacted me about some of my project/idea submissions. She and her editor liked the things I submitted and they requested that I send them finished projects and descriptions ASAP. So I spent the week after the wedding getting the projects finished and mailed off. In all, I think I sent in about 6-7 projects. From what I can tell, it appears that the book will be some sort of anthology of projects from various crafters/artists. Hopefully, they will select at least one of my projects.

Wish me luck on both (I think the Etsy contest is a longshot though.)!

Things finally appear to be slowing down a little from the recent flurry of miscellaneous crafty activities. Maybe now I'll have more time to devote to knitting and spinning. I haven't done much of either. I had been making great progress on a double knitted hat and was near-ready to decrease. Then, I realized that my image was not right. I failed to check as I knitted and knitted. What's more is that I lacked foresight in planning the design image, so I ended up with a backwards design on one side. *sigh* That's the Zen of Knitting.

Not having time to knit also means no time to spin -- I still don't think I have more than 6 yards of the alpaca lace I started nearly 4 weeks ago. I DO have some new spinning-related news though! I will keep you all in suspense until I can photograph the great news. ;)

Well, before I get to do more spinning and knitting, I do have to do more sewing. I need to make more headbands for the shop. In the next couple of weeks, I will also be making more of my Fortune Cookie purses (like this one I made for Aubrey) for the shop and for two custom orders I received at the wedding.

Lucha Libre!

I was perusing some bloggers from the Dye-No-Mite swap and came across Teresa's. She had a weird looking picture, which was apparently from this website from the Netherlands described as "a fine collection of random stuff such as cool inventions and people with really bad days."

Well, part of the collection (#26) included some knitted masks that look like lucha libre masks! This is my favorite from the knitted mask collection. The masks were created by artist Chrystl Rijkeboer, who's work centers around her "astonishment about human life." She describes on her website,

"My work is figurative and recognisable but shape and proportions are not necessarily correct or 'beautiful', what matters is the sensation they evoke. You can always view my work in two ways: kind, pleasant and innocent, or frightening, condemning and guilty."

Not only are the artist's art and projects creative, odd, intriguing and ingenous, they are provocative and progressive. Many of her projects are made from human hair. Yup. Here are some film stills featuring human hair getting spun into yarn from her 2005 "Stolen Identity" project. She has so many intriguing projects that it's really hard for me to select a favorite...There's the hair-covered medicine cabinet highlighting the vain consumer in all of us, the odd hairy balls with teeth illustrating society's fear of immigration and multiculturalism, the gnome army symbolizing the violence in peacekeeping and occupation, and there's this hairy chair which was the artist's commentary on social and sex discrimination:
There are so many things to show, you might as well go to her website and check it out yourselves!

:: sigh ::

Well, Magknits never published an April issue, and as I said before, waiting sucks. So now it's May. The May issue is up, but my pattern is not in it. I did not get an email about why April was never published, nor did I get one about why my pattern is not in the May issue either. I sent an email to the Magknits editor again this morning and am waiting for a reply. If they're going to publish it, I wish they'd do it already or let me know their intentions, instead of letting me hang. I very much appreciate courtesy emails. If they've changed their mind about publishing it, I just want to know so that I can either self-publish or submit it elsewhere.

I'm starting to wonder if people think I'm a liar. I submitted the pattern to Magknits in November 2006 and still have nothing to show for it. In September 2006, my friends and I taped 2 episodes of Uncommon Threads, which started airing in March, but they stopped the airing schedule midway. I don't know when they will resume, but our episodes belong in the unaired batch. Knitty Gritty probably won't air for some time either (but that's not too big, since I was only a knitster). Well, at least I have this.

Dalai Llama

Unfortunately, that's not his name. His name is Cinnamon, and he's a bonafide camera hog. Cinnamon (right) is one of several llamas that Aubrey's future mother-in-law has on her property. The news on the grapevine is that Cinnamon and all his friends are due for a haircut soon. You know what that means, right? Llama fleece and fiber to play with and spin!! Lots of fiber! The other llamas are pretty friendly as well, or so they seem. I was a little wary of making any sudden movements, because getting spat on by a llama is certainly not on my to-do list.

This past Thursday, hubby and I went to a Galaxy game with JayJay and her spouse, and my friend Linh and her spouse. It was in the middle of a sudden cold windstorm, only we were all too stupid to bring a jacket. If it weren't for all the freebie t-shirts, we would've frozen. It was a nasty windstorm that knocked out the power in many areas. We really could've used a llama fleece for warmth! While the boys enjoyed the game, the girls without the sexy David Beckham to oogle, turned our attention to knitting -- well, as best as we could with our frozen fingers. JayJay and I both worked on baby hats, and Linh (right) worked to finish her very first knitting project, also a baby hat.

Halfway through her visit Linh decided that she wanted to learn, so of course, I was more than happy to oblige. She wants to be able to knit clothing and accessories for her future children. She's a pro already-- here stitches are all pretty even and she really only dropped a 3-4 times. Not bad for a first time, especially working on dpns!! And as you can see to the left, Linh resorted to wearing her unfinished baby hat due the sharp winds. Good thing wool is stretchy!

As far as my own recent crafty endeavors, this past week, I made 3 baby hats for my inventory stockpile for future craft fairs. I'm otherwise stuck in between knitting WIPs. I ran out of one of the yarns for my entrelac stole, so I can only admire it in its unfinished state for now. I'm also working on a lace stole for a friend, and am attempting to write my first lace panel design. We'll see how that goes -- it doesn't seem very promising at this time. If I am itching to knit, I guess I could always try to tackle the many old UFOs....nah!



In shop activity, I also recently listed these:

Left: Reversible fabric headband featuring different Asian prints on either side. Right: Fabric -covered buttons

Left: Fabric covered keychain with a genuine Indonesian batik fabric. Right: A fully lined and stabilized wristlet clutch with 2 interior pockets.

Left: Another Liana kit in Hot, Hot, Hot! colorway. Right: A Dye-No-Mite Surprise Yarn pack. I'm offering people a handpainted yarn package deal If you buy, what you get will definitely be at least 25% less than buying it separately. Details here.

Waiting Sucks

I hate waiting, don't you? I've already waited since November! So then I waited for February, and when the pattern didn't show up then, I waited for March. The March issue didn't go live until the 4th, if I recall correctly, and it didn't have my pattern in it. I was wondering what happened to my pattern, so I emailed Magknits editor Kerrie Allman, who apologized for forgetting to notify me, but that they were thinking about putting my pattern in the April issue. It's already April 11, and the April issue still isn't up! I wonder what's going on with the publication? I checked Kerrie's blog, and certainly seems that she's been swamped with a new baby, a family passing and new yarn line for her shop, but I didn't see any mention or announcement about Magknits or the reason for the delay in releasing the April issue. If they do end up publishing an April issue, and with my pattern in it, it would be such a lovely birthday present. Boooo, I hate waiting.

Surprise Visitor

A few days ago, I received a call from my friend Linh at the same time I was about to pick up the phone to let her know that I'd be sending her the baby booties she commissioned me to make as a gift for her pregnant sister-in-law. Her response? "Don't bother sending them...I'll pick them up in a few days." Huh? She's in the Windy City! As it turns out, she and her hubby decided to take a month-long road trip, with southern California as their primary destination. I love it when my good friends come for a visit.

Today, Linh and I dragged her hubby with us to a massive fabric store. Then I helped Linh, who has no sewing skills, execute a prototype for dressing a vase for a wedding she's doing. There was lots of hammering and grommets too. Tomorrow, I will be "forcing" them to go to my knitting group with me for a little while so that we can get the yummy gelato made daily at a local cafe. Yum! Also, Linh will be offering her expertise and creativity to assist Aubrey in figuring out wedding florals for Aubrey's pending nuptials.

In crafty news, I picked up my entrelac scarf/wrap again and am making steady progress (prev. post). I'll have to remember to take a progress photo and post. I'm also nearly done with a swatch of the sunspots lace in Barbara Walker's 3rd Treasury for the Walker Treasury Project (WTP). The WTP is such a great idea, so I volunteered to do 4 pattern swatches for the WTP, but I haven't even finished the first one. Kind of sad, isn't it? In my defense (not a real defense, more like carelessness), I've had to undo many many rows as I worked the swatch. It's definitely not something you can knit mindlessly. Well, volunteers get 3 months to finish their swatches anyway, so I have 2 more months to complete all the swatches. I also donated some stuff for the WTP contest. So if you are thinking about signing up to do some swatches, you should do it this month!

Today, I sold a couple of items, but it seems that my customers were having problems with PayPal. Weird. So, technically, I haven't gotten paid yet. I also finally just got around to posting these fabric buttons in the shop. The purple flower one is from a genuine cotton batik I bought in Indonesia. The yellow flower one is from an Asian print fabric. I will be posting some needle cases later this week as well.

Project: Baby T-strap booties
Pattern: A modified mary jane
Yarn: Valley Yarns, Goshen in Ballet Pink; 48% Peruvian Cotton/46% Modal/6% Silk; 92yds/50g
Needles: US #6
Notions: 4 pretty little buttons.

Yarn Storage Solutions & Hiding Places

So, after reading JayJay's post and hearing about her yarn storage dilemma at ATS today, her problem inspired me to give y'all some of my storage ideas. ;-) Many of these storage solutions could also be good ideas for hiding places, in case your significant other ("SO") is keeping a keen eye on your fiber spending:

• Open a seam in your futon or couch cushion where it's not really noticeable. Remove some of the foam and/or stuffing. Remove the evidence immediately if this will be your hiding place. Then re-stuff the cushion with your yarn.
  
• The above will work for throw pillows too.
  
• If your storage totes are full, and you have stacked them to the ceiling and there's no more floor space, consider hanging your yarn on the wall -- instant wall art and storage. This is especially good if you live in chilly places know for the teeny tiny apartments, like NYC or San Francisco. The yarn on the walls also act as a insulator and can help warm your apartment, thus saving you some $ on heat. Just switch to cottons and other summer friendly fibers was the weather warms.
• You can enhance your bohemian and artsy decor by hanging hanks of colorful yarn over the doorway, lik those beaded curtains.
  
• Stuff balls of yarn into the pockets of coats and jackets hanging in your closet if your closet is already pretty much crammed to the brim.
  
• Toss some of the socks in your sock drawer. You don't need that many. Your SO probably won't even think to look in your sock drawer. Also, you know how your laundry machine eats socks, leaving you with mismatched singles? Well, stuff yarn in the singles. Your SO will just think that you rolled up your socks. But this will only work for small balls, like Debbie Bliss.
• If you have more than one bathroom, declare one off limits and use the tub to store your yarn.
  
• You can put yarn in a plastic bag in your hamper. This works well as a hiding place, especially if you're the person who does the laundry. Or, insist that you and your SO have separate hampers. You'll just have to do laundry more often.
• Knit or crochet yourself a net. Tack the corners to your ceiling and store your yarn there. This is a quick and neck-saving solution if you need to paint your ceiling anyway to cover some unsightly water stain or to make your popcorn ceiling more attractive. Instant ceiling art.
  
• String together all your balls of yarn, like a garland. Hang on your mantle or around the entire perimeter of your room. It'll look really festive, and like you're always having a party.
  
• Stop buying bulk toilet paper from Costco. The storage space you save will make room for more yarn.
• Downsize your pantry. Canned foods have high sodium content, taste tinny and have preservatives in there. Fresh is always better anyway. Besides, the local farmer's marker always needs your support. (Please, I hope you don't have those nasty vienna sausages in a can!) Anyway, yarn can go in the pantry.
  
• You know that bread machine you never use? Isn't there a big cavity in it where the bread is suppose to go? Better yet, sell it and buy a small tub and more yarn, then store it where the bread machine used to go!
• Use the suitcases stilling idly in the garage, waiting for you to fill them up for a vacation. I'm sure you have more than one. You probably just need to reserve the small one for your business trips. Heck, stuff them all. Don't wait until you plan to take a trip to stuff them.
  

I think that's enough for now. It is afterall, about 3 a.m., and this insomniac has got to try and go to bed.

Whew! Yarn Swift Instructions Complete!

After a lot of hard work, I just finished updating my homemade yarn swift plans, complete with photos and detailed instructions for each step. Here's the link to the swift pattern/plan. Because I've been staring at this for a while, I may have missed some typos/errors. If you see any, please let me know! For those of you who've been waiting for this, especially those of you who emailed me for the insturctions, thanks for being patient! Enjoy!

Swag

Here's what I just got from my swapper in the Cool Crafty Chic Swap (see photo at right.) My swapper is Karrie of Girl on the Rocks. She spoiled me with some merino roving she painted with such lovely shades of blue, indigo and violet, some of her own button creations, a hand-woven pouch and some awesome vintage magazines that I have never seen before! Thanks Karrie!

I spent the weekend making a portable needle roll for my swapee in Italy. Since she lives in Italy, I went ahead and sent her what I had until I had time to make something and so, she'll also be getting this from me:


Here's what it looks like without all the stuff on it, and with it buttoned up:


And finally, I got around to taking some photos of some cashmere yarn that I dyed about 2 months ago for projects commissioned by my friends/family. This one will end up being a scarf or wrap for my friend Pamila:

And this will end up being a rectangular shawl for my cousin Amber (which will take me a while to get to and finish):

These are yarns that I painted/dyed a while back but never got around to processing. I plan to post them on my shop. Ugh, I still have lots more to process and photograph:


Clockwise: "Minty," Kid mohair; "Wildflowers," Merino wool; "Jewels," 60%Cashmere/Merino; "Purple Haze," 40%Angora/40%Merino/20%Rayon

Yarn Swift Instruction Requests

Wow. I never expected so many emails in such a short time! A few months ago, I disabled the link to my instructions on how to make your own yarn swift for under $10-15, but not the uploaded file, so nothing happened. I really didn't expect anything to happen because people could still access the file through a saved link or an internet search. However, about a week and a half ago, I deleted the uploaded pdf file from the server. Wow. In this short time, I have received emails from several people requesting the swift instructions, stating that they could no longer find or access the link.

If you are looking for the instructions, I am revising the instructions and will be reposting in the patterns section of this blog. I should have it back up soon, so check back in a couple of weeks. Sorry for any inconveniences.

From my infrequent traffic checks, I know that many people come to this blog from an internet search on "how to make yarn swift" or through a link from other bloggers. I also know that in the past, my instructions were recommended on Knitter's Review and other forums. Thanks for all those that recommended and linked the instructions. :) Hmmm...I should check who's visiting and linking to this blog more often.

Catty

My sister had requested some fitted fingerless gauntlet gloves with claws sometime ago with a matching kitty hat like the one in Stitch n' Bitch. After being rejected by Knitty, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to try a submission with another site or publication. I've now decided that I'll just post the pattern here. I'm currently working on a new patterns page for this blog, so Catty will be up soon. In the meantime, here are some previews:

My friend Ann modeling for me for the Knitty submission.



My sister is exuding her inner cat above.
Pattern: Catty
Yarn: 2 skeins of Manos del Uruguay
Notes: For the elbow length gloves, you'll need 1 skein plus a small amount from a 2nd skein.


Pattern: Kittyville hat from Debbie Stoller's Stitch n' Bitch book
Yarn: 1 skein of Manos del Uruguay
Notes: I modified the hat to account for the larger gauge of the Manos, but I still cast on too many stitches for my sister's smaller head. Apparently, I have a large head.

Lupita, my sister's cat that likes to groom people's head and her bf's beard. gross!

Stitches West: Sensory Overload

The minute I walked in, I got a bit befuddled from the the crowd, and from the abundance of colorful stuff!

Saturday morning started out rather quiet and mellow. Aubrey and I went to Rainbow Grocery with my sister, where we bought an assortment organic and wild mushrooms to cook for brunch and one of the best green teas I've ever had. Because the tea was priced at $59/lb. (organic green tea with organic toasted rice), Aubrey and I each got a measley bit, but the tea is so earthy, rich, and definitely worth the price. I love Rainbow and wish there were more Rainbows, especially where I live!

After lunch, not only did Christina come to pick us up , she also brought some knitting books for us to peruse during the 45-60 min drive. How thoughtful! Christina also gave me some nice vintage crafty stuff (see photos at right). Once we got there, we were so disappointed that photography was prohibited. We thought about sneaking photos, but that would've been difficult.

There were many many many booths from all over the country, of course there was good representation from shops in the SF Bay Area. My favorite booths were the cashmere and alpaca vendors. I molested a lot of those yarns. There was also an Alaskan vendor specializing in qiviut. At $70 a tiny tiny ball (1 oz, approx. 210 yds), this is definitely for the bold and undaunted, and not for the faint of heart. Even though I have confidence in my knitting abilities, I don't think I'm worthy enough to knit with qiviut yet, even if I win the lotto and can manage to cough up the dough. Imagine, you'd need about 20 or more balls for a sweater!

Since Saturday was a dizzying blur, Aubrey and I headed back to Stitches on Sunday. We talked to many nice and friendly people at the booths, including the owner-family of SWTC, and an amazing artist specializing in traditional Japanese painting and dyeing techniques. I also had several people stop me to comment on my Laced scarf, including a group of 3 sweet elderly ladies. They were so adorable I decided to give them each my Laced scarf pattern on a button. I hope they have magnifying glasses!

Seemingly, there is a trend among ladies over 50 at Stitches: shockingly bright hair. We saw a woman who looked like Violet from Willy Wonka, except she was a grape from head to toe. Yes, she had bright purple hair to match her purple sweatsuit. Then there was a woman with hot hot neon pink hair and another with neon teal hair. I didn't spot any younger persons with brightly colored hair. Apparently, like all the folks under 50, Aubrey and I just are uncool and did not stay ahead of this neon hair trend. This might be something novel to do when I'm 50.

Here are my purchases:

Aubrey and I collectively bought the spinning fibers above for Renata, fearless leader of our knitting group. From L-R: Hand-painted merino roving, Cotton Cloud roving, hand-painted silk hankie.


Left: A bag of 80/20 Alpaca/Silk from Webs and a bag of cotton roving I want to try to paint. Right: One of the booths had an already decently-priced Misti Alpaca Bulky on 30% off.


Left: from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I love the strand of brown yarn plied into the yarn. Right: some vintage patterns Aubrey and I purchased. We got the bottom two for the funny 80s kitsch factor.

Stitches West, Here We Come!

Aubrey and I will be trekking up to SF this weekend for Stitches West. Woohoo! We'll be crashing on the floor of my sister's tiny apartment in SF, then I'll be stealing her car so that we can go down to Santa Clara. I used to live in Santa Clara, so hopefully, the ways of the road will come back to me and I won't get discombobulated and lost. Part of our itinerary includes checking out Craft Gym and meeting up with my friend Christina, who will be going to the Stitches Market with us. And if we have time, maybe revisit some of the SF LYSs.

Now what will I pack? Nah, clothes aren't that important...for a knitting weekend, I think I need LOTs of room to bring back yarn and other goodies that might acquire. I will also need to bring some WIPs. I think I will bring my latest new WIP, an entrelac scarf/wrap made of handspun yarn by Zona and chocolate and rust colored baby alpaca. I think I will bring one of my handpainted yarns for Christina. I should also make some buttons, in case I find people who want to buy some. I've come up with some cute and original button designs. I just need to list and photograph them.

Needle Organization

As I get more involved in this "little" hobby of mine, I have discovered that my needle supplies need better and more efficient organization. When I first started knitting, I made this needle roll below, which was more than suffice and fit all my stuff rather well. It was made of various remants I had from my curtains.


Then when I joined my knitting group, I needed something portable, so I made this green one out of some sari fabric (bought on ebay) and some batik (bought in Indonesia). The white thing in the picture is velcro, so that I can keep little things like cable needles safe, but also be able to take the pouch out.


But as my "little" hobby grew, my needles started falling out of my larger needle roll and my travel one started becoming overflow storage. I also had a problem of always needing to search and search for the right sized needles. Whenever I tried to look for needles, everything would get caught in the circulars and selecting needles was like playing your luck in the lottery. Also, I had to sprawl out to do this so my needle roll took up prime real estate on my sewing tables. I needed something better. The first thing I did to solve that problem was to make a holder for my circulars. This one below is a prototype, but the idea is to hang it on a wall or hanger with the grommets. I need to make a better one.


Well adding the circular needle case to my organization still did not help much, as you can see below. All this obviously does not include all the needles on the many many UFOs any dedicated knitter has.


So, I decided to make a better needle roll for all my straights and DPNs that could be portable, if needed, and save surface real estate. The orange dotted one was the prototype, but I had made the pockets a little snug for the more commonly used sizes, where you're likely to have duplicates. This prototype now belongs to Aubrey, who desperately needed something to help her organize her needles.


So after making some adjustments, here's the final one. Yay! It has pockets low enough to fit both 5" and 7" dpns, and pockets wide enough to fit extra pairs of same-sized straights. The roll accoommodates a full set of needles sizes 000-19, up to 13" in length. Now, all I have to do is make a pattern out of the specs I used for this so that I can make some to give friends and to put up on my etsy shop. Ooh gotta go shopping for more fun fabrics too. Yay!

Here it is hanging on my craft room wall. The little zippered pouch is detachable.

Roses are red

I am really not too fond of Valentines Day. I am not opposed to having an extra special day, but those damn marketing ploys really take it over the edge. How many campy stuffed animals and pepto bismol pink things do people really need? I could go on and on.

Hubby and I don't really do anything that most people celebrate, such as Vday. We don't exchange gifts or anything. We're lucky to have everything we could want, and if want anything material, we can get it ourselves. I would not want him to buy yarn for me (he might accidentally buy acrylic for his yarn snob wife), nor would he want me to buy any techie things for him (I used a cell phone held together by a wire and rubber band for 8 months.) Anyways, we do at least do try to do something together, but nothing extraordinary. Well, unlike me, hubby is rather dutiful and sends me beautiful & fragrant roses every year.

This year, since I now have a little more time, I made him two of his favorites: Chicken Marsala and Tiramisu. We kept it simple, as usual -- we ate in the kitchen, had the TV on, and hubby flipped though a magazine while he ate.

Roses are red,
Hubby's socks are blue,
He loves that English actor
By the name of Hugh.

After dinner, we went to see hubby's man-crush, Hugh Grant in Music and Lyrics. Yes, he really wanted to see the movie, as he does for all of Hugh's movies. Hubby thought the movie was flawed: bad script, no good chemistry between the actors, and bad acting/character development for Drew Barrymore's role. However, in true devotion to his idol, hubby declared that Hugh was his usual wonderful self. His loyalty and adoration for Hugh was even part of the best man's speech and many jokes at our wedding. I predict that the combination of hubby's adulaltion and goofy nature will inevitably lead to his spontaneous off-key singing, dancing and hip shaking in imitation of his man-love at home, and worse, in public. Man, I'm doomed.

If I weren't devoted to hubby, I don't know if I 'd be able to endure his public theatrics, nor would I have finished knitting his socks. I highly doubt I would ever make another pair, unless another loved one asks me to.


Project: Hubby's socks
Pattern: Many bad patterns, and several ones I had to reference because of the bad patterns. I used this, which had many errors, checked this, referenced some books, and altered to suit my tastes.
Yarn: MC- KnitPicks Swish in Bare (100% Superwash Wool), which I dyed various shades of blue and seagreen; CC - KnitPicks Swish in Coast Grey
Needles: US #5 and US #6

Oh Baby!

In a previous post, I mentioned that I taught my friend Ann, who was a star student, to knit. She knitted this baby hat for a friend as her very first project!! Bravo, Ann!

While I we were knitting, I managed to make a hat for her pudgy and adorable baby Josh out of yarn that I purchased on a mini yarn crawl at an LYS.


Josh is such an adorable baby!

Project: Josh's Baby Hat
Pattern: My own take on the baby knot hat. I don't recall exactly what I did, but I did about 4-5 rows of 2x2 rib, worked in St st for about 3 rows, then I repeated 1 purl and about 7 St st until it was time to decrease, ending on a purl round before rapidly decreasing to get that gathered look. The knot is an i-cord.
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca

Mission: Yarn Acquisiion

Today, Zona and I headed went to Laguna Beach on a mission: Clean out a thrift store of it's yarn stash! This is no ordinary smelly craft yarn that you stumble upon at a thrift store. We would not even bother driving down there unless it worthy yarn. This was recycled sari silk yarn from MangoMoon!!! The store had a total of 9 ziploc bags of the yarn (tags removed, but the store said they were MangoMoon). They were $10.50 for yarn in an orderly skein or ball and $5 for yarn barf. More than half were yarn barf, but not unmanageable. Aubrey had wanted some too, but she could not get out of work, so 3 of the 6 bags pictured are actually for her.

After I unbagged the yarn, I felt like a thief for getting this at such a steal. MangoMoon usually retails at around $20 per 150yd skein. The yarn lover and addict in me couldn't help feel a little sad that the store didn't have more!

I've already managed to untangled one of the barfy messes and it wasn't too bad. I haven't counted the yardage, but it seems to be a full skein. I must thank Jan who posted notice on our knitting group message board about the yarn. Thank You Jan!

In spinning news, I finished spinning the remainder of the matted roving. Tomorrow I will try to play with some Brown Sheep mill ends that Zona gave me. If I get insomnia again, I guess I could play with it tonight instead. :)

Sock update

Ok, here's a picture of my progress.It wasn't easy getting this far. See, I still have not learned, and was determined to do a different color on the heel, which was not too hard to figure out and adjust. However, that pattern generator had mistakes in it, and as she said, they weren't meant to replace a knitting pattern. So, I ended up with some problems. I knew there was an error when it came to turning the heel since I've made more than a couple pairs of baby booties. I ended up consulting the sock knitting tutorial and many online basic sock patterns before things made sense.

I had another problem: my beautiful bamboo dpns and my fingers turned blue. Boooohooo! I don't think you can tell from the photo, but the needles look like I washed my needles in blue milkpaint. I have never had problems with color coming off my yarn. I actually had a lot of difficulty dyeing this yarn -- it took forever. I don't think it's because it's 100% superwash wool, but rather just the KnitPicks yarn. Blues usually dye the fastest, but I finished painting 2 skeins of red/magenta/fuschia/orange yarn before this one finished. Actually, I got tired of waiting and took out the yarn when there was still a very faint blue tint in the water. I guess I should've either waited longer or rinsed the yarn better. Again, I should've known better.

Should've Known Better: Socks

Inevitably, I always take on a project or idea that ends up being far more complicated than I had intended. Thus, I should've known better and paid better attention before embarking on this sock challenge.

I've always sworn that I would never knit socks. I don't have the same attraction as other knitters to hand-knitted socks. They look beautiful and great, but I can't seem to picture me or someone wearing a time-consuming handknit item I made in a sweaty shoe. That imagery gives me wrinkles around my face that I don't need or want. Yep, I would never knit socks. I should have known better than to say "never" because I'm eating those words now. Hubby, who has never asked me to knit or sew him something, asked for knitted socks to wear at home to insulate him from the cold hardwood floors. How could I say no?

I researched some patterns and liked the look of the Boot Sock pattern from KnitPicks, so I bought the yarns recommended -- a skein of Swish superwash wool in gray and 1 skein of the bare, which I dyed fantastic marine colors (pictured left). I realized then that the pattern called for knitting 2 socks on 2 circulars at the same time. Ok, no sweat, right? I've knitted with 2 circulars many times and didn't think it'd be too much of a departure. Plus, I know how to double knit pretty decently and with more than 2 colors. I was DEAD wrong. I started the pattern at my knitting group and I ended up with a weird tangled mess, even after reading and dissecting the pattern more than 10 times. I even consulted some of the fabulous knitters in my group, who know practically everything in knitting. They couldn't understand the weird and hard to understand written instructions either. It was unclear and confusing and there weren't any photos showing some of the more complicated set up. After fumbling for over an hour, I managed to do half a round of each sock. Then I got stuck and more tangled. Determined, I then tried to follow the pattern but while doing one sock at a time, but the instructions weren't meant for that. *sigh* I frogged for the 7th or 8th time. Argh, I should've know better!

Determined to get something done before I go to bed, I rifled through my books and found the Cozy Sock pattern in Weekend Knitting by Melanie Falick. After checking gauge, I figured that this would work. I cast on and worked the cuff to my liking. All the mental work, testing, frogging and knitting finally ended at 3 a.m., when I started to question the seamed heel in the instructions. Again, I should have known better and thought about it more carefully.

After confirming with Aubrey that most socks don't have a seamed heel, I search for some more patterns online. I decided to go with the sock pattern generator by Elizabeth Bennett. I hope that this tutorial will be of help if I get stuck. I'm more worried that after all this, hubby might end up with just one sock!

Sunny California

People here are not used to cold weather. I'm not either, but not this bad. There's soma unusual cold weather in southern California, but Houston was colder when I was there. Houston and other parts of Texas has somewhat extreme weather -- it can go from 100% humidity and totally stinkin' sweaty hot in one week to really cold with frost and ice the next week. California, especially SoCal is not even close to being that bad!

Anyway, while I was in TX one of the people I got to see was my friend Ann, who I met in college and taught how to cook and sew. This time, I taught her to knit. Her first lesson was the mantras:
"Hobby store yarn is only for practicing and learning."
"Do not waste your precious skills and time knitting something for someone using acrylic or other petroleum-based synthetic yarns."
"There is nothing shameful about being a yarn snob."
"Natural fibers are awesome."
So, after she understood those mantras, I showed her how to cast on and knit. We then went to a HipKnitsHouston meeting at the Central location. There we met some lovely and friendly ladies, who mostly seemed to be transplants to Houston. One of the ladies, Kelly of Kelp!, was making this beautiful sweater out of Malabrigo yarn from a project in Knitting Nature. It was so soft that I just wanted to roll in it like a cat. Anyway, everyone at the meeting was amazed at the knitting prowess of my star student. Her stitches were really straight and had even tension, AND she didn't even drop a stitch! I think she's a natural...or....is it because I am an awesome teacher? ;)

The next day, I decided to take a field trip to one of the few yarn stores in Houston, Nancy's Knits. I ended up hanging out and chatting at the store for a couple of hours with the very welcoming and friendly Nancy (owner) and Michelle (regular customer). The shop is a small shop stocked well with all sorts of yarn -- a little something for everyone. Some of the yummy yarns Nancy carried include Fiesta, Noro, & Cherry Tree Hill. I showed Michelle and Nancy the projects stuffed in my giant purse and they admired my hand-painted yarns in my clapotis and the scarf for Linh. I bought myself some 5" #7 dpns by Lakewood and a skein of Berroco Ultra (50/50 alpaca/wool) in a deep red for Ann. After the store trip, I visited Ann again -- she wanted to make a baby hat for a gift for the next day! Talk about ambition! Ann then learned to purl, decrease, make tassels, pom-poms and bind off. That night, I made a baby hat with the Berroco for Joshua, Ann's large 9 mo old baby, and Ann will be using the rest of the yarn to make Josh matching booties.

I should call Ann and tell her that she should get an alpaca as a pet for her son.

Another Liana

Here's a pic of the sample of another Liana pattern in a colorway that makes me think of a desert sunset.

Still sick

I'm still suffering the effects of a severe cold. Now that some of the congestion has moved out of my lungs and chest, I feel a little better, but it has all moved to my head. ugh. Anyway, after several days of rest, I went to knitting group on Wednesday night, armed with drugs, cough drops and a new knitting project. Two lovely ladies came by to pick up the order they commissioned from me as a gift for their daughter/sister. Here's the finished product, fingerless lace-up gauntlets from my hand-painted yarn (100% merino, double-faced satin ribbon):


Last night, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had another sale on my etsy shop. So this morning, went early and was the first in line at the post office to drop off a new order from my etsy shop. yay! - I sold 2 of the headbands I made recently (see previous post). I couldn't just put an estimated postage on the package in order to avoid holiday traffic because the package needed to go to Canada.

In other crafty news, I started yet another knitting project, despite having about 10 other WIPs. I've been planning on making something(s) for my friend Linh in preparation for her drastic climate change from Dallas to Chicago. I settled on a combination of a kid mohair yarn and a 60/40 cashmerino blend yarn, both of which I hand-painted/dyed. I think the lace pattern is called ivy lace.

My next cast on will be a pair of sample Liana gauntlets for the class that I will be teaching based on the kit.

I got a flu shot...

...and I'm sick. Yuck. I guess logically, you can still get sick, just not the flu. I was always sick as a kid, and I guess maybe built up some sort of tolerance, so after 23 I would rarely get sick. I've been in bed for 2 1/2 days now. It started on Saturday morning, but I still woke up at 7am to photogragh and post some reversible headbands and a few of the lacy lace-up gauntlets knitting kits on my etsy shop. (see below, click on photo to enlarge)

After I finished posting the stuff, I went back to bed to get myself feeling better so that I could attend my knitting group's holiday party, where I ate WAAAY too much fondue.

The saddest part of being sick is that though I've been good about resting in bed, my head is too stuffy to work on any of my knitting projects. booohooo. I'm currently working on 3 original patterns, holiday gifts, gauntlets for my sis, and a scarf for my friend Linh who will be making a drastic move from Dallas to Chicago in January. I still have to cast on for a scarf for former colleague, lace scarf for another friend/former colleague, a wrap from my stepmother, and slipper socks for hubby. Other planned crafty projects include a project for a contest and other home improvement stuff. whew! I'm tired from writing that list! Must go back to bed and nap before my head explodes.

Resignation

I had resigned from my beloved job about a month ago for several personal reasons. So on Tuesday, my good friends from work took me out for a yummy lunch at , and then they organized a decadent homemade dessert party. YUM! At lunch, I gave my friends special gifts that I made for them.

click on photos to enlarge

We're all showing off our knitted items. L to R: Kim is wearing the seafoam stitch scarf that I made her a while back. This time, I made her a short version of the "Liana" out of hand-painted cashmere/merino yarn. I made Carmen an neckwarmer ascot from a 50/50 alpaca and merinp wool yarn. I don't know if you can see it, but I encorporated dropped stitches into the pattern. Pamila got a lacy merino scarf that I call "Honeycomb" which I knitted then dyed in shades of red, salmon and pink. I'm wearing my clapotis that made back in March.


Left: (ccw) Kim, Carmen, Pamila, Matt, me. Right: Kim looking beautiful as ever, especially with her wonderful scarf ;)


Poor Matt didn't understand why his hat had sticks attached to a cord in the design, and was still attached to the ball of yarn. ha! Aubrey had borrowed my dpns so I couldn't finish off Matt's hat. (I finished tonight a knitting group - yay!) His hat is knit from a cappucino colored 50/50 soy/wool yarn accented by a super soft light green 100% alpaca yarn. I personally think Matt should start a new trend by wearing hats with a circular needle stuck in and a ball of yarn still attached. Tres chic!

The pics below are from the decadent dessert party. click to enlarge.

Left: (ccw) Maria, Matt, me, Carmen. I taught (or tried to teach) all 3 of them to knit. Maria is currently working on a sampler afghan, Matt did some wonderful drunk knitting at our staff training, and Carmen just couldn't do it. Right: Anastasia works in one of our remote offices, so I actually don't see her that much, but I taught her to knit too! Her last project was trying to make a scarf out of a legwarmer knit kit she got at Target, of all places.


Kim and Suzi posing with the gifts the office got me. They got me a GORGEOUS arrrangement of orchids, hydrangeas, curly tulips, monkey tails, and some other lovely fillers. The phallic-looking thing next to Suzi is an amaryllis plant that my former supervisor got me.

I will miss all these people and friends, but not that damn commute!

Crawly Yarn and Craft Crawl

So Saturday was Aubrey's birthday. The girls and I drove Aubrey to L.A. for a crafty crawl. I mapped out all the places we were visitng and hoped to squeeze in, but we had so much fun, the crawl was slow and we only had time to visit one yarn store before birthday girl had to go back home for a special dinner.

We visited:
1) Suss Designs outlet - none of us bought anything at the clothing sale, but we did get some yarn. I bought 3 pairs of big needles for $4 each, 4 skeins of Lamb's Pride (navy and green) for $4 each, and some buttons for $0.50 each. Picture of the booty ---------->
2) Brunch at Cafe M de Chaya - yum yum yum
3) Felt Club's XL Holiday extravagana - I bought some "make art not war" and "make craft not war" buttons for me and the girls, a hand-screenprinted t-shirt of a frog for my sister, and a 200yd skein of hand-painted mohair for $10! Ok, I really don't know if the girl can be selling hand-painted mohair for $10 a skein because mohair ain't that cheap, even at wholesale prices, and does she count her time and labor? Well, at least I benefitted. :D See picture of my Felt Club booty on left.
4) Stitch Cafe - a small, cute and overstuffed LYS in the valley. Aubrey and Zona both bought yarn. I showed self restraint and didn't get anything.

That's all we had time for. If we had had more time, we also would've tried to visit Black Sheep Knittery, Unwind, Skein, That Yarn Store, and Alamitos Bay Yarn Co. I guess that means we'll have to try an plan another crawl some other time!

Knisterville

KNITTY GRITTY, Season 8, episode #12, "I Do Knits"
Yesterday, Aubrey and I spent the day at the studio of Screen Door Entertainment for the taping of the wedding-themed Knitty Gritty episode. The guest of the day was Suss Cousins of Suss Design, who demonstrated how to knit a lace wedding veil with a crocheted border. Both Vickie Howell and Suss were really nice and very energetic. The producer of the show was Sonia, who also happened to be the associate producer of our "Shapeshifting Sweater" episode of Uncommon Threads. The associate producer was Joy, who was super nice too and really took care of us.

Part of the fun in doing these shows is that it not only removes you from the monotony of everyday life, it also allows you to meet lots of really creative and fun people. We met and got to know Brenda, the 3rd knister on the episode. Brenda is a newlywed and she got to show off a shawl she knitted for her wedding last December. She also currently organizes the Los Angeles chapter of The Church of Craft. While we were sitting and waiting (which happened quite a bit), we met another cool crafter, Cecily. Cecily is also an Uncommon Threads alumni -- she and her friends demonstrated various crochet projects for 3 episodes of the first season of Uncommon Threads.

Click on photos to enlarge.

left: Me and Brenda in between taping. right: The 3 knitsters!


above: Some behind-the-scenes shots.


left: Aubrey's self-portrait right: Me and Aubrey posing with Vickie and Suss.


left: Aubrey knitting and lookin' sexy . right: Vickie knitting a scarf on set.

Not yet published

Still no news on which month Magknits will be publishing my pattern. They said either February or March 2007...it's still very far away, but if it's February, it's less far! I love how you can get really cute free patterns from Magknits and Knitty, don't you? I guess my next long-term goal is to try and get something submitted to Knitty and/or Interweaves or some other reputable knitting magazine.

Teacher, Teacher!

I just finished my first-ever craft fair as a vendor this past weekend. And boy, I am tired! I had attended the same craft fair as a spectator a couple times in the past and as a cheerleader for my friend when she had her booth in October, and there were more people in attendance then this one, which really surprised me because this one's a holiday fair. My booth is pictured above. (I don't know photoshop well enough to get rid of the bluish tint in the photo.) I should mention that my logo was designed by my sister and the sign was made for me by Zona's husband, who also set it up for me!

I suppose, considering the low attendance, and my first attempt, I didn't do to terribly -- not as much as I had hoped, but enough to make me want to try it again. (Did I just really say that? Eek - another craft fair means no sleep for me!) Anyway, the response and interest I received was encouraging. A few people commissioned me to make them some knitted projects of my own design/pattern. I priced and quoted the commission work a little low for the amount of labor involved. But since they were my first craft fair commission work, I wanted to just get some repoire and establish relationships, so I really don't mind that I undervalued my time/labor a little bit.

I sold mostly hand-painted yarns, some knitted items and a few sewn items. The item that got the most response is the lacy lace-up gauntlet "Liana" that I designed to be worn 2 ways and to feature my hand-painted yarns (see picture to right). I sold it as a kit and be will posting it on my etsy shop along with some yarns by the end of this weekend (hopefully). Towards the end of the second day of the fair, some ladies approached me and asked if I would be interested in teaching a class featuring "Liana." Of course, I jumped a this opportunity to add more notches onto my belt. So, in January, I will be doing a demo on the gauntlets and some of the wonderful things you can do to show off hand-painted yarns. Then in February, I will be teaching a class on my pattern using the kit. The photo on the left shows the packaging I chose and designed for the gauntlets.

Attn: Logophiles and Fiberphiles

After spending much time these past 2 weeks madly re-skeinning some dyed yarn in preparation for craft fair this weekend, I started wondering, Is skeinning a word? By all accounts, I think it should be. However, to my dismay, when I looked up skein, it's listed only as a noun. The logophiles and linguistics experts out there who form petititions, committees and decisions about the lexicons and language used in modern English, and who ultimately decided whether a new word should be added to the dictionary, must not be fiber lovers.

Can you believe it? Fiberphile is not a word. However, technophile is. And why not? The suffix -phil (phile, philia) denotes love or attraction, usually of an obsessive nature. There are many types of philia, with pedophilia being the most notorious. Then there are also other more obscure ones:
Lygophilia - love of darkness
Taphophilia - love of graves,cemeteries and funerals
Audiophilia - Love of high-fidelity sound reproduction
Hippophilia - Attraction to horses

Wikipedia maintains a short list. I found AlphaDictionary, which has a bunch o' philias in their list, which according to them, they basically replaced the known phobias from a list from the Canadian Mental Health Association with the -philia suffix. Hey, why not? Makes sense to me, with some exceptions that really leave me agape and pondering:
ankylophilia - love of immobility of a joint -- ?!?!
leprophilia - love of leprosy -- ?!?!
oneirogmophilia - love of wet dreams -- hahaha!!! poor preteen and teen boys!
pediculophilia - love of lice -- okay...I can imagine "Ohh...I just love a itchy head full of lice and lice eggs!"... yuck.

I did find one fiber-related philia -- Textophilia, which means love of certain fabrics according to AlphaDictionary, but I was unable to find a definition for it through Dictionary.com. I think the following words SHOULD be added to English language dictionaries:

SKEIN, skeinned, skeinning - verb. the act of winding or reeling yarn or thread into coils.
RESKEIN, reskeinned, reskeinning - verb. the act of rewinding yarn or thread into coils when the yarn or thread is already in a coil. This act of rewinding yarn is mostly used by knitters and crocheters who dye their own wool.

FIBERPHILIA - noun. the love or enthusiasm for fiber, textiles, wool, and yarn. FIBERPHILE - noun. one who has a love or enthusiasm for fiber, especially in knitting and other crafting that involves wool or other fibers.

LANAPHILIA or WOLLEPHILIA - noun. the love or enthusiasm for sheep and wool! (not related to any weird bestiality or zoophilia festishes or anything, of course! yuck.)
LANAPHILE or WOLLEPHILE - noun. someone who has a love or enthusiasm for sheep and wool! (again, not related to zoophilia or other such festishes and orientation!!)

Don't you think that these words should be added too? These words are certainly being used in our fiber culture lexicon.

On another interesting note, the craft fair this weekend is sponsored by the now-notorious Piecemakers. There were 2 articles in row in the LA Times about the 85 year old sect leader wearing fatigues and a beret as she was getting sentenced for not allowing a health inspector into the Piecemaker's store. This will be my first official craft fair. I should note that my friends and I are not part of their organization, nor do our views necessarily agree with theirs, but the ladies are nice and we're just having a booth at the fair. I attended the October Piecemakers fair, where Zona had a booth, and they had a great eclectic turn out. I hear the December holiday one is better attended and more exciting. How can it not now with the additional notoriety? (hopefully) If you are in SoCal, come by and say hi! Zona, Aubrey and I are splitting a space and we will be selling various yarn and fiber related stuff. Hopefully, I will be able to post some pix of some of my stuff tomorrow, if I'm not too exhausted.

Wine, Dye and Knit III

Not counting other crafty things we've done at my house that also happened to include yarn, dye and wine (which happens quite a bit!), I hosted a 3rd Wine, Dye and Knit party at my house. In addition to the usual suspects, Aubrey, Zona and Rachel, we also were joined by "JayJay" and Amanda. We took over the entire kitchen - all 4 ranges, the eat-in nook, the dining room, the entryway, the floor,the bathroom, and every single countertop and table top. I wish I had taken pictures-- didn't even think of it, for it was surely a crafty delight.

OK, get your visual and imaginative brain cells ready. I'll have to describe it...Picture 2 long-armed table top swifts, an umbrella swift and a ball winder on a 6' long dining table with wine glasses scattered around any available corner or space. Then around the perimeter around the table and the rest of the dining room were everyone's bags of yarn and roving. In my kitchen nook, which is connected to the dining room through a pocket door, my round 45" breakfast table was covered with food, yarn, more wine
glasses and yummy (and beautiful!) muffins (made by Chefs Amanda and Rachel). Then all the counters and ledges in the kitchen were covered with dye supplies, dye pots, cups, spoons, more dye supplies, yarn and rovings. The kitchen sink was filled with
piping hot dyed yarns waiting to get a rinse bath, while the floor had more tubs of dye supplies, yarn and Aubrey's giant ball of roving. The shower stall in the bathroom was filled with wet colorful yarns, and it stunk like it too. Well, the whole house smelled of wet wool. Luckily we used citric acid, not vinegar, which can burn your nose if you do it for hours. Yep, we dyed for hours. I think it may be due to the yet-to-be-researched addictive qualities of wool. I will offer some of my hand-dyed yarn if someone can give me and Zona a reasonable and scientific explanation proving our theory on the addictive qualities of wool. Even non-knitters and non-crafty people always want to touch and ooh and ahh over wool. Why?

Pictures: top - a lacy scarf I knitted then dyed; middle - a hat I knitted, then dyed; bottom - Aubrey's big ball of roving that she left behind. My kitties were surely happy with her forgotten roving!

I Do Knits

KNITTY GRITTY
"I Do Knits" apparently is the title of the Knitty Gritty episode that Aubrey and I will be shooting in a couple of weeks. The producer just emailed us the pattern and shipped us yarn to do the project. I can't wait to see it! I should be getting the yarn by tomorrow. Yay! I know I can't distribute the pattern, but I'm not sure what I can reveal....it's a wedding-themed show. The pattern calls for a crocheted edge. I don't know how to crochet (shouldn't knowing a chain stitch suffice?), nor am I really interested in learning. Luckily, we can alter it to our own taste and spice it up if we want. Woo hoo! That means no crochet for me! No offense meant for you crocheters out there.

MAGKNITS
More Awesome knitting fun! Last week, I submitted a pattern to MagKnits for publication. I got a response from the editor within a few days (damn she's fast!) saying that they want to publish my pattern. I read it a couple times just to make sure my eyes were not playing tricks on me. They are wanting to put my pattern in their Feb. or March 2007 issue, so I don't want to get too excited and celebrate prematurely until it comes out. This will be my first published pattern. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's Up, It's Up!

Leave it to me to find it first. I am an insomniac afterall! The SqueezeOC website posts the weekly magazine online as well as in traditional print. Here's the article. Here's a bio on Aubrey and me. The photos below are from the magazine.

Knitty Gritty Knitster

KNITTY GRITTY KNITSTER?
Yep. That's me. I just received confirmation that Aubrey and I will be knitsters on Knitty Gritty!!! It all happened sooo fast. I saw a post on SNB-LA asking for people to be a knitster for a wedding-themed episode. I immediately emailed Aubrey to call and apply since she just got engaged. After a few minutes, I decided to write in too, especially since I'll be going tons of weddings. It also turns out that Aubrey needed another bridesmaid and asked me to be one (of course on the condition that she didn't make me look like I walked through a Pepto-Bismol factory explosion). Anyway, it all folded together at the same time, and the assitant producer, Joy, called us today to "officially book" us! They like the fact that Aubrey and I met through knitting and I will now be in her wedding. I don't know if I'm supposed to say what the project is, but it is wedding related! Another cool thing is the producer of this Knitty Gritty episode was the assistant producer for one of the episodes of Uncommon Threads that we taped this past September. (Knitty Gritty, Uncommon Threads and several other craft shows on the DIY Network are produced by Screen Door Entertainment.) Yay us!!

OTHER MEDIA NEWS!
Ok, remember when I posted about a teeny weeny bikini I was making? I made the top and Aubrey made the bottom. It was for a photo shoot for a weekly publication, SqueezeOC, a subsidiary of the Orange County Register. Well, the issue is supposed to come out tomorrow!! I can't wait to see it! If you go to the website, they post current issues online too!!

The reporter came by the knitting group and interviewed us 2 weeks ago, after we said we'd knit the bikini. I don't know if she quoted us in the story (about knitting) but I'm sure we're credited for knitting the teeny weeny bikini. I still don't know what the bottom looks like, although Aubrey and I sketched out some designs, and since I started and finished my piece first, I was able to email Aubrey my top pattern to that her bottom and better match the top. It is a totally functional bikini, one made to go in the water and move with the body, not like those "sit and look pretty" ones in Sexy Little Knits. What make it functional? We used Cascade Fixation, which is cotton with lycra. Knitting this was quick and fun, but we sure could not try it on since the model is a 31A and Aubrey and I are much more busty. It would be x-rated if we tried to wear the bikini. We haven't had a chance to take a picture of both pieces, but here's the top, taken in my car as I dropped it off for the photo shoot.

CRAFTY THINGS
I have made and written several patterns recently. However, because I am trying my hand at being a "published" knitter, I am planning on submitting them. Thus, I cannot post the pictures! bummer! Books, magazines (online and traditional) and other legitimate publications have a clause that you cannot post a picture of your work until they publish it (if selected), plus some time (i.e. the issue expires). I did submit something to Debbie Stoller for her upcoming book on more advanced knitting skills, but I got rejected. Don't worry, I'm not bummed about it at all. I knew the chances were slim and although I am happy with my abilities and what I can achieve, I totally know and appreciate that there are many much more skilled knitters and patternwriters/designers. I simply tend to make up my own patterns because I don't follow directions well, and also because I need something to think about when I can't sleep. :)

One thing I can share is a lacy lace-up gauntlet I finished writing about 3 weeks
ago. The photo here is of the prototype (unblocked), so it's not very good and really doesn't show off the lace. Necia of Jane of All Trades volunteered to test knit for me, so I custom-dyed some yarn for her. She just finished and I am eagerly awaiting her response, comments and photos. She did post one picture and blogged her experience here.

Have you knitted with goats?

I don't want to double post again. But, really, have you ever knitted with goats? or Bathed with yarn? Answers here.

Cult of Knits

Ah yes, as any crazy fanatical will understand, we want to convert everyone into knitting, because it is the best thing ever! (ok, dark chocolate is pretty darn close on that list). Anyhoo...this weekend I was stuck in the boondocks of Fremont and having to eat crappy hotel food. I was there for 3 days for conference/training. The good part of it is that I suggested that we have a Stitch 'n Bitch circle and they went for it! hooray! It wasn't called SNB -- probably too "out there" for a work function, and because I'm in the legal field, I guess maybe they didn't want to use the name since all the legal hoopla around the use of the SNB between Debbie Stoller and SewFastSewEasy is still ongoing.

So, some fellow colleagues from other offices also volunteered to teach and I think some people really caught on! Noelle, one of the volunteer intructors is pictured above. (Noelle had some super awesome Frog Tree alpaca with her and a really nice colorway of the Bamboo from SWTC.) It was really fun having an evening devoted to teaching people how to knit, and throughout the weekend, during some unstructured down time, we'd gather in the lobby and knit away. My good friend Matt decided to get into the game and he learned to knit this thing that somehow ended up looking like a tie. Others referred to it as a loin cloth or thong. Matt started out with 12 stitches but he kept decreasing. Matt would tell folks that he's a fast learner, but those who know him know that he's full of BS. He likes to make stuff up like, "Oh, I see you are knitting the double back twisted inside out stitch" or some other similiar BS. Of course, it totally cracks me up and make non-knitters really think he knows what he's talking about. I even made Matt wear his masterpiece at dinner as an earring (I don't know why he turned blood red when he put it on and why he just wouldn't remove his hand! ha!). All in all, I have to say that Matt did a great job, especially considering how much wine and beer we had. He's showing off his Loin Cloth in this picture to the right.



This is my friend Kim and roommate for the weekend. Kim is the one for whom I made the seafoam stitch scarf several months ago. Kim and some non-knitting folks were playing cards next to us -- they were really loud and talking a lot of smack. I think Kim was talking so much smack that she didn't even not notice I was taking pix. ;) Am I right? Kim, you still look great.

Hand-Painted goodness

Here's some hand-painted yarns from this past weekend's dye party at Aubrey's house and also 2 weeks ago in my kitchen "lab." I dyed both animal fibers and cotton. I sent the 4th skein on the bottom row to Necia, who is test knitting some lacy lace-up gauntlets that I designed. By the way, I am so jealous of Necia's recent fiber and spinning fest!! It looked really fun.

Of Note -- Aubrey and I were interviewed by a SqueezOC reporter, and we're collaboratively designing and knitting a bikini, which will be used in a photoshoot for a knitting story at the mag. I finished the bikini top, but still need to finish weaving in the ends (photos later).

See, I HAVE been busy!

I finally got the photo publishing thing fixed, so I'm catchin' up! These aren't in any particular order though...

I made this for my dear friend Jean a couple weeks ago, per her request. The yarn is a merino that Jean dyed the yarn at the slumber party. The pattern is the one from Stitch n Bitch.
A few weeks ago, Zona had a booth at a local craft fair held over one weekend, where she sold her hand-dyed and hand-spun yarns. So puuurrrty! Anyway, when I went to visit and support Zona on the Saturday of the fair, she said I could put out some of my hand-painted yarns and give selling a try. I only had 2-3 skeins, so after being inspired by Zona, I embarked on a dye fest Saturday night. On Sunday, the first thing I sold was some recycled yarn that I painted (picture on left) so that every stitch would knit up a different color.

Below: Pictures of Zona's booth and yarns. She actually had a lot more stuff, but she sold them all before I remembered to take a picture! yay Zona!


Below: Some of my dyed yarns. I still need to re-skein (is that a word?) them, especially the 60cashmere/40merino ones, since I don't think most people will buy 400 yds of hand-painted cash/merino in one breath. Plus, the colors look better when it's mixed up a little. (L-R: cotton, recycled shetland, cash/merino, cash/merino, cash/merino, cotton, merino, cotton)

Here is a picture of my overstuffed needle case. The large one is my main one, and it's overstuffed with double-points, circulars, straights, crochet hooks, and stitch holders. It was so overstuffed that I really couldn't find anything, especially at 6am when I'm trying to find a project to bring with me to work on during my commute to/from work. The green sari fabric one is my travel needle case. I made a circular case (black Asian print) to alleviate the overstuffing. This circular one can be hung on a hanger or wall, and can be folded up and become portable. Well, it'd be a little more portable if I had made the yellow part a little more narrow. The numbers are embroidery yarn.

Me Stuffy Nose

Damn allergies. or maybe I'm getting a cold. My nose is stuffed and I'm sneezing incessantly. And I ran out of my regular allergie meds, which won't get refilled until Friday! argh.

Well, here's something I've been working on for awhile. I finished writing the pattern a long time ago and have finished knitting half of it. This is the other half. The white part is the underbelly of a dove.This weekend, on a whim I decided to dye a bunch o' stuff, which I intend to sell on Etsy. Let's see when I get around to posting it for sale. I've got to get back cracking on work (my bread and butter job) to prepare for a meeting tomorrow that is likely to be filled with tension. I've gotta get out boxing gloves since I'll be dealing with this clueless administrator and a school that has totally screwed this young man over (many many years) and is noncompliant with a bunch o' education laws. Hmm...do you think it'd be unprofessional to knit at my meeting tomorrow? See, when you are stuck on crafts, knitting and other wonderful obsessions, you come up with these seemingly nonsensical questions. If only I could...

I Don't Get It...

I don't get it. See the little cube at the very bottom of this page? (scroll all the way down). Well, the cube [Sitemeter] tells me my blog stats, such as how people are getting referred to my blog. The really weird thing is that sometimes about 1/4 of the people who happen upon this blog were doing a search on purses!! I'm not talking about homemade, crafty or artsy purses, but a particular high-end couture one that sells anywhere from $4k to $20k! I am not going to name names again, but I will say that it is all related to a previous little post that I wrote on April 9, 2006 about an LA Fashion District Santee Alley find. Why are sooo many people searching for this purse? How many pages of the search did they click on to get to this blog? The people doing that search certainly is not looking for a crafty blog either -- the stats indicate that these people aren't on my page for more than 1 to 2 seconds. Since this has peaked my curiousity, I typed in the appropriate keywords and Crafty Diversions is certainly not in the first 3 search pages. Weird, huh? Or am I just inexperienced in the way the blogging world and in my knowledge of the way people are using the internet?

On a side note -- I was all prepared to do another post on the 2nd Uncommon Threads taping, but Blogger was having problems again and wouldn't upload any of my pix. Argh! I'll try and carve out some time again (tomorrow?) and do it so y'all can see the pictures!

Beaded Mohair Capelet (& Skirt?) Finished and Submitted!

Okay, so I did finish a few things since May/June, but I have been TERRIBLE about posting and documenting all my crafty endeavors. I am now going to try and catch up a little before it gets worse.

Remember my Rude Awakening to the Catastrophe I had with Whitey Coyote, aka Mohair Ripper? Well, I finally finished that beaded mohair/silk capelet I was knitting for my godmother sometime in June. I did make the deadline and actually submitted the pattern to Debbie Stoller for her next book. I also submitted a drawing and graph of a Chinese Lantern bag for which I knit a prototype, and a drawing and graph of another pattern idea that I did not have time to knit.

This is my first attempt at submission to any publication online or otherwise, and I am eager to hear back from her. In the call for submission, she said that she'd make the decision in 2-3 weeks. About 1-2 weeks ago, I got an email saying that she's still reviewing. I doubt my chances are good, but hey, I tried. .

Anyway, I finished the capelet when I went up to San Franciso and Big Sur to scatter the rest of my mom's ashes. My sister is the model.

Chic Front View








Back View

As A Skirt Over Jeans

:)

A close-up showing the beads randomly scattered throughout.

Secret Sister Goodness

I'm participating in my very first secret pal exchange through one of the rings to which I belong. My secret sister is awesome!!! I got a very thoughtful and awesome package from her last week. It's so exciting and wonderful to receive surprise packages! Woohoo! THANK YOU SECRET SISTER!

First of all, my lovely package came in this really nice basket (which matches the decor of my house btw). Inside the basket was a bunch of wonderful treasures:

1. A lovely note and some other little notes tucked away throughout.
2. 2 skeins of Noro (no explanation needed here! yum!)
3. 2 balls of white angora from my secret pal's stash (soooo soft)
4. 1 Harry and David chocolate moose bar (came a little melted, but it sure tasted divine!)
5. 2 pairs of beautiful wooden hopsticks that come with their own casing and a chopstick rest.
6. A journal
7. A mini notebook (the blue one)
8. A Japanese sandal note holder (too cute!)
9. 1 Godiva dark chocolate bar (I'm saving it for a massive craving, but I don't know how much longer I can wait...)
10. A glass box with amber glass squares.
11. Stitch markers that she made herself! (awww....)

"Kimono" Bag

Here it is! I still have close-up photos that I have not uploaded and formated, but I figure these will do. I hope Rhi likes her bag! I haven't seen her since I have missed 2 knitting group meetings since her graduation.

I made this huge bag so that both of the main sides would be beautiful and look like a totally different bag, and so that it would fit all sorts of yarn, books or anything else!
1
2

1. I made this to resemble a Japanese kimono. The flowery fabric and the deep red "obi" are leftovers from fabric I purchased 2 years ago to make my curtains. The trim and the orange fabrics are just scraps.
2. This side is made from a recycled and felted sweater. I made and added the flower and blue petals to coordinate with the fabric on the other side. THe orange flower and the blue petals are also from felted sweaters.
3. See all the pockets in the front?
4. & 5. Showing the sides of the bag. I also worked in a pen/pencil pocket.
6. & 7. Just comparing the size of the bag to a magazine.
3
4 5
6 7

Knit in Public Day

My knitting group participated in the World Wide Knit in Public Day on June 10. The turn out wasn't that good for such a large group like ours (but it was still fun.) I think part of it is because June is a month full of graduation activities and vacation for people. I myself have been really busy with work and various other projects this month. I have more committments coming up and the month isn't over!

Anyway, I only attended for about 1 hour. Part of the WWKIP event for our group was to celebrate Rhi's graduation from high school. She's the youngest member in our group.

I made Rhi a large tote bag for her knitting and anything else she wants to carry in it. (It's super large!) I call it "Kimono." I also hand-painted her 2 skeins of 250yds each of merino wool. Each skein is different, but I made the colors coordinate. I decided to give her all that because, she's a cool and mature young lady, and in addition to the graduation, she just turned 18 a few days ago as well. I don't have time to format all the pitures showing the detail, but here are a few sneak peaks:

Left: Rhi and her gifts. Right: This is how I "wrapped" her gifts.

"Lavender" Purse

Well, I was thinking of lavender plants when I dyed the yarn for the purse, and for a lack of a better name, I am calling it "Lavender." This took a while to complete, partly due to the many steps and partly due to lack of time. So, here's the photo pictorial from beginning to end (to get a better view, click on the pictures):

(1) First, it started out ast a Goodwill sweater and then I unraveled it and got tons o' yarn (below):


(2) Then I mixed various shades of green and lavender dye and hand-painted the yarns. I blogged the results in a previous post.

(3) Then I knitted the hand-painted yarn from a pattern of my own design, and made it so that I wouldn't have to sew ear flaps to make the bottom gusset of the bag.


(4) After I finished knitting the bag, I felted it in my washing machine. The flower on the front is a knitted flower, also my own pattern, with a few seed beads in the center. The yarn I used for the flower is leftover from the cashmere/merino seafoam stitch scarf I knitted for Kim.



(5) The lining was attached by hand-sewing and I added a magnetic closure. It's pretty roomy on the inside - I love the light green accent fabric. I also cut out a plastic canvas to fit into the bottom of the purse so that it will sit without falling over, and to give it more stability when in use.


(6) Here's the another picture of the finished product and a close-up of the embellishment. As mentioned earlier, the flower was hand-knitted. The little swirls and balls were needle-felted.

I have not decided if I'm going to give this away or sell it. I don't even know if people would be able to pay all the thought and labor!

Photos: Yarn Crawl and Picnic

The blue-teal ones are 4 skeins of Araucania NatureWool that I got for 40% off. The multi-color one is the recycled sari silk.
Roving I purchased on Saturday and my first spinning project! I borrowed the drop spindle from Zona. The blue-gray roving is colonial wool and the white is merino. The following is a close up of the beautiful blue-gray colors.
Below are 3 photos from my knitting group's Beach Blanket Picnic. I didn't take a lot of photos because it was overcast, but we all still had a blast! Too bad I didn't capture many pics with the ocean in the background or 3 spinning wheels people brought. The middle one is our leader Renata, who is being interviewed by a reporter for SqueezeOC, who just happened to be walking by. I tried searching for the article, but I can't find it. Maybe it's not up yet.

Yarn crawl & lots of $$ spent

I spent lots of $$ on knitting-related things Saturday, Sunday and Today.

My friend Jane and I spent half of Saturday on a yarn crawl in West Los Angeles. We went to Wild Fiber, Yarns Unlimited, A Mano Yarn, and finally, Stitches from the Heart. Wild Fiber is a large store that's well stocked, clean, and well organized. It's bright, cheery and carry lots of gorgeous specialty yarns. However, one certainly pays for the nice organization and zip code. For example, it charges $14-$16 for Manos del Uruguay (one of my faves), whereas my LYS, Velona charges $12.95-$13.95. However, Wild Fiber's selection of Manos is to die for! I bought some white merino roving at $1.80 per yard and some older magazines for 50% off. Jane bought a ball of orange/rust colored yarn. (Btw- Velona is disorganized and overpacked, but I still like it and haven't had any bad experiences there.)

The second stop was Yarns Unlimited. It is a dark and dim store and has very narrow and tight quarters. The store carries a lot of yucky synthetic yarn in the front par of the store -- not at all inviting to the yarn snob. The back half of the store has some better yarns, but still not impressive. The best yarn that I saw was a small section of Cascade 220 in a narrow hallway. The prices overall aren't bad.

The 3rd stop was A Mano Yarn Center, which is smaller than Wild Fiber, but they carry a nice variety of yarn, books and notions for a store this size. It's well organized, cozy and friendly. The staff offered us bread and homemade jam and had super customer service. I bought some wool roving with grays and blues for $1.55 per oz. and I bought 4 skeins of Araucania Nature Wool at 40% off the regular price for a future tank/sweater project. Jane bought several hanks and balls of yarn on sale, including a chunky handspun one. Gorgeous!

The last stop was Stitches from the Heart, a charity and a nonpfrofit store helping premies across the country. The store has a very small yarn selection and is run by volunteers. Most of the yarn is baby yarn (surprise, surprise). Pastels and synthetics -- definitely not my kind of yarn. Although, I must note they carry Southwest Trading Co.'s Karaoke (wool/soy silk) and Berroco Alpaca, 2 nice yarns.

On Sunday, I went to Laguna Beach for my knitting group's beach party. (I'll post about the knitting event and pictures in a separate post). About half a mile from the beach is Strands and Stitches, where Aubrey, Maria (colleague that I converted to the yarn world) and I stopped at the end of the day. Strands and Stitches is rather unique in that all the yarns are organized by color. This medium-ish store has a nice selection of yarn and also specializes in embroidery threads and yarns. They don't have as many knitted samples as some of the other stores I've been to, which I noticed for some odd reason. Aubrey and I purchased some Mango Moon recycled sari silk yarn.

Tonight, I bought some reactive dyes and mordants online at Dharma Trading so that I can dye some cotton yarns I've had for some time. I'm also going to torture myself again and try the reactive dyes with the Stinky Silk. I als0 went to another online store and bought 2 Addis and a bag each (10 per bag) of SWTC Karaoke and Mondial Cotton. I'm planning to use the Mondial Cotton for a Butterfly Vest cami from a Rowan book I borrowed. As for the Karaoke, it's an unplanned purchase, but it's on sale for a great price and I'm sure I would use it for something pretty! :)

What, no time to knit?

I finally mailed off the baby booties that I had to re-cast. It's made out of fair trade 100% baby alpaca yarn in its natural color. I bought it from The Hunger Site. I actually finished the booties about 1 week ago, but work has been really busy and I was also somewhat depressed over the whole mother's day thing. Anyway, I made the booties for my college friend Ann, who just gave birth to a boy 2 days ago.

I finally tackled the mohair unraveling project. I don't know how I would've done this if I didn't have a ball winder. I ended up with lots of broken pieces (bad kitty must have chewed and clawed at it), but the long mohair fuzz didn't get too tangled up, although I had to pull and tug a little.
Other than the booties and untangling the mohair, I haven't really had any time to knit or do other things. I really need to work on my house....

Rude Awakenings

I had a rude awakening this morning. I heard some strange noises and upon waking, I saw a blurry vision of a big pinkish blob on the floor (I am terribly myopic). After I put my glasses on, I realized to my HORROR, that it was my knitting. It turns out that sly Whitey Coyote had somehow opened my heavy nightstand drawer the 1 inch she needed in order to DRAG out the beautiful Italian mohair/silk yarn that I had purchased in Taipei. I think she had been plotting her mischief every since she saw me working on it yesterday evening. (I'm knitting a capelet of my own design as a gift for my godmother.) Needless to say it is no longer in a ball, as you can see in the photo. Furthermore, it was a little wet from the slober that cats tend to produce when they are excited. Eww! This yarn apparently makes Whitey Coyote ecstatic (and naughty!) Luckily, because I'm knitting on a circular needle, none of the stitches were lost. Now I must untangle mohair, which is no easy feat. I just hope that she didn't also felt some of the yarn with all her slober and rolling. booo hooo!

Knit in Public Day

The second annual World Wide Knit in Public Day is being organized for June.10.2006! Cool, huh? My knitting group is already celebrating our 1 Year Anniversary on May.21.2006 at a beach park. I don't think it'll take much convincing for our group organizer and other members to participate in a knitting event and join in on WWKIP!

Places I've knitted in public:

• While waiting for, and on the train & subway-- Almost daily
• In the car (someone else driving)
• At a loooong stoplight when there were also lots of other cars (just once). My friends Aubrey and Rachel do it sometimes when they're stuck at a light or in traffic. (A little too scary for me!)
• In Coffee shops and in bookstores with cafes around the country and the globe.
• On the plane and at the airport.
• On the bus and at the bus stop.
• At a conference.
• At the doctor's office and at the pharmacy.
• At the movie theater, during previews. I am not good enough to knit in total darkness while watching a movie, unless maybe for knitting straight in the round.
• In a Las Vegas casino.
• In restaurants either waiting for a seat or for the food. (Hubby is not very conversational and usually just reads a magazine anyway, so I don't have anyone to talk to.)
• At the beach.
• In the lobby of the Dept. of Mental Health while waiting for a meeting to start.

I KNOW there are knitters out there who've knitted in stanger and more unique places. My ventures in public knitting is mild in comparison.

Your Homemade Yarn Swifts! (from instructions)

Last week, Jackie emailed me and wrote:

"Dear Ann,
I just want to say Thank you for posting the directions for the yarn swift. I made one today and it works great! I could not justify buying one for the occasional times I needed one, but this is perfect and the performance is suberb, plus I can disassemble it when I'm done using it to store it in less space.
Jackie"

Thank you Jackie! It's really nice to hear from you. I am so excited that you were successful in making your own handmade yarn swift from my instructions.

Jackie's yarn swift:

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

edit: July 21, 2006

I had posted the yarn swift and instructions on Craftster. "Beantown" posted the swift her husband made for her. See her swift here.

If you want to show yours off, please feel free post in comments section. :)

Taipei, part 2: Top Ten Things I Love/Hate

Top Ten Things I Love About Taipei (in no particular order)

1. Smelling the sweet scent of flowers sold by elderly street vendors. They are sold usually with 5-6 flowers strung together and wrapped in a leaf. I don't know exactly what species or subspecies these flowers are, but I know that they are related to the magnolias. From my research, these flowers appear to belong the the genus Michelia (family Magnoliaceae , order Magnoliales). (Picture 1: Street vendor selling the flowers with an orchid for people going to the Hsin Tien Temple (also Xin Tian, Shin Tien, HsingTien), a religious Dao Temple. Here are some beautiful photos of the temple.
2. LemBu, my most favorite fruit in the world! LemBu is what we call it in Taiwanese, and in Mandarin it's "Lian Woo." The common English name is Wax Apple - I'm not even going to try to spell the scientific name!. The LemBu variety in Taiwan is seedless and doesn't even look like the inside of an apple, but I can't find any links describing that variety or showing it cut open. LemBu is super juicy and you definitely will need to pee frequently if you eat some. Even if you happen to pick one that is not sweet, it is still yummy! On this trip, Dad found some at 80NT per kg (1 kg=2.2lbs; 80NT= approx $2.60). Unfortunately, I have never seen this in the U.S., not even in the Asian markets in California. If they do sell LemBu here, they'd be really $$ and probably not as fresh. (Picture 2: The LemBu I brought to eat on my flight home.)
3. Stinky Tofu!! It's so yummy, and yes, they kinda stink, but in a good way. The stinkier the better! You can find them in small mom & pop Taiwanese-style delis and restaurants in the U.S. I have alson seen them on the menu as "Tofu with Odor." In Mandarin, it's pronounced something like "Tsou DoFu." Stinky Tofu can be served many ways: braised, steamed, as a stinky tofu hot pot, grilled or fried. In Taipei, the there is a street full of stinky tofu vendors one after another, but I can't recall the name. However, the fried and grilled (and better tasting) varieties can be found anywhere, especially at the many night markets (see #4), and are usually served piping hot on skewers. *Drool*
4. I can't talk about stinky tofu without mentioning all the Night Markets (article) in Taipei! The two more well known ones are the ShihLin Night Market and the HuaHsi Tourist Market (also HuaXi), which is also known as Snake Alley. Night markets are more than tourist attractions. The night market in the area of XiMenDing is very hip and less known to tourists. You'll never be without something to do or eat (my favorite activity) at the night markets!
5. How to get to experience all the super things in Taipei? The MRT! The MRT is user friendly, fast, frequent, efficient and clean. (Pictures of MRT) In Mandarin, it's pronounced like "Jieh Yun." L.A. should learn from Taipei. There are many more people per square mile in Taipei and more users, AND Taipei has a better system than the MetroRail system of Los Angeles, which is dismal and uncoordinated by comparison. But of course, I prefer MetroRail to driving anyday.
6. Taiwan-style shaved ice. It's fluffier and softer than the Hawaiian shaved ice that most Americans are familiar with. Go to any Chinatown in any city and you'll find some. In Taiwanese, it's pronounced "Tswhoh Bing." According to Dad, there really wasn't an equivalent Chinese character for "tswhoh" because that's strictly a Taiwanese word, until of late, when people got creative. In Mandarin, it's translated to "Bao Bing." There's also a new "invention" with even finer ice, called snow or snow flake ice. Taiwanese bing (ice) is served with sweet toppings (taro, boiled peanut, azuki bean, mung bean, almond gelatin, tapioca, mango, black pulms, pineapple, etc.) and then topped with brown sugar or molasses water and/or condensed milk. This is also found readily in the night markets (see #4). Shaving ice.
7. The abundance of yummy and fresh bakeries. You can smell fresh-baked sweet breads everyday as you walk along the streets of Taipei. I could eat them all day. (Photo 3: My sister at a bakery near the Shuanglian MRT station.) This bakery has a type of "Pwo Lwo" (translated to pineapple bread in English for the resemblance to the skin-- there's no pineapple in it), with a thick crumbly crust on the outside and on the inside was like an awesome super croissant. yum.
8. All the things to love about a bustling and large metropolitan city.
9. All the specialty streets and districts. If you want cheap wholesale textiles, you go to a certain street. If you want snacks and preserved fruits, you go to another. There's an area where go get your herbs and tea. Etc., etc., etc. Of course, you can find those shops anywhere in Taipei as well, at the day markets and at the night markets. You get better deals and are guaranteed that at least one store will have what you want in those specialty streets/districts.
10. Street vendor and mom & pop food stalls. You'll want to be a little careful with cleanliness of some of the carts and stalls, but when they're good, they're good. There is food everywhere in Taipei and you're sure never to be hungry. There are so many things to write about -- vermicelli soup, onion cakes, potstickers, meat buns, egg cakes, etc. I could go on and on and on.

Top Ten Things I Hate About Taipei (again, in no particular order)

1. The humidity.
2. Mosquitos. Damn, have you ever met Asian tropical mosquitos? They love to suck blood.
3. The heat with the humidity. Really really sucky and suffocating.
4. The uneven pavements and sidewalks. Not good for clutzy people.
5. The VERY aggressive drivers and scooter drivers. They WILL try to run you over even if it's your right of way and WILL yell at you for "running into" their car.
6. The smog. Not good for the skin-- yucky clogged pores.
7. All the other usual things to hate about a very densely populated metropolitan city.
8. Some of the stinky day markets with chicken, pig, duck and fish heads and parts of all sorts staring right back at you.
9. The BAD hairdos of young Taiwanese students! There are more mullets in Taipei than all the midwestern and southern states added together! The mullets there range from short backs to very long backs. Yuck. More mullets here. (Er, my advance apologies if you have a mullet, but please reconsider...)
10. The BAD fashions! I don't even know how to explain. It's like a bad mix of Japanese, Korean, Italian and other runway high fashion NOT made for normal everyday life!

Painted Goodwill Sweater

These are photos of the dried and finished hand-dyed and hand-painted reclaimed/recycled yarn from a brand-new sweater I found at a thrift store, as I had posted a few days ago. I love Goodwill, and it's not just because of the sweater finds. Philosophically, I support their mission and their accomplishments in empowering the people they serve through their job training and opportunities program.


Top Left: A composite showing the yarns in different views. The 2 on the left were dyed in the same pot in the same manner. The one to the right is shown spread out in the next picture. Top Right: I hand-painted this one to get more frequent and random color change. Bottom: Another view, with one partially wound.

Stinky Silk Woes, Part 2

So I decided to be a masochist and tried to dye my silk again. This time I read the section of my dye book on dyeing silk and silk-blended yarns. I soaked (really, I did) my yarn OVERNIGHT and with soap. I started with my snafoo yarn from last time, which leached blue-green water (go figure, because it was baby blue).

Above Left: 1st Snafoo, Part 2, attempt 1: I painted it darker blue (shown) and other shades of teal, turquiose and algae green. After 40 looong minutes and lots of citric acid, the color still wouldn't take, so I tried a different approach.
Above Right: 1st Snafoo, Part 2, attempt 2: I put it in a steamer basket and re-hand-painted all the colors which also was laced with acid. I steamed for about 40 minutes. I still have a Baby Blue Bomb. I can't even see any green. Why? see below!


Above Left: Although I think my water level was a little bit high (only barely touched part of yarn when on high boil), it should not have leached green water. I still have baby blue yarn, albeit a darker baby blue, and it still is not colorfast. :( boo hoo.
Above Right: I am really a masochist. I didn't think nearly 2 hours of Stinky Silk was enough. hmm, maybe something is wrong with that yarn. I should try the extra hank I soaked last night. So I did. I painstakingly hand-painted the yarn, all 500 yds of the 50/50 silk/wool, put less water and steamed for 50-60 minutes. Towards the last 20 minutes, I threw in the Baby Blue Bomb. This one is a little better than Baby Blue Bomb, but it is still leaching color since it hasn't set.

Wait, there IS a rainbow! I miraculously have the gift of foresight and somehow knew that I would be disappointed. So before doing the silk, I unraveled an embroidered thrift store find (new w/tags!) made in Scotland from shetland wool. It was cut and then stitched from the armpits up (maybe b/c of embroidery), so I couldn't really unravel the top third without getting a pile of short yarn pieces that my kitties would drool over. I treated those parts like fabric.

My house smells awful. What's worse? Hot Stinky Silk or Hot Vinegar? Yuck.


Left: The sweater. Right: What I got.

I dyed some of the sweater parts and yarn. Success!! What's even better is that I am able to multi-task and had the Stinky Silk and wool dyeing at the same time. Right: A picture of all the yarns in the drying process. (Click on it and any other picture for better detail.)

Above: The top back of the sweater. I painted the stripes and will be felting it for a clutch.

Red Booties

Here's the picture of the finished red baby booties. It'll probably fit a 6 mo+ old baby. I think I need to make the black ties shorter. They look a bit long. 100% Cotton, US 4 needles.

I have not re-cast the baby alpaca baby booties. The reason I had to frog it in the first place is because the pattern did not make any sense when it come to the toe shaping. The pattern just says "toe shaping is done by working in short rows," but gives no instructions on how many rows or stitches! I hate poorly written patterns! I want to find a good baby bootie pattern done on double pointed needles. Until then, I'll do the alpaca booties on 2 straights.

I spent this evening dyeing yarn. I actually tried to take pics of the dye process. It was Stinky Silk Woes (pic) all over again! Quite dismal and disappointing. I don't have time to reformat all the pics now, and since it's late, I'll have to rant about my Stinky Silk Adventure, Part 2 later. I'm going to cry now.

Babies of All Sorts

I'm a proud momma. First of all, I finished my Clapotis late Thursday night. As holey as it is, it's actually pretty warm. I am TOTALLY happy with the colorway and the turn out. I probably should block it since it's rolling a bit, but not before I wear it a couple more times. :) I knitted the sport weight Cashmere/Merino yarn on US 7 needles.

Left: The finished project.
Below: Close-up view. Aren't the colors are lovely?



Scored! Despite having worked in LaLaLand (aka Plastic Land and Silicon City) for the past 5 years, I have never shopped in the Fashion District or in most areas in LA -- walked and passed through, but no real shopping. I'm a transplant, so I don't have many friends here to go with me, and it's not like my short-attention-spanned hubby will indulge me in something like this. So of course, I said yes when 2 friends woke me from my slumber this morning.

Anyhow, I've always though the Hermes Birkin bags were cute. Ever since I saw a colleague with a knock-off she bought from NYC, I've had my eyes on one. Of course, even if I won the lotto, I don't think I would spend even $1000 on a purse or tote, let alone spend thousands upon thousands!! (BTW- the real bags go anywhere from $4,000 to $40,000 for the larger crocodile totes.) I found this lovely and fairly well-made orange one for a bargain $25. There was a green one too, but the orange one is prettier. Rachel got a really nice black Salvatore Ferragamo for $18. We tried to bargain more, but the guy would not go any lower and he was the lower-priced venue. We came across another store that also has Birkins (and even a blue one), but the store charges $35.



Above: Ms. Brownie modeling the purse.

Babies Galore. I am at that age where all my friends are having babies or getting married. In the apst 2 years or so, I've had to deal with a lot personal stuff, so I have been terrible at calling and sending gifts, cards, and other congratulatory gestures. So now that things have calmed a bit, I'm finally making long overdue baby gifts. It's a good thing baby booties are fast to knit, except the ones requiring knitting in the round. I am going to be busy! I would like to make gifts for...

1. ...Nyssa, Tedd's girl, around 1 year old
2. ...Baby, Ann's, sex unknown, expected this May
3. ...Madeline, Kay's girl, now about 2 or 3 ? years old
4. ...Baby, Kay's 2nd, expected Fall 2007 (probably)
5. ...Danny, Nguyen's boy, around 1 year old -- technically our godchild. I am a terrible godmother. Hubby is much worse. He bought Danny a Winnie the Pooh for Christmas and did not give it to him until I put it by the front door to remind him 2 weeks ago!
6. ...Grant, Amy's boy, age 2 months.

Below: I don't know who this will be for yet. It's out of 100% cotton yarn on US 4 needles. I still need to sew it up, but I think I will wait until my next knitting group meeting so I can get some sage guidance on proper seaming.

Below: I think this one will be for Ann's soon-to-be-popped baby. She and her hubby want to be surprised by the sex, so any gifts would have to be unisex. And since this is use what you have month, I'm using this fingering weight 100% baby alpaca yarn that I got about 6 months ago from The Hunger Site, a cool place to shop, support a nonprofit and fight hunger. What's more is that this a fair trade product. I've only made the sole so far. I find it a little challenging to knit in the round with teeny tiny US 1 needles.

Backward Knitting

Someone from my knitting group taught me how to knit backwards last night. AWESOME! I didn't even know that you could do that! I wished I learned to do it before I got so far on my Clapotis and thus, I would've saved myself some finger arthritis from all those hated purl rows. (I knit continental and when I purl, I pull the yarn over the needle with my left index finger.) Now I may consider another Clap in the future. I still have many projects that I want to do and make up! Here's a nice backwards knitting and purling online tutorial.

Awww *blush*
What's also really cool is that I posted and linked my yarn swift pattern on Craftster. I got really cool comments and feedback from people. I hope more people realize how easy it is to make one (and cheap!)

Is it Friday yet?

Argh. It's only Tuesday and I've aleady had a looong busy and draining week at work. I haven't had much down time, except ripping out a project. (Although I did buy a pair of lovely Via Spigas :) while running errands today.) I'm making time now and updating my blog and photos. I just uploaded the photos of some purses I made for donation recently. This one is my favorites, which I called Wild Poppies - inspired by wild poppies (go figure). It's of my own pattern and design. Hand dyed & painted using yarn I recycled from a sweater. Top darker colored section is felted. Lower half is knitted with purl ridges. Bottom of purse sits flat - knitted that way, no extra sewing. The tag says Sugar Apple Creations, which I had asked my talented and artistic sister to design for me. Isn't that cool? I have that website, but I haven't learned how to create a site yet. Learning to do this blog was challenge enough!

My Day Off

Because I work in a progressive nonprofit world, we get holidays like Columbus Day (really, I don't want to celebrate a guy who didn't really discover America and subsequently caused the mass extinction of many American Indigenous Peoples) replaced with holidays like Cesar Chavez Day!

I don't know how people spend their day off, but I've spent it napping and thinking about how I should update Crafty Diversions. I can't really do any major projects because I actually have to work later and meet a client. Plus, m' achin' back is totally bothering me. Hey, that means, I can KNIT some more!

These are 2 of my current knitting projects. The top is my Clapotis project I'm making with my own hand-dyed yarn at the Wine, Dye 'n Knit party (See "Backtrack..." posted 3/11/06). The bottom one is the project commissioned by my friend Kim, who originally wanted fingerless gloves so that she could wear it in her freezing cold office. After seeing how beautiful her dyed yarn is, we decided a scarf would be best to show off! I'm doing this in the seafoam stitch.