My Weekend

A Couple Sweater and such

A little bit of this and that.

I finished this lovely sweater by the Brown Stitch (you can find the pattern here) just in time for New York City to hit the high 90’s. I had to wait for it to cool down a bit so that I could bear to put it on for the picture.

I also made this little guy for a friend’s newborn, my gauge was a bit on the small size so it is a good thing it went in the mail on Friday.

And because I couldn’t not share this ridiculousness…

Only in NYC do you get a guy selling drift wood on the sidewalk. $50 to $100 bucks a pop, makes me think I am in the wrong business. Of course I didn’t see anyone actually buy anything.

T.T.T.B. (to tired to blog)

Sorry to be missing in action, we had a bit sadness in our lives and have been sticking close to family lately which has made me T.T.T.B., otherwise known as to tired to blog syndrome. Plus my wee nephew did his best to give me his not so wee cold. How can someone so small be packed with something so contagious?
I have things to share, but most of them involve downloading photos, which involves me being awake when I get home at night. Rather than have us all collectively hold our breath for that moment I thought I would pass on this greatness that I came across awhile back.

Did you know that Lego has a whole line of architecturally inspired kits? I always knew Lego's were cool but Lego Frank Lloyd Wright- how cool is that!

More Redwork

Redwork

The American Folk Art Museum has an amazing exhibit of Redwork quilts right now through Wednesday. This show is up for less than a week, as if that could possibly be enough time to absorb all that loveliness. Molly and I spent our Friday afternoon getting lost amongst the quilts. As I doubt people who live in NYC will have a chance to make it to the show let alone those of you outside the city, I thought I would show you all some of the photos. Enjoy!

Snowflakes

Depending on how you look at it I have either missed the boat or am tempting fate with this blog post. I was going to post this a few weeks back but we hit a warm spell in New York that turned into a warming trend and the rest is history. But this is far too cool not to post and I am sure it is snowing somewhere in the world and there is a darn good chance it will snow here again.


Sarah over at Quince and Quire figured out how to photograph snowflakes. (Come on admit it you’re so impressed by the photo that you forgive me for tempting the snow gods.)

photos by Quince and Quire

 

You can view here tutorial here (check out her great blog while you’re at it). And let’s face it, if it is going to snow more this session don’t we all need a snow project to help get us through?

Letterpress Love

Do you love letterpress? Really how could you not.


There is a great project up on Kickstarter right now which is to help create an app for the iPad (and other products) that will let you print in letterpress type set. You can arrange and change type the way you would with old letterpress printing.

My father, who is a bigger tech geek than your 7 year old nephew and avid lover of old letterpress insisted that I should post something about this project. You can check it out here on Kickstarter. Go ahead give him a few bucks and help keep letterpress alive!

A Fair Well to Avice

On Monday my adopted grandmother passed away. Although her death was not a surprise, she was 93 and in failing health, it has still left me with a heavy heart. My sister and I were very lucky to have her as part of our lives, she taught us about what it truly means to be a creative person and has nurtured our creativity. She is in large part the reason I started this blog, as a means of sharing my projects with her even though she lived many states away.


After I got the news on Monday I was somewhat at a loss of what to do with myself. I was filled with relief and sadness. She would have been horrified with sadness and tears and so my guy asked what she would want me to do at that moment, and the answer was simple, make something. And so I got out my sewing machine and finally made a cover for my heating pad. Admittedly there was still sadness and tears but there was also sewing, and I think she would have liked that. In order to be a true memorial to her I should have covered it in Black and Whites (her favorite color combination) but I used what I had on hand.

Sorry for the poor picture, I pulled it out of my bed this morning to take a picture before heading to work so I guess it has the equivalent of bed head in the heating pad world.

Too Intense Revisited

I came home early today to stare at the bookshelf. Actually, I was a bit under the weather and came home in the interest of keeping my germs to myself. But I ended up staring at the bookshelves.

I got a letter from my biggest blogging fan, my adopted grandma Avice. She said I either needed to stop staring at the bookshelves or mix things up a bit. Not staring at the bookshelves might be a good idea but I can’t seem to stop, so mixing things up sounded good. Actually covering things up sounded even better. For a while now I have been wanting to put up more pictures of friends and things that make me laugh, but committing it to the wall has seemed a bit to permanent. Committing it to the bookshelves is perfect. So here is a start. My plan is to eventually have a whole host of pictures, big and little, all framed rotating on our bookshelves. If I can’t stop myself from staring at them at least I can stare at things I like, right? Right!

Some Goals

I have been trying to figure out how in the heck to fit in all the things I want/need to do into this crazy world of mine.  Between work and home and various projects it can be hard, oh and did I mention I am drinking less caffeine now?  Why am I drinking less caffeine now you ask: the simple answer is that I have been drinking way too much caffeine since birth, really I blame my father and his fancy oh so yummy coffee machine for this.  There was a brief 6 months when I went cold turkey but that is a distant memory.  So my goal right now is to drink one, that's right one cup a day.  After that morning "get your butt in gear girl" cup of coffee it is no more caffeine for me.  So far so good, although I do find my brain a wee bit fuzzy in the afternoon, at moments like you know now...
Anyway, I was telling you all about my attempt to fit everything into the mere 24 hours there is in a day.  And let me stop here and say I really have no clue how in the heck folks with kids do anything.  I have a very selfish list of things to cram into my day and I still can't.  But in an effort to keep trying to cram it all in I thought I would share it with you and then when you see me clearing not doing my best to accomplish these goals, or more likely trying to sneak an afternoon cup of joe you can yell at me, nicely.  And yes if you are going to yell at me do it sweetly after all I am trying to kick a caffeine habit here.
So here are the goals I have going on right now

• Do a bit of apartment cleaning every day so you don't have to do it for a whole day later.  So I have been trying this out after reading something (sorry for the lack of article reference here I have no idea where) about doing small bits each day.  What I have been doing is spending the first 15 minutes that I walk into my apartment doing some piece of housework (full disclosure usually I pee first).  I vacuum, or do 15 minutes worth of dishes or sort the laundry or clean the bathtub.  So far so good I have a far cleaner apartment and far less angry long cleaning days.  The next trick is getting my guy to adopt this.
• Project Make My Pants Fit (PMMPF)- somewhere along the way I gained some weight and now my pants don't fit.  Actually I know exactly when it happened but I shall not speak of this here, however, PMMPF is well underway which means the gym 4 times a week after work.  This may not seem crafty but if the gym thing doesn't work it means a lot of clothing altering later so you know it kinda fits.
• Sew more stuff in general
• Sew more clothing for me but because grown up clothing scares me a bit ease in with some kids stuff
• Blog more- which unlike this post means take more pictures, which usually means during the day, AND download the darn things to the computer so that I BLOG MORE.  This should not be that hard and yet...
• Start finishing up some of these lingering projects I have around the house- seriously
• Do more crafting that scares me- ok so sew more stuff for me and really blog more fit here.  There are a ton of creative things that I am excited about but I don't know maybe I am waiting for the moons to align just right but I just can't quite get past my "ohh that looks fun but hard" phase to telling you all about the amazing thing I tried that didn't quite work.
• Get my etsy shop back up- or stop beating myself up that it isn't
• Make more stuff for good causes.  there are a ton of charities out there that I want to make stuff for and get all of you to make stuff for

So that is the list for now- oh and I should add don't drink coffee in the afternoon but I feel we have covered that

Britex Fabrics: oh my

On our recent trip to San Fransisco I got to wander around a magical, albeit a bit pricey, fabric store extravaganza: Britex Fabrics. My very cool guy found it in a guide book and was kind enough to drop me off at the front door for what turned out to be an hour and a half of wandering and petting. I was like Alice in the rabbit hole and thought I was there a mere 30 minutes. To be fair there are 4 floors of goodness!
The top floor is all reminents. I pawed through the racks organized by fiber content and fell in love more then once. I feel I had some majopr restaint and only bought what I felt I couldn't get back home easily and some major yardage of a lovely print that was on sale.

Craftacular Room

We moved 3 months ago and for the last 4 months I haven't been able to find a single crafting item. Why is it the thing we love is always the last to get our attention?
Well no more, yesterday I removed ever single item, yes you heard me right, every ball of yarn, stay needle, piece of felt and scrap of paper with an idea on it and got organized. The result: my very own Craftacular Room! Yipee! Crafting here I come

Been Gone for Awhile

Life has been a little too much of too much lately which has meant it is hard to keep up with my blog. But rest assured I am still making lots of stuff! And i might even managed to tell you all about it now that my camera cable is permanently living in my office drawer.
In the mean time...I got a package in this box and when I went to recycle it this little note is what I found- I love it! and it pretty much sums up how I feel right now

Problem

When this here girl is moving and getting all four of her wisdom teeth out tomorrow she needs to worry knit.
Now said girl was smart enough not to pack her project or extra yarn but greatly underestimated the amount of worry knitting that was going to happen. Hence said girl needs to wined more yarn and the ball winder if packed away and the skeins are big, real big. That is a lot of hand winding.

Starting 2010 Off Right

Somehow I my new job, which I love, has boxed me in a bit. I was given a cubicle which I am learning to live with, partially by holding onto my old desk and ignoring the small desk attached to it and partially through putting good things up on the walls.
One of those good things is this lovely calendar made by storybymia on etsy. Every time I look at it I smile, so things can't be that bad. :)

Holiday Goodness

I must explain, I took many, many, really just a ton of photo's of things I have been doing over the past month. But with a new job and the holidays things weren't really making it to posts. So Last night in a fit of organization I managed to download all my photo's and you will now be bombarded with posts. So enjoy them- and I promise to try to be better about downloading my camera more often.
This lovely bit of holiday cheer was my handmade gift of choice to friends and co-workers this year. It is lavender scented bath salts with a little lavender added in to make it purdy.

To make your own:
One cup salt (sea salt works well)
add 5-6 drops of essential oil and mix, add a few more drops if it seems like it needs it- but try not to go over board.
Put in some sort of yummy container.

A note about the container. I don't know about all of you but I am alway reading magizines where they claim that you can go out and get these containeers for no money at all at your local junk shop. And the city kitten that I am always wonders where these folks live that they have access to these junk shops. Well over October my guy and I went upstate to visit some friends that took us their favorite junk shop where I got a box load of these old canning jars for $10. It was a true score.

craft-orginization

A few months ago our good friends came for a visit with their 10 1/2 month old, Hunter. He had just started crawling and getting into everything. Before their visit I found myself awake at night with fears of the baby death trap that was my craft corner- and so I spent a solid two weeks moving everything up and out and creating a safe but completely unorganized craft space.
I have been living with the consequences for the past two months. The short of it has been that whenever I want to get something that used to be right at my hand I had to climb on a chair, curse like a sailor and rummage around until I came up with something close to what I was looking for- needless to say nothing ever really went back to where it had come from. I was left with a giant tangle of crafting materials and glue and who knows what else falling off the top of our bookshelves. As you may have guessed this put a serious damper on my crafting.
So this weekend I took the plunge. I took everything down- I organize, prioritized and even sterilized my craft zone. My guy is now thinking he should have bought stock in clear plastic bins. But it did the trick and it is lovely. I even managed to sit down and sew a bag last night!

My Flock

It should really be no surprise to anyone that I have a love of sheep somewhere along the way I seemed to start collecting my own flock at various sheep and wools and fairs. Here they are

Very Cool Lamps

So our camera is MIA which has led to some bad blogging practices. Instead I thought I might show you all some cool etsy wears. I think these lamps are the bomb and we may just need one for our living room.
They are made by a lady here in NY and you can visit her etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5670728

I Really am Alive and Mostly Well

I will be the first to admit that the last month or so has just been crappy. My mother was in the hospital way to long and then once she was released and healthy, on queue I got really sick. My guy knew I was really sick because I didn't make a thing for the week I was stuck at home. Instead I watch a lot of bad tv confirming in my mind that we really can get rid of it.
I am doing much better now; I no longer have a fever and I can actually talk. Best yet I am plotting and have started many fun projects. I may have to go into some quilt over drive because everyone I know, or close to everyone I know is pregnant. I feel I am in the middle of a baby boom and my sewing machine and i are doing the best we can to keep up.
My worry knitting is almost completed which is a good thing because like Madame Defarge I noted all that happened in that knitting over the last month and to be quite honest I will be happy to put the needles down.
I promise to take many pictures just as soon as I find the camera in the wreckage of our apartment