lf's cities

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American Cities That Best Fit You:

65% San Francisco

60% Honolulu

60% Los Angeles

60% Washington, DC

55% San Diego

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

new favorite online magazine and other fun stuff...

i came across saucy magazine about a week ago and have been visiting religiously ever since. they have all the qualities that a website needs to keep me interested. a recipe of the day, pretty colors, and fun links.

they even link to this fundue set. a usb powered fondue pot!



what will they think of next?

guess who's wearing something made by sandia? =) 

bacon scallion cheddar corn muffins!

 

one of my new favorite things to do is to make muffins out of my best recipe baking book. i am quite enamoured of chefs who wear bow ties and therefore must use recipes from their books. =) i'm contemplating which type of muffin to make next. the current front runner is blueberry. mmmmm....

today, gauge... tomorrow, world domination

Haha! I have made gauge on #6 needles. It's 28-29 rows for 4", but that's close enough to 30 for me, and the width came out just right. Now I can only hope that I have enough yarn after making all of those stupid swatches.

I washed the first swatch and did not get gauge, so I'm working on another. In the meantime, I've been engaging in some origami.

yarn v. sandia

I don't know why we always must be at odds, but this black cotton yarn and I don't seem to get along. I have conceptualized it as multiple projects, all of which have somehow defied me.

1) The "sitcom chic" from Knitty, a raglan-sleeve cardigan with an eyelet detail, stalled on the needles and stayed there for over a year. I eventually figured that it was too much stockinette knitting and I didn't feel challenged enough

2) Post-ripping, which was a huge pain in the butt, I thought it could be this other cardigan that had horizontal ribbing and godets at the side seams and sleeve cuffs. I managed to lose interest in this pattern too. Maybe it was because it was in French and I was too lazy to translate the pattern or maybe it was because I had again reached the unexciting stockinette section of the knitting process. This one stayed on the needles only about three months before being ripped. Is this progress?

3) The next idea I had for the yarn was the “spring fling” cardigan. Blame it on the bad name. Spring fling sounds like clichéd collegiate event. I still like the design, but the yarn defied me when I was swatching it. It laughed at me, I swear. I won’t let you make gauge, neener neener. It doesn'’t help that I hate swatching. If you can recall from my previous posts, I'’m not that enthralled with knitting rectangles, but they are necessary to ensure the good fit of the garment, blah blah blah.

4) The new plan is to make up a pattern from the book I just bought by Teva Durham. It'’s a cardigan (surprise). I am extending my personal belief that I cannot have too many black tank tops to also include black cardigans. Right now, I have one black cardigan that had a rhinestone zipper. Somehow, with all of my brute strength, I managed to pull the zipper pull straight off of the sweater within weeks of receiving it. That hasn'’t stopped me from wearing it, since I may like it better unzipped and the rhinestones being a little more dispersed on each side of the center front. I’'m too lazy to take a photograph of the sweater, although that doesn’t stop me from writing an exposition on my history with this black softball cotton yarn, but anyway, the back of this design includes an openwork medallion.

Durham writes that another sweater that was published in Interweave knits awhile back, perhaps called the Sunburst Pullover, inspired her. I actually bought that magazine thinking I would make the pattern, but never came across the right yarn. Now I can make this one, if when my swatch dries it is close to making gauge. If not, the yarn will laugh at me again, I will get mad and give up on the cardigans altogether, unless it somehow miraculously makes gauge for sweater plan #3…

Sorry, this post originally had pictures showing those designs that have now fallen by the wayside, but blogger rebelled and you will just have to use your imaginations. I think I linked to pictures when I babbled about them in the past.

scarf

I finished the blobby scarf, except for weaving in the ends. I like to put that part off for a long time and then do it at the last minute, when I want to either wear the item in question or give it away as a gift. It's just my little way of adding excitement to my life.

As a random side note, it's interesting how scarf rhymes with barf and that they are (if you are in a gross mindset)opposite forms of the same process.

martha - april 2005 - take 1

in an attempt to make good on my promise to create my very own craft-a-month club i was perusing my martha magazine the other night. a simple craft caught my eye. by using the decorative (usually never used) stitches on ones sewing machine you too can create lovely stationary! hahaha... not actually owning thread that isn't black or white, i went out and bought some colorful thread, sat down at my sewing machine and then realized that i don't actually have a machine that has decorative stitches!

foiled!

measure up

The scarf is now approximately 44 inches long. I want it to be done, so I can move on to other projects, maybe the cardigan from knitty I mentioned earlier... or a camisole. .. or anything else that isn't long and rectangular.

stortrooper sandia

www.stortroopers.com provides you with a cartoon self-portrait. I actually own those shoes!

unnecessary objects

i saw this on http://www.anh-minh.com/




isn't it cute? i want it! very hard to resist. but i just can't justify spending $79. argh.

metal and blobs

When I was up in San Francisco recently, I went over to check out Artfibers, which was conveniently only two blocks away from the event I was attending. The woman working there was friendly and helpful, even as she informed me that I had only about fifteen minutes before the store closed, but I could take up as much of those minutes as I wanted. I had actually dragged lf there a few years back, but this was before I became obsessed with yarn.



Artfibers carries a unique line that has natural fibers and novelties. Some people like only one or the other, but I (perhaps unfortunately) like everything. On that particular day, the novelties spoke to me. I picked up a ball of Tesla, which is a cotton and stainless steel blend, which ends up looking like think threads of metal connecting blobs of woven cotton ribbon. The resulting fabric looks very organic and in this pink color, to me resembles flowers.

Naive Knitting Blog

I recently discovered Naive Knitting Blog. Voodoo bunnies! Elephants! Sock monkeys and, better yet, sock dogs! I got just a little excited.

onesies

For a baby shower, I used fabric markers to decorate a set of onesies. I got them at Flax in San Francisco using a gift certificate that I received for the holidays. You just draw on the design and heat set it with an iron. I wasn't able to get a very narrow line because the knit fabric liked to stretch while I was trying to draw, but all in all it turned out ok.

leaves (above) and fishies (below)

dragon (back and front)

New project!!!

I just finished the last sock. Somehow, reading 15 pages today made me feel justified in taking a break. I am now oddly between projects.

There is the black sweater that I seem to have abandoned. What can I say? I guess I lost the inspiration. This is the second time that this has happened with this yarn, so it wouldn't be farfetched in saying that I don't really like knitting with this cotton. It doesn't stretch. It squeaks along on the plastic needles. (Here is where the shopaholic that lies inside says, "Buy more needles!" I try to avoid listening to that voice.)

I am thinking of ripping it out and starting this sweater from the new edition of Knitty. It's officially named "Spring Fling," but I'll pretend that it isn't. Spring fling tends to bring up weird associations in my mind with random drunken behavior and a plotline on "One Life to Live" back over 10 years ago when young lf and sandia used to watch it. Anyway, the design is cute and seems practical enough for southern California and stupidly climate-controlled buildings, but I might get sidetracked into starting something else first.

quilted heart

This is a quilted wall hanging that I made. The design is from Kumiko Sudo's "Circles of the East," a book that uses mon, Japanese family crests, as inspiration for applique quilt blocks.

The main changes I made were that I added another pair of vines and, in a largely unpremeditated move, decided that it needed to be heart-shaped. I don't think that would have happened had I had access to a sewing machine when I was binding the outer edge. The process took far too long and left me time to stew over how bad the binding was looking as a square. I also did weird looping things when I attempted to miter the corners. I guess I haven't bound anything quilt-like in awhile. By the time I finished the heart binding, there weren't many other directions to go with the shape and I didn't want to redo it, even though some parts are puffier than they need to be.

I got away with only two trips to the fabric store and used mostly scrap materials. The disappearing marker that I used to draw the placement of the pieces on the background fabric was a shocking $4. I'm tempted to go on some sort of quilting binge so I can use the marker before it dries up, but that is highly unlikely. I have knitting projects awaiting.

In a sad turn of events in my battle with the library, the book I requested came too late for me to be able to check it out. Oh well... on to projects for which I already have yarn!

sick

i woke up this morning with a sore throat and feeling like i was coming down with a cold. according to the package, if you "take at the FIRST sign of a cold symptom or before entering crowded environments" you can ward off a cold.

we'll see. i'm skeptical. but it's worth a shot. i hate being sick.