weekend

i find it slightly disconcerting that in an attempt to be early for a shindig at corndog and rootbeer's i appeared exactly on time. hmmmmmmm... maybe i should try to be early for everything?

this weekend there were a couple of notable craft/cooking experiences. there was a my attempt at chockylit's Lychee-Coconut Cupcakes with Ginger-Cream Cheese Frosting, Candied Ginger Sprinkles, and Sugar Decorations minus the sugar decorations. it was my first real experience piping frosting. the piping required more concentration that i thought it would. hahaha... next time i will try using a bigger tip.

i also finished up my postcards for the swap. i had an idea to do a sashiko postcard with navy blue felt. unfortunately what was in my head looked a lot better than what i ended up with so i ended up putting together a embossed number instead. not as creative but maybe i can get fancier next time.

so i took pictures but they are currently being held hostage in san francisco. so i guess i can't post. doh! hopefully i'll be able to rescue my camera sometime this week. =)

Arrozcaldo

What's not to like about chicken soup with fish sauce? Here's the arrozcaldo recipe that I found some time ago and didn't get to try out until recently. I used lime instead of lemon and accidentally boiled the toasted garlic with the rest of the soup. Yum.

SST on acid

This campus has truly hideous architecture. That's what happens when the school is built in the 1970s, I guess. Then perhaps all the new buildings have to match the originals.

One day... I will walk to campus and find this instead.

hasta la revolucion

I'm more than a little obsessed with Stencil Revolution right now. The tutorials on how to make stencils are pretty helpful. Don't look for me under any freeway overpasses just yet, though.

sketch

To the left is what the high neck lace top that I'm knitting, as the pattern is written. If I hadn't kept ripping back, I would probably be done with the front by now! I know, that kind of thinking isn't very productive, blah blah blah.

..

To the right is a photoshopped draft of what my modifications will do to the pattern. The lace panel on the top will be less dramatic, since the eyelet portion is cut and pasted from the bottom, where the eyelets are black because the model's wearing a black skirt.

button maker

I'm suddenly obsessed with the idea of a button maker. I wonder if they have ones that you can rent...

lace top photo

Here's a photo of the top I'm working on. I don't think I'll be wearing it with the black lace gauntlets, but anyway... sorry, model, for chopping off part of your head!

The bit of swatch that I have here shows how I decided to add in some eyelets to make the hem part lacier. It is lacier, but I don't know if I think it's necessarily attractive. Maybe I will stagger the eyelets so they don't look so... vertical? Columnar? Rigid? Bah.

The yarn I'm using is Pingouin benares. It's cotton and polymide and has just the right amount of sproinginess.

P.S. Somehow, the blog settings were such that someone was supposed to be moderating the comments. Oops. Just realized that and have addressed the problem. Not that we're drowning in comments or anything, but sorry if your comment was held up by this unnecessary process.

quote of the day

"We Asians age very, very gracefully. Did you know that Lucy Liu is 37, BD Wong is 43 and Pat Morita is dead? I didn't think so."

i lifted this from my random blog surfing. HAHAHAHAHAHA... too funny!

knitted toys frolic

I made a bunch of toys from Jess Hutch patterns for random Christmas gifts, including this robot and bear. The bear has spotted pants, but I guess you can't tell in this photo.

The bear dances the Nutcracker under the tree.

This cat ended up with slightly evil eyes. I don't know what happened, but here it looks like it's slightly hungover from all the festivities. Whew!

copia

for b's birthday we headed out to copia to visit the fancy wine and cheese. it was a beautiful day and there were lots of good photo opps. the giant vase above was made out of thousands of bottlecaps. i tried to get an upclose picture so you could see the bottlecaps but i don't know if it was that successful.






even the copia shop was fun for the senses.



there were also some visitors from chicago...

and i even snuck in some pictures in the no photos allowed room. (i actually just forgot about the sign when i took the picture but i didn't have the heart to erase it!)

we also visited artesa. the architecture of the building was breathtaking. built with the surrounding landscaping in mind it reminded me of a pyramid covered with native grasses.

after the excitment in napa we headed to house of waffles for some chicken and waffle goodness. we stuffed ourselves silly and even contemplated a sock-it-to-me cake but the waffles and chicken took up too much stomach space to allow for dessert.

holiday projects

DSC01486
Originally uploaded by itslynzee.

every year a holiday frenzy of flour, sugar, and eggs comes together to form some sort of christmas project. this year was a little more hectic than most but with a little bit of cellophane and ribbon it ended up looking semi-presentable. made jam thumbprints (from barefoot contessa), mini pecan cups, and peppermint bark.

*note to self*
next year use smaller platters!

Pictures of finished projects in an unfinished stage and pictures of projects that I'm not working on

After completing the holiday knitting (and the birthday knitting) and ringing in the new year, your faithful blogger decided to... no, not finish old projects like the cardigan that's been hanging around with a gaping hole in the back, but to start new ones. I'm too lazy right now to take a picture of the actual pattern that I started, so instead I'll post a picture of a sort of similar top on a pattern book that I was thinking of buying. It's crochet, not knit, and no, those aren't my fingers. I'm also too lazy to crop them out.



The differences are this: the pattern I'm using has no sleeves, it's knit, not crochet, so there are no pineapple sleeve trim (which I think is kind of cute) and all in all, there's less openwork (which I also think is kind of cute). In place of the openwork, substitute staggered bobbles. I know, less cute.

But anyway, I don't mind the lack of sleeves and the pattern I'm using does have rather cute (I'm overusing the word cute today, but I did go to a Japanese store today... that must be why!) horizontal lace bands dividing the different sections and some short row shaping. I'm trying to come up with a way to extend the vertical lace bands to the hem of the top, but I don't think that's really going to work out. Instead, I'm trying to find a suitable stitch pattern to replace the weird-ish bobbles. I think bobbles are tricky. If they aren't done right, they start to look like random warts, which I can do without, really.

swap!

i signed up to do my first swap! how very exciting. the rusty wheels in my head are already churning... =)

ongoing with the theme...
postsecret is an interesting website if you have some web browsing time.

"PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard."

finding nemo

the other day i was driving home and there was a big sign for the upcoming show “finding nemo on ice”. now sometimes my memory isn't so good. but isn’t finding nemo about a bunch of fish? how do fish ice skate if they don’t even have legs?! sometimes i just don’t understand.