Peanut Butter Bagels

Knit Girllls Spin-a-long

2011-06-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

A few months a go I was lucky enough to participate in the April spin-a-long for the Knitgirllls. The lovely Tempted dyed a few sheep's worth of super-wash Blue Face Leicester wool for us all and it was fun to see how different ever one spun the yarn and how it all knit up.
Here is what I did with my 4 o.z. of purple, blue and white with hints of pink:

Singles spun from the full braid, not split.

I then navajo plied the yarn so I would get color blocks as an effect.

I knit it up into some Albina (I'm calling them SALbina) armwarmers. If you spin this pattern is awesome for plugging your numbers into to get all the math done. I almost wish it was half excel spread sheet so it would literally do the math for you. Hmm. Maybe some day.

house hold and office odds and ends

2011-05-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

I love thrift shoping. I love looking at the cool things and figuring out where they came from as well as finding something that fits in the bare spots in our home.

Like this terrific thread painting someone spent a lot of time making at one point. It has gorgeous harvest gold colors:

Some jars I picked up to start terrariums in for our office -- 1 month later they still look pretty much the same. I'm hoping for some moss growth. I also wanted to find some fimo to make wee gnomes for them but no luck in my house.

Lately I've been busy with items to spruce up my new office at work after my recent promotion.
I found this great cross-stitch kit from 1975 and got busy stitching turtles:

I bought 2 prints by a student (they depict Philadelphia and traveling to from and around center city). She just graduated this year and worked super hard the whole time she was here. I hope her career goes succesfully!

And I covered an old magnet board from ikea in some light green woodgrain fabric. I also made button magnets to match:

I hung up some curtains, bought a gerbera daisy, and started that big ole green plant from a cutting a year a go! look at how much it's grown!

cozies. i love them.

2011-05-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

made some tissue box cozies for the cold season this spring out of hand-spun.

Late Winter Spinning

2011-05-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

I spent time spinning this late winter, trying to get closer on my quest for a nice fingering weight yarn while keeping the fiber stash under control.

I spun all my singles up, playing with ideas of what colors to ply with what.

I plied the mixed color with some cranberry singles to get this gorgeous yarn:

The multicolor is from Woolgatherings -- I highly recommend her fiber, was not compacted, spun smoothly and she has gorgeous color sense. This was BFL silk, combined with a cranberry braid I picked up from Clover Leaf Farms at Maryland Sheep and Wool a few years ago.

Then I spun up the white corriedale all on it's own. I love this fiber. I want more of it. It spun like a breeze.

I also spun my cloudlover fiber up from the Fallmageddon swap we did on the Knit Girlll's board on ravelry. Plied with najavo plying technique:

cat sweater mania

2011-05-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

I saw a cat sweater from the 1986 Holiday Vogue Knitting that I had to have.
Classic 80's, loose fit, giant tube of a sweater with a ridiculous picture on it.

So I did what any reasonably crazy person would do and ordered my copy of the out of print magazine off of ebay and bought the yarn while I waited 2 weeks for it to get here from Canada. Of course I needed to make sure I got suitable yarn for such a sweater that I want to last a while and wear well -- I went with Vanna's Choice.

Finally my 1986 Vogue Knitting Holiday issue got here. Chock full of terrific advertising:

I cast on immediately and with in one weekend had half a sweater back done:

Here's me starting the front with my cat sweater on the needles, cat chart on the legs, and fat kitty cat hanging out with me.

Here's my 2/3rd of the way done front. I'm almost at the nose!!

Trying to pick out the right eye color:

And then it was done:

from christmas to now, f.o. parade

2011-02-28T13:43:00.000-08:00

Been absent from here for the past 2 months because of the large amount of projects and work going on in life.
Since Christmas we have: started playing another MMO and stopped, paused work on the house while we rebuild our finances to start on the next area, joined a gym and many more things.
Since the last time I posted I was given some new job responsibilities which was very good for me. keeps me entertained and out of trouble at work but it is also stressful and without a pay-raise or title change. I keep looking at it from the standpoint that I am still very fortunate to have a job and that things will get better.

I have also joined the 11 shawls in 2011 group to help kill off some of my lace stash while making beautiful things. I joined the group to try and keep me motivated to make larger projects while also working on smaller items on the train. Inspired by dryactivebeast I've also decided to kick the butt of any unfinished objects I still have to complete (the scrapghan, the tempted sweater, and the candy corn knee highs).

So the FO parade begins:

a sweet hat out of shelter yarn for Matt's noggin

a reusable coffee sleeve from the leftovers - the pattern is from the lovely Sarahlou who gave it to me as a barter for a pattern layout (as well as her other patterns):

then the Hera Mountain Ridge shawl (the colors were inspired by a friend from my graduate courses who does lovely portrait paintings as well as abstracts. It took a long time to get through all that garter then the feather and fan. This is shawl 1 of 11 for 2011. Here it is from beginning to end:

here's Otis helping me photograph it:

A gaptastic cowl for the coworker who left and who's job responsibilities I enherited:

Some flip-top mittens with flip top thumbs for a commission:

2 strands of crocheted heart garland for valentine's day -- one of the fun and challenging things about having a house is not having any holiday decorations. Especially where we are everyone, and I mean everyone, decorates for holidays.

Then I spun this Frabjous fibers into some heavy fingering weight yarn and knit it into a Wendyknit's Argus shawlette for the knitgirllls shawlette swap. The middle photo best shows the color.

And while I was in a lovey-dovey mood from my heart garland I also finally remember to take better photos of the Lovebug socks I knit out of Tempted's goodgrrl yarn in the Pin Up colorway. (p.s. she is dying a butt-ton of fiber for a Knitgirllls spin-a-long and she also does custom orders).

Frsh off the needles we have a handspun pair of dragon gloves (if you look back 3 posts you can see the fiber I spun up for these)

I'm going to try and keep the blog more active in the new year. I think you will all be pretty psyched for one of the projects I just cast on and will share with you soon.

office redone

2011-01-28T13:10:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos of our redone office (before and after) that we finished right before Christmas. Note the tree and other Christmas decor in the room.
So here's before:

the first one is before we ripped out the camel colored carpet and closet and closet doors.

This is the back corner (where the orange fabric chair is now, next to the futon).

This is where the bookshelf & desk are.

This is where our red closet and my desk and yarn wall are set up.

Now for the after photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/halfbisqued/5283592434/in/photostream/

The last photo is a shot of the ceiling madalion and new fan we put up to replace the really crappy brown fan that was up there.

Christmas Flurry of FO's

2011-01-04T10:49:00.000-08:00

I got a ton of commissioned knitting done over my christmas break and then cast on a few things for myself and Matt. I also got to hang out with my sister and got to meet Jen of Piddleloop (who also gave me one of her awesome bags!)

First the roll out of items for Christmas gifts:
1. Gloves for Matt's coworker Sarge - he wanted them in Navy-type colors this is as close as I had on hand in the stash. Pattern is my own recipe, yarn is Araucania and some left over gold sock yarn.

2. Sweater for Brian's new nephew. I knit a Dr. Who scarf for this guy a little while ago too - he was so taken by it that when his first nephew came into the world he wanted to have something handmade to give him. The sweater uses my handspun Crown Mouintain Fibers (you might remember it from the summer spinning for Tour De Fleece). i put a cute tag on it so the parents would have care directions and know it was hand-made completely as well as have repair yarn. Pattern used is Snug by Hinke. Here's a photo of Benny modeling it before I washed and blocked it.

3. Ganomy Hat KAL with my sis. Laura and I did a mega quick handspun hat KAL for right before winter. The pattern is Elizabeth Zimmerman's Ganomy Hat the fiber for this was also spun up over the summer.
Flaps down:

Flaps up:

4. Christmas eve whip-up mittens for Mom. Pattern is herringbone mittens with poms, yarn is Rowan Magpie I had unraveled from a kids sweater I started a long time ago. She loved them and request a headband to match. Much help from my sister in picking out a pattern for her. I did them with out pompoms because that's how I roll.

This is everything I made before christmas - tomorrow I'll share with you the rest of the finished items I made up before having to return to work. There's a quilt in there too!

Local to Local - Philly Cowls

2010-12-17T11:32:00.000-08:00

Mid way through the semester I started work on a series that is currently in the works. It will need some revisions as I go along but here is the general idea: local materials used to make local goods inspired by local buildings. It's a celebration of the history of manufacturing in Philadelphia and the revival that is being inspired by shows like PhillyWorks and the Handmade Philly group on etsy.

The yarns are all from regional farms (none further than 50 miles) and are hand-spun (some by me, some by the farm owners). The designs are interpretations of Philly's rich architectural heritage.

The first cowl in this series is the PSFS Cowl, pattern is available for free on ravelry.

The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) building on the 1200 block of Market Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The building was one of the first International style buildings in America.
The PSFS cowl is a lace design based on the grid the PSFS building uses for it’s windows and floors. It features a darker tower of ribbing to mimic the tower that runs up the side of the building.

Next up in the series is the PAFA building - Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

december flurry of projects

2010-12-13T11:11:00.000-08:00

pfew!! with finals for my classes and things heating up at work it has been a hectic time!
I finally finished the Chinese Waves dishcloth - pattern is very dense and it took me forever for some reason. I can't beleive I still have more cotton left.

Then my socks of shame.... I cast on these socks the week of Halloween for some silly reason I thought I'd finish calf socks in 2 days. That striped yarn is Vesper in Candy Corn colorway, the brown yarn is knitpicks. These are my autumn blend candy corn socks. This is my progress so far - I've been knitting on them on the train ride into work in the morning. The heel hole is for my after thought heel to match my toe on the sock!

I've also compelted all except for the last 8 blocks of the queen sized paintbox quilt I'm making for Leslie. Here's one of my favorites at the top of the stack:

Isn't that a lot so far? My graduate projects course helped re-energize me and give me a kick in the butt this time. I also have finally finished spinning the blue and green Cloverleaf Farms Merino in 'Southwest' that has been sitting on my wheel. It's 448 yards of worsted weight:

Last but not least, I had another shop comission for some toddler pairs of dragon gloves! These got shipped out a few days ago and are well on their way for their Christmas recipients! Thanks to Perfect Day Yarns for measuring her bony 6 year old to help me get a hand measurement!

knitting away in november

2010-12-01T10:42:00.000-08:00

I spent the 2nd half of November knitting like crazy.

I finished a test knit I'm doing for Moa on Ravelry - Megan is a terrific designer. This is a mermaid kicking bag pattern she's planning to put up sometime before next Halloween:

I took a ton of photos of this because they are all so funny I didn't know what ones to use!! I did make a christmas card from it also "Hope your holidays go swimmingly".

Matt also finished our guest room - just in time since my sister is staying with us for Christmas! I also knit up some stockings for a commission and wrote up the pattern as well! It uses bulky weight yarn and each one only took me about 3 hours. I think they look much better without the names on there personally.

I also whipped up some scoots cozies for my eames desk chair since it's missing it's gliders. They took about a half hour and are holding up ok - I still want to find red tennis balls to use instead.

Then one last commission from the shop! A pair of shark gloves based on my dragon gloves that I still need to write up a pattern for to share with you all.

This is the image they sent me after they got the gloves! I'm glad she likes them as much as I do!

what a week!

2010-11-15T09:18:00.000-08:00

Wowza, is Matt cracking on our Office/Guest room or what. He got all the trim in and we got the room all primed and painted from yellowish smokers white to bright white!
We even put up a ceiling medallion and bought a new ceiling fan.
In other news that I'm very excited about my parents bought us a dryer for Christmas and it gets delivered this Wednesday! No more hanging out line drying unless I want to!

Last week I tried to knit a dish cloth each night.After reading an interesting discussion on ravelry about how people prefer them over sponges and realizing I needed to use up my leftover cotton somehow I figured I'd give them a shot. I remember our mom used to use them when we'd go camping or occasionally in the house when we were kids. They make good clean sense, you can change them out and toss them in the washer when they get gross looking, and they dry better then sponges.
La-la-la Linoleum
I love this pattern, I want to make a million things using it.

Balla Ball Band
Meh, this was only ok after doing the linoleum pattern which I got so jazzed up about.

Oh Christmas Tree
This was terrific!! I did on less branch on the bottom because I ran out of green. The pattern knit up super fast and looks terrific.

Scrubbie Scrubs
I had such a hard time with these - I'm still a crochet novice for sure. Mine did not turn out exactly like how they look in the photographs after 3 attempts.

And then I cast on hopefully the last one to finish out the rest of my cotton that was left over from making my fall wreath (which I don't think I showed you all yet!). I cast on this noodley looking one, which is slow going because it's so dense but looks sick!

Cookie A. Test Knit Sock

2010-11-08T12:21:00.000-08:00

I can finally share this now that the pdf and book including the pattern are available for download!
This is my test knit of the new Cookie A. pattern Stalagmite (available in the new book and separate).
The pattern is terrific - terrifyingly amazing. The charts are super clear as are the instructions. I love the swooping diagonal cable that comes down at the top of the heel.

The only problem is since I knit this I misplaced the sock and the yarn was felted from when I had to run everything through the dryer. Sheesh!

The yarn I used for the test knit is the lovely Tempted's good grrl in "Deviant Behavoir" same yarn I'm using for the pioneer sweater! I'm hoping to use the left overs from the sweat to make myself so faux-argyle socks.

Current projects in progress: Pioneer, Dishcloths (out of leftover yarn from my fall wreath), and my traveling project is the Vesper Candy Corn socks.
Put on hold - Scrapghan and Curtains (need to rip out and restart)
Current non-knitting projects that are also in the works include ads for BeaGin's stitch markers on etsy, a new banner for the Knit Girlls, and the paintbox quilt for Leslie.

Lovebug Socks

2010-11-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

I did successfully finish the lovebug socks in time for Socktober and our 2nd anniversary but still haven't had time to take a real good photo of them!
Here's how the first one turned out. This is before I realized how much extra yarn there was and ripped out to add 2 inches of ribbing. I did adjust the pattern to fit my size 12 feet or sometimes 10 wides - the notes for the adjustments I made are on the ravelry page here.
Normally I don't buy sock patterns but these were just so cute I think having the charts is worth the $4. All of the charts also have written instructions as well! My only complaints about the pattern are the lack of symbols in the charts and the length!! 8 pages *pfew*! I hope at some point in time the designer invests in a trade with someone to help get a better layout.

The yarn used in this is Tempted Good Grrl in the colorway Pinup. It's so vibrant and only bled a smidge a bit when I blocked them - a real accomplishment with any shade of red. I love this yarn as you can tell from the sweater I'm working on out of it!

lots of big projects!

2010-10-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

On my needles:
Pioneer: about 12" longer than in the last photo
Love Bugs: just cast-on today- don't we all need a traveling bag project?

Dr. Who Scarf: cast-on Saturday at the bequest of Matt for one of his coworkers. I forgot I had told him that I'd make him one. I'm about 4 feet of garter stitch in and a little over 1/3rd of the way through.

On my hooks:
Curtains for our office - I started these a while ago but it is a lot of crochet and way more than I was prepared for. I was one repeat in and have decided to rip out and start over because of errors.
Scrapghan - The scrapghan was almost done growing until I got more socks but the lovely paletpc was awesome enough to send me scraps from her sock stash down.
Here's the scrapghan before I put in the last 4 skeins I had:

Luckily I just found out the box of sock scraps from Paletpc just arrived on my door today!

The other non-needle project I'm working on is my Graduate Thesis Proposal. The caps represent how Epic this project feels to me. After some motivation from the lovely folk on Plurk I'm ready to start kicking it's butt so I can have more knitting time and not pay the $928 continuation fee.

current WIP -sweatersocktober

2010-10-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Over the summer on my podcast with the knitgirllls I expressed how much I wanted to use some Tempted yarn to make the Pioneer sweater.
Well it's been slowly underway since the start of September. I had to rip the first go out when I accidently joined it in the round from the start - then recast on correctly.

Here is my progress so far - I'm pushing hard to finish it for this weekend now that it has gotten chilly here!

Check out that serious deep V on there!

getting ready for fall

2010-09-30T07:14:00.000-07:00

I spent part of the summer trying to destash yarns I'd been holding on to for no reason like this old orange wool and it's green counter part. I knew there must be something I could make with it - too scritchy for clothes so I knit up a pumpkin and leaves! It's my own creation since I wanted a much bigger pumpkin then any of the patterns I could find had and I love how the fast increase made it nice and wrinkly.

This is my first go at felting something knit and I loved how it turned out (now to queue those french press slippers!)

I can't wait to get our Halloween decorations up - but my orders are that we need to wait until October.

Before and After: The Basketweave Glider

2010-09-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

Here's the before photo which you may recognize from a few weeks ago:

And after some sanding, spray paint, and TLC mostly by Matt here's the after:

If you look around the photo you also get a sneak peak of how the porch is coming together. Check out the awesome mailbox stand Matt's pop-pop made for our lunchbox-mailbox!
We spent a long time hunting for a glider. A very long time. Until we got lucky and found one in our price range with an owner who was nice enough to let us pay with paypal.
One rental truck later here's how much it cost us:
Glider $250, Truck $80, Spray Paint $70. = $400.00.
Fully redone powder coated glider start at $1,000 so all in all I'm very happy with this!
As we've learned from the door and Matt's coworker the key to getting a vibrant red is making sure you prime (we used grey primer on the door, white on the glider since we were leaving parts white) and also making sure you let the paint have enough time to fully cure between coats. Our doors first layer finally cured after a few months! No exaggeration, it was tacky for a very long time but it's now read for a second coat.

Finishing

2010-09-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

This week I finally finished Matt's skew socks. After much knitting, frogging, and reknitting. The pattern is clever but the bias does throw it off from typical sock measurements since it stretches much more than regular knitting. Matt is very happy with them, I'm a little meh as he really has to pull them to get them over his heel but Matt says the fit is excellent once they are on.
I think this is the right type of sock yarn for him too. It's a Regia Jacquard with mostly cotton base and no felting this time.
Here's Matt modeling the finished socks:

The room in the background was our bedroom which Matt has started work on. We've decided to turn that room into our office/guest room since it's larger and we spend the majority of our time in there.

DC Trip

2010-09-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we were invited down to DC to hang out with Lala and Leslie (the knitgirllls) and Wendy (wendyknits).
We explored the Museum of Natural History together:

And the castle!:

We also took some funny photos to share:

I'm pretty sure Wendy never wants to hang out with us ever again when she realized we have the comedian styling of 3rd graders. It was a great trip and fun to see my sister and Leslie again since we live so far away!

Potholder party!

2010-09-27T08:38:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been cooking up some potholders. Ever since I made the first set I've wanted to make more and more. I think it's a great way to work on my binding skills.

So here you go! Both of these were made for giveaway. One with hooters, the other a mash-up of the person's favorite colors.

quilting away!

2010-08-17T11:02:00.000-07:00

I spent the last week working on a Skew sock (from this last winter's knitty) and I finished the first one but I'm not very happy with the fit yet - I need to have Matt try them on since they are for him.
I also have been working on another test-knit for the talented Notwosnowflakes which I'm super excited about this pattern and yarn combination. It's very cool.
On top of that I decided to try my hand at crocheting some curtains for our office. I'm about 3 rows in.

This past weekend we spent getting a glider to refinish for our porch and quilting and playing Fable 2.

Here's the quilt getting ready for basting. It does not lie completely flat due to all the different types of fabric and sewing tension put into it so I'm hoping I don't run into too many problems when I quilt it.

And here's the beautiful metal glider we picked up this weekend. We've been looking for a while but they've all been so expensive even if they were rusty but our constant stalking on Craigslist finally paid off:

This is our before photo!

Socks, vests, and cats

2010-08-04T09:38:00.000-07:00

This past Friday we got my brother and his family all moved into their new house! It's nice to have family so close by -- we even went to Ikea with them on Sunday too.
The niece is cute as ever and their pups were all doing well for such a long move.

Taking the weekend easy after having half a week off from work was great. I used the vacation time to try and work on the floor in the bedroom to no end. Matt finally got the last 3 laminate pieces up yesterday after we tried everything under the sun he had to remove it bit by bit with our dremel scrapper.

I used the time to learn how to play Gears of War. I like the hoard mode best because their were 3 of us playing so it was ok that I wasn't the best shot.
And I finished Matt's socks! The pattern is Mad Color Weave, the yarn is Opal Hundertwasser.

After that I cast on some baby gifts for an coworker friend. She paints the most amazing pieces (link here)!
I'm excited that she's having her first one but sad that she'll be out for a few months.
Here is Benny trying on the Pembroke vest in progress to make sure it'll fit a baby.

I hope this weekend we knock out the closet and get the walls or floor painted! I still have booties and a hat to knit for the shower on Thursday.

giveaways and raffles!

2010-07-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

This week there are two give aways going on with items from my shop. First up (open until Friday Aug. 5th) is an orange apple cozy to keep your fruit safe from bruising.
You can enter to win over at the Handmade Philly blog.

Next up is a potholder giveaway over on this delicious foodie blog: Just Cook Already!
This giveaway is open until next Wednesday August 3rd. She's also giving away stationary right now and when she hits 1,000 followers she'll be giving away a kitchen aid mixer!

More importantly: (think of the children!):
This Friday is your last chance to help LynnZimm's Denver Oyster team who is donating to the Make A Wish foundation. She's having an enormous raffle on her blog with tons of tasty handspun yarn, fiber, piddle loop, and dare I say, wollmeise?
If you don't knit -- I'd enter just for the pair of hand-knit socks that's being raffled off per a $25 donation (every 5 dollars after 25 buy you an additional sock raffle place).
You have 3 days left to donate and $5 dollars buys you an entry.

Now onto the bedroom!

2010-07-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

Because of having to treat the upstairs for bedbugs we were forced to move almost everything downstairs that we were storing upstairs for the down stairs renovation. Right now the boxes are filling up our kitchen, so we did the only logical thing and started to renovate the master bedroom.

This is my only picture from before ripping up the camel colored carpet:

Here's what we've found under the carpet so far and more full pictures of the room:

tdf last couple days

2010-07-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

A few days off to deal with a house emergency. Our next door neighbors have bedbugs and they traveled through their walls to our house (as well as some other neighbors too). I'm fairly angry at them as we now have to shell out $1,300 to treat for the bugs with coverage for a year. We had to go with someone who could give us continued service since our neighbors are trying to bomb their house to deal with them rather than hiring professional.

Luckily it seems all of our stuff is safe we caught them early enough and continued to let them jam out in our bed so they wouldn't relocate into our items until they came to spray. This is why I always store shop items in plastic once they are made because you never know. And of course the stashes are safe although I did have to toss some skeins that we're next to the bed that felted when I put them in the dryer but they could be replaced.

Here's day 17's ply and dry:

Here you can see it dried in daylight (this is almost exactly the actual colors):

For the last days of TDF I spun up some of this Vesper merino tencel roving "Jolly Rodger" is the colorway name:

And I finished Matt's first colorweave sock. He says it fits "perfect" -- guess since this is my 3rd pair of socks for him 3rd time is the charm.

tdf day 13

2010-07-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

Had a super long day today. Went shoe shopping on my lunch to try and find boots (no luck). Then went and picked up pillow forms (thank you so much Tricia!), got a haircut, went shoe shopping again (settled with some pumps), and then finally got dinner around 9:15 at night!

After that I put on the audio-book copy of "Wee Free Men" and spun another 2 o.z. of the BFL from abstract fibers. It's more purple in real life (like a royal purple) you'll just have to take my word for it since the camera won't pick it up!

tdf day 12

2010-07-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

Day 12! Today a started spinning the Abstract fibers colorway "Gaston" into lace singles. I'm hoping it works out as a fingering weight yarn when I'm all finished! Then maybe I'll turn it into a Haruni. Haruni is a beautiful shawl with flowery edging on it. This is my favorite variation on the haruni pattern so far and I might steal her idea!
So 2 o.z. of this fiber:

became this:

tdf day 11

2010-07-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

Day 10 is a day of rest for us and the bikers. I spent the evening crocheting away on my scrap yarn mega-granny square afghan.

For day 11 I finished off the last skein and a half worth of plying!
I love this yarn it's so soft and smooshy.
I set it up to soak and dry. I'll take better photos this weekend and get the statistic of wpi, weight, etc.

But for now here's a shot of all the plied yarn:

tdf day 9

2010-07-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

For day 9 I spent most of the day working on a pumpkin I'm knitting for the fall decorations around the house. I can wait to show you once it's all felted! Right now it just looks like an unending orange blob with some green bits ready to go in the wash. I'm trying to get my oomingmacks (yak) slippers ready to felt so I can do them both together! Plus I still have one more skein of orange left to turn into a pumpkin or two!

I fell in love with this leaf pattern. It's absolutely perfect. And now I want to make a million of them.

Without further ado, my photo for TDF day 9, One skein plied with 3-4 more left to go!

tdf day 8

2010-07-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

For day 8 of Tour de Fleece I spun up the rest of the roving. Finished off the first bobbin, a second on, and about a third of a new one!

Now to let the singles rest before plying tomorrow!

tdf day 7

2010-07-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

Note: I've been so busy posting stuff to ravelry and spinning I forgot to post on here. I've backdated posts for the other tour de fleece days that I spun on to keep them chronological and not bombard you with too much in one post!

Day 6 I had too much going on around the house. We cleaned, vacuumed, went through our papers to figure out what we needed to hold on to. All of the boring stuff and by the end of it all it was time for bed.

Day 7 I sat down and spun almost a full bobbin from this fiber:

It's Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino fiber in te colorway "Hard Days Night" and here's how my bobbin came out so far:

TDF day 5

2010-07-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

Day 5 of Tour de Fleece I finished plying and wound off the skeins. I set the twist by soaking the yarn.

Here are the skeins all dry:

Some Finished Socks

2010-07-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

I finally got some time in to take photos of my finished socks!
The Norwegian Rose socks, my Bee Keeper Socks, and the Artichoke socks!
Pfew! I got noro'ed when I knit the Norwegian Roses for the knit-a-long from Wendy Knit's new book (my awesome sister got me an signed copy)! There was an infamous knot in my Noro and the next thing I know it ends up being almost entirely blue for my second sock!
The knit-a-long is still happening all summer long over with the knit girllls (Laura is only about an inch in on hers!).
Please ignore my fat calves in these photos I must have been seriously putting on water weight that week.

another shawl done!

2010-07-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you buy weird sock yarn just because all the colors are so beautiful. This was one of those skeins. I'm not sure where I got it or what it is but Leslie (from over at the knit girllls) helped me find the perfect pattern (stolen from her queue).
The pattern is called Victorine it works up quickly and beautifully and is easy to adjust. The charts and instructions are well done (no errors I found!) which definitely makes it worth the $4.
I can't wear it like a true shawl (and I added 2 extra repeats ending up with 6 yards left of yarn) so here it is scarf style on me, shawl style on our fat cat, Benny.

TDF days 2, 3, and 4

2010-07-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

Day 2 - after our 12 hour drive back form Michigan we kicked back and relaxed. Matt play the new Tranformers War for Cybertron game while I predrafted all 8 oz of this fiber from Creatively Dyed it's the merino top in colorway K7:

Then day 3 I spun 6 oz, day 4 i spun the other 2 oz. :

tour de fleece day 1

2010-07-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

For the first day of Tour de Fleece (we spin with the bicyclists of the Tour de France as an homage to the will of humankind) Lala and I went and bought fiber. We also traded cars for the spinning wheel and I became the proud owner of an Ashford Traveller.
We've been planning this for about a month I gave the Lourt hatbox back to mom, and got Lala's wheel.

We visited a cute shop while in Michigan on our vacation called Ewe to You where I bought some blue face Leicester fiber dyed by Abstract Fiber in the Gaston colorway.

I can't wait to spin with it!

dresden plates and pot holders!

2010-06-22T13:57:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some sewing this week. Sunday I got confused and thought the modern quilt guild meeting was this week! I put together some dresden plates:

Then I realized that it was way too big for a potholder and that I had cut enough for 3 instead of just two.
I opted to sew it in quaters and made these cute potholders:

There's insulbright and cotton in between there and the loops are a little wonky but they work fine!

finishing what you start

2010-06-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

Recently a co-worker asked me to finish a quilt form her grand mom. I told her no 3 times because I was so worried about screwing it up and I don' have a long-armed machine so it would be a bit tricky on my end. Finally I agreed!
Here's the quilt:
It's totally amazing, all pieced together from feed sack cloth and then even some of the squares are pieced form scraps. It's both hand sewn and machine and a little wonky in some areas with stretch.

Here's a shot of the backing (aqua/teal) and the binding (owls).

And there's the ton of binding I made the other night! pfew!

Norwegian Rose - One done!

2010-06-14T15:45:00.000-07:00

First, Errata: I thought the tour de fleece was in June - it starts in July so you still have time to get ready if you want to participate!

I got one sock done on the Norwegian Rose KAL (knit-a-long)! Slowly making some progress. The yarns are Ella Rae and some Noro Sock yarn. This is my 2nd fair isle sock - the first was some herring bone sock I did for a Hogwarts Sock Swap a few year ago.
There's been a lot of discussion in the KAL group on ravelry on how to hold your yarn for fair isle. I knit left handed (German style or continental) I tend to hold on yarn in-between my ring and middle finger and the other strand between my middle and index fingers. I use my index finger in conjunction with the middle to swap colors and put in twists where one color is used for too long (helps me maintain even tension).
The pattern is from Wendy Johnson's new sock book (which my sister just scored my an autographed copy of!!) and it's terrific. The other socks in the book look great too!

one elephant

2010-06-02T17:01:00.000-07:00

I'm made this little elephant for my niece's 1st birthday.
The pattern was a little backwards but I think it worked out in the end!

Hope to get quilting soon! I need to wait until the weekend so I've got some space to lay everything out!

finished shawl and busy!

2010-05-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

I finally finished my first lace shawl about a week ago. It's the swallow tail shawl by Evelyn Clark. I first saw it in Interweave knits a few years ago and always wanted to make it. I just finally got around to it.
And of course I forced matt and one of the cats to be in the photos:

The pattern was pretty easy to knit up - especially after I found out you start at the middle and it does end up being a triangle. In my head it just wasn't working out. Thanks knitting circle!
Next up was an elephant toy and I'm still working on the Norwegian Rose Sock Knitalong hosted by the knit girllls it's a summer knit along so there's still time to join!
I'm also going to participate in the Tour de Fleece spinning fiber while admirring spinners of the Tour de France for the month of June. Spinning every day!
I'll also have some exciting quilts coming along to show you in the next few weeks.

tempted

2010-05-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

Man. Stacy is not kidding around with the name of her yarn!!
In exchange for some graphic work Tempted shipped me some yarn. Well I thought she meant a skein of yarn - but look at how she spoiled me!

The colors are so deep and vibrant. I'm not usually a red or pink or purple kind of person but these are simply stunning. I can't wait to knit with them - now I just have to figure out what pattern is worth such beautiful yarn!

Stacy has plans to stock her shop full for June so if you want to get a sneak peak definitely head over to her site: Tempted Yarns.

goodie bag

2010-05-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

Here's the extra surprise I snuck in with the last camera strap order. I had left over fabric so I figured, what the heck!
Check out those hong kong seams - the fabric was reversible so I wanted to show that off.

It's been a busy week for us. First I was featured on the Philly Modern Quilt Guild Blog - here's the story!
The guild is open to anyone who's interested so join up! Also if you head over there you can take a peak at what my studio area looks like.

The last 2 weeks have been preoccupied with getting junk out of our backyard from our construction.

boxes

2010-05-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

We got a great package this week! Our future mailbox!!

We're converting an old lunchbox into our mailbox.
We got it from this sweet folk artist and vintage-seller on etsy, Madampickay! I'm in love with her cool folk art cats!

Also, our cat found his true love - this shipping box!

camera strap cover - pink!

2010-05-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly starting to rekindle my like of the color pink. I remember as a 6 year old agreeing with my best friend that Hot Pink was my favorite color of all.
Seriously. Hot Pink.

That being said check out this sweet custom camera strap I got to make out of a cute pink Alice and Wonderland reversible fabric! It's off to it's new home along with a super secret project I slipped in made from the extra fabric. I will post pictures later of that one (it's a secret!!)

Also I apologize to anyone that follows me on flickr - I just photographed my entire stash and put it on ravelry.

oh how our garden grows

2010-05-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

Well! The garden got planted I think 3-4 weeks ago now. Since then our tomatoes have already doubled in height. Grow babies, grow!
In our garden growing up we never really staked tomatoes. I never knew you should - I thought it was a measure for when they started to get too heavy with tomatoes. my plan is and I haven't read up on this yet on whether or not it's a good idea it to put the stakes in diagonally and try to get the tomatoes to take to the fence.

We'll see - there are getting tall enough where I think now is the time to take action!
I planted 2 slicing type (tomato and beefeater) and one cherry tomato patio type.
The peppers are Cubanelle, Baby Bells (orange), jalapenos, and normal green bell peppers. I love me some peppers!

I'm hoping to plant some herbs maybe this weekend since it seems like we're out of frost danger.
Oh and you might be asking what's up with the buckets - well at 2 dollars a bucket it's a much better deal than 7 dollars a per plastic pot. Our neighbor does the same but he upgraded his with a terracotta color spray-paint this year. I'm also using some emptied kitty-liter buckets and plan on using more of the same or some yogurt cups for my herbs.

a bad week

2010-04-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a pretty awful, terrible, no-good week for me so far. Tuesday I walked out the door stepped in dog poo, then later that night broke one of my favorite ebony knitting needles I had received in a swap. I know they were expensive and so I'm bummed about that.

And today I got my package stuck in a drop box between the top and bottom so it would go out or in. When I called UPS they told me there was nothing they could do until the driver picked it up at his normal time 12 hours later.
I just hope it gets to where it needs to go otherwise I'll be out $50 on a shirt that didn't fit.

Good news is that the other shirt did fit and looks good! And I'm going to the Phillies game tonight! My first time going since I was a kid and they played at Veteran's stadium. I hope it's fun! I'm also almost finished with the first artichoke sock - I can't believe how fast this pattern works up!

yella box

2010-04-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

Another skein of crappy yarn is gone - or well transformed into a box!
The colors match our red/orange/and yellow office and luckily it fits Xbox games!
We don't have many - a lot of them are on loan to us from friends.

But there you go! I only have 3 full and 2 half skeins of acrylic left to get through until most of the crap yarn is our of my stash. Then I have to move on to weird ribbon yarn, paper yarn, etc.

At the same time I've been working on these:

Artichoke Socks in the "Eat Your Veggies" colorway from Claudia's Hand Paints sock yarn.
I love her yarns and they knit so nicely.

dinosaur remake!

2010-04-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

I had some gray fingerless mitts laying around that don't seem to be doing so good in the shop. A look back at one of my favorite projects Anthropomorphic Grad-student or as I call them Dinosaur Girlfriend (after a song by The Flying Dutchmen).

This is the redo with crochet skills this time! They are up in the shop if anyone is interested. They are adult sized, the gray yarn is hand-spun, orange is part of my stash I'm trying to kill off. The pattern is my own.

scrapple to the apple

2010-04-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share these apple cozies with you because they were so much fun to make!
The pattern is Adorable Apple Cozy (it's free!) and they were super fast.
I'm a sucker for making silly things especially for the house or friends. I really want to make like 20 more fo these to burn through some ugly stash yarn.

The rainbow one was inspired by the old apple mac logo (you remember the rainbow apply from the 80's and 90's?) and it's up for sale in the shop. I'm hoping to sucker one of you other geeky mac people into buying it well because, I too am a sucker for that kitschy kind of stuff! It's made out of soy silk (so soft!) and it used the entire skein to make one cozy and 3 leaves.

Enjoy and happy crafting! - beck

the hafghan is done!

2010-04-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

I finally finished the afghan I was crocheting and sewing away on! I ran it through it's first machine wash with trpedation but it came out how it went in! Just a little more damp.
Here it is:

oh. and i need to gloat. I did finish it before my sister finished two projects. so there. nyaaaahh.

I'm currently writing this post without glasses because I wasn't thinking. I dropped my glasses off for new lenses thinking my spares would be somewhere easy to get to. I have no idea which one of the 20 or so boxes they could be in. I have a feeling this next hour will be the longest hour.

a camera strap and the afghan

2010-04-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

Here's the camera strap cover I mentioned the other day. It's for one of my coworkers in our office that just turned 21 and is a pro-photographer. You can see a small amount of her terrific work on flickr here.

I went with orange polkadots for the inside to help hide any weird neck grunge that might happen with the white and the green fabric. The outside fabric is a nice medium weight I found a half yard of at a thrift shop.

I added some cotton batting and ran some quick quilting over the whole thing for softness.
I'm debating making a few of these for the shop as custom orders but I'm not sure if there's a market for it or if there are too many already on etsy! I guess I'll figure that part out!

80 more ends

2010-04-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

80 more ends left to weave in on the afghan!
I settled for making a camera strap cover this morning after sewing and sewing and sewing last night!

In other news I finally sold my first quilt on etsy making my first real sale. So I've decided to take another stab at it! The bright and scrappy nine-patch quilt is now up there for sale! So check it out.

I'm determined to start piecing the afghan together tonight!

Then I just have to catch up on the quilt along...

crochet away!

2010-04-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

So far I've made two complete crochet items, both inspired by the blog in my last post: Attic24. She's got very easy to follow first time instructions on there.

The first was this hurry-up spring wreath for our house. I still haven't found the perfect spot for it. mainly because we still don't really have a complete downstairs or upstairs (more on that next time!)
Here's the wreath:

Currently I"m working on my first afghan. I had bought 4 colors of Vanna's Choice Lionbrand yarn to make some charity scarves out of. Well 1 scarf down I lost my umph to keep knitting scarves.

One mystery skein of black yarn later I started making granny squares:

Now I just have 352 more ends to weave in!
p.s. I'm trying to have a contest with my sister. She needs to finish 2 more unfinished objects in the time it takes me to sew in all the ends! Take a peak at all her UFO's on her blog.

pinwheel end of row 1

2010-04-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

First things first - there is a change in my pricing of my quilts on etsy. They are much cheaper - really it's a sale so we can get our construction trash taken away.
So, please go check out my shop! Lemonhalf.

I'm very late posting this. I took the photo 3 weeks ago!
My class work for the past 2 weeks has been a little crazy. I'm preparing to submit my prospectus on my graduate thesis next week so it's been challenging doing all the reading for both classes.

This is the final block of the 1st row. I'm really excited for how this quilt will come together in the end.

Over the past 3 weeks I also learned how to crochet thanks to this great blog: Attic24
I've got 35 granny squares together and many more to go and a nice springy wreath.

We put up some drywall in the kitchen (we've still have half a ceiling to go!) and I took the vines off our fence out back. I love how pretty the morning glories were but I demand peas.
In that process I also found a gigantic wasp nest under a mat that was on the fence since we moved in. Luckily neither one of us got stung and Matt was quick to spray them down. My hero!

Pinwheel Party A2

2010-03-10T13:41:00.000-08:00

Just finished my second block for the Pinwheel Party yesterday!
I'm not quite sure what happened to the tips of my pinwheels but at least the squares line up pretty good.

I also finished another quilt-along quilt from almost a year ago. I've had the top sitting around unfinished but pieced it all together since I took the week off from work.
This one was from Sewmamasew's Nine-patch-along. I love how it turned out considering some of the fabrics in the quilt were really ugly.

Also if you glance back down at the Endpaper mitts post I updated it with a photo of the mitts I made for Matt.
The beekeeper socks are slowing chugging along, should have them finished soon.

Pinwheel Party block 1!

2010-03-01T18:36:00.000-08:00

So I just finished my first block for the pinwheel party twiddletails is hosting. I'm not sure if my reading is bad or what but I did not end up with a 12x12" block. It's more 11.5 x 11.5. Won't be a problem if they are all consistent.

I'm pleased as punch with the fabrics for this all except the peach one with the horses were from my mom and sister for Christmas. The background is a green sheet from Ikea.
Matt picked out the fabrics which was great because these aren't fabrics I'd normally pick out to buy so it's the best of everyone coming together.

It'll end up lap sized if I follow the instructions to a T, I'm thinking about increasing the sashing part to make it larger or putting a border around the edge. We'll see once more of the blocks are done!

Eeking through our projects

2010-03-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

Lately we've been up to no good around the house. Matt completed a second acid spritz of our bricks, put up some drywall and wired an outlet. I started scraping paint off our banister to restore it back to wood. The game plan now is to have the railing stained some medium red-brown and paint the dowels white to match the rest of the trim.
There is so much paint on that banister... Drips that had been painted over and over but we'll get there.

Right now I've been obsessed with a book I found while doing research for my thesis:
It's fantastic. Not just criticizing walmart or you but looking more in-depth to the culture of cheap and bargain hunting that has developed in the U.S. and other places.
I'm looking forward to reading more especially since I found out I banked up 14 days of vacation I need to use or lose.

I cast on and finished one sock in a honey comb/chicken fence pattern and they are slow going but very pretty. More pictures to come once I get through the second sock!

I also signed on board for another quilt-a-long (this time pinwheels!) and yes I did finish the other nine-patch-along... just almost half a year later. I'm hoping to stay on top of this one to give me a creative hand-on break when I get home.

Endless Endpaper

2010-02-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

2 sets of 2 mitts both knit in 2 days in the 2nd month.
I feel a little bit like the Count from Sesame Street!

The pattern is Endpaper Mitts - something I've had in my ravelry queue forever and specially bought yarn for one day a few years ago!
This were quick to do - quicker when I got the orange beast cat away from my yarn.
The yarn used on the first pair is Claudia's Hand Paint in Poppy and Deep Blue. I love her yarn and colorways - always nice. These colors are typically not me but I love how bright they are.

After I finished my mitts DH insisted that he also needed a pair. He was feeling kind of bad I think after he lost one of his gloves the other day. I was hesitant to make them because he's always too hot - but afterward he assured me that they don't keep his hands warm at all. Weird. Mine are super toasty!
Yarn used on Matt's is Araucania Nature Wool - I think I mentioned how much I love this for color work a post or two ago! I like how his gloves turned out kinda camouflage-ey.

winter socks

2010-02-12T18:00:00.000-08:00

The cold weather here is great for knitting. That and all the snow days we've had (2! more than I ever had as a student in Philly!) make it easy to cosy up on the couch and knit while Matt plays video games.

The cats have also enjoyed having us home to pet them and photograph them. They also have used the time for some sincere yarn chasing and head-butting. And have managed to make sure they get their cat butts in any photo I took. It's a sign of love.

First up are the Jay walkers I finisehd a few weeks ago. The yarn is the Purl colorway I picked up on a trip to NYC at Purl in Soho. I've had it for a few years and bought it for this project but just couldn't commit to more socks.

Next up are Matt's masonic socks. The pattern for this was kind of jacked up. I had to reknit the 2nd heel 3 times, but in the long run it was fun and worth it. The yarn isn't anything special just some super-wash from Knit Picks after he felted the last socks I made him in one day I figured this might be safer.

dinosaur girlfriend!

2010-02-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a song called "Dinosaur Girlfriend" and a way too in-depth discussion on anthropomorphic objects I made these gloves for a fellow student and friend. I have a ton of fun making objects on the fly like this and especially on commission or for a swap of something good.

This weekend I think I'm going to go back to this spirit of dinosaur girlfriend and make up some fun improvised things for my etsy shop.

skull chulo

2010-02-03T12:11:00.001-08:00

Here's an oldie but a goodie - I'll be reposting a few of these over the next few times and thinking warm thoughts in this cold weather!

A skull chulo I knit for one of my friends. In the end it turned out larger than I wanted and I ended up fulling it to make it more cozy and to have it fit better.

It was fun and I always love color work. There's just something magical about it. It's inspired by the Andean book by Interweave press - There are some great patterns in there!

The yarn is one of my favorites for fairisle : Araucania Nature Wool. This is a great yarn in some nice colors.

Our refreshed bathroom

2010-01-27T08:33:00.001-08:00

Here's some photos of the bathroom remodel we completed I think 2 weeks ago now.
A lot of frustration went into painting the popcorn ceiling, plumbing the offset sink (thanks hun!), pulling out and putting back the toilet, nailing in the molding, and especially wiring the light!
Our total budget ended up at about 420 dollars (200 for sink and cabinet, 120 for the faucet, 40 for the light, and 60ish for paint, pipes, and supplies).

Here are our shot of BEFORE:

Originally we were going to use a wall mounted sink but then realized it was too large to let us get through to the toilet! So a few holes in the wall and patches later here we are:

I love the detail corner pieces Matt picked out. They saved us on the miter cuts but also added a little extra something to the room and the nice molding we picked out.

sweet mail day!

2010-01-24T10:59:00.000-08:00

I got the best mail today. My Fallmageddon swap package arrive from Nancy/Sri and I love it so hard!
She sent me this gorgeous bag, cloudlover fiber, my favorite soak scent, and chocolate! As well as some other extra little goodies like bubbles that make me smile. I can't wait to spin up the fiber - it feels terrific!

I also received my barter package from BeaGin Stitchmarkers for some ad work I did. I got a ton of markers in exchange not to mention delicious candy! mmmmm..... candy.
The stitch markers are terrific - they don't catch which is most important for me.
She sells them through her etsy shop and also does custom sets from Sweden with love. A little bird told me that some piddleloop bags will now have them as extra goodies also!

wash cloth party

2010-01-22T10:12:00.001-08:00

For Christmas I got a great organic cotton wash cloth kit from my mom. She's the best!
Well, day one I stuck with the pattern in the box...

Day two I decided to look trhough my ravelry que - I knew I snuck soem washcloth patterns on there some where. And I knit up a Transformer's autobot wash clotch for Matt...

Day three, I knit another one from my que: Bobbles the sheep. I watched an awesome French comedy called "the Closet" which was terrific (it's on instant watch on netflix) and "Mr. Tibbs" I love Sidney Portier's voice so it was a fun 70's film to watch.

All these in preparation for our finished bath!

Winter Break

2010-01-07T06:41:00.000-08:00

We spent a lot of time decompressing from working on the house over break - er, I guess I should say I did since Matt still had to work!
We did get to go to Pittsburgh and see my brother's family with my 7 month old niece, Julia. She is a sweetie! She figured out how to raspberry with formula in her mouth on the last night there too!
a lot of time was spent working on quilts and I finished 1 of 3 christmas quilts. The one that needed finished immediately since it was a gift for my brother and sister-in-law!
The fabric is Michelle Miller's funky christmas which I got in charm packs. I copied the pattern off of the chopped up 9 patch quilts I've been seeing on flickr recently.

The backing is lime green hippos and red and white gingham across it. I was going with the "I want a hippopotamus for christmas" theme.
The cats however were good at keeping me company over break. The orange one, Otis, would not leave me alone. We jokingly call him my boyfriend - he goes so far to sit on my sewing area and put his head through the throat of my machine while I'm sewing to be close to me! luckly new cats have been sewn to quilts yet.

2 weeks

2009-12-26T14:08:00.000-08:00

2 weeks off!
What a great bonus! One of the reasons I love working at the university.
Matt and I did early Christmas this past week after much progress on the bathroom.
I got a PS2 with katamari and we <3 katamari; and Matt got an XBox 360!
Pfew! Lots of achievement unlocks and gaming has been happening over here.

We are still slowly but surely making progress in the bathroom - I had a meltdown the other day when we discovered the sink we bought wouldn't fit. Back to Ikea probably for a non-wallmount this time.

And some socks I finished earlier this week before we got a second controller:

philly works quilts

2009-12-15T09:14:00.000-08:00

here are two of the quilts I made for the Made In Philly exhibit for designphiladelphia called "Philly Works"

You may recognize the first one as a variation of the quilt I made for my niece Julia based off of the traditional Chinese coin or stacked coin quilt. The second one is an original I drew out on graph paper then cut pieces from vintage bed linens and sewed it into asymmetrical squares.

This was the first exhibition I've had some of my non-industrial design work which is very exciting for me! this exhibition inspired me to open my etsy shop and start creating again after a yearlong hiatus during which I moved 3 times, we bought a car and house and got hitched! Pfew! Has it really been a year already?

Matt and I will also be featured as subject matter in the Senior Photo show for Lou Caltabiano's thesis project. It's a photo documentary of people who met on the internet and their stories. I can't wait to see how it turns out! I'll post more information about the show as time grows closer ( i think it's in April) but I have to say he was great to work with! Very professional and had his gear setup in record time even though he was shooting during one of the world series playoff games.

moving along

2009-12-15T08:46:00.000-08:00

A Quick update on our Etsy wedding ring purchase:
Jeremiah the shop owner of ZoeandDoyle graciously offered to refund us for teh rings, remake my band in the correct width and reship them to us at no cost. He went above and beyond to win us back and I have since updated our review on his website. We should be seeing the rings soon I hope!

On Sunday we started renovating our "master bathroom" it's really a 4ft x 12 ft box with oddly positioned items and a heater vent we can't find a replacement cover for.
We're painting the bottom board the same green as our tub (Behr paints calls it something ridiculous like emerald mist). The first coat is a little streaky but we figure the 2nd or 3rd coat will even it out.

We got a great wall sink from Ikea to replace out monster cabinet that was in there.
Took off the cove trim, toilet (ewwww! Matt did that part), sink and beastly cabinet (also Matt, I'm no good at plumbing or lifting), shelves and other hardware and door.

Why the door? this is a narrow bathroom without windows, although it has a great skylight, we wouldn't be able to get any ventilation in to kill off the paint fumes.

Plus the last owner decided to paint every piece of trim that was white, brown. Any new trim he put in he stained, so all the doors and great old pieces all have to be sanded and scraped down to be repainted white.

A nice mop-up and wipe down later, we patched and sanded, wiped down again then Matt taped off the room and we traded off painting.

Here's a shot from before:

I'm all over the place!

2009-12-13T08:57:00.000-08:00

Someone told me once that "Idle Hands are the Devil's Plaything," so I've been keeping myself busy lately with plenty of things to do.

Progress is going good, if a bit slow on our kitchen. After this post I'm going to head out to Lowes and pick up some two by's for framing. To date we have torn out the original rotten floor, put in a new sub floor, ripped out the pantry to make room for the fridge, pulled off all the cabinets and a few other odds and ends. We've also finished exposing our brick wall and are now in the process of cleaning it before pointing. Plaster is a bear to work with, it's so dusty and hard as a rock when it's slapped rght on top of brick with no lathe. We also had a large chunk of our stink pipe replaced, but we had plumbers come in and do that.

A mash-up photo of our in-progress wall

In other news, I've also started out on my first steps toward becoming a Free Mason. I've been interested in it for a while but a coworker of mine really inspired me to get involved. It has been a positive and life changing event for me. Jim and myself took our better halves to the Grand Lodge of PA and I've got to tell you, they don't call it "Grand" for nothing! That place is huge!

Me and Jim, photo courtesy of Jim.
All in all I am very satisfied with the direction things are heading right now, I only wish there were more hours in a day. I should probably go now, Beck is vacuuming and I am currently just laying on the bed typing.

Smell ya later!

PS. Update on the status of our my last post!

ZoeandDoyle, the folks who we were having problems with on Etsy are going back and forth on what they want to do with our rings. They told us to mail them back for a refund, so we went to the post office and mailed them. We get home from doing errands to find a new message telling us not to mail them back. I was hoping I could just mail them and get a refund but now I feel like this is going to turn into a big deal.

Buyer Beware!

2009-12-11T19:35:00.000-08:00

Today I had one of my first negative experiences in online purchasing. I think we learned a valuable lesson.

About three months ago Beck and myself ordered our wedding rings through the shop ZoeandDoyle on Etsy.com. For those of you not "in the know," Etsy is sort of like eBay but for vintage and handmade stuff. We ordered a nice set of satin finished titanium bands. We didn't want anything flashy, just something special for us.

Everything was peaches and cream at first. The shop owner told us it would be a 4-6 week wait for delivery. Over the past three months we exchanged messages wondering where our rings were.We were polite and patient, but our patience was wearing thin. To satisfy us, they told Beck "Don't worry, we'll ship them out this upcoming Wednesday."

We were swimming in their ocean of lies!!!

We waited more, messaged them more, stared down at our cold naked fingers more and finally received a tracking number for our now turbo late package.

The package finally arrived yesterday, a nondescript brown envelope with two little altoids-esque tins in it.

Now don't get me wrong, the rings were nice, but not everything we expected - especially for waiting so long and being lied to. The images of the rings we looked at were of two matte gray rings. The male ring had a wider band and looked masculine while the female ring was slimmer.

The male ring we received was spot on, although the female ring was not. Beck's ring was just a smaller version of mine. The band was just as wide and masculine. The Guslers were not pleased.

At first we had decided to settle. We said "screw it, they look OK," and went about our business. Everything was hunkey dorey until Beck went ahead and COMMITTED THE UNHOLY ACT OF NEGATIVE FEEDBACK!

I supported her in her efforts. She was even nice about it. In her negative feedback she didn't even complain about the band size issue, she simply said that it took longer than they promised and that they were not on the ball with responses. She didn't even call them on being the rotten scoundrel liars that they are. We figured that would be the end of it.

Oh the flood gates she opened!

The store owner wrote to her complaining that he did not deserve negative feedback, he said very straightforwardly that he was in the ring making business, not customer service. He then bribed her with the promise of a free ring delivered in one weeks time if she would change her feedback to positive.

Geez, why couldn't he have just shipped our original rings on time? Would this emergency ring forging slow down orders for other customers? For a moment I was tempted to accept his offer, under the condition he forge me a real life functional version of "The One Ring" from J. R. R. Puffenstuff's trilogy. I've only got so much imagination though, and I can't fathom splitting it between pretending to fight goblins and what I would do if I ever hit the lotto.

By the way, I fully intend on hitting the lotto...

Anyway, I was tired of it and it bothered me how upset it was making Beck so I decided to jump into the message fest. I sent him a message telling him that we were not removing our negative feedback. I told him it was our duty as consumers to be honest and forthcoming with other consumers. I suggested that he try to be more timely with his products, especially when it is something as sensitive as a wedding band. Once again we thought this would be the end of it, but oh I was wrong.

The guy messaged me back, essentially telling me that I was totally wrong. I'll spare you the details, but in short he informed me that I know nothing about good business sense, that customers are cattle who don't understand how hard he works on his painstaking craft, and that he is brilliant.

So painstaking and meticulous I might add, that he has only managed to create over ONE THOUSAND rings in the past seven months.

I should probably stop here before I get myself angry. The lesson here is to research what you buy before you buy it. We were confident in our purchase because of his positive feedback. Reading it after that fact, we discovered even the positive feedback was littered with complaints.

Another life lesson brought to you by us!

PS, forgot to mention, we are sending the rings back for a refund! Stand up for yourself, don't accept sub-par service. Your voice may not be loud, but your money is!

what a great guy

2009-12-11T11:02:00.001-08:00

Seriously. Matt takes me to Joann Fabrics all the time and goes in with me, carries my fabric, makes nunchucks out of my batting. He also put up with moving my 3 very large boxes of yarn, not to mention the serger, spining wheel, sewing machine, tubs of fabric and notions.
I'm so luck to have found such a great caring guy that is willing to support me in anything I do.

Check out this sweet yarn wall he built me at our old apartment:

He's even building me a nook in our new house's guest room/office! who could ask for more!

1st etsy sale!

2009-12-11T10:58:00.000-08:00

Woo! I just made my first etsy sale ever to a guy who happened to be a first time etsy user too!
Hot diggity.

Here's what I've been up to:

Lots of knitting and finding of previously knit items that got buried in the move but are all for sale. Hoping to work my way up a little bit and find my book on what forms I need to fill out for setting up a business in Pennsylvania.

2 quilted projects for our office

2009-11-23T11:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a shot of a flying geese variation quilt I finished back in August before the big move. my geese ended up kind of headless! I forgot to account for the seam I'd have from sewing the rows together - oops. I think it's a happy accident though. This is a modified version of a Denyse Schmidt quilt - I altered the scale, each triangle is about 2.5 inches tall and 4.5 wide.

Next the asymmetrical log cabin pillows I made for the office:

I wanted to throw in some more yellow (our futon cover is orange and our rug is bright red!)
These are from a sewing magazine that I can't seem to find at the moment. I went with the suggested ribbon tie closure on the back but it's horrible! The ribbon keeps tearing out and then it puckers so you see the pillow. Ergh! I'm going to swap it out for anotehr closure when I get some extra time.

where we've been!

2009-11-23T10:46:00.000-08:00

It's been a crazy past couple of months! Since our last post we've bought a house, started renovating the down stairs (kitchen and living room), and moved.
so excuse the lack of posts in all the chaos! I've also started taking some graduate classes, finished 3 quilts, and have been in a gallery show.
We'll fill you in with some project posts of what's been going on.

For now, a photo of our kitchen about 3 weeks ago:

We are so dumb.

2009-06-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

So if you don't know already, Beck and myself are fairly obsessed with craigslist. We sell stuff, buy stuff, find stuff to do. As far as we're concerned it should be called "stufflist."

One of our favorite pastimes is cruising the personals. You know, men seeking women, women seeking women, etc. We always talk about how fun it would be to respond to some of these ads and today, we did!

Today we decided to respond to a lovelorn guy who according to his title, was "feeling lonely." We wondered why, until we saw his picture. The guy was a giraffe!

Click image for big size!

Feeling frisky, we decided to make up an email and send a response.

Click image for big size!

I hope he gets a laugh out of it, we sure did!

stuck

2009-06-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

I'm stuck at a training camp this week for new financial aid admins. Not that much math or that much fun but I'm learning a bunch. Obviously, I'd rather be at home with Matt and just doing normal stuff. The real kicker is that my work is doing layoffs this week too.

Also, only the student union at this place has internet -- the dumb-side of that is that none of the outlets are near seating areas. Booo. hissss. Plus the drive to get here took forever -- I went an alternate route to avoid the $10 toll for the $2 toll, I don't think so on the way back.

ew.. cooties

2009-06-06T17:03:00.000-07:00

So now I am sick too! A victim of the strep throat Matt had a few weeks ago.

Over the past couple weeks we've sold some extra things off on craigslist, a great website -- and actually how we both met. It's funny to meet the different people picking things up after you email them back and forth because you're not really sure what to expect but you definitely have some kind of image of what the persons like before you meet them.

First was the guy for the metal bike basket I had - super tall skinny guy who immediately started putting it on his bike after he gave me the money.

Next was the couple who came to pick up our full size bed frame - it seemed like they had been arguing in the car and the one guy definitely did not want the bed and the other guy definitely did. The first one kept saying it wasn't going to fit in the car.

The best was when we were getting rid of some 8mm and super 8 stag films, and the guy came from a family picnic to pick them up with his girlfriend in the car. She seemed sweet enough but I can't imagine having that conversation with her. 'We're going to make a detour on our way home, I bought some super 8 porno's off of craigslist that I need to pick up'

It's been fun to meet all these people and find a better home for stuff we're not using anymore.

Sugar Crushing!

2009-06-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

So we went to the market yesterday with the goal of buying diabetic friendly food. Stuff with no sugar, very few carbs etc. I discovered that it made 2 significant differences from our normal shopping experience.

1. The cart was much more colorful with all the vegetables and organic stuff.
2. My face was much more colorful after discovering how pricey it is to eat healthy.

Apparently, the less they add to food, the higher the price.

We did get a pretty good haul though, enough food to get us through the week and then some. It's strange how the eating healthy thing gets a bit addictive. Sure I bought the low carb, no sugar products but when I went to buy a bag of cashews I picked the unsalted ones even though I am allowed to eat salt.

My biggest hurdle so far has been coming up with meals. Our 5 day meal plan consists of 2 days fish, 2 days vegetarian and one day chicken. Weekends are up in the air as long as it's healthy. I tried checking online for good vegetarian recipes but they are all either too high in sugar, carbs or depend entirely on using pre-packaged veggie burgers or veggie crumbles. The mountain of ingredients in those things turned me off right away. Most diabetic recipes on the other hand, were just plain old recipes with splenda replacing sugar. I thought it was a cheaters way out.

So rather than give up, I have decided to make my own low-carb no sugar diet. Unfortunately, it's not 100% but I don't think any diet is. For example, I need tortillas to make fish tacos, but I found an excellent whole wheat alternative at Whole Foods. Beck also found an organic olive oil spray that has less bad stuff in it than traditional olive oil but still greases a pan just fine.

My first meal was fish tacos. It came out great. We had a side of stuffed tomatoes and for dessert we had a few cubes of watermelon (not too much watermelon, it can drive up your sugar!).

Fish Tacos with Stuffed Tomatoes
Serves 2 with leftovers.

12-15 oz. frozen fish. I use 2 halibut fillets
4 whole wheat soft tortillas
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 large onion: chopped fine
2 large peppers: chopped up (red and yellow)
1 jalapeno pepper: seeded and chopped fine
2 tomatoes: caps cut off and scooped out (save the scooped out parts!)
1 lemon: halved
2 teaspoons of feta cheese
ground black pepper
oregano
Olive oil or spray substitute
Low fat all natural yogurt (optional)
Lettuce (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Start cooking your onions, bell peppers, tomato (just the scooped out bits!) and jalapeno in a lightly oiled pan on high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of chili powder to the mix. Stir occasionally.
Arrange your fish on a large piece of foil. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon chili powder and squirt a lemon half over top. Close foil loosely around the fish.
Squirt some lemon into your veggie mix. Stir. Change to low heat.
Spoon some veggie mix into the tomatoes. Top with feta cheese and some oregano.
Place the foiled fish and tomatoes on a baking sheet and cook on bottom rack.
Allow everything to cook for ten minutes. Take this time to heat up your tortillas if you like.
Remove fish and tomatoes from oven. Place tomatoes on plates.
Open foil and add fish to veggie mixture, it should break up easily. Add some black pepper. Stir together.
Spoon mixture onto tortillas, add lettuce and yogurt if you like.
Put it on the plate and enjoy!

I hope someone else out tries these out. They are slammin good and I had enough leftovers for lunch!

Until Next time.

I'm sick.

2009-05-28T17:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry for lack of posting, I've been feeling under the weather lately. I went to the doctor today to get the results of some blood work. The doctor told me I have diabetes. I'm not surprised, just disappointed. I have been working pretty hard to get my diet in order over the past 8 months but it was just too late. So now I've got to restrict my diet to an extreme. I m going back into the doctor next week t get more blood taken and to start figuring out what medicines I will need.

In other news, we have been doing a little rearranging of the site. It's going to take a little time before we get it just right but it will happen eventually.

Dock for Windows?

2009-05-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

I'm an avid Microsoft fan. I've always liked Windows and I never really got into the whole Mac OS thing. The layout of Mac OS has always really turned me off. I've never liked the flat feel of it or some of the stuff that just feels backwards.

And honestly, I've always been turned off by the stereotypical Mac owner: the "I am a Mac" guy. I think that's more of a cultural thing though. You know, the same way I don't enjoy cafes or logos on my clothing. All that being said, I did the most logical thing you could imagine...

I started dating a Mac user. Who likes cafes.

Our kids will probably run Linux.

Now that I've had some serious sit-down time with a Mac I can say with all honesty that I still don't like it. However, I was in awe of that little quick-launching bar at the bottom known as the Dock.

For those not in the know, the Mac dock is a bar of programs located at the bottom of the screen on most Mac operating systems. It allows you to quickly launch programs, maximize programs that are already running and identify which programs you already have open. It's the Mac saving grace for me. Without it, I wouldn't be able to find anything. It's the one thing I wanted Windows to copy.

The Mac Dock.

Looking for my own solution, I downloaded a program called Rocket Dock. Essentially a dock for Vista. I've been test driving it for about a week and although it has a few flaws, it is a functional substitute for a Mac dock. You can put your favorite programs in it, have it change size with mouse-over and even minimize into the dock instead of the taskbar.

RocketDock.

It is not perfect though. Non-minimized windows that have become hidden behind other windows will not appear in the dock, which can be a real pain in the neck. The default icons it comes packed with are also kind of weak, requiring the user to download custom icons. It took me about an hour and a half to get my dock to not look so vanilla.

All in all, I didn't like it. Not because it was a bad program or even because of the window hiding issue. I didn't like it because I honestly didn't need it. The Windows start menu and task bar are more than adequate tools. They do everything I need them to do and found that while pretty, the dock was really just eye candy.

It's funny how things work out. At the beginning of the week I wanted a dock on my PC, now every time I use the Mac I find myself wishing there was a start menu.

Seeya next time!

Office Redecoration and Ikea Hacks

2009-05-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

So for a little while now we have been redecorating our office. When we first moved in we sorta just slammed in whatever furniture we had, bought a futon for guests and that was that. Our workspace was a small ikea desk (table is more appropriate a word) that shared my PC, Beck's laptop and her sewing machine. It was an absolute nightmare but we lived with it.

We did have a real nifty filing cabinet that was red and white, it was my favorite piece of furniture in the room and it inspired me.

I went out and bought a matching cabinet, some replacement drawer pulls, eight legs, and a huge untreated pine board. I slapped it all together, treated the pine with a clear finish and voila! A new desk was born!

I even gutted the left cabinet, knocked out the back end and drawer bottoms, connected all the drawers together and stuck my PC inside. I've got a pretty monstrous computer so it's nice to get it out of the way.

As for the rest of the office, I rearranged the furniture, put up some shelves to show off some of my robot collection and other bricabrac, remounted Beck's bike, and put the clock in the window. Beck made some wicked cool curtains and pillow covers and is currently in the process of making a quilt to go over our futon.

We also moved the old desk to the bedroom so Beck has plenty of room to do her quilting and sewing.

Theres still quite a bit left to do, such as decorate the front wall and patch up the drill holes where the old phone/shelves used to be but all in all I am very satisfied with the way things turned out. I am looking forward to move on to the front room next.

Until next time.

P.S. In case you are wondering, that is a Panton chair. I'm no designer, but apparently they are pretty cool. Beck foud that thing in the trash one morning covered in paint and dirt. She brought the beast home anyway and with some careful scraping and alot of brawn I got all of the paint off of it. It's now my favorite chair in the world. It's all plastic but shaped in a way that it supports even my weight with no problems.

Nine patch No. 14

2009-05-11T18:00:00.000-07:00

Here's today's nine-patch! All trimmed and pressed!
I'm a little concerned that I may run out of scraps for this -- not like it would kill me to cut down some fat quarters. I'm worried that if I do some of the blocks will start looking too homogeneous.
We'll see what happens.

Catching up

2009-05-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

I used this sunday to catch up on this sweet nine-patch a day along that crazymomquilts is having.
I know making 13 in one day is not one a day -- but i felt bad starting so late! Here are my 1st 13 nine patches.

Thrift Finds

2009-05-07T21:09:00.000-07:00

So I admit, I am fairly addicted to thrift shopping. Beck and I will spend entire Saturdays driving from yard sale, to goodwill, to thrift shop... rinse repeat. Sometimes we get a haul and sometimes we come back with nothing at all. That's part of the fun I guess, never knowing if you'll find something good. Luckily, we did!

So down the road on Baltimore Avenue is a small store called "J&B Furniture." Beck and myself must have rode past it a hundred times and it has always been closed! ...until NOW!

photo is from googlemaps!

Today we went out on a whim. We cruised over to find it open for business. Inside the small firetrap we found piles and piles of treasures and garbage. The guy who ran the place had a nice mix of stuff from electronics to housewares and apparently, the entire back library of "Big Booty"magazine.

We were not there for protruding posteriors though, we had a goal. We wanted... no wait... we needed a phone. Our phone was one of those cheap black plastic phones from CVS. We bought an ugly phone on purpose, waiting to find just the right one. Fortunately that day was today.

Seven dollar phone!

This monster of a machine is not only a phone, but a speakerphone! It's constructed of real wood, metal and plastic. It has dials, switches lights and a plethora of other stuff I don't understand. It's got real character, which I look for in any kind of electronics. It works great and lights up when it rings!

Score!

quilt for a niece-to-be

2009-04-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

Just finished this quilt for my soon-to-be niece Julia. It's a variation on the chinese coins pattern (I think it's also called stacked coins?) I'm really happy with how it turned out. The binding is completely machined on -- I don't trust my hand stitching enough for thousands of washes.

test post?

2009-03-21T20:43:00.000-07:00