Superstitch

My favorite colors

I've been doing alot of crafty shopping lately. Online and in person. A cool new craft store just opened last week here in austin, austin craft o rama, if you are in the austin area you should definitely check it out! So i bought a few pretty fabrics there, i bought some artyarns supermerino at Sarah's Yarns big sale and i also bought some brown and tan kp essential for the eunny jang, entrelac socks! My grandmother has recently been diagnosed with cancer and she's been complaining of cold feet, so i thought that some entrelac socks might be the cure for that!

Anyways, why do i keep talking about shopping? Well it seems like all i buy lately are things in orange, pink, brown and yellow. The u-neck vest? Fit the color scheme perfectly. The jaywalker socks? Browns, yellows, and blue just to mix it up!

That fabric is an awesome alexander henry print i picked up this weekend at craft o rama. The orange on the left is the finished first half of clementine. I started knitting clementine just for fun, i hadn't knit a complicated lace pattern and thought the pattern was too pretty to pass up. Well the lace pattern has turned out to be very easy and memorizable, a plus in my book! So the whole time i've been working on it, i've been trying to figure out who to give it to, and i think i've decided! Of course i cant say yet because i'm not sure if she reads my blog very often, i dont want her to run across this!

Here's a full shot of the first half of the shawlette, silly word but thats what it is! I just love the way that the nature wool variations show up in the pattern, the yarn could be a little bit softer but my swatch did soften with washing, so i'm hopeful for the finished product!

I really wish i had more knowledge of html and blog templates, i'd really like to creat my own background, and keep a gallery of my finished knits, quilts and sewing projects, but i'm just not sure how to make all that stuff happen. I may try though, wish me luck!

A call for help!

I have fallen in love with Shelly Kang's blanket. I cant seem to link directly to her blanket because all of her webpages simply say, shellykang.com. Anyways, the blanket really appeals to my love of working with tiny needles and fingering weight/sock weight yarn. (see thermal and the deceased venezia) So anyways, i am putting out a call for yarn scraps, anything that is recommended to be knit on size 1-3 needles, it can be any fiber, if its acrylic i prefer a blend so that it can be blocked later, but really anything will work i'm not picky. If there are any sock knitters reading this i would love to have your scraps!!! I will be happy to pay postage if you have a paypal i can send money to. Just leave a comment and i will email you with my info.

Here is what i've started with my scraps, you can see most of my stuff is solids.

i'm following shelly's tutorial she has up on her blog. My squares are measuring almost exactly 2 inches by 2 inches. I know this will take years to collect enough random sock yarn, but i think its just a lot of fun to have this going on.

In other news, i am tempted to join the ripple blanket craze and start one of my own, but maybe i shouldn't have 2 giant blanket projects going on at the same time?

getting there

Slowly but surely i'm making my way through my works in progress. I think finishing my u neck vest so quickly has motivated me! Speaking of the vest...

(i really am terrible at taking pictures, so sorry) But here it is!

Pattern: Fair isle U neck from Vogue Knitting, Fall 2006

yarn: elann's peruvian highland wool, 5 balls of natural, 1 ball each of brown, yellow and orange

needles: clover bamboo 29" circulars, size 4.25 mm/ us 6

modifications: well i left off the sleeves! I shaped the arm holes more so that i could add on ribbed trim.

Overall, I'm very happy with it but there are a couple of things i'll do differently when i make it again. I would lengthen it by 2-3 inches, I would go down a size, or use a smaller needle, i haven't figured it out yet, but the sweater is a little bit big. Not big enough to keep me from wearing it, but big enough that i wish i had made it smaller.

And now for something completely different, anyone remember this sock? It is done! And its match is halfway there!

its grumperina's jaywalker pattern and its great!

just a teaser

I finished my u-neck vest!! I'll be back tomorrow once i have decent pictures, but for now, here's a peek... http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=121658.msg1644330#msg1644330

Weekend knitting

You want to know something dumb? I haven't blogged about this project because i feel like all i ever do is show the beginning of a project... and then it never gets finished. But thats silly because the whole point of this blog is for me to document my crafts and if all i ever do is start knitting projects... well then thats what i'll talk about! I really have had a lot of bad luck with my knitting projects. The viveka was frogged, venezia was too big, same problem with thermal, and i still cant even talk about the poor deep v vest. Wicked has about 2 inches left on the 2nd sleeve. So anyways, last weekend i started the fair isle u neck from the fall 06 vogue.

And this weekend i managed to finish off the back! I am modifying the sweater into a sweater vest. I have been looking for a pattern ever since the deep v vest fell through. The only part of the sweater pattern that i had to modify was the arm hole shaping, i wanted the arm holes to scoop in farther so that i can add ribbing later to finish it.  

I'm using elann's peruvian wool, natural/white as the main color and chocolate, orange, and lemon yellow as the accents. The original pattern called for 5 accent colors but i didn't like the idea of all the fair isle being triple-stranded so i pared it down. I really think i'm a fair isle addict! Hopefully by next weekend i will have a completed vest!

The Great Outdoors!

Well I have a way to upload pictures now! It turns out that the awesome photo printer i got for christmas will upload my pictures onto the computer. Yay! These pictures are from the first weekend of my spring break, march 10th. My youngest sister Allison, 16, is part of a competitive rowing club and they had a regatta at Town Lake in Austin. It was the most gorgeous day, and there was a lot of sitting around and waiting since she was in 2 races, at 2 pm and 4:30 pm, so we sat outside on a blanket, reading, knitting, eating and talking from around 1pm through 5, it was alot of fun!

what i did all day.... sit around and knit!

what sarah did all day... read!

Joseph, the youngest sibling, he turns 9 on saturday, everyone say hi joe!

here is allison out on the water, kickin ass and taking names! She won a gold in her doubles race, a silver in her single race, and a bronze in her quad! (its hard to see in the smaller version of the picture, but if you open it up you can see how hard she's working! She's a champ)

her leisurely row back to the dock

It was a great day!

home, sweet home

I'm still having trouble uploading my pictures, but sarah snapped a few pictures of my new place, so i thought i would share. Seth and I just moved from a 2200 sqft house we shared with my other sister (not my lovely co author) into an 800 sq ft duplex.... its hard fitting everything, but to quote my favorite man on television, we're making it work.

here is the "charming" (read small) kitchen. Thats it, to the left of the cabinet there is the back door, which opens onto a tiny deck with the utility closet....

the back door....

the little porch with the utility closet, i dont really like the idea of having to take my clothes outside, but i suppose i will get used to it...

well, thats all the house photos i'll bore you with today, i have tons more to show once i get my camera to work again. Hopefully i can do some before and afters soon to once we have everything settled in.

spring break? not for this girl

Instead of a nice relaxing, fun spring break, I get to move! Oh the joy. Seth and I moved about 15 minutes from our last house to a duplex closer to school. The rent is way cheaper and the location is great. So it's a good move in that respect but still... moving sucks! I took a ton of before pictures of the new place and i'll be taking some afters once I get all of the curtains put up and everything set up. I've been working on organizing my new craft room too!

here is where i'm at with the pretty clementine shawlette

California, California, it's such a wonder

Elizabeth  is four years older than me, almost to the day. I decided to be born the day before her birthday, and have been paying the price ever since. We've had joint birthday parties for as long as I can remember... at McDonalds, at Celebration Station, at the duck pond, the pool, the park, the backyard. Celebrating my birthday was never something I did on my own.

When I graduated high school, I thought the rules might have changed, that I might be able to go on my graduation trip to California by myself. No such luck. My mother invited Elizabeth along, and while cruising over the Golden Gate Bridge, windows down, music blaring, Elizabeth, my mom, and I convulsing in laughter over something stupid one of us just said, I came to a realization; My birthdays were always so happy because I was sharing them with the closest friend I've ever had. Any perceived disadvantage was all in my own head. I let go and we ended up having the vacation to end all vacations. We toured wineries, I ate my first In-N-Out burger, I hugged a redwood, we found an entire store devoted soley to Legos, we drove down Lombard Street, we rode a boat to Alcatraz, and shopped until my debit card melted.

I was over at Bird In the Hand earlier tonight, and her photos of Alcatraz inspired me to share a few of my own, along with some of the other photos I took during that charmed week in California. I hope you enjoy them.

Benziger Winery:

Muir Woods:

San Francisco:

and, finally, Alcatraz Island:

So these are my pictures, my memories. It really was a great week. So sunny! It's nice to remember right now, as storms of biblical proportions have been plaguing Central Texas nonstop since Sunday.

Sun... I miss it.

Dirty Little Secrets

Ok, before I start the post, I have to transcribe the conversation Elizabeth and I just had about my job in Inter-Library Lending in my school's library.

Sarah: I just pulled a book for the Executive Office of the President of the United States of America.

Liz: Was it Everybody Poops?

(Sarah doesn't breathe for the next ten minutes.)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Anyways, on with the post.

I've seen the Six Weird Things meme floating around on a number of blogs over the past month or so, and now that I'm in Austin for Spring Break, and I can make Liz do whatever I want, we're totes doin' it. But! With a twist! I will write Six Weird Things about Elizabeth, and she will write Six Weird Things about me. I've already got about ten weird things about her floating around in my head, but I bet she's going to have a hard time with this. I'm about as normal as they come.

That's us in the middle, weirdin' it up already, at such a young age!

Here we go!

Six Weird Things About Elizabeth, by Sarah

1. Elizabeth is a freak for Nerds. Seriously. She would probably pole vault over my lifeless corpse for a half-full box of them. If she could, she would grind them into powder and snort them like coke. I can just see her now, in a disco club's bathroom, hunched over rainbow-colored lines, rolled up Washington at the ready... it's a sad, sad picture.

2. If you ever have a particularly hairy customer service issue that you have to work out over the phone, Elizabeth is the one you want navigating that web of hell for you. I call the cell phone company because my phone is broken, they laugh in my face (or ear, as it were). I put Elizabeth on the phone, and I can expect not only a new phone, but a dozen roses, a box of Godivas, and a note of apology on my doorstep the next morning. Well, not really. But still. She's got skills.

3. Elizabeth has [redacted] cats! I mean, I like cats almost as much as the next person, but that's pretty much ridiculous. I guess I can't make too much fun, she really does seem to love them. I mean, I drop a french fry in between the couch cushions and she's ready to behead me, the cats dump out an entire paper shredder and roll around in the confetti and she act like its the cutest thing she's ever seen. The cats, being typical felines, are kind like, well, I guess sorta okay with her. I'm more of a dog person myself. At least you know when they like you.

4. You may not be able to tell by reading her relatively demure craft blog, but Elizabeth is a total badass. She got kicked off her high school color guard twice. Supposedly it was because of her "attitude problem," when really it was because she wouldn't let her sadistic coach sit on her back while she did push ups. She also made her, ahem, inexperienced senior year Spanish teacher cry when the hag tried to humiliate her in front of the entire class for talking when the entire class was talking. Don't mess with Liz, she messes back.

5. Whenever Liz shows me something she's made, I usually tell her how great it is, and then she usually expends a ridiculous amount of energy telling me exactly how and why it sucks harder than a black hole. She is so, so, so wrong. Just about everything she touches is glorious. Whenever she shows me a new sweater or purse, I usually try to convince her to give it to me as a "Happy Wednesday!" or "Congratulations On Showing Up to Work On Time Today!" present, so I take her disapproval of her own work as an insult to my taste. And that's mean.

6. Elizabeth gets trapped in the closet on a nightly basis. It is maybe a little less weird than it sounds, but not by much. Seth usually goes to sleep well before Liz, so she sets up camp in their giant, giant closet. She sits in there with her laptop and a knitting project, watching Scubs DVDs (ohmygod, how awesome is Scrubs???) or talking online to me. she says its downright comfy in there, with a pillow and a quilt perhaps... But I still think she's a nutjob. A sweet, funny, talented nutjob, of course. Can you tell that I just remembered that she's about to start writing about me?

Six Weird Things About Sarah, by Elizabeth

1. Sarah likes to make up words. Well, maybe not make up, but abbreviate. It all started with "totes inapropes." Totes means totally, inapropes means inappropriate. It's kind of caught on in our family, and you really haven't lived until you've heard your eight year old brother tell your sixteen year old sister that her outfit is "totes inapropes."

2. Sarah will not ever, never let things go. I told her once that I was "exceptional" at crochet and now whenever we talk about crochet she calls me "exceptional." I was trying to tell her that I can pretty much read any pattern and make it happen, and it just came out wrong. That was months and months ago, and still. I am Liz the Exceptional. The last time she was in town I was talking about making knitting patterns for different magazines and I made use of the phrase, "knitted garments." Sarah immediately got her Tim Gunn voice on and didn't stop making fun of my pretentious vocabulary for a solid hour. She still brings it up when she thinks I'm getting a little too big for my britches.

3. Sarah is obsessed with mermaids. OBSESSED. It started at the impressionable age of 3 with the Little Mermaid, and continues to this day with a velvet mermaid poster she is coloring in with markers. She's crazy. (Sarah would like me to add that she would never, say, walk up to you on the street and ask you if you had accepted The Mermaid as your personal lord and savior. She likes to keep her crazy under wraps.)

4. Sarah would much rather sing a conversation than speak it, any day of the week. If a lyric to a song is even remotely related to what we're talking about, believe me, she's singing it. If she can't think of a real song, hell, she'll just make one up on the fly. She's pretty much a master improvisor.

5. Sarah has a 256 gig hard drive hooked up to a 1998 Sony Vaio laptop, worth probably about $30.

6. When Sarah gets mad at me, she touches my face. She knows it makes me want to kill her. So maybe all those times she tried to leave a thumbprint on my forehead she wasn't mad, but suicidal. Hmmmm...

That was fun!