drive-by update

So much! TNNA was great! You'll want to read Clara's recap, because she does it right. This time, TNNA was about Knitty-building [adding content, etc] and a few other thingies for me. Just you wait. :-)

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Meanwhile, you all know what I need to be doing now instead of writing a flowery blog post, so a few quick pics will have to hold you while I go back to work!

pic 1: the secret present I was working on in silversmithy class:


Yes. Those are sterling silver brains, handcut out of sheet silver, BY ME, for my beloved Jillian. Anyone who's ever seen us work together knows that we share a brain and are just better together. Her birthday is this coming Saturday, and I wanted to formalize that. So now we share two brains [we each have one of the silver ones]. She loved it. :-)

pic 2: the accessory I wear all the time now that everyone at the show loved:


Those are beads OF GRASS. Seriously. Read this site to learn more about who makes them, why they're cool and how great it is to be able to support a group of crafting women on the other side of the world as we decorate our bodies. I bought mine in Toronto at the UofT bookstore. You can find links to shops through the Zulugrass.com site -- it's all over the place, but without the backstory, I don't know that I would have noticed these.

[for those that care about such things, this is 6 strands, colors chosen by me, twisted three times around my wrist.]

pic 3: a big shoutout of love to Amy O'Neill Houck and Kim Werker. Girls, looky what I did on the plane home!!


That, my friends, is a granny square. CROCHETED by me. In, get this, Alchemy Silk Chenille. Could you plotz? Thanks to Gina and Austin who enabled me into a skein of this gorgeous stuff [colorway Red Run] when I had the best crochet teacher ever [Amy] at my disposal. You need to see how Amy wields a hook [I didn't see Kim's techique, but it's probably just as sexy.] Amy makes it look like hand ballet. And unlike crocheting straight rows that are boring as hell, doing this, once I got the hook size right, was [dear lord, help me] F.U.N.

No, there will be no Crochetty. No, I am not giving up my beloved knitting. But I do want to make granny squares and ripples. And now I can. Thank you, crochet girls!

And now, back to Knitty. Head down, see you soon!