come on sucker, lick my battery*

so while all the work on knitty continues, other things are introducing themselves into my world. fun things. things i haven't let myself think about because they're just too silly and will i really do them?

the mystery object at left found its way to me last week due to the most ridiculous example of serendipity i've ever experienced. i wanted this exact thing -- same color, even -- and elizabeth's daughter had been given this exact thing but it wasn't the right size model [in this case, size did matter :-)]. so now it lives with me.

you may be able to guess what it is, but i'm not telling until next week. i've been working with it and am not ready for my debut just yet. i won't be ready next week, either, but that's just part of this whole new attitude to life thing i'm feeling lately. if i wait for everything i do to be perfect before i share it, i'll never share ANYTHANG. and life is too short for that crap.

i'm not getting reckless. i'm just going to stop preventing myself from doing stuff i really want to do because i think i might look silly doing it.

---

*yes, the Conchord-titled blog posts continue. what are you gonna do about it? eh?

---

i've also been beading, but since almost all of it is for gifts, you won't see it here for a while.

and prototype knitting has begun on the Blue Moon Luscious Silk sweater, which has resulted in two swatches, both frogged. this design probably requires alternating 2 balls to make the best use of the gorgeous colors. variegateds are kicking my butt lately.

---

okay, back to work. and then the mystery thing. woo!

oh, and did you know? one of those magic erasers can make your computer keyboard look like new [just make sure every bit of the water is squeezed out first]. the trackpad, too. i wonder if they're nuclear or magical something. how do they do it?

you're so beautiful, you could be a waitress

[scout on the left, me on the right, wearing our karmically linked zulugrass.]
image shamelessly stolen from scout's flickr

when life works out like it did earlier this week, it's hard not to believe in the power of external forces. i choose to believe it's karma. and good timing.

jillian and carla are my roomies for Rhinebeck this October [Rhinebeck! wooooo!]. they're driving direct from Michigan, which is a long enough trip on its own. they ain't sweeping past Toronto to pick me up this time, and i don't blame them a bit.

i have been agonizing over every possible route and method of transport to Rhinebeck for months. don't want 12 hours on the train. don't want to drive 7+ hours alone. no affordable flights from here to the closest airport to Rhinebeck.

then Scout -- who i stayed with last June when i visited Albuquerque, and have missed ever since -- blogs [in a rare blog post] that she's going too. i tell her she'd better come because i'll be there.

next thing you know, we realize we're both going to be in the same 20-mile radius at about the same time both before and after Rhinebeck, and the result? Scout's picking me up at Newark airport [cheapish flight, yay!], we're driving to Rhinebeck together. and back again on Sunday after the show.

scout and i on the road. in her daddy's car [!], with my GPS and her satellite radio. oh, you *so* would want to be in the back seat for that trip, but you can't, so there. we're both so excited to be able to have time to hang out together, you should have read the chat transcript as we made the plans. lots of vowels strung together with exclamation marks at the end of 'em.

you want beads? i got yer beads right here.

the first FO. these are shimmery delica beads in a pre-mixed assortment i bought at a great bead store in Chicago a few years ago. the contents of one tiny tube JUST made a band long enough.



here's the clasp from the pretty side. it's sterling and was $6 [i think] at Arton Beads on Queen West in Toronto. here's how i attached it:



is that the right way to do it? it's the only way i could think of, and it's very strongly attached to the band, so i'm leaving it as it is.

the clasp is rather brilliant. easy enough to get on but a bugger to get off, which means i don't have to worry about it coming undone like toggles do.

and the peanut is a little thing i've been wearing on a simple chain for a while. i just like it.

can somebody please remove these cutleries from my knees?

and now, i end the teasing. look what arrived in my mailbox last week.





4 skeins of sex brand-new Blue Moon Luscious Silk in the colorway Gypsum. i had no idea it was coming. so i opened the package and then i had to sit down because all the blood drained out of my head. i rubbed it all over the public parts of myself [don't get gross now] and made soft moaning noises.

if you haven't been stalking the Blue Moon website [or the new development, Tina's blog!], you might not have noticed the new additions to the site. silk. one or two-ply and worsted-weightish. can you stand it? more stunningly, 360 yards of this gorgeous hand-dyed-by-Tina silk is only $28.

then i ran to the swift and turned the first skein into a cake and started swatching.

jillian has taught me that long stretches of color aren't going to work so well horizontally on my bod, but if i knit side to side...



and when i think side to side, of course i think of kristi porter, which is why a lacy variation of Sonnet is going to be the next thing on my needles. lace because it's cooler [and silk is warmer than wool, so coolness must be factored in to the design plan!] and because 4 skeins of this sex gorgeous 2-ply silk = 1440 yards means it needs to be lacy if i want it to be long-sleeved. and i do.

i'm knitting something for fall Knitty as well, and it's damned hard to concentrate on deadline knitting with this stuff looking at me and winking seductively. oh, my life is so hard, isn't it?

got an hour to kill?

Yup, I done opened my mouth again. This time, the podcast was CraftSanity, and what you'll hear is me sounding more like me than any other interview I've done.

You know how sometimes you know stuff but you haven't had to articulate it so the stuff just floats around your head, all nebulous? Well, in this podcast, Jennifer, the host, got it all out of me.

I'm not one for Mission Statements. I think they're kind of pompous and usually pretty generic. But this podcast is about as close as I'll get to stating Knitty's mission...so if you are interested in why Knitty does things the way we do, give it a listen.

And then come back and tell me what you think, will you?

knitting math

+

+

+
a mystery ingredient =
the newest thing on my needles.


how's that for a weekend-eve teaser?

music that's making Knitty go today

[his website makes me giggle. listen to all the stuff he's done for each of the pages. don't click too fast!]



keep your hands off my teevee boyfriend -- jemaine.
[hey, j, the mustache could go, but don't you dare touch the sideburns]

lather, rinse, repeat.
um, yes, please.

before there was dood...

there was this stuff. the tv show it goes along with [Swingtown] is amusing enough, but i really am liking the music. serious flashback time.

---

my tour de fleece experience is off the rails. i haven't spun in 3 days, but i have been working hard on Knitty and am cutting myself some slack.

the 2 ounces of tussah is half spun already, so i'm sure i'll finish by the end of the challenge. perhaps that's the problem. set a harder challenge and you can't let it drop without a disaster.

---

also, i'm beading again. i am stuck at how to finish the bands of peyote i've completed so they look professional and are functional without being uncomfortable to wear. i'm expecting a few bead books to arrive up here shortly, and i think they'll help significantly.

and in the downtime since i picked it up last, my large-bead peyote has become tidier [or at least i've figured out how to keep it tidier now]. pictures forthcoming shortly.

---

really, lots of work going on here. thank heavens i didn't plan any travel this summer. i'd be out of my mind if i had to go anywhere beyond the back yard or one of my two LYSs.

My sweet Vespa

Doods. Today was my first scooter rally -- The Twisted Wheel Scooter Rally in Toronto. Rallies are basically a reason to ride together, compare and compliment scoots and get ideas for what you might want to do to yours next.

There was also a raffle for a brand new vespa [I didn't win], and contests in all sorts of categories. Surprisingly, I *did* win one of the judged awards: Sweetest Modern Scoot. I guess everyone was won over by my pink leopard seat cover and matching pink sparkly tassels. There's also a pompom hanging from my rear rack in sparkly purple. Clearly, the sparkle appeals.

Take a peek at my photos for the day if you like Vespas too. There's a purple one in there that I will wager you have never seen the likes of anywheres. [And it won for Sweetest Vintage Scoot. You ain't kidding.]

you can't take me out anywhere, but someone's gonna try.

hub brought me this last night as a little present.

a pink baseball.

for what reason?

why?

i guess it's well-known enough that i am fond of pink, but that's not the main reason.

it's a baseball, after all. what is it doing in my house?

perhaps a closeup might make its purpose more apparent:


dudes. i'm gonna throw out the first pitch at the Toronto Stitch & Pitch game on August 5th.

i am simultaneously thrilled, horrified, terrified, excited and a little giddy. the baseball is in our house because i don't just throw like the stereotypical girl. i throw like a 4-year-old girl. hub says we're gonna train before it's time for me to stand on the pitcher's mound in the middle of SkyDome the stadium in front of, like, lots of people, and try [desperately] to at least get the ball as far as the catcher.

meanwhile, my friend Dawn tells me this Training ball is the same type of ball 5-year-olds use to play t-ball. and i bet they can all throw the ball better than i can.

---

garden update!

so the fence was in when i last wrote about our troubled backyard.

last fall, we planted two apple trees and lots of shrubs in the border to begin filling it out.


well, the lawn is scraggly and there are tons of weeds, but there is also a brand new raised bed! we bought a raised bed kit from Lee Valley Tools, and i searched out patio stones that weren't butt-ugly for the sidewalls. these look like slate. hub built the thing with great care, ensuring there was anti-weed cloth under the box and sifting the soil to get out as much of the wild violet roots as possible.


foody things are now growing in there! we transplanted the tomato, and planted arugula, parsley and endive seeds for the buns -- everything but the parsely sprouted in 2 days! we're too late in the season for much else, but i will go seek out some overgrown seedlings at the garden centers that are still open around here.

time for some Tour de Fleece!

the title aside [because I know it's about spinning, not just about wool :-)], i'm in for this year's Tour de Fleece!

summary: pick a spinning challenge, start when the Tour de France starts and finish when it ends.

in the last post, i showed pics from the beginning of my Tour de Fleece experience. here's what you haven't yet seen:


roving from my stash, at least 2 years old. clearly i like to let things percolate.



that's my very pretty, perfectly balanced, incredibly long-spinning Houndesign lace spindle, purchased at The Purple Purl. for my fellow spindlewhores, it's a 19-gram Pau Amarillo lace spindle. my new favorite. Houndesign is a spindlemaker in BC. they're delicious.


and this is the first night's spinning, some of it in near darkness. rock.

oh, i neglected to mention the details of my challenge. it's simple: finish this roving [2 whole ounces], including plying and setting the twist. and spin outside for half an hour a day when it's not raining. i will amend the challenge to add the following: "...when it's not raining, or so humid that i begin to question the sanity of spinning silk in summer." and since the forecast for the next few days is super humid and super hot, i'll probably be doing my spinning inside.

holy crap. i did it to myself.

so i recently went on and on about how newly made stuff breaks too soon, requiring replacement, and how we're programmed to think "must have new" any time we see something shinier than what we have. [i'm sure many of you resist this, and perhaps it doesn't affect some of you. lucky buggers.] i try to resist this horrible condition and often succeed. and sometimes not.

[this post is not going to end the way you think it is. stick with me.]

all the cool kids are getting new cameras. they take really great pictures, although we know a lot of that is the person behind the camera. so this makes me think about my cameras. i've been carrying around a Canon Powershot sd550 since I bought it for our trip to Italy a few years ago. the other camera I had was bulky and annoying. this one was light! it fit in my pocket! it takes pretty great pictures! and it's 7.1 megapixels, which is more than the other camera i had. more is better, right?

seriously. i'd just bought this super-expensive camera less than a year before the Canon. it was to be the Knitty magazine camera. but it was big and only 5 megapixels [oh, dear. less is bad, right?]. once the Canon arrived, i felt that the Lumix was already obsolete, and was angry at myself for choosing it in the first place. instead, i used the Canon for everything. that was more than 2 years ago.

this thursday, Mel and i were excavating my office, transforming it from a pile of piles into functional space -- which is another post for another day. Mel unearthed the Lumix in its rather-small, quite-nice LowePro case [smaller than I remember. hmm]. i took it out and there on the lens i saw this: 12x optical zoom.

oh. right. i chose the Lumix after hours and hours of careful searching on digital camera review websites because it had a kickass optical zoom and a Leica lens. clearly I had forgotten that part.

dudes, i talked myself out of liking something i already owned that was more than good enough for my needs just because i thought there was better to be had. it's a good lesson learned.

i charged up the battery last night and took the Lumix along with me to a Tour de Fleece kickoff party. i have some serious manual-reading to do in order to take advantage of all the features of this camera -- many manual or semi-manual options, even -- but here are a few point-and-shoot, low-light, no-tripod shots from last night. i know they are nothing special, except for the subject matter, which is lovely. but i'll be able to do better shortly, and soon, without spending a penny on anything. i love that.










bokeh, here i come.

oh mama!

I blogged a few weeks ago about my mama's new Etsy shop and lots of you commented that you liked her work.

Well, the enabler in me is not sorry at all [:-)] to let you know that mama has cut her prices on almost everything in her shop. Rather quite a lot, actually.

Each necklace is one of a kind and now they're so much more affordable, it's kind of nuts. This amethyst and yellow druzy necklace? It's now just $45. That's crazy talk.

Mama gets the pendants and other elements from a variety of craftspeople in Africa and Asia. Buying one of my mama's necklaces helps to support these artisans and their extended families. Which I think is seriously cool.

Here are a few of my other favorites from mom's shop:









And if you buy that last turquoise one, don't be surprised if you see me wearing its sister. I asked mama if she could find another pendant like this one and she's making me my own version of this baby. She says it looks chunky, but is really almost light as air. The pendant is actually dyed yak bone! I can't wait for it to come!