little yellow door

May Day

2011-05-01T08:19:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning crabby and anxious after a poor nights sleep. I contemplated writing the day off as an immediate failure but decided to give it time to redeem itself. So I did what I normally do under these circumstances, I did the dishes and then proceeded to bum around on the internet for a couple of hours.

I decided to take a walk to the bodega to pick up ingredients for Kombucha brewing and pie making. After yesterday's errand running extravaganza I figured being domestic was about all I could take. My neighborhood is filled with flower trees and it wouldn't be a May Day post without flowers.

My friend M'lou gave me some scobys that she had left over from her own kombucha brewing. They had been sitting in my fridge for about a week and I figured it was time to do something with them. I used this recipe and it was easier than pie. Im keeping my fingers crossed that everything turns out ok. I'll report back in about a week with the final verdict.

Now I have to say I was pretty staunchly against kombucha for many years. I found the taste off putting and overwhelming. Considering all the health benefits I wanted to like it but my taste buds had a different plan. All that changed when M'lou offered me some of her home brewed kombucha mixed with apple juice. It was delicious! It tasted more like tangy, fizzy juice than vinegary sour kombucha. I hope my first batch turns out well as I can see the drink becoming a summer obsession.

I had originally intended to end this day eating a a beautiful piece of strawberry rhubarb pie. Unfortunately I was spaced out while assembling the innards and i put in baking power instead of corn starch. To make a long, gut wrenching story short the pie was ruined. Tinny, fizzy and downright inedible.

I saved the day though by whipping up a batch of these poptarts which I made before with nutella filling and they didnt last more than five minutes. This time I had to be resourceful with the fillings using only what I had on hand. Two are nutella (what I had left over from the last batch), 7 are strawberry jam and the last is filled with maple peanut butter. we'll see how that one goes over. Dan had a rough day at work so these are going to be a little treat for him.

I haven't been crafting much lately but when I have time I try to get a little done on my second project from Alicia Paulsons Embroidery Companion.

I completed this a few weeks ago and it is one of my favorite things I've ever made.

Well I'm going to try to make an effort to post here more often but we've all heard that before.

Be well my little poodles.

Reviving the Blog!?

2010-02-15T16:17:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking alot recently about the progression of my crafting endeavors and have been trying to hone craft related goals for myself. I've been spending less and less time knitting as I'm having a harder time finding patterns that I "need" or find useful. I have an enormous amount of hats and shawls and generally my funds are too low to purchase sweater yarn. My goal is to never feel worn out on knitting so I've decided to focuse more of my attention on embroidery. Its always been a love of mine but knitting has for a long time held the number one place in my heart. I am starting to see the value of craft for economy as well. I always swore to myself I would never knit for money because I believe the time input is not worth the market price. However, I find myself teeming with ideas for embroidery projects that I could never keep all to myself and I would feel alot more comfortable asking a reasonable price for. So, in short I'm reviving the blog in hopes to share many of my new endeavors in the world of embroidery and perhaps work as a showcase for my upcoming etsy shop.
I do not meant to imply that this blog will serve only as a way to peddle my wears. I have spent many years reading and admiring blogs and I'm hoping that over time I will be able to create an enchanting arena for my fantasies in my many areas of interest. So enough with grand plans and silly schemes perhaps i should give you a little peak at what I've been working on today.

It's for my friend Alison in exhange for her charming white rabbit Gnome. More about him in a few days hopefully when I introduce you to the whole animal menagerie. I'm set on finishing it tonight so i can get it tea dyed and stitched up by tomorrow.

Goodnight my sweet peaches!

Free pattern for no one

2008-04-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

I wrote up the pattern for my ball jar cosy for the two other knitters in the world who would even need a mason jar cosy. ill post picture once its finished blocking. ive never written out a pattern before so be kind.

Edit- i wrote up the pattern before the cozy was finished drying from blocking. the fabric stretched quite a bit after it was dry. this could be due to the fact i pulled it on and off a few times while it was still wet but im going to assume that it was the cotton's natural bloom. becuase of this i would recommend knitting this with a size 6 instead of the size 7s listed. i havent tried this but i will be casting on for another soon. i dont particularly mind the growth as the cozy doesnt fall off or anything but is a little loose so i would recommend the needle change to those who want a very snug cozy.

Knitted Ball Jar Cozy*

*note the jar I have is a Kerr 1 quart wide mouth mason jar. if you have a different size or brand you may have to adjust the pattern.

materials- .25 skein Lion Brand Cottonease
size 7 24" needles (for magic loop) or set of 4 size 7 dpn if you prefer it
gauge- 4 st. to the inch in stockinette stitch

pattern stitch- Chevron Stitch
Multiple of 8 sts + 1

Row 1: k1, *p7, k1; rep from *
Row 2: k1, *p7, k1; rep from *
Row 3: k2, *p5, k3; rep from *, end p5, k2
Row 4: k2, *p5, k3; rep from *, end p5, k2
Row 5: k3, *p3, k5; rep from *, end p3, k3
Row 6: k3, *p3, k5; rep from *, end p3, k3
Row 7: k4, *p1, k7; rep from *, end p1, k4
Row 8: k4, *p1, k7; rep from *, end p1, k4
Row 9: Rep Row 2
Row 10: Rep Row 1
Row 11: Rep Row 4
Row 12: Rep Row 3
Row 13: Rep Row 6
Row 14: Rep Row 5
Row 15: Rep Row 8
Row 16: Rep Row 7

Pattern
Co. 8 stitches divide for magic loop

Round 1- *k1, increase 1 by knitting into the front and back of next stitch (kfb)* repeat to end of round-12 st.
Round 2 and all subsequent even rounds-knit
Round 3- *knit 2, kfb* repeat to end of round-16 st.
Round 5- *knit 3, kfb* repeat- 20 st.
Round 7- *knit 4, kfb* repeat- 24 st.
Round 9- *knit 5, kfb* repeat- 28 st.
Round 10 *knit 6, kfb* repeat- 32 st.
Round 11 *knit 7, kfb* repeat- 36 st.
Round 12 *knit 8, kfb* repeat- 40 st.
purl 1 round
next round-start chevron stitch pattern and repeat twice
next round-purl 3, slip 1, purl 2tog, pass slip stitch over, *purl 5, slip 1, purl 2tog, psso* repeat until 6 stitches before slip 1, purl 2tog, psso, purl 3.
purl 5 round
BO loosely.

I blocked the cozy on the jar. this seemed the eliminate the little nipple that is formed by the increases on the bottom.

chugging away

2007-11-28T17:43:00.000-08:00

So I don't have any Thanksgiving pictures like I thought I would. I was too tired from baking to remember to take any :( oh well there's always next year. Thanksgiving always has a way of springing up on me. After the holiday there are only two weeks of school left in the semester. I have been dutifully knitting and trying to ignore the mounting pile of crap I have to get done in that time span. Specifically a paper due next Tuesday the topic of which I have yet to decide upon. Never good on the nerves.
Luckily for my nerves I have been doing somethings that seem to sooth them. After a few days away I picked up my needles again and got to work on Garetts fingerless mitts. I had been working on Cigar gloves but after getting two fingers done on the first glove I decided I didn't like the way it fit. FROG! Soooo I cast on for Dashing and finished the first one last night.
I pretty much hate that picture but it was the best I could get. The mitt fits me fairly well and Garett and I have basically the same size hand so here fingers crossed (no pun intended)

I also cast on last night for the second hand towel for my mom. Road to Perdition and the first disc of the first season of Metalocalypse...
Nothing much to report on that though as its the same as the first one. I really like the pattern as its incredibly mindless but just exciting enough that I dont go crazy.

Another thing that sooths my nerves is being behind the eight ball so to speak. I went on a little Target run yesterday and picked up some holiday essentials. I was going to wait to use them but I couldnt sleep last night (like everynight) so me and the little elves got to work and whipped up this nice little pile of goodies.Now doesnt that look nice? Of course it isnt everything, just everything I have right now. Still waiting for a bunch of stuff in the mail.

And now that we're in the holiday mood I'll show off some ornaments I got myself today from work. They're nothing special and probably not that old (the bunny one isnt old at all) but I was feeling crummy and it was a nice little pick me up.

I like to think about using all the little ornaments and tid bits I get now in ten or twenty years decorating a christmas tree with my family to be. Its dorky I know but at least its a way of justifying buying a bunch of crap! :)

To worn out to rant

2007-11-21T22:01:00.000-08:00

I'm having one of those days where everything feels stale. I've lived this day, emotionally, before. That to me is tiring. I feel discontented, like I did when I was 16. That is not good. I just suddenly felt like everything I have is not what I want. I cant sleep, think, do my work, stay focused. Blah. Things come into my realm of vision and they stay and they remind me just how shifty and unhappy I am. I don't have anyone to talk to. I feel like I can't explain myself fully to anyone right now. I think its just the time of year, the way the light looks in my room, the smells. I guess its stupid to feel this way but I dont like keeping it bottled up. Its one of those moods where I just really want to go get a tattoo, or dye my hair, or go buy a bunch of shit I dont need. Thats called boredom right?

I baked today and that was fun. Tomorrow will be nice with foods and smells, and the nagging feeling like I should be doing work. I'll have pictures of the feast and hopefully smiling faces. I got out of the crazy side show that is Garett's parents Thanksgiving so its just me and the folks. As always it will be a nontraditional meal with leek soup, high brow mac and cheese, burritos (my sisters contribution), and oh yeah turkey.

PS I am totally in love with Hubble pictures. Anytime I am feeling down or worthless I like to look at galaxies that are billions of times bigger than us. It makes me microscopic but in a good way. it reassures me about all the stupid shit thats easy to get caught up in.

Regaining Health

2007-11-20T11:52:00.000-08:00

So I have been sick for the past 6 days. And it wasnt the type of sit on the couch and watch daytime tv and knit kind of sick it was the lay in bed with a fever and sleep kind. UGH. Today was a day of surprises though. Firstly I woke up feeling 1000% better with only a little cough. Secondly IT SNOWED!! (does happy snow dance) So I've just been curled up knitting contently all day.

In other news I learned how to do magic loop knitting. I don't know why I never learned but if I had known it was so damned easy I would have started years ago. I've ben cruising away on Garett's fingerless mitts. I'm about 3/4 of the way through both of then. I, as always, am knitting them both at the same time because i know I will succumb to the dreaded Second (Anything) Syndrome.

I cant get any very good pictures because the day is so gray and dreary but I'll leave you with the gift FOs pictures I took the other day.

My mom specifically requested hand towels for Christmas. I think this is the first time I've ever knit her something. She isnt a knitwear kind of person. I really enjoy knitting with cotton, something id never tried until recently. I love the way this towel turned out. I plan on knitting her a few more before christmas.

Hannah had baby Charlie Calyx Kai on November 3rd! I'm 99% done with his sweater. I just have to add the button and loop. Its really cute but it sits kind of funny. I think maybe my gauge changed halfway through. Oh well im sure it wont matter much to him.

I'm also working on some leggings for him but I dont have pictures of those yet. I had a hard time getting a decent picture of this. Hopefully I'll be able to take a better one with Charlie wearing it.

Happy Thanksgiving all you sweets!

I know I know

2007-11-13T20:20:00.000-08:00

Every year I bitch about how christmas is starting earlier and earlier, I know I'm one of those people, but secretly I kind of love it. I really love ornaments. I don't use them on the tree but hang them from the ends of my curtain rods, my rear view mirror and any other place I can stick them.

If I had to think of two things I love more than Christmas they would be Ebay and Sweden. So when I found something that combined all three I was naturally pleased.

I found these Swedish traditional straw ornaments which are just darling

I particularly love the little stars.

I think I am going to use them to decorate my other little splurge from Michaels last night. (Sorry for the absolutely hideous picture)

I know this is incredibly tacky but quite frankly I love tacky. I almost bought the feather tree but they didnt have the small one in pink. Yeah thats how much I love tacky. I am my mother's daughter.

In knitterly news, I finished garetts xmas very warm hat. Now I only have to knit two towels for my mom, a headband and mittens for my sister, gloves for my dad, handwarmers for garett, and handwarmers for cherie. oh joy!

Back Again

2007-11-12T18:53:00.000-08:00

So I'm not sure why I compulsively avoid this blog. I mean I spend a considerable amount of time on the internet, I enjoy reading other peoples blog, and I sometimes might have a tendency to narrate the adventures of my life (a la JD from Scrubs) in my head, who doesn't?. So why not keep my own blog? I geuss its a feeling of inadequacy. I mean my life isnt really that exciting and I feel like I have a hard time writing honestly in a blog. But I am going to try to keep at it. I have a goal of once a week for the time being.

I geuss I was pondering all this while shopping at Michaels this evening with my mom. If you didn't already know Michaels is having a big yarn (and other stuff) sale and I just couldnt resist. I bought stuff for christmas knitting I promise! ok so i might have bought a skein of SWS that I have been petting everytime I go into Michaels for the past six months. See the thing about me is that despite the fact that I have a compulsive knitter I am not a compulsive yarn buyer. I dont have a large stash at all. Ive found the way to not constantly cast on new projects is to buy only enough yarn for one project at a time. This has been working well for me until recently when I ordered some yarn from knit picks for christmas presents (and well some for myself) and i feel back in love with buying random yarn. I have found the best way to beat the i wanna knit something frivolous for myself blues is to scoot to walmart, pick up a ball of peaches and cream and cast on for a dishcloth.

So I have just discovered in my attempts to take some photos for this post that the light I use for my SAD works fairly decently for lighting photos at night! I took all of the following pictures using it as the primary source of light. The only colors that seem to look a little funky are the dark colors especially the purples which look totally blue. Anyway so this isnt just a boring text only post:

presenting The Very Warm Hat for the always cold ears of Garett

The color is a little washed out I'll have to post a better picture when its done.
These are from my trip to michaels

And here is a little sampling of my random project temptation knitting

This isnt the best picture of this washcloth but I dont feel like loading any more pictures onto my computer at the moment. I just adore this dishcloth because it has a great vintagey feel to me. I dont use dishclothes but garett and his roommates do so this was gifted to them. Undoubtedly it will be destroyed in two weeks but it was pretty while it lasted.

So see you in week (or less if im good or feeling procrastinaty)!

Sweden and Ravelry

2007-08-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

So our trip to Sweden is coming to a close (four more days!) but i think it has helped me organize myself in a lot of ways. In other ways it has made me realize that I don't always have to be organized. I have been doing some knitting but i wish i was doing more. Ravelry is a terrible things to become addicted to when you don't have access to your stash or any money to buy new yarns. i am itching to go through my stash and cast on for new projects. that being said i am also going to be quite dilligant with keeping up on my promise to have no more than two WIPs at a time (one hard and one easy) It is so inspiring to go through all of the pages and see everyones interpretations on different patterns. It is so exciting to me because this is a resource I have been craving for some time now. Every time I find a pattern online I want to make (which is quite often) I would Google and craftster it to see how other people felt about the pattern or see what yarns had been subbed. now with Ravelry I don't have to work anymore! It is also lovely to have such intimate (as intimate as the internet can be) contact with designers and yarn makers. When I found out that i could favorite a yarn company I just about freaked. I found this great company called Beaverslide Dry Goods. In all honesty I think I love the name of the company more than I could every love the yarn although it does look scrupseous. i think ill pick some up for Gretel by Ysolda when I decide to make it which will hopefully be as soon as possible.

I have been knitting a little bit. I bought some Drops Alpaca at the lovely knitting store in Lund Sweden for Endpaper Mitts but I soon realized I didnt like the stitch definition of the alpaca so I switched over to the vintage lace glove pattern. I love the way the pink ones have turned out and my only problem with them is that the pinky finger is a little tight on both hands. I have started on a pair of generic handwarmers for Zoe that I hope she likes. Actually I dont really care if she likes them or not I have to keep knitting so I dont get stressed about flying on Wednesday.

This was taken in a very unfinished and unblocked state. I just originally wrote unfished state which indeed they have been and will remain in an unfished state!

Its funny you start off a trip thinking you will be able to plan everything out and then literally nothing goes as you had thought. Its the same with knitting. None of the yarn I bought has matched the patterns I thought i would knit. I bought some Dale of Norway Falk for the Motorcycle Chica gloves but i hated the way the yarn knit up and I didnt care for the pattern too much either. I didnt find any amazing yarn stores in Europe though. Well actually that isnt entirely true the one is Lund is nice and so was the one in Zurich. I wish i had more money to indulge in local fibers but I suppose that will be one of my goals for when I return!

One of the nicest thing about this trip has been that i discovered I liked to cook which is something I hated before coming here. I always loved to bake but couldn't be bothered with cooking. I am still not very good but for the first time I have all sorts of dishes swirling about my brain waiting to be created. I made a tasty carrot soup for garett and mathilda this past week which knocked my socks off. Of course it would have been much nicer if it wasnt 80 degrees out but that is an entirely different story.

Hmm yummy. We bought the tastiest rosemary bread to go with it. Dont you just love that dish too. I have refused to eat out of any other bowl since ive been here. I was secretly hoping someone would just give it to me! I kid!

I hope I will be able to knit far more this semester than I was able to last semester. My course load will be lighter i think and I have a movie class which I think I will be able to do mindless knitting in which to me is like heaven. Watching classic movies for school and knitting is almost as good as knitting during downtime at work.

I will hopefully be blogging more since Ravelry will be forcing me to take pictures of my work and actually post online so why not write a post or two. I always end up deleting the ones I write which is kind of stupid I know

Well I'll leave you with a little picture of the beach at Malmo we went swimming at on Monday.

Happy Crafting my sweets!

Hiking

2007-05-08T19:10:00.000-07:00

Pfew I'm tired. G, his sis Helena, and I hiked up Mount Cardigan which was absolutely gorgeous but made me realize how out of shape I am. The smokers lung was definitely kicking my ass on the way up. We made it down alive surprisingly especially since Helena took quite a tumble halfway down the mountain. It was some amazing head over heels actions. Thankfully she managed not to hurt herself too badly. It felt great to be on top of a mountain again. I'm really trying to do as much hiking as possible before we leave so I'm ready for the Alps.
That doesn't nearly compare to what the Alps will be like but none the less impressive. I've been basking in my free time and have been trying to keep on top of my knitting. Miss Anna's birthday is a little less than a month away and although I will absolutely finish her(incredibly adorably little)

 sweater in time I have to remind myself not to slack and play DS instead to knit.

Since that picture I have finished the back and almost finished the left front of the cardigan. Thankfully Butterfly is slow going so I haven't been too tempted to pick that up.
G and I are going to the college's book sale tomorrow and I am pumped. Last year I got probably 15 book for about 5 bucks. Most of which were cookbooks and antique nature guides. Hopefully tomorrow won't be as good though because I don't want to spend money! I'm so bad I just can't resist a good book sale. Speaking of spending money or rather trying not to, I will also be accompanying Amity to the Newfane Flea Market and more importantly I'm going to Sheep and Wool Woo! Pray to the money Gods I don't find too many amazingly tempting things this weekend. I'll leave you with this, sweets.