Spazzmanda

In the past 24 hours, I’ve learned the following:

1. Don’t buy painters tape at Big Lots, it can peel the drywall off of the walls (and paint too.)

2. Sweating is a good thing.

3. Don’t spray paint your switch plate covers on a teensy square of newspaper, the white over spray WILL get on your black patio table.

4. Gainesville had like a foot of rain in the past few days (and I have the full watering can I left on the patio to prove it.)

5. Cats like yarn… still. Ziplocs are your friend always.

6. NEVER stereotype the “type” of person that knits or crochets as being either elderly or female…

Don’t you love his outfit? That is dedication. That is delightful. That is… a whole lot of yellow. (Disclaimer: This is not my photograph, it was forwarded to me and I’m merely sharing it with the world because, honestly, someone must.)

I got home from my wicked cool yoga class tonight only to find a mysterious and smuooshy package. I saw it was from a little slice of heaven on earth, Knitch, only the finest yarn shop in Atlanta. Inside was this:

A pattern for a shrug and some of the most beautiful beaded silk I’ve ever seen. (I’ve been coveting this yarn for, like, ever. But it wasn’t in the budget on my current yarn diet.) I thought to myself: “Self?”  “Did I win something???”

Nope, my fantastic friend Jen (of Sugarchef.com) sent it to me as a pick me up. And boy howdy, it is the perfect end of an almost perfect day. I had a good day at work, a good evening at the gym and now I have some silky, sparkly lovliness to occupy the rest of the night.

Jen, I can’t thank you enough. You are truly a wonderful, wonderful friend and I’m missing you lots.

Ok, one close-up for the road:

MMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Have a great weekend!

Mom came over again and we painted some more. Still not finished. This is going to take a long, long time.

Here is the progress of her RUG that she is knitting. (Who knits a rug? I wouldn’t be able to bear someone putting their feet on something that took this much time, but whatever floats your boat.) I think it looks like Uncle Sam’s lower intestine, but I’m assured it will be rug-shaped.

She then made me this salad, which was very appetizing even though there were no tomatoes.

I’m mad today. Mad is better than sad. Sad sucks.

Angry is working for me today.

Task- to create new throw pillows to go with old bedspread/new sheets color palette:

But I don’t wanna cover up my circus toile (sniff, sniff)

Ok, it is a tad girly, technically it matches, but girrrrrrrrly. So now I have this:

My mother helped me select these two fabrics that contrasted each other nicely. I was wanting some sort of trim to finish these off – and we all know that trim can get expensive (right Auntie Kandie?) so she talked me through this neat trick, I took some cording I had at home and covered it with contrasting fabric then sewed it into the pillow just like trim.

And for the finished project:

This concludes our session of Adventures in Sewing. Next time, pillows the sequel- sofa throws.

A thought that comes to my mind almost daily. I don’t know why some greenery enjoys the pleasure of my company while some flora abandons ship almost immediately. I have no green thumb, but I like to grow stuff, when I can. This year Jeff got me a loverly hummingbird bush (amongst other fauna) and I am eternally grateful for the beauty that is our patio right now. Now we have also adopted some plants that were “liberated” from an untimely demise (i.e. the dumpster at Lowe’s by Jeff’s Mom) and we have planted them as well, what the hell.

Now it is getting truly exiting. Brace yourselves, we have a burgeoning head of lettuce (about three bites worth) happily growing alongside some cilantro, which is also flourishing, I’ll have you know.

Now for my personal favorite… drumroll please… our “vegetable.” Somewhere along the way this plant lost its tag, but from the bar code we have deciphered that, at maturity, we will have a crop of “vegetable.”

Good to know. The center green thing that is positively thriving is a lonely refugee patio tomato, of THAT I can be certain (it had a tag.) However, the two spindly things on the outside, well, that can be anyone’s guess, but by the way that they are creeping, I’m going to hypothesize that maybe… possibly… they could be a bean of some sort? An Okra plant? Won’t this be fun? I’ll be sure to take a photographic essay of our journey together –so stay tuned.

Now for your daily dose of eye candy. I merged two birthday gifts today in a most delightfully brilliant way (um thank you, thank you very much). First, some really cute glittery rock star decals with my equally rocking, slicker-than-snot sewing machine- wanna know how I know it is rockin? Take a gander:

What, what?

Now from the side:

Boo-ya! NOW I’m ready to roll!

Who knew that I was a capable seamstress? Based on the string of foul words that came out of my mouth the last time I attempted to sew something with a machine, I would have never dreamed it possible. Apparently, the right tools make all the difference in the world! I recently acquired a loverly NEW sewing machine from John Olin and Margaret (hi there folks!) and it looks something like this:

Singer Esteem say hello to the world. This thing is truly wunderbar. The first very important item of business was to fill out the warranty card, you know, just in case you monkey strength the thing and have to have something, er, replaced. (I didn’t do that by the way, but it has been known to happen to other appliances, like the Cuisnart.)

Then you can sew. Once I got through the basics I was ready to rock and roll, the Singer Esteem (don’t you just love that?) is a MUCH nicer machine than the one I inherited a few years ago, but in all fairness, it was a 50 year old dinosaur of a machine so it is like comparing apples to fossilized apples or something. my Esteem is light weight, easy to understand and it sews like buttah. I lined my rosebud bag and finished it last night! It took two tries, but I made lemons into lemonade. My first lining was much too small, so I made a second, better lining, and the first became a snazzy hidden side pocket see?

Notice the stripes in the pocket and in the bag go opposite ways, let us pretend I did that on purpose (I like the effect though) I also used my zigzag feature because that is how I roll. And here is the finished bag on the outside:

All in all, not a bad project. The actual knitting was done in a flash, then add about 2 hours to sew on all the roses, leaves and insert the handles and another 2 hours (give or take) to do a lining. I am very pleased with my new summer bag!  Hey, thanks Jenny for the pattern suggestion, and again to John and Margaret for the snazzy new machine and of course, I’d like to thank the academy…

Now, you too can create a delightful “Green Ogre” hat (a la Shrek) for your little beasties. I am thrilled I get to share this as my very first pattern. I’ve made things up before for sure, but this time I took the trouble to do MATH for you people and type it all out.

Click on the link below and you should magically have a PDF file.

Enjoy!

spazzgreenogrehat

(Modeled by my favorite red-headed monster. Photograph courtesy of my pal Olaf. I totally “borrowed” it from his flickr site because the only other hat photo I have is this. I’m sure all will understand why I thieved.)

*Disclaimer: I am not as proficient in mathematics as I am verbal, and subsequently, the pattern may not be without flaw. But handmade things have flaws and I’m ok with that. If you are not, I suggest you gauge swatch and do your own math. Let me know if you have problems with the pattern, but I reserve the right not to care. It is free. Free as a bird. Free like the wind. Free as…Well, you get it.

I had a truly awesome weekend. The perfect balance of fun and productivity- in the face of all the stress from work and some bizarre superfluous drama on the home front- we really needed it.

On Friday we went to Chow Baby, an awesome restaurant in Atlanta, for Olaf‘s birthday. It is a stir fry bar- you go through and get all your stuff- veggies, noodles, sauces and meat and they stir fry it for you. The trick is to try a little at a time so you can go through more than once (it is all you can eat for $11.99) I followed a recipe the first time then went through “free style” the second time. It was awesome and so worth the trip to celebrate our super fly friend turning 31.

On Saturday, after some feverish knitting with my ladies, I went over to Rachel and Caleb’s for some much needed, drama-free camaraderie.  It was a Mexican potluck- and so awesome. We may start doing this once a month it was such a good time- I got to see some very old friends and make some new ones too(maybe next time we will actually get to playing some games!) We played with all the babies present- it seems everyone is squeezing out offspring right now- it sure makes for some fun discussions to walk in on!

And today- I did my taxes (all by myself thank you very much) and have cast on two successfully swatched projects! Oh, and I didn’t mention the very best part, here is the aforementioned EYE CANDY:

Yes, that would be some Kool-Aid dyed, self-striping (God willing) sock yarn. I followed this tutorial. Jeff has already had to help me through some tangling issues and I promised him I would not attempt to put this into a ball without his help no matter how confident I am that I won’t tangle it, because naturally, I’m a very skilled yarn tangler. (He takes such good care of me.)

So, I’m ready to face the week, and good thing too, we have a BIG event at work that I need to be on the ball for. Heck, I don’t think I’ll even need a Benadryl to help me sleep tonight!

I had this truly batshit idea last month to replicate the original Fargo movie poster in actual (i.e. not digital) cross stitch for Fox’s birthday. (She loves the movie as much as I and I wanted to see if it could be done.)

It CAN:

I learned several things:

1. Cross stitch is NOT as fun (to me) as knitting.

2. Expect delays-elaborate borders take much TIME and you should add many hours to your initial estimation and might (cough) miss the deadline.

3. Not everyone ‘gets’ or has seen Fargo, so you have a lot of ‘splaining to do when working on this project in public.

4. It was totally worth it! (See the reaction HERE and HERE.)

UPDATE: I have no pattern for this. I made the beast by using a photo of the original movie poster blown up very, very large so you could see all the little pixels. It served as a pseudo-’pattern’ and it was not really to ‘scale’ (It didn’t exactly match the gauge of the grid of the cross stitch fabric) so I had to wing it a little and create the same overall shapes and shadows. I am not very skilled with cross stitch, so it probably has many imperfections. The text was backstitched except for the “Fargo” logo, which I drew on at the very end with pencil then filled in with thread using a very imperfect embroidery technique- and yes- that is a real needle.

Overall it is a success and I think it is sort of “funny looking” (like the little guy) dontcha know.

The end is in site for the costume construction for DragonCon. We will be revamping Pee Wee and Miss Yvonne (last year’s Halloween costumes) sometime this weekend in addition to our group outfit- the Life Aquatic team- and our ultra-secret creation. I just have to pack and make sure I don’t forget a single eyelash, in addition to packing up the car for the beach!

I have managed to do some knitting.

See- Baby Bobbi sans stuffing

I still have much work to do, but it is finishing stuff. The last arm is knit around the stuffing and closed up. This yarn has been a tad difficult to work with, but I went down a needle size too so the fabric would be more dense so it is probably my own fault. (I wouldn’t want his guts to come out, you know.) Then I will do the ears, a duplicate stitch around the neck – which I’m not quite sure of how or why it needs to be done, but I’ll do it. And then embroider the face. The head is freaking HUGE. I looked at the photo and I believe the head is supposed to be as big as the torso, but it looks, so far, gargantuan. But I think I may still be able to pull it off.

It snuggles good though. And, because I will eventually HAVE to mention it, so does this:

Look what Dr. Doolittle found in the woods. Yup, that would be a beh-beh kitteh, about a week old, abandoned by its momma and starving to death. No, it will not be living with us. In fact, I’m hoping that someone that will remain nameless will get off the fence and take this here little-un off our hands once it is old enough to go. (It has to be bottle fed and so far I’m proving myself to be not very maternal, thank goodness Jeff is maternal enough for the both of us.)