mayflower

This past year, I....

posted on this blog once, landed a GREAT job as an Academic Advisor, started my Master's of Education in Higher Ed, and I BOUGHT A HOUSE!

I've started a blog chronicling my adventures in home ownership and home improvement projects. It's like a giant, never ending WIP! The blog was started just for my family, so it's a little on the goofy side, complete with ridiculous pictures of myself, and plenty of hobbit self references :)

I do plan to come back to this knitting blog soon, but until then, catch me over here !

Over the end-of-year vacation, I completed what has become my all time favorite project. I used the Victorian Pink Lamb's Pride Bulky that I bought a few months ago from the ladies at Discontinued Yarn. It looks like they have a few colors still in stock for a great price of $4.25 each! My favorite online yarn pusher Little Knits also has a selection on discount at $4.65 a skein.

I really love LP Bulky- it's a soft, cushy, single ply yarn that feels wonderful gliding through your fingers onto your needles. Plus, it knits up VERY quickly! My only complaint is that it sheds like crazy. One day as I was picking tufts of mohair and wool off my black dress pants, a stranger remarked, "It looks like you've been rolling around with a cat!" Oh so true!

Since I was home, my little sister modeled the sweater for me.

Pattern: Sweaterbabe.com's 'Fabulous Lace Inset Cardigan'

Yarn: 6 skeins (I think) of Lamb's Pride Bulky in Victorian Pink

Needles: 10 1/2 Addis

Notes: Super simple and fast. I loosely followed the pattern, but altered the number of stitches and shaping of the body and sleeve caps to fit me. I found the pattern to be a little restrictive. Instead of "knit in pattern for 6 inches" or "work until desired length", it was "work 36 rows". Additionally, the pattern is only written in one size, though you could certainly make some easy changes for other sizes. It is a very simple pattern, so once you read through and get the general idea, you could just ditch the instructions.

I love the sleeves! I do believe I still have a thing for belled sleeves (it was certainly my thing in the early days of this blog!)

I found these GREAT buttons, silvery with a subtle pink streak running through them. Perfect! I have always steered clear of buttons in the past, but after this positive experience, I'm full of buttony love!

I have much more to share, so I suspect my next visit will be sooner than 3 months from now! :)

Birthday socks! Nothing like a frenzied birthday deadline to kick yourself out of a knitting funk! One sock was actually knit in a day, after work and early into the next morning. These are actually my first completed pair of socks!

Funky knee-high birthday socks!

Pattern: I loosely followed Wendy's  basic pattern for toe-up sicks, which includes a short row heel and toe.  As I started working the short rows, I could not begin to visualize how they were going to morph into a toe...until they magically did. SO COOL.Toe up with short row toes and heels is now my favorite way to knit socks. I used Eunny's great tutorial to help me with the provisional cast on (scroll down to the Invisible Crochet Cast On II).

Yarn: Knit Pick's Felici in Aurora. What a FANTASTIC yarn! It's super soft with great yardage. This pair of knee high socks only took about 1 1/3 balls, though this could partially be attributed to short legs and little feet ;) When wet, the socks stretched like crazy, but quickly shrank back to perfect size after a trip through the dryer. The resulting socks were even more deliciously soft. I'll definitely be using this yarn again.

Needles:  Clover Takumi bamboo dpns, size 2.

They were shipped off to my little sister in Santa Barbara later that day, along with a copy of Letters to a Young Poet, one of my favorite books.

After a few crazy days of furious knitting, it felt strange not to have needles and yarn in my hands. I started hunting for something to knit, and found my in-progress thermal stuffed in a dingy plastic bag in the corner of my living room. Could knitting be sneaking back into the picture?  We'll just have to see!

Until next time, happy knitting!

While I have been quite unmoved to knit and to blog about said stagnant knitting, I have been quite marvelously inspired by many other things! Don’t you just love and relish those moments where you feel giddy with creative excitement?

There is nothing quite as pristine and inspiring to me as a brand new Moleskine notebook. A sleek, sexy black book held together with fresh, taut elastic, and wrapped tightly in plastic. The crisp, unmarked, untorn, unglued, unscribbled, undawdled, unsketched, unscrawled, unpainted, unsquiggled pages lie uniformly perfect. 240 pages of INFINITE possibility! I find myself hurriedly scribbling, doodling and gluing my way through the final pages of my current moleskine, deliciously dirty and scuffed, held together by the strained, twisted elastic, and bursting with bits and pieces of my life from the past few months. Oh new beginnings, and that sense of possibility and satisfaction of writing that opening word on the first, crisp, empty page. The little joys of life!

(2 of 5 moleskines...many more to come! Prior to the 5 are about 10 other filled books, the first of which was started in 1994! )

My moleskine, the “large blank notebook” variety, has permanent residency in my very full purple bag that follows me everywhere I go. Despite the rather rough treatment it is subjected to, the binding and elastic closure stay impeccably tight, and have never started to break. The pages lie flat, and the paper is perfect: smooth but not overly so, tolerant of light watercoloring and such a joy to write (draw/ scribble/etc.) on.

Some great books about journaling creatively that have inspired me: Everyday matters and Creative Licence by Danny Gregory, How to make a journal of your life by Dan Price, and Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art by Jennifer New. Clicking on the images will take you directly to Amazon!

Other highly inspiring things....

(FYI, the first three are video links)

This stunning performance by Pilobolus truly defies words.

Ross Lovegrove's work. Two statements he made flows perfectly with what I've been thinking about lately “observation, curiosity & instinct create good art”  and "What nature does is drill holes in things…it liberates forms”   

The idea of “open source architecture”

The Brothers Karamazov, a book that deserves to be savored slowly, preferably with a good cup of coffee, or with a frosty dark beer!

Discovery HD theater channel on hospital boy’s new 58” plasma TV and 5.1 surround sound (hello personal injury/ pain and suffering money!)  Truly mind-boggling.

Be inspired!

I seem to be riding a wave of knitting nonchalance. I go through periods of "knitting gung-ho-ism", where the needles fly furiously, and I feel constantly inspired and driven to create. Then there are those days that turn into weeks where the desire to sit still and perform tedious, repetitive motions dwindles drastically. Ah, but wonderful knitting waits patiently for the next frantic "OMG! I MUST KNIT NOW!" moment (see Silk Garden Fair Isle). However, knitting blogs do not patiently wait. Sporadic once a month postings can't be ideal...thank goodness for bloglines! People would get tired of checking this site for updates!

So the point is, I haven't been knitting...much. After the quick chunky knit top, and the more complex, slightly frustrating SGFI, I needed a mindless, small gauge project.  Thermal!  I wasn't terribly thrilled with it at first, but I definitely changed my mind after seeing a few really cute ones floating around blog land. It's been just what I need, but Oh.My.Goodness, it's taking FOREVER. But, I love it, and hopefully I'll be done by the time the cold weather rolls around.

And yes, yes, I know I STILL haven't posted pictures of the 5-buck top or the SGFI. I have yet to take decent pictures of either. But until then, he's a sneak peak of of the 5-buck recycled top!

Observe the lovely waist shaping...

Working with chunky yarn is great, but can all too easily result in bulky, unflattering knits. Because fit is of supreme importance to me when working with this quick-knitting yarn, I added plenty of shaping for a perfect fit.

All my creative time has shifted from knitting to cooking! I've been working on a food project for my sister's birthday, so all my free time has been spent cooking, tweaking recipes, photographing, and EATING the results.

mmm, german chocolate cake in cupcake form! Thank goodness for spinning classes!

My whole family will be flying to Seattle tomorrow from Texas (me), Santa Barbara (little sis), and San Diego (parents) to hang out with my older sister for a quick week! SO EXCITED! I get to see my family twice a year, at most, so our little reunions are always a blast.

Hope you are all enjoying your summer!

My biggest problem with blogging regularly is finding the time and light to photograph. Recently, the majority of evenings around here have been overcast or stormy, ruling out any possibility of taking FO pictures...yes, FO! The Silk Garden Fair Isle and my 5-buck top are finished! Additionally, I can't seem to find the most important part of my tripod (the part that screws to the bottom of the camera) Because of my lack of knitting and fiber related pictures...a quick detour to food blogging!

I've become quite enamored with dumplings of all sorts, particularly these delicious and delicate pan fried and steamed gyoza. The technique and process is simple, and the filling possibilities are endless! This particular batch had shredded cabbage, diced seitan, grated carrot, green onions, chopped garlic and ginger, broccoli bits, and shiitake mushrooms, all lightly cooked, then seasoned with Hoisin sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil. I added a little cornstarch at the end to help everything stick together.

I used store bought gyoza skins to simplify the process even more. Once you get the hang of it, stuffing, sealing, and crimping the dumplings goes by really quickly, and you end up with a cute pan full of gyoza ready to be cooked!

I brown the bottoms in an oiled pan, add a little water, cover and steam until the skin turns lightly translucent.

Glistening, delicious dumplings!

I like to dip them in a mixture of Sriracha (roasted chili sauce), lime juice (or rice vinegar) and soy sauce. Absolutely amazing. Try it!