The Pink Pirate

 finished! a little gift for rachel’s twins.  ** spoiler alert** stop here if you are rachel! Read the rest of this entry »

here you see the aftermath of the great iced coffee battle of june, 2008.  max was quite clearly the winner, as he did not stop jumping on the desk/standing up on my knee and batting at the cup/purring and begging until he got what he wanted - first the straw, which only kept him busy for a moment. then the lid, which kept him busy for a minute. finally, i relented and gave him the cup with the last few drops of coffee in it. he got the cup stuck on his head, but would not do that again once i got the camera out, instead just choosing to guard his prizes. on the knitting front, things are going slowly… its been too hot this week. i only have a few inches left on the body of my wicked though, and a pocket.  

i have been working away on my “wicked” and it is so much fun! i am just about done with the part after the armpits. it is going along really quickly. the hardest part about this sweater so far, has been winding the yarn. its kind of finicky to wind. but really pretty and soft, so i get over it.  i have been asked to make a new wicked for YITF, as their current wicked must go back home to tink’s sister in texas. here it is - a bag full of rowan felted tweed. and here are some saartjie’s bootees to be, for my friend jennifer’s baby which i am currently calling sesameseedavocado anderson. i dont think she reads this blog, so i dont expect that i am ruining any surprises. i really want to crochet sesameseedavocado a chromium star blanket, but have not yet tried, let alone learned, how to crochet. so i plan to knit a couple little things, get some books, and some various things from around here to send as a “happy baby” package. and if the blanket gets in, extra happiness. if not, maybe it will be an xmas present! 

yesterday bertha and i went to providence for the RISD alumni sale.  it was a fun day, and i had a particularly good time briefly revisiting the campus, where i had spent 6 weeks at a pre-college photography program back in 1996.  had the day been less rainy, and june and bertha (mostly june, who is no longer excited to sit in the car and then a stroller for hours and hours) been willing, i would have liked to wander around some more… but there is always next time.  i did not buy a lot, because many of the items were beautiful AND expensive… but again… next time.  however, the undisputed highlight of the day was receiving the vog on socks that bertha had so very kindly knitted for me for a birthday gift!  i have never had a pair of handmade socks before (that i can remember anyway) and they are so beautiful!  (by the way y’alll, i had no idea how hard it is to take a picture of your own feet and have it come out decently…. these are the best 2 out of about 20!)

 so i went to YITF and bought myself some yarn and a pattern to make “wicked”.  the yarn is misti cotton.  it is soft and silky and the color is so pretty and grapey.  i am excited for it. i plan to make it with 3/4 sleeves and the pocket, and probably make it a little longer than the pattern calls for, because i do not really like short sweaters on me. the second purple legwarmer is about 2/3 done.  any day now i might decide to finish it.   my dad “helped” me make these shelves, and he finished them off for a birthday present.  i love them!  it is so exciting to me that after 2 1/2 years our house is really starting to look like i want it to.  its still kind of cluttered… but i am working on it. i got myself some new camping toys.  i got a new headlamp (princeton tec FUEL, of course it is pink) to replace my tikka+ that the battery door will not stay shut on anymore.  i got the little case to keep it in, because i am hoping it will be easier to find in my bag that way.  also, the squishy bowl (and cup, which i probably will not use often) to replace the hard plastic bowl that gets awkward to pack.  and, i got a pair of the north face “aero” capri pants, which i love and have worn every day since i got them!  also, a new pair of sneakers so i can retire 3 pairs of wrecked ones!  now i just need to go camping.  i have been itching to go for a couple of weeks, ever since the weather warmed up.  and finally, TA DA! i completed my collection of blueprint magazines (best magazine EVER , what were you thinking when you decided to stop making them martha)!  and got my parents to take me to ikea to find them a fashionable home.  i got about 25 magazine boxes… should be about enough to last me, oh, the rest of my life.  (i hope.) 

this afternoon i was taking my grandmother’s wedding ring and her stepmother’s engagement ring to my favorite jewelry store ever because they had been stuck on her finger and she had the doctor cut them off. (so sad, so sad) so i went to rockport and there was nowhere to park, but that was not surprising. so i parked far away from my destination and was sort of surprised to find myself having to walk through a movie set to get there. bearskin neck is playing sitka, alaska in a movie called “the proposal” which i vaguely remember reading about in the newspaper sometime in the last couple of weeks. so that was interesting. then i went to take a walk with kristiina and we went back down so she could see too, and then when we were there we ran into her cousin jen. so we walked through it and out to the end of the road, then on the way back through again walked right past ryan reynolds getting all makeup-ed. i loved that show he was on a while back, “2 guys a girl and a pizza place” (aka 2 guys and a girl) i could have like, given him a high five if i wanted to be a big rude dork. he was tall. he must be cool, because he went out with god and because he was on scrubs once. thats my story, and im sticking with it. yep.** these pictures were in the gloucester times today**  

i found this adorable little chair a couple of years ago out on the curb on trash day, and thought to myself, that would be the perfect chair for the writing desk i would like to have someday. all it needs is a cute slipcover. for my birthday in 2006, my dad built the desk for me, modeled after a picture in a catalog. (my dad should go into business building beautiful furniture. it has become a hobby of his since he built this desk.) so ever since then i had been thinking i should get around to covering it. sometime approximately last summer i bought the fabric i had been loving when it was discontinued and on clearance for 75% off from maine cottage. the pattern is called “branchberry” and the color is “shrimp”. it was only the color that was discontinued, and not the pattern. (it turns out i got enough to cover this chair, make a bunch of throw pillows, and probably even slipcover the chair i would like to get from ikea! but that is ok, cause i love this fabric.) i made up the pattern myself, and put this together, with a little bit of sewing machine help from my mom, in about 4 hours on sunday. i really love it! (this is the desk my dad built to go with this chair.)  

first things first - one completed legwarmer from the LMKG pattern.i thought i would finish both of them during the roadtrip, but there was too much to look at and i only finished about half of the first one on the trip. they are made of sheep shop 3 in a gorgeous purple color (because the brown/pink was gone… but this color is really pretty too).  the large ball of yarn is the second legwarmer. the small ball, which is what is left from the first large ball of yarn, will probably be something like a long arm warmer. for added cuteness, here is max. i was filling up the cat food container and he came over and had a few bites. he was probably thinking something like “wow, this is the nicest thing you have ever done for me.” i love that kitty!

•  and now, onto the trip! 

 i completely forgot to mention in my last post, that while in los angeles i went to knit cafe. while i was there, i got their book (a perfect souvenir!) and one skein of debbie bliss “pure silk”. it was such a cute store! i only had about 10-15 minutes to spend there because our original flight was cancelled due to snow, and our new flight got us there around 1130 pm, which pretty much killed about 75% of our planned time to do and see things in L.A., but that is ok. i will go back sometime and do stuff. also, the first thing that happened the morning after we got there was that i discovered that BOTH of my camera batteries were dead. so i put one on the charger, we went to breakfast, and went back for #1, and put #2 on the charger. then the fun started. 

•  as soon as we crossed into arizona, we started to see saguaro cactuses. 
• we ate lunch in wickenburg, AZ at bar 7 restaurant. they had really good mexican food there, even though it looked like a dive once you got inside. 
• here is a better, not taken out the window of a moving car, picture of saguaro cactuses. 
• arizona was flat for a long time, then suddenly we drove around some big mountains for a while. here is a picture of where we came out of the mountains, into jerome. 
• jerome was a teeny little town with about one very windy road twisting through the buildings. unfortunately, i missed getting a picture of the “bordello pizzeria“, which i found incredibly amusing. 
• here is a so-so picture of the gorgeous red rocks that surround sedona. 
• we stopped to walk around and have a little rest at tlaquepaque in sedona, which is a nifty little complex of art galleries and shops, with lots of sculpture-y things in the courtyards. this is a barbed wire burro. 
• then, through a canyon and up another twisty mountain road to flagstaff. there was a beautiful waterfall, way up high. 
• a close up of the same waterfall (love that zoom lens!). 
• this was by far the nicest hotel we stayed at during the entire trip, the travel inn in flagstaff. it had a nice view of mountains, and freight trains. but, and this is important, it was not so close that the trains kept us up all night.
• the grand canyon. i took about a million pictures, and they are ok. but when you go there, the pictures just do not do justice to the beauty of the place. it was icy on the rim in mid february, but there were not tons and tons of people. we went before in the end of feb/first week of march and i think that that is an ideal time to go. you miss the spring break rush, but there was much less snow and ice around. 
• i love this old view finder. you move the tube into one of the grooves, and it tells you what you are looking at when you look through the scope. 
• the sunset was beautiful. 
• tim and jake sat on the edge and had chili and beer for dinner while we watched the sunset. 
• in the morning we left, stopping by “the watchtower” at the eastern end of the canyon. 
• a closer view 

more pictures later…. i took about 300 during the entire trip, so i am sure i will be posting photos at least a couple more times.

so, the other day we got home from a week and a half long trip. we flew to los angeles, picked up a car and drove it home. it was a long time to be gone, but it was a fun time. i went with jake, and his friend tim came along too. i won’t say too much… there was so much to see, so i will just share some of my favorite pictures. 

•  welcome to california! 
• chicken and waffles, a very special valentine’s day breakfast! 
• hollywood sign (you just can’t get close to it anywhere!) 
• batman was hanging out at grauman’s chinese theater, he is in that dark part at the bottom :) 
• i didn’t see any people using crosswalks… but these ducks did. 
• venice beach - the ocean is on the WRONG SIDE! 
• i love jake’s aunt & uncle’s chess set 
• night sky at joshua tree national park (brightened up in photoshop)
• sunrise (and the same rocks), joshua tree national park 
• a joshua tree 
• skull rock (ARRRRRRGH MATEY!), j.t.n.p. 
• tim said this was good, jake did not agree… i was not even going to try it. 
• sunset from our campsite, j.t.n.p. 
• jake by an amusing sign, cholla garden, j.t.n.p. 

i have to say, joshua tree is one of the prettiest places that i have ever been to. the only thing i did not love there was that it was so windy the first night that our tent would not stay up. oh, and also there were signs that said something like “watch your hands, your feet, your seat” and had a picture of a giant snake…… i probably would have locked myself in the car for the rest of the trip if i had seen a snake like that! next up, the grand canyon.

i am talking about my hourglass sweater.  it is all knitted.  it EVEN FITS!  wow.  i was kind of surprised about that.  i still have 3 of 4 funny spots where the arms and the body did not join quite right…. but thats ok too.  i am quite sure that there is no other sweater in the world quite like this one. the crazy pattern on it is the same on the front as the back, basically.  this was my first sweater, and it was pretty easy. the pattern was not difficult, and i only modified it a little bit.  i knitted a little lacy bit (from the lacy camisole in the same book), and i made the body a couple inches longer than the pattern called for. it is still a little short, i could have made it a couple more inches longer than i did.  also, i did not do the hemming at the neck and sleeves, i like how it rolls. i added about 5 extra rows at the neck so it would roll even more.  i love this yarn.  it is soft and sparkly and silky… what more could you ask for?  it is blue heron rayon metallic in the color “marshgrass”, which i love because it is pink and green and sparkly. (by the way, this is not the best picture ever. i am aware of that. next time i take a picture without daylight, i will use the flash.)  the pattern told me that i would need 3 skeins, but really, i did not even use two.  there is still quite a bit of the second skein left.  so i took the extra one to YITF and traded for a brand new skein in the color “deep space” which is dark blue and black with gold sparkles.  it is so pretty.   i have not decided what to make with it yet.  and - coming soon!  pictures from roadtrip 2008 L.A. -> MA!