Knitting

Finally finished the Cat Bordhi Discovery Sock.

Pattern: Discovery Sock from Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters

Yarn: Madelinetosh Tosh Sock in Oak

Knitting this sock was an adventure. I learned new techniques (knitting on two circulars); I now have my first completed fingering-weight project; I probably spent more time looking at my own feet than I did as a six-month-old; and my mind was generally blown.

Knit myself a little scarf.

Pattern: Kink by Jodie Gordon Lucas

This would mark the first time I have ever cast on and completed a Knitty project within a month of it going live. I am so proud of me! It was a fun, easy to memorize pattern, too, my purse knitting for three weeks or so.

Yarn: Malabrigo Silky Merino in Nocturnal

I must have had this yarn for three years or more. I bought it right when Malabrigo first rolled out the test skeins, from Imagiknit. I’ve cast on three or four projects with it, but it was only one skein and they never worked out. This one did, and now I have a slinky little merino/silk scarf to throw ’round my neck dramatically before driving off in my convertible Duesenberg.

Started a Top Secret Colorwork Project. FUN.

Pattern: It’s a Secret to Everybody.

I cannot tell you what pattern this is, because then it would be immediately obvious what I am up to. I will say that I like the two-row instant-memorize pattern. The prettiest TV knitting I’ve done.

Yarn: Stitch Nation by Debbie Stoller’s Full ‘o Sheep.

Yarn snob here, no apologies. But! I found Full ‘o Sheep at Beverly’s, and it’s really nice, so far. The colors are gorgeous together, and the yarn is pretty soft for 100% wool. It’s like Brown Sheep without the itchy. I like!

Sewing (I still do this!)

Sewed an envelope pillow on a whim.

Pattern: made up

Knitting will always be my first craft love. But there is something about thinking, “Hey, what if there was a pillow here?” and going away for half an hour and coming back with a pillow that is terribly appealing. Knitting does not work this way.

Fabric: Amy Butler

Not making an Amy Butler quilt leaves you with A LOT of upholstery-weight fabric). When I am done with the storm of sewn handcrafts I plan to unleash on my home in the coming months, we will be an all-Amy Butler household.

Finally taught myself blind hand stitching so I could finish the pillow I pretended to have finished last summer.

Running

Ran two 5Ks and a 10K. Saw the return of Runner’s Knee while training for a half-marathon. (Why, no, I don’t tend to overdo things. Why do you ask?) Back to physical therapy, it appears. I walked for half an hour today without problems; hoping to start limping around Golden Gate Park by next week.

Other things I did

• Roasted parsley root from my CSA with potatoes, carrots and cubed pancetta.
• Acquired two guinea pigs despite having a lifelong aversion to nonhuman mammals.
• Evaluated a lovely new shul (very favorably, I might add). I think we have found a keeper.
• Started a new rewrite of an ancient manuscript. What was once 18th century historical romance has become 18th century alternate history paranormal (she said with a straight face).
• Figured out how to adapt FlyLady for my own personality: by making simple routine lists and keeping to them.

Plans for the rest of the summer

• Continue to write said 18th century alternate history paranormal (continuing to maintain a straight face).
• Finish Top Secret Project.
• Blog Mad Men.
• Get back to training for a half-marathon (hopefully the San Jose Rock ‘n Roll in October).

In short, writing, knitting, blogging, running. Wish me luck!

This weekend, I finished my birthday present. Happy birthday, me.

Pattern: Saroyan (from feministy).
Yarn: Lonesome Stone Alpaca Worsted
Color: Shades of Aspen Leaves

Other than the Giant Chuppah of 2008, I think this is the first lace pattern I’ve really buckled down and finished. It was really nicely designed — the lace panel was so teeny, with only one repeat, so’s I could actually carry the project around. I knitted this shawl on MUNI, on the couch watching Hoarders, in the car waiting for school pick-up, and while sitting around at a taping of Mythbusters (”WHAT YOU SAY,” you say? Top secret until the episode airs, sorry).

I used blocking wires for the first time with this little scarf, and I have to say I wish I had had them when I blocked the Ginormous Chuppah instead of millions of little straight pins. Hindsight, etc.

2. Draft Snake

After recently acquiring Lotta Jansdotter’s recent book on sewing simple and attractive projects, I really wanted to get around to sewing a draft snake. For the uninitiated, draft snakes are narrow tubes of stuffed fabric placed across the bottoms of doors or in window jambs to block drafts, making the home more energy-efficient.

They are also a cute way to use fabric scraps!!!1!

And they are impossibly easy to make. I have a big, drafty front window, so, last Saturday,  I measured and measured, cut my little pieces of fabric, and sewed the whole thing, in a total of about half an hour. Then I went to fill it with all the rice we had in the house.

It filled about six inches of the snake.

So eventually we acquired several more pounds of rice.

Still not enough.

(I live in San Francisco for its majestic views of the ocean.)

Here is the draft snake in its finished glory.

Ten pounds of rice. TEN. Every time I look at it I feel the pride of craftsmanship/profound guilt for filling a mildly functional decorative item with ACTUAL FOOD PEOPLE COULD EAT.

Pattern: Draft Snake from Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing
Fabric: Scraps — Alexander Henry 2-D Zoo, Kona Cotton, old cotton twill from MUNI driver costume

At least, if the End Times start, we will have a secret food source.

3. Mini Quilt

Pattern: Tiny Dishes by Virginia Cole
Fabrics: Amy Butler & other misc scraps from my Off-Kilter Pillow
Status: Not Done Yet And It’s Gonna Be A While

I like sewing big rectangles to other big rectangles. I do not like cutting out fussy little triangles and sewing them to other, equally fussy little triangles. I really don’t like cutting fabric at all, as it turns out. It’s always kinda wonky when I do it, as you can see.

I still have several rows of straight stitching — as well as binding — to do on this mini quilt. I am SO GLAD I did not jump into my first proper patchwork quilt. I can’t imagine having cut out two hundred triangles and then having to piece them together. The quilters of Gee’s Bend were already amazing to me, but now I think they are quilting superheroes.

4. Craft Space

My January house objective (this is a thing now) is supposed to be Extremely Making My Room Over. That hasn’t happened in its entirety, but at least there are no bicycles in my room, junk was sent away forever, and only the oldest unsorted papers are still lying around. It sucks much less.

I have this idea of gradually covering the wall next to my sewing machine with letterpress prints. I can’t do this all at once, but I did order some postcards from Etsy.

They’re reproductions of a gorgeous series (almost entirely sold out) of letterpress broadsheets about feminist heroes, by Anagram Press.

I really hope they don’t sell out of the Harriet Tubman and Marie Curie ones before I get around to buying them, ’cause AMAZING.

It is hard to describe how good I am at graphic design (no martyr).

This year, I’ve decided that one resolution is going to get rid of that sad failure-feeling: No Martyrs.

I’m going to resolve to do a bunch of things I like this year, and maybe the things I don’t like will sort of fall into line. Maybe not. I don’t care. I’m not going to be a martyr, sitting around waiting for someone to give me permission to have a fulfilling life. I’m turning [redacted] years old tomorrow, and I plan on having a lot more fun starting immediately.

This will also make a lot of other people’s lives a lot happier, since a martyred mama is a bitterly sarcastic mama, and if mama is bitterly sarcastic everybody is bitterly sarcastic. Nothing is sadder than a four-year-old making biting comments under his breath.

No Martyrs: New Year’s Resolutions

1. Self-imposed moratorium on gift knitting

I love knitting for others, but, as a result, I rarely knit things I want to knit because I don’t think other people would like them. Also when you are knitting an already late gift, every stitch is infused with profound guilt and resentment. Everyone loves gifts like that.

So I am knitting myself a birthday present, and it is already almost late, and I do not care.

Pattern: Saroyan by Liz Abinante

It’s really fun, with mindless bits coupled with fun bits, i.e. perfect for my lifestyle. It is, implausibly, my first lacy scarf knit for myself.

Yarn: Lonesome Stone Alpaca Worsted in Shades of Aspen Leaves

Buttery soft yarn that I bought on vacation in Grand Lake, Colorado, which was thus Too Nice To Do Anything With. Not anymore! The color is gorgeous and periodically there are little bits of vegetable matter, signifying that the animals who produced the fiber hung out under the sky and thus have happy lives.

2. Finally Sign Up for a Graphic Design Class With Cathy Z.

I have been a closet scrapbooker ever since I discovered my first issue of Simple Scrapbooks, a now-defunct magazine that, instead of just relentlessly pushing product, tried to teach fundamentals of graphic design in a friendly and entertaining way. Central to this process was Cathy Z., my first graphic design crush (yes, it’s a thing! shut up) whose devastatingly simple layouts taught me that scrapbooking could be an art form. I bought both her books, I relentlessly lurk on her blog, and I just signed up for a twelve week online class with The Master. I AM NO LONGER A CLOSET SCRAPBOOKER. I WANT TO MARRY PATTERNED PAPER. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ME.

P.S. In the interests of no more martyrdom, I will probably be subjecting you to scans of my layouts. No Martyrs!

3. Just Buy Some Pants, Already. On Clearance.

Finding out your favorite jeans don’t fit is like throwing on your coat, going down to the garage, and discovering you can no longer squeeze into the front seat of your car. It is horrifying and Not Tenable. Jeans are the car of clothes (?). I am not a martyr, needing pants does not make me a more devoted mother or get me to the gym, I bought three pair of pants at Banana Republic yesterday.

On clearance. 30% off clearance prices, actually. Loving clearance racks is not part of my martyrdom.

4. Join a Gym

I really did like the Wii Fit for a while there, but I have always loved belonging to a gym. I love the anonymous healthy-minded people around me; I love the unlimited weights and machines; I love the lack of rain; and I was coming up with all these reasons why we couldn’t afford it.

We joined the Y. They have childcare, which I have used several times, and SHOWERS where there are no CHILDREN. And exercise equipment and what have you. Training for a 5K is suddenly 100% less impossible, not to mention all the physical therapy I have been not doing. Also running at 12 mph while listening to Jay-Z and watching Gordon Ramsay scream obscenities at a hapless restaurant owner — subtitled — is amazing.

5. Make My Room Nice

Our bedroom is the worst room in the house. It is where we keep things that need to be thrown away or donated, along with whatever laundry we have not gotten to in a month, and also all my non-knitting craft stuff from American Crafts Thickers to my cheapo Singer, and two adult-sized bicycles! It is not a nice place for sewing, or scrapbooking, or, really, sleeping. It sucks.

Step one of the redecorate is to complete an Amy Butler August Fields Duvet Cover (pdf link to pattern). This is the closest thing to martyrdom on my list because of all the stupid cutting I am having to do before I can even plug in the Singer. However, the martyrdom is mitigated by the fact that I bought incredibly pretty (on clearance!) fabrics to make the cover.

When it’s done, there will be a ray of coral sunshine in my bedroom, trust.

6. Write the Fun Stuff

If something isn’t entertaining, exciting, or something I am happy to see on a page, I’m not going to be writing a lot of it in 2010. Are you listening, Failed, Unnamed Contemporary Romance? You’re out. 2010 is the year of the Historical with Paranormal Elements around here.

7. Miscellaneous

Eat and drink things I like to eat and drink, without feeling bad later.

Watch offensive and exploitative television for pure entertainment value.

Read more trash.

Volunteer for school tasks that sound interesting or hilarious.

Hire a singing coach.

Clean less.

Learn to swim, but only if I feel like it.

Use all the nice stuff that is for company only.

Limit children’s extracurriculars.

Rock out daily.

8. Go to the dentist

Well, I’m on my way there now, so I figured I might as well put something on the list that was about to get done anyway.

Happy New Martyr-Free Year!

Anyhow, I thought it would be fun to do an Extreme Makeover: Room Edition for my daughter’s tenth birthday. How hard could it be? It was only one bedroom, after all, and I wasn’t going to replace everything. I’d sew a quilt, I reasoned (her birthday was months away at this point). I’d paint her old, graffito-ed raw wood desk. I’d buy some shelving and a new rug and do something to the walls. And I’d do the bulk of it on her birthday, while she was at school.

Several communicable illnesses later (you know, the kind that pass back and forth between the germiest members of the family and the oldest, frailest ones) I found myself five days away from her birthday, with three-quarters of a quilt top and nothing else.

So I went into Extreme Makeover mode.

1) Overindulgent grand (and great-grand) parents are happy to subsidize tenth birthday makeovers. They are even willing to pay for rush shipping.

2) I spent a deeply unpleasant afternoon at IKEA picking up bright accent pieces.

3) Later that same afternoon, I bought an organizer at Target, which was the first phase of the remodel.

4) Exhausted by IKEA + Target, I didn’t really step up my game again until the following Sunday, when we started the process of making milk paint for the desk. It’s nontoxic and produces no fumes, so I could paint right in her room without moving things around too much. I also sanded the desk and filled ten years’ worth of holes and gouges with wood filler, then sanded that down too.

5) The following Monday, I mixed up the milk paint and discovered that Martha Stewart’s milk paint recipe is a LIE. I had a total of about six ounces of (admittedly pretty) green milk paint. In the end, I barely had enough to stain the wood: full paint coverage was out of the question, not to mention painting the drawers. I decoupaged those with American Crafts papers that, yes, I had lying around the house.

6) While I was already covered in Mod Podge, I decoupaged her old IKEA bedside table, too.

At this point, my daughter thought I was done with her birthday present. I smiled pityingly. (Pitying myself.)

7) The day of her birthday, I sent her off to school, got caffeinated, and cued This American Life on my iPod. I cleaned her room (this is frankly the part that took the longest), replaced her old IKEA bed slats, changed her sheets to new bright chartreuse ones, and set up the bright IKEA accents (such as the trash can pictured above, next to the bedside table).

8) I covered the walls and ceiling with Pottery Barn Teens Bubble Dot Decals. I only needed one package, as it turned out, which was a relief. Borrowing a design tip from PB Teens, I also added a package of Bubble Dot Mirrors as accents.

9) Pottery Barn sells a wall set of large square components — pegboards, dry erase boards and the like. They are $30 per square. I got the skateboarding fabric board on clearance for $10 and bought a perfectly sized dry erase board from Target for $8.

I had to drill into the drywall. Gah.

10) When she arrived home on her birthday, she was surprised, in that she entered her room, stood in silence for several seconds, and then began to giggle uncontrollably, twirling in circles. BUT I WAS STILL NOT DONE. OH NO.

11) Two days after her birthday, the FLOR (modular carpet) arrived, and I spent far too long designing the perfect pattern. (I don’t get obsessed with the minutia of enormous projects, thank goodness.) Note: FLOR offers a fun online design tool that stops being fun after the first 45 minutes.

12) The same day, I decided to power through and just turn the quilt into a duvet cover. (Internet Truth Alert: I still haven’t made the ties to close the duvet cover yet. I know, I am a terrible person.)

13) Step 13: Profit!

The main problem with this room makeover is that now the rest of our house looks like a dingy hovel. It is like my daughter’s room is the Edwardian manor lady’s room and we are all sculleries living in the walls, but at least Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson play us in the movie version of our lives (?).

So of course for my birthday (which is less than two weeks away) we are going to do Extreme Makeover: No One Is Subsidizing My Birthday Room Makeover So It Is Going To Be Super Lame And Mostly Consist Of Sewing Another Duvet Cover Edition! Happy Birthday To Me!

Delicious fabrics, why you take so long to cut? Why you hate me?

(Untitled Fantasy Novel is winning, though it’s a close thing. The dirty dishes are the real loser here.)

I’m at 22,241 words of a novel I never thought I could write. I am behind the NanoWriMo curve (I should probably be around 26,600 words by now) but I’m assuming it will all work itself out. All these characters I used to hang out with when my ninja princess was a wee baby are dropping by. I’m enjoying getting to know them.

I’m also discovering that sewing is apparently faster than knitting.

In my extremely limited experience, the slow part of sewing is the setup — washing fabric, cutting pieces, re-cutting pieces, re-cutting the GD pieces again, going out for a well-deserved margarita, etc.

As long as straight sewing is in your future — and straight sewing will be in my future for a long time — once that is done, it’s just you and the satisfying whir of your cheap Singer, making new fabric from old.

With knitting, the conscientious knitter has a lot of swatching and swatch blocking and stuff, but I am not a conscientious knitter, so I can usually get down to the nitty gritty (okay, I hate puns, but Knitty Gritty) pretty quickly. That’s part of the reason I tend to knit with the same couple of yarns: no swatching.

Knitting is better than sewing for many things, at least for me, at least for now. Going out to buy fabric for a scarf or hat seems silly when I could make one of those in a day or two with yarn I already have (too much of.) I am more likely to knit a sweater than I am to sew clothes for myself, for now, since I know how to knit a sweater and the idea of placing all those little pattern pieces makes me queasy.

Also sewing socks is theoretically possible but looks like something you do on your lunch break when you work at a bananas factory (what does that MEAN?).

But for large, flat bedcoverings, it seems sewing is winning.

I have been obsessed with the idea of learning to quilt. It all started, of course, with Mason Dixon Knitting (go read their blog right now, I dare you not to giggle), and their quilt-inspired blankets. I’ve been knitting their Log Cabin Quilt, off and on, for months. It is slow going, but it is my comfort knitting, and when it’s done it will be a (70th?) birthday present for myself.

From there, I got into the Quilts of Gee’s Bend, and I remembered another elderly woman from the south, my grandfather’s Aunt Alberta, who sewed me a quilt when I was ten, just because I wrote her a letter in pink ink saying I missed her. I wanted to join that tradition.

So I bought some books and fabric and got started on a project for my daughter’s birthday (it’s in three weeks, y’all).

It is faster than knitting. Observe.

Exhibit A: My Log Cabin Quilt

I began this quilt in Colorado the first week of August. That was three months ago. It is around 26″ square right now, unstretched. Almost baby-blanket sized.

Exhibit B: My First Quilt

I do not know why he is obsessed with rulers. Apparently they make great trains. If only he had three train sets.

I did this yesterday. Yesterday. In less than an hour. I did spend Saturday night cussing and cutting pieces, but the pieces are all cut now, and it’s already 32″ square. I should actually have the quilt top done by this weekend, and then I will have time to either dither over whether or not to turn it into a duvet cover since I have never quilted anything, or get a quarter of the way through the quilting process before her birthday and then burst into tears.

In the meantime, I can’t use the sewing machine in the car (while parked! while parked! also at red lights) or on my lap while watching reruns of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant (apparently 85% of pregnant women have their babies on the toilet or in deserted campgrounds). So there’s that.

1) Halloween
My son is obsessed with the San Francisco Municipal Railway. (No, I don’t know why, either. We just roll with it.) I thought he would enjoy dressing up as a MUNI driver for Halloween.

I used my sewing machine! I made my own pattern! The funny thing is, the MUNI patch almost took longer than the sewing, and that includes designing and sewing the top twice. He loved the costume, but demanded a BART driver costume almost immediately thereafter. Le sigh.

2) Sewing (!)

Now that I’ve dragged my sewing machine out, and set it up, and kind of learned how to make stitches appear on fabric, it’s seemed a waste to, I don’t know, put it away. So I haven’t. Instead, I’ve been taking out sewing books from the library, and slowly following the lessons in a book I didn’t think I was going to like, Easy Singer Style Pattern-Free Fashions & Accessories: 15 Easy-Sew Projects that Build Skills, Too.

The reason I thought I would not like the book is that I was not a fan of the fabrics used. To my astonishment, using fabrics I liked made the projects look great.

Each project teaches you how to do something, like square corners or mitering. Now I know how to sew square corners and also mitered corners. On a sewing machine!

a) Off-Kilter Pillow

I’m usually all about matching, so I’m pleased with myself that I was able to suspend my disbelief and do something just a teeny bit bananas. In the end I really liked it.

b) Grab-and-Go Bag (large size).

Yes, I am pleased with this, thank you. I bet you can’t even see my crooked topstitching, or that the bag is a little off-kilter. It is still my first bag!

The lovely linen ribbon — and the fabrics used to make the pillow and the purse lining — were all acquired at Peapod Fabrics, a lovely, teeny fabric store in the mid-Sunset. To be honest, I had avoided it because I thought the tiny size would lead to a hard sell. The opposite was true — the owner was super-friendly but not at all intrusive, so I got to look at every single bolt of fabric without pressure before making my tortured decisions. I had so much fun selecting my fat quarters that I went back last weekend with the ninja princess to select more fabrics to make her a duvet cover, which of course will be easy for me now that I am the best seamstress evar and I will be done in like 15 minutes/by her birthday in three weeks.

Yet again, it all comes down to materials. When I was first re-teaching myself to knit, I went and got some Susan Bates aluminum size-15s and Wool-Ease Chunky yarn and was convinced I just didn’t like knitting. Then I stumbled into Imagiknit, got my hands on some Malabrigo, and never looked back. It should be no surprise that sewing with cheap twill was not that enjoyable, however rewarding producing the MUNI costume was.

When I was looking for fabric, I first haunted Joann and was saddened by how many kinds of Nascar fleece there are on the market. Now that I know where to get darling owl prints and mod florals, I will soon be bankrupt.

3) Season Finale of Mad Men.
Yes, I am working on this blog post. I guess it had better be a doozy. Which is why it is taking so long. No, it has nothing to do with…

4) 14,275 words of a novel.
NaNoWriMo! NaNoWriMo! National Novel Writing Month, in which I pledge to write 50,000 words by November 30 (thus I am, at this exact moment, 29% done). I know, I have already written a novel. But I’ve been getting lazy on the fiction front, and I thought NaNoWriMo would be a good time to kick myself in the proverbial pants and get writing aggressively. I’m actually working on a story I’ve been daydreaming since high school, which is really exciting. It’s fantasy, and kind of steampunky, and it is fun.

Mad Men foodcap is coming, I swear. So much happened in the past two episodes that I really want to think through this. Ta!