I’m definitely related to my oldest child, don’t you think?
I have to stop saying that she’s my mini-me now that she’s getting older and showing a definite independent streak, but she really does look like me (and walk like me, and stand like me, and read like me…)
I’m making a sweater for her and marveling at how big the sweater is, how big she is. I’ve enjoyed her time on the planet so much, I hope to be able to keep up as she grows up and not lose touch with who she is.
My girl, so proud.
and I don’t want to get out.
Wollmeise Lace Garn in color Farn
And found this:
The color was so exquisite, it just jumped right out at me.
This was found in a park built on top of a landfill, and it’s not really a “pretty” park, but here was this beautiful flower right on the edge of the path.
There’s beauty all around, you just have to look for it.
[Sorry, I don't know what's come over me, I don't usually wax all philosophic and pithy and all, it must be sleep deprivation].
My children go back to school day after tomorrow, that’s another bit of beauty to look forward to!
Today I took advantage of the fact that my children are still on vacation (and most everybody else’s have gone back to school) and we went to The Exploratorium in San Francisco.
We had so much fun. It was Punkin, Buddy, one of Punkin’s best friends and me. We spent over five hours there and didn’t have a chance to try everything.
The last time I went there Buddy was probably three or so and we had to literally hold his hand the whole time to keep him from running off and getting lost in the crowd. This time I felt a little better about giving him a little more freedom of movement, although I still got twitchy a couple of times when he went out of sight.
I got to play with a Van de Graaff generator, which took my hairdo to new levels.
In my last post I showed you my first FO for the year (that’s finished object for you non-knitter-geeks out there, I think there are a few of you left in the world). While I enjoyed the project and was tickled by the way it turned out, it just wasn’t me and I wanted it to go to someone who might wear it and enjoy it.
Voila! The Fat Lintilla went to live with a very dear friend who can only wear very soft wool, wears a scarf most every day (she lives in San Francisco where it is cold!) and likes the bright colors!
(FYI, it’s called the Fat Lintilla because the original pattern is meant for sock weight yarn, and I knit it up in a chunky yarn instead.)
I have not knit very many things for anyone outside my immediate family lately and I think I should do it more often, it felt great to give it to her. The fact that she knits just enough to really appreciate a hand knit gift didn’t hurt!
Also, because photos make a post more entertaining, here’s a recent photo of my boy:
Making hot cocoa
I’m not much of one for making New Year’s Resolutions, but I’m happy to look for omens of a good year when I see them.
I finished a knitted object today, and that’s a good trend. I have too many long-languishing projects that I need to finish, and it feels good to finish something. (In all honesty, this was a project I started on December 27th, so it doesn’t really count towards the karma of the while thing, but I”ll count it as a win.)
I don’t usually look this stern (or at least I don’t think so) but I was trying to snap this shot with my iPhone.
This is my Fat Lintilla (Ravelry link). The yarn was a joy to work with, the pattern was extremely well written and I’ll definitely be trying more patterns by Martina Behm.
I bought this on a whim at the Purlescence Yarns Black Friday sale. I fell in love with the feel and the color and used Ravelry to find a project and this is what looked good.
I’m not sure if this is something I’m going to keep, or if this will go to someone else. I really like the colors, but the scale of this is just not working for me. I tend to really like my shawls to be much larger and more of a wrap than a neck ruffle.
Still, it was a fun project and I enjoyed doing something for fun, after the crush of gift knitting.
What’s next for my knitting? Stay tuned…
As I suspected, I am finding it hard to find the time to post now that I’m not on bed rest after surgery any more.
[Quick surgery update: it's now been more than 5 weeks since my surgery and things are going well. I am spending more time with shoes on both feet - wahoo!]
I did some holiday knitting this year, entirely things for my kids. (I asked the Italian if he wanted anything and he declined.)
My daughter loves to wear goofy things, and I love that she loves to! I picked out a couple of hats to make for her, one goofy and one not.
The goofy one is the Diagonal Stripes hat from 60 Quick Knits, a fun book. She loves orange but there weren’t any orange options, so I did red and yellow. Several people commented that it looked like Stanford colors, although my girl pronounced that these are the Gryffindor House colors.
This project was fun but definitely not quick. Each stripe required its own ball of yarn – this is intarsia, not stranded knitting. It made me realize why I don’t usually do intarsia projects – so fiddly.
I started by just letting the balls of yarn get tangled, but that quickly proved untenable.
My friend Veronica was over one day (we hung out, we knit, it was awesome!) and she and the Italian both suggested using egg cartons to keep the yarn in order. Lo and behold it worked.
Once I got the yarn management under control the rest proceeded pretty easily (as easily as knitting a fiddly, not very portable project that you’re trying to keep secret from your small children can be) and I finished just in time to wrap and put under the tree.
This was kind of a litmus test – I wasn’t sure just how goofy my girl would be wiling to go, and I had some concern that she was more “grown up” than I thought.
Thankfully, I was wrong! She loves it, and wore it yesterday and is wearing it again today.
I have spent more time than usual looking at photos of yarn lately. I’ve come to really appreciate the importance of taking nice photographs of yarn and things made with yarn.
I’ve taken my fair share of crummy pictures, sometimes because I don’t know how to take better photos, and sometimes because the desire to have photos overrides the desire to stop and take good photos.
But especially if you’re intending your photos for anything more than just preserving memories it really makes a difference to know what you’re doing.
Take a look at Jared Flood’s photos in this blog post, the Yarnista’s photos of places and the yarn color ways they inspired in this blog post, and the photos Anne Hanson posts on her blog.
I went to art school but I transferred as a sophomore directly into my major. Even though I did a summer school intensive I really missed out on the freshman foundation. One of the things I missed was developing a skill for really looking at things. It’s one of the reasons I struggle with drawing things accurately – I draw them the way I know them to be instead of the way they appear to be (I can’t draw things in perspective worth a damn).
I’m trying to spend more time looking at good photos to begin to identify what makes them good photos. One key thing is the light – we all know the flash usually makes things look awful, but it’s hard to find the right light: too bright and things look harsh, too dark and things have deep shadows.
This is a skein of Cascade 220 Heather, photographed on my bed. I like the way the color turned out, it’s very close to actual. I don’t like the visual clutter in the background, and I don’t like the slightly harsh light on the right side of the photo. I think the green sheet is a nice backdrop for this color, but in general I think a more neutral backdrop would be better.
This is a skein of Zephyr lace weight, again taken on my bed (this is while I really couldn’t get around after my surgery!) It’s too dark, there are too many shadows on the bed, and you really can’t tell that there’s a gorgeous sheen with this yarn. It doesn’t do it justice at all.
Here we have a skein of Mountain Colors Twizzle, a beautiful 85% Wool / 15% Silk yarn. This is taken on my kitchen table, which at the moment is covered with a clear vinyl tablecloth. The light is nice, the color is true, but again there’s visual distraction in the background and on the table.
Here’s the scarf that I’m making from the Mountain Colors yarn. The color is a little bit washed out, and the table is still distracting, but I like how I framed the shot closer so there are fewer distractions.
Then I remembered that the Italian (my husband) had made a photo light tent so I gave that a try.
Here’s the first photo of a really pretty Cascade 220 Quatro:
It doesn’t really capture the depth of the color and there’s too much shadow.
It’s much better cropped, but still nothing to write home about.
One last photo: another skein of Cascade 220 Quatro, again photographed in the homemade light tent. It’s a little better, but it just doesn’t glow.
Still work to be done, but at least I’m starting to really look at the photos!
I grew up in New England, where we had weather. Lots of it. It was great fun when I was little, I loved playing in the snow in winter, playing in the rain in the summer, kicking through the leaves in the fall, and stomping in the mud in the spring.
For the past 17 years I have lived in Northern California and I love it. Here we have a climate, but we rarely get Weather (with a capital W). People ask me if I get bored with our weather. No, I am not bored of not having to shovel my driveway, not having to scrape my car windshield, not having to bundle up to take the trash out.
But this is not Southern California and we do have seasons. Right now we are in late Fall, with many trees still holding on to colorful leaves, and many more trees already bare. (Just because the trees that are losing leaves are persimmon trees instead of Maple trees doesn’t make them any less trees!)
This afternoon my son was playing in the leaves at his after school program and his teacher sent me these:
I love that his face is an island in the middle of the leaves!
We live three thousand miles from our families. We used to travel “home” for many big holidays, but time, age, having two children, and not wanting to torture ourselves means that we don’t travel for most holidays any more.
We have a plan most years for Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but somehow we don’t usually have a plan for Thanksgiving.
This year we invited our new neighbors (who are German and French) to our house for the holiday, in spite of the fact that we knew I was going to have foot surgery on the 10th.
On the 12th we joined these friends for dinner at another friend’s house, and I at that point realized that the idea of our cooking and hosting for Thanksgiving just wasn’t going to work: I wouldn’t be able to help much, and it would be a lot of work for my husband to do it all himself.
So I asked the friend whose house we were at if we could all join their family for dinner. (In my defense I was on Vicodin, and I did know they were hosting an “orphan’s” Thanksgiving).
Fantastic friends that they are, they said yes!
So this year for thanksgiving we got to cook the foods we were interested in making without having the stress of hosting, then join a large group of friends for a fabulous meal. There was great conversation, a communal building project after dinner, then music making and whiskey for those of there until the bitter end. There were other kids for our kids to play with, old and new friends, and I had a wonderful time.
