Oh, it's been a while.

On to happier things. Because focusing on knitting keeps my mind from wandering.

A week before Christmas something spectacular happened. I was commissioned by one of my favorite bands, MGMT, to knit a headband with their logo on it. Oh, and it was for their Kids music video!

Here is their logo. They wanted it done horizontal in neon pink, across an 80's style blue or gray background.


Oh. And the headband was for a baby. And they needed it in 2 days. And this was 5 days before Christmas! So, out the window went my knitting and sleeping schedule, and these are what I came up with.


Also, I had to come up with a billing rate, which cause me much distress. I was originally thinking $25-$35 plus materials, but was convinced by both my boss and a knitting friend of mine who sells her stuff all the time that I should charge somewhere upwards of $200. I settled on charging them $15 an hour for six hours of work (the time it took me to design and knit the blue headband) plus materials. They didn't even bat an eyelash.

So. The music video should come out in a month or so. I'm sure I'll post when it does. Oh, and here it is on rav

In Memorium

Grandma Kay

December 30, 1921--December 1, 2008

We miss you so much

Well, it's been a while

But I'm still here.

Once i finished my steeked Saddle Shoulder Cardigan I kindof lost some knitting steam. Especially since I bought the perfect buttons for it, and then put them somewhere in my apartment so as not to lose them, but I haven't found them since then. I have the button bands knitted and it's finally cold enough to wear sweaters here in New Orleans, so of course they're m.i.a.

This prompted me to start cleaning my apartment. I've been working from either corner in to the center (I have a wide hallway of a studio). So my kitchen is spotless, as is my bathroom/closet. Clothing is hung in rainbow order (did you know I haven't put on a pair of pants in over six months?) All dresses and skirts!

Here is a crappy cell phone image of my closet halfway through the process. Anyways...

In knitting content, Here is what I've been working on.
Hat,

After Hat,

After failed scarf.

( I frogged this)

But. I have been designing like crazy. I'm having a hard time executing any of my ideas though. Send good vibes my way.

In the mean time. I have started....

Two more hats. The other one is colorwork.

Oh! And I met Sela Ward last night!

Stitches bonus

Many skeins of yarn and stuff arrived for me today...I won a drawing at the yarn4socks booth at Stitches! I don't know how, although I did stop by their booth four or five times over the weekend bec I really liked the stuff they had. My stash is now quite amazing.

A big, big thank you to Donna at yarn4socks for all the gorgeous yarn, stitch markers, and two notions bags. I'll have a lot of fun with it!

Stitches East 08

Evidence of a great time at Stitches in Baltimore? My new stash:

Two skeins of Manos silk blend, very soft and fluffy. It's color 3105, brown, black, pink, etc., with 30% silk & 70% merino extrafine wool. I think I'm

going to make a mini-Clapotis with it next week while I'm traveling.

The green is some sock yarn that I couldn't resist, Bamboo Baby from Miss Babs, in case I get around to learning how to knit socks.
The purple is Jade Sapphire Silk Cashmere, which is too soft to describe. Very yummy.

The dark, dark blue yarn is Araucania Ranco Multy, which is wool with polyamide.

The bright blue is Malabrigo baby merino wool lace, which I've wanted since last year's Stitches, where I had gotten a timy sample. More soft, soft stuff. I think I'll make Juno Regia http//www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/juno-regina-stole with it.

And saving the best for last: the double Handmaiden SeaSilk.

I forgot to take a photo of the Kollage square circular needles. I love them.

Love you too. I'm so happy you were able to get to B'more. Are you brave enough to post everything you bought?

Guess What I'm Doing Tonight?

STEEKING!!!!

(Well, before I head to The Faint concert at the Republic)

Ugh

So I'm done with all the garter stitch and I couldn't be happier. But my next question is:

Should this be the front of the sweater?



Or should this?


I know I need to just try on the stupid sweater and decide for myself, but I'd really like some input.

Mom, where are you?

So Kevin was in town this weekend and we had a glorious time, and ate quite heartily the whole way though. After my last visitors I came to the realization that I need to diet the week before I have guests or else I feel bad about eating things like fried green tomato and shrimp remoulade po boys.

I think I did a good job of feeding/showing Kevin what the city is all about, and he spent some time on his first day just exploring on his own. Also, we enjoyed a seriously delicious meal at Luke's where we enjoyed P &J oysters and something called a flamenküche. Which is like a pizza topped with cheese, french onion soup, and fried bacon. Thanks so much for funding that experience. New Orleans sure knows how to make everything as fattening as possible. Oh, and he also got my Jacques-imo's leftovers as soon as he got off the plane (blackened redfish and chili hollendaise).

Anyways, amidst all that eating, it became knit weather again in New Orleans! Well, sort of. At night at least. And so I made something I've had in my sketch book for months.



A red Slouchy Scaley looking hat. I made it out of about 1.2 skeins of Blue Sky Alpacas Worsted Hand Dyes, and I've already gotten quite a few complements on it. Kevin did say that he thought it was a little too emo/hipster for me, but I think I can rock it.


So. Bad pictures aside and all. I'm a big fan. [Rav Link]

So I'm a Moron

I cast on for another sweater because the Saddle Shoulder Aran was much too large to carry around with me now that I've united the sleeves to the body. So, low and behold Suvi S's Baby Cables and Big One's Too which I am so very in love with.


I'm knitting it out of discontinued Jaeger Extra Fine Merino DK, which i got on Sale at Cucumber Patch for quite cheap. The only problem is that I bought a bag of 10 balls, enough to make the size 32". But thanks to genetics, and a healthy amount of fried oysters, I'm making the 36". So. I'm not sure how to work out ravlery stash trading, but I'm sure someone can enlighten me.

Here is a crappy picture of the beginings of my sweater as posed on an olive jar


I cannot wait until Sitches East! Design classes here I come!

Progress!

5 Rows away from having the second sleeve completed.... Then comes the exciting part... decreases!

Playing with yarn

This is one of the skeins of merino-silk I got in Alaska last year. It's beautiful and really soft, but I haven't wanted to knit anything with it. I just couldn't get past imagining how much the yellow part would stand out when knitted up.

So I decided to overdye it. Tina suggested icing dye, and after reading on knitty how to do it, I finally did. I used Wilton's icing colors, teal plus a tiny bit of brown.

And here it is dry.

I love it now that the yellow is sort of foresty green. I seem to have felted the yarn a little bit, but I think I'll be able to wind it up.

And I had the best time in New Orleans with you, especially all the knitting time we had:

Long live the streetcars of New Orleans!

What I'm all about these days

Sheepfold Cable tweedy sleeve goodness
[for my Saddle shoulder Aran]

Which I haven't gotten sick of yet, I suppose because I let myself knit a fiddlehead mitten

Oh the Colorwork. I knit this up in a day I was so in love with it.
It's Noro Silk Garden and Knitpicks Merino Bare in Fingering weight held double.
[Raveled here]
(apparently I like to take pictures of things in trees)

Also I'm in love with the fact that it's finally cool enough in New Orleans to wear a scarf.. Sorry mom, the temperature dropped ten degrees once your plane took off.

I'm done with Hurricanes.

So I've cast the Central Park Hoodie aside. It's completely seamed together and only missing the button band. But, it's decidedly shorter than I wanted and I can't bring myself to pick up all those stitches and knit 3 inches of ribbing. That just sounds boring.

So I cast on for Elizabeth Zimmerman's Saddle Shoulder Aran made famous by Brooklyn Tweed. I kindof want my version to look like Gumboots'. Oh yeah, and I have to cut a steek when I'm done knitting this beauty.


I'm knitting it in Rowan Yorkshire Tweed DK. I had a hard time deciding between this color (frog) and a pale blue. I ended up with this color because it has these beautiful blue and yellow flecks of tweed in it.
I took those pictures a few days ago. I'm much farther now, but it is currently raining buckets and this was the best pictures I could muster.


As I was walking to work the other morning a water droplet hit me square in the head. I looked up to see what that was all about and saw these storm shudders...

I was busy watching tail lights

Here's what happened,

We closed up the shop last Friday evening and I proceeded to several different hurricane parties. Hurricane parties are where everyone brings all the perishable food or alcohol they have in their refrigerators to a central location and commences drinking/eating/speculating on whether or not the storm will hit. After a little drunken deliberation (yes, I do live in the Quarter, but I was already without power and damn is it hot without air conditioning) I decided to leave.

I woke up Saturday morning with one monster sized hangover and had my last New Orleans meal at Camelia Grill. I drove back to my apartment so I could pack up and get on my way to Dallas. The Quarter was eerily quite, but there were still some die hard gay couples walking the streets. This past weekend was Southern Decadence, which is essentially the gay Mardi Gras. I didn't get any pictures but I saw gold and silver lamé everywhere I looked.

Once I cleaned out my fridge, closed my storm shudders, and had sufficiently packed my car with three boxes of wheat thins, water, coffee drinks, and any clothing or yarn I couldn't live without, I got on my way to my kickball coaches house. I dropped off everything that was left in my fridge, frozen chicken, cheese, and ranch dressing (and a few lean cuisines, though I'm not sure what he did with those). He was having a Hurricane Party later that night and then staying through the storm so he needed as much food as possible (he did end up leaving after hearing Nagin's "Mother of all Storms speech")

I then drove over to the West Bank to my friend Beth's sister's house. Their family was kind enough to let me Carravan with them to the Dallas/Ft. Worth Area. I showed up at their house around 8pm and attemped to take a nap, but was far to anxious to sleep. I ended up playing cards and knitting with Beth and her cousin until we decided it was time to leave at around 1:30am. We drove with realtive ease until we got past Orleans Parish and then slowed to a crawl. I was already starting to crash and we weren't even out into the Bayou yet. Traffic sped up after a while, and I staid awake by bouncing around to bad pop punk music. Once we passed Baton Rouge we stopped at a Waffle House and Beth's boyfriend Greg drove for about an hour while I took a nap. When I woke up it was light outside and HOT. They had started contraflow, which is a great idea in theory, but it basically takes a two lane highway and makes it into a four lane highway (which no one can get off for about 40 miles) and then turns it back into a two lane highway. It is desgned to get people out of the immediate damage area, but it just creates even worse traffic when the two lanes need to merge back together again.

So, in short. I got to Dallas. It took me 16 hours and I was awake for most of two days, but I made it. I had a great time there and spent Labor day at a pool party once I realized that watching the news was only freaking me out more. So I indulged in three of my favorite things, water fights, deviled eggs, and Coors Light and had a great time.

On Thursday morning I decided it was time to drive home. Beth and her family had gotten back Wednesday night after the ban on letting people back into the city had been lifted, and they said that it was safe to come back. So I drove. And drove and drove. I made great time until I hit Lafayette and had to start heading east on I-10. Traffic slowed to a crawl before every exit and didn't pick up until well after the on-ramps. I'm pretty sure that this was because there were rumors flying rampant that gas and food were very scarce in New Orleans and the surrounding areas. I also saw a lot of these:

Flipped over exit signs... but only in the westbound lanes. I'm not sure if these were remenants from Contraflow or what, but there were at least 20 of them. I finally made it back into the city at about 8 o'clock that night and headed to Avenue Pub. One of their regulars had picked up 300 frozen hamburgers for them on their way back into town and they were serving hot Cheeseburgers. As my first meal all day that didn't consist of Ranch wheat thins, I ate that sucker with gusto and then went on a mission to find my cat. She had staid out the storm at the shop I work at, along with the other three shop cats, a blind dog someone had rescued, and the two guys that live in the back of the shop. I grabbed her, and some cat food from my apartament which was fine, just very very dark, and then immediatly headed back to the Lower Garden District and fell asleep on a friend's couch.

Yesterday morning when i woke up I went back down to the Quarter and walked around a little bit. Most of the stores were still boarded up but there were a few tourists walking around amongst the heavy presence of National Guardsmen and Police Officers.

This picture was taken this morning across from Jackson Square. I'd say the amount of National Guardsmen with HUGE guns is a little weird, but I think that is only because it is so very reminicent of post-Katrina New Orleans (I also saw one showing off his gun to drunk college kids outside of a bar). Last night I went all the way uptown for a dinner party and even St.Charles Avenue is littered with tree branches and many of the neighborhoods are still without power. I read somewhere that 250 of the 450 stoplights in Orleans Parish are working. I drove by my old house and the tree in the front lawn had been blown over. This was one hell of a storm.

Anyways, I decided to open up the shop today, as I would like to return to some sense of normalcy (and earn some money). I've had about five or so couples walk into the shop. Everyone is very friendly, and many have interesting storm stories. I just want to say that I am thankful that I got through this with relativly little heart ache and that I think the city did a great job evacuating people.

Worry

You were driving, so you didn't get a chance to see this

or this

or this.

But we couldn't stop watching and worrying. So glad you made it safely to Dallas.

love

mom

Gustav

I'm headed to Dallas. Pray for light traffic and that this doesn't fuck us like the last one did.

House cleaning

Dear Caro,

I'm cleaning the basement.

I'm working on some of the stuff you left behind. I'm donating a lot of it. I don't think it will break your heart to part with old AE tees and short shorts.

And I'm sure you don't want to keep the kelly green corduroy pants with whales on them, which I can only think you wore to one swim meet?

But I'm not giving away the batman cape,

or the swim caps.

Do you remember all these crazy socks you used to wear?

I didn't get the ones with the tree frogs on them in the picture, but they're here somewhere.

And I don't know what to do about all of these:

That one on the top? X-Files. One of many. Miss them?

love,

mom

I'm knitting a sweater and its neither blue nor red.

Which is so very unlike me. This is the first sleeve of the Central Park Hoodie. I think I started it some time last November. I have the back and I thought I had both fronts done but I can only seem to find one of them. The yarn is Malabrigo Worsted in some sort of green, though I don't know what kind because the owner of the Quarter Stitch doesn't like the way the tags look and pulls them off. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I only forgive her because she has such a large stock of it, even after that factory fire Malabrigo had.


I starting pulling the yarn from the bottom of the ball. I hate when I do that.


Last Saturday was Dirty Linen Night. It's the more low rent version of White Linen Night. Most of the galleries and shops on Royal Street stay open and serve cheese and jambalaya and drinks. I was quite pleased to find out that my shop was going to be closed, so I was able to participate. It gave me a great opportunity to go into all the shops on Royal Street that I usually just pass by on my walk home. Anyways, I bought this bracelet at a shop called the Latin Quarter. It was made by someone in Argentina I think. It's pretty freaking cool, but makes my hands smell like metal.

Oh, and my fingers are healing nicely.