little feet, big city

Brooklyn New York has a new place to shop... Sunday Love ..... and Sunday Love has some cute new shoes, little baby booties to be exact! I have already knitted up two batches. New York is eating them up... delicious.

i want this icar

The Los Angeles car show has past, but my dreams still wander back to this little darling, a Mitsubishi. The iMiev. It is little, cute and has the most adorable 'face'. The headlights and tail lights are round and clustered like bubbles. The antena has a light on it and is positioned like the lure on top of an angler fish. It runs on electricity and cuteness! Here are some photos of it on the runway. Her head and tail lights, her from a side view and one of her smile. Sweet and yummy!

garden art

It is the end of the summer growing season here and time to pull up all of the beans, squash and peppers from the garden. The summer sun and our plot of earth gave us many beautiful green beans, wonderful little yellow tomatoes and a few Japanese pumpkin. My favorite summer vegetable is the trombone squash, so I left her for last. My dear trombone squash gave me a wonderful surprise. A squash sculpture! Here are some photos of her creation. She worked so hard this season and gave us many delicious dinners, now she will decorate our fall table. Thank you Lady Trombone Squash!

Long, lean and bright green, it has a buttery flavor and is much more mild than other summer squashes. It has a long growing season, takes up quite a bit of room and is a prolific producer. Usually the fruit is long or curved a bit so you just cut off the bulb at the end and slice up the neck, steam, butter and lightly salt.....absolutely delicious.

don't you just love sunday?

Sunday Love, a new shop opening in New York will be carrying some of my work! Coasters and baby booties do ya know. Sunday Love is an artists workshop and store located in an up and coming area of Brooklyn, NY. Green items galore and fun to be had at it's grand opening celebration on October 10th. Their address is 624 Grand st. Brooklyn, NY, so if you are 'in' NY this weekend....be sure to stop by and say Hello to Greer, have a look around and buy things, lots of things, delicious things from Sunday Love, yummy.

pigs toes

My dearest friend moved. Sad but true. She is not in another state, though California is a pretty big state. She also chose to move up a mountain. Up a mountain*. Not a hill, or a rise, but a mountain, like the Sierras kind of (actually) mountain. She did though, leave me her pigs toes. Not a real pig silly! A plant pig, well not a pig a lithop. Lithops are also known as living stones as they do indeed look like stones. Here are some photos of the ones I now care for. I have in my care about four different kinds of lithops. Some small, some smaller and some smaller still. Yes, they do look like rocks...or even little pigs toes. Sweet.

*I have a horrid fear of driving up mountains. I have done it mind you, though with much hair pulling and gnashing of teeth. I really need to be unconscious for it not to be a bother to the driver (read...yellling, screaming, grabbing the wheel and otherwise a bit of a discraction). This is why my friend moving up into the SIERRAS is an issue.

a bowl of yarn

How fantastic is this, a yarn bowl. How long have I waited for this object. How amazing that this potter, Fred Parker, has created it. It is beautiful and perfect. I adore bowls, I adore yarn, what could be better? Yes, few things in life to be sure. I will be acquiring one of these beauties before the year is up. That is if he makes more. They sell so fast and I can see why. Perhaps a special one is in my future, one that has yet to be imagined. The clay still waiting, the idea still in it's egg. Oh yes Mr. Fred Parker, I will own one of your splendid yarn bowls...so delicious.

It's a Clean, Clean Summer...

New in the etsy shop, little make-up remover pads! Eco-friendly, save money, save the planet and save face at the same time...what could be better. They are hand crocheted from 100% cotton yarn, toss in the washer, tumble in the dryer...or... better yet, go one step further and set them out in the summer sun to dry - Hooray for solar power. I have them ready to ship in white and green, don't be shy if you want a custom color just send me a note through etsy and we can chat. Bonus, you can also get washcloths to match, oh so many delicous choices.

like potato chips....

Ah, here we are again with the Noro. Striped scarf that is. I just could not resist this color combo. I realize that it is the dead center of summer, but the hypnotizing stripes of Noro could not be denied. So, looking forward (as I am, summer is not my favorite) to fall I chose these colors. Not as dramatic as I had hoped, but yummy just the same.

Fish

Here is a fun little game to play. Feed the fish! I am also including it on my side bar so you can play it whenever you want. Fish, food, fun...delicious!

donuts...cars...fathers...sons

Well, it was that time again, Father's Day. We decided to venture out on a cold and rainy morning (yes, it was cold and rainy in June in Southern California) to join the throngs at Donut Derelicts in Huntington Beach CA. Every Saturday morning from 6:30 to 8:30 you can find all sizes and shapes of cars. Big cars, little cars, cars that run on steam. New cars, old cars, cars that make men dream. I was excited about the donuts, few things can drag me out of bed on a Saturday morning at 5:30 am that do not include yarn. We did have a good time (I had a 'porcupine'...yummy) and I was able to take a few fun photos of hood ornaments. The car I liked the best, an Isabella, left before I was able to photograph it. There was a Stanley Steamer and a Kaiser, that is the ornament with the clear acrylic piece. It is amazing what cars there are, and the people who love them. I did very much enjoy listening to the stories and learning some history. Fun and delicious!

'these are not the 'droids you are looking for...'

Old Ben would be proud to wear this amazing jacket. I just finished my 'Kenobi Jacket' from Interweave Knits. This was a wonderful knit, easy, fun and engaging. The stitch patterns change to keep it from becoming tedious and look great. I used Cashsoft dk in the color 'poison', a dark purple/maroon. I almost always wear black so I stepped outside of my color box for this one! It does not fit me in the length as much as it does the model (maybe because I look quite different from the model) but it still fits quite well. I did not put buttons on it, I am planning on either leaving it open or using a shawl pin to keep it closed. This yarn is so snuggly that it feels like a soft blanket....yummy!

modeling for class

As an employee of a yarn shop (1 day a week), knitting for the shop can take up a large chunk of my knitting time. I will be teaching this vest as a class this summer at ABYC. Actually this is a wonderful experience as I knit things that I NEVER would knit otherwise. Take this adorable 'vine lace vest' for example. It knits up super quick and is a fun and easy lace pattern. The yarn/bamboo tape is wonderfully soft, though it needs to be untwisted after a few rows, I am liking it. 1st; I would never wear this, 2nd; it does not come in my size, 3rd; seafoam green is not my color and forth; it is not my style. So, if not for needing a class model I would never have had this knitting experience. I do just love knitting...it is so....yummy.

far away in a faire isle....

I have been working and knitting and knitting and working. I have finished my placed cable aran, and am very happy with it (that is not me in the photo, it is from the magazine...silly). I am also almost finished with my Kenobi Jacket, just need to add the collar. My current projects are these wonderful faire isle Norwegian hats from Bea Ellis Knitwear.
They come in a kit and are so much fun to knit up! I am almost finished with my first one and have one other kit to make, which I shall upon finishing my first one, as one knows you cannot eat just one when they are so delicious!

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Yes, today is the Vernal Equinox. Daytime and nighttime are equal today and it is the first day of Spring. Today is also the only day (supposedly) that you can stand an egg up on its end. So we did! Here is a photo of said egg on my kitchen table, which is made of wood. The flower is a sweet pea from my garden as a colorful addition to this spring celebration. This is not a trick, there is nothing under the egg holding it up, it is just balancing there. We were able to stand several up in a row but I was too late with the camera as my son decided to stand up 'just one more' and they all tumbled down like dominoes and omelets were on the menu for breakfast. Delicious!

fonts, fonts, sing the praises of fonts....

Okay.....like I know you don't have anything better to do than play this game, but it sure is fun!
I'm hooked.

button, button, who's got the button?

Buttons are big, some really are big. Doing good things for the environment is big, crafting is big, found objects are big. Here we have some found wood buttons. They are all quite big and command a special spot on a purse, shawl, wrap or sweater. Alamitos Bay Yarn Company just got them in and I had to take a little photo of them. They really are beautiful. So if you need some big buttons.....here is the place to feed that need!

if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?

'Everyone' is making this scarf. Well, I guess everyone was except me! So, I had to do it. 4 skiens of Noro silk garden and a pair of size 7 needles later.... I present to you the Noro Striped Scarf. Wow was it fun! I can see why so many people are making this scarf. I am ready to make another, just for the fun of it. They way Noro is dyed it stripes in such amazing ways, and in this pattern it really shows. I kept knitting (well into the wee hours of the morning) just because I wanted to see what color would come next. It was very exciting. The pattern is by Elizabeth Zimmerman but Brooklyn Tweed really made this pattern rock. The pattern goes like this: first you get 2 balls of Noro Silk Garden in a 'light' color, then you get 2 balls of Noro Silk Garden in a 'dark' color and a pair of size 7 needles. It really has to be size 7 otherwise it just does not look right. Then you cast on 39 stitches. Work in knit one, purl one rib throught....slipping the first and last stitch of every even numbered row purlwise. This make that amazing edge and lets the scarf lay super flat. So 'if everyone jumped off the Noro bridge, would you?' Make this scarf...it's delicious.