Pie & Poetry

I don't get out much these days, but I made sure to hit Northtown Books in Arcata last night for Pie & Poetry! They threw the culinary/composition combo in honor of National Poetry Month, & it would have been a hit even without the complimentary gin & tonics!

The poetry half of the evening was provided by Jacqueline Suskin of the Poem Store. With her vintage Royal portable, complete with a 'Your Subject, Your Price' sign, Jacqueline creates impromptu poetry on demand. Here's the yarn-themed bit she 'penned' for me:

-yarn

We take our time with the weaving
of our ways, picking our paths
as bits of straw from wool, with care
and all senses alight. But to settle on
the actual weave is to cut past all
the go between and make motion our debt
to the cycle of all things. From sheep
back to our back, the warmth of connection
becomes craft and the purpose of spinning
is clear as our spot of time on this
ongoing line of again & again.
~Jacqueline Suskin April 24th, 2010

You can catch Jacqueline pecking out poems all season on the Arcata Plaza at Farmers Market, or commission one at the Poem Store online. Oh, and listen to KRFH, Radio Free Humboldt, if you get it - not only are they award-winners, but the reporter they sent to cover P&P had me read 'my' poem for the presentation they are planning to air during one of their Saturday shows.

As for the pie, Monika and Sarah really outdid themselves! Monika's Double Cherry was my favorite, but the surprise of the evening was Sarah's delightful Avacado Chiffon, which blew me away. I tried it for the novelty factor, but what brought me back for seconds was the clean, citrusy goodness that melted on my tongue. When they get their Pie Truck idea up and running, you can BET I'll be a regular customer!

Finally, let me give you my Craft or Bust! Week 16 roundup:

• went yarnbombing in Eureka
• started a lace shawl
  
• knit 9/10ths of a hat
  
• worked on a long-languishing crochet hat
• started a 2nd spindle of handspun laceweight
• discovered I was nominated for a CoB! award

Tags: pie, poetry, knitting, Craft or Bust

Craft or Bust Week 14-15

The past 2 weeks of Craft or Bust may not have included much in the way of blogging, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been doing any crafty things.

I continued working on my Spunky Boob Cover vest - I'm up into the steek stitches now, about halfway done or so.
I blocked my one-skein stole, then wrote a DIY Lace Blocking tutorial that was featured on Craftzine.com - shot my blog stats up by a factor of 5!

My A Year in Pictures: A Work in Progress photo blog is still going strong, mostly with craft-related pics: I photographed a couple of the yarns I spun in the past 2 weeks: 'Not on My Watch' and 'Clown Pants', and there's a shot of our Sunday afternoon knitting group, Sit 'n' Knit.

Speaking of knitting groups, I took a bunch of pictures at Purl 'n Hurl this week, too. We had a huge turnout - an even dozen!

I also started a lace shawl, got some new yarn, read The Friday Night Knitting Club, & received a smashing set of custom-made knitting bags as a gift. All in all, a quiet but productive week.

Finally, I went yarnbombing for the first time today, but that's a whole blog post in itself, so you'll have to come back to read about that!

Tags: craft or bust, craft, knitting

Craft or Bust Week 13

My crafting knew no bounds this week!

Here are the highlights:

• spun some yarn: LoopyDoopy in 'Flashback to 1974'
• celebrated 7 years of blogging by redesigning my blog
• celebrated Natl Craft Month by blogging about my crafty must-reads
• finished a knitting project: Color is a Lifestyle (socks)
• started a new knitting project: Spunky Rack Cover (vest)

Week 14 of Craft or Bust! should be just as fun-filled; what will I be doing? Check back next week to find out!

Tags: craft or bust, crafting

Craft or Bust Week 12

Today finds us at the close of the 3rd month of Craft or Bust. Can you believe it? That's a whole quarter of crafting, with absolutely zero busting!

This week was almost exclusively about spinning yarn, in terms of crafty pursuits. Lots & lots o' art yarn!!

In the shop:

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Denim Shmenim

Melon Baller

Buttered Popcorn

Green Man

Oh, and Neon Filoffee, that last one, which is a TwoFer, it's bound for France, for a swap with another art yarn spinner. She says she loves it - score!

Don't you just love all that texture? We've got bobbles, we've got wrapping, we've got flowers, we've got supercoils. Enough texture to git 'er done, I'd say.

The weather all week ('til today) was sheer awesomeness, so I spent a good part of it doing my spinning outside in the backyard. There's not much nicer on a Saturday afternoon than sitting at the wheel amongst the daisies, letting wool pass between your fingers & listening to the chickadees in the Hawthorne tree. Look, I'll show you!

Tags: yarn, handspun, art yarn, COLORBOMB Creations

Craft or Bust Week 11

Where the hell did my week go?!? I haven't blogged since last week's CoB update, so this post better be a darn-tootin' good one, eh? And it's not like I didn't do anything crafty this week, not at ALL.

I finished a sock! Remember the socks I started last Saturday? The ones using the yarn I dyed? Well, it turned out BEE-YOU-TEE-FULL, if I may say so myself. And I do! I adore this sock.

It's a 'plain' stockinette sock, if you can call my spectacular stripes 'plain'. I used Amy Swenson's Universal Toe-Up Sock Formula pattern from Knitty.com - it fits me exceptionally well and uses a short-row toe/heel combo, perfect for self-striping yarn. I hear she now offers a Toe-Up Sock Generator app that does the math for you; might just try it next time, just for kicks & to see if it's different.

I split my yarn into two cakes & knit 'til I ran out of yarn. I was able to get a 9" leg, which brought my massively muscular calves into play, so I tried calf-shaping for the first time. See? Right there at the top? Increases! I tried the TECHknitting Nearly Invisible Increase technique, & it worked like a charm! I did a total of 15 double increases, bringing my stitch count from 60 to 90.

This is the first time I've done a roll-top sock; wasn't sure if it would stay up without ribbing, but I made a nice, tight fabric, and it seems to stay up just fine! I went up two needles sizes to a US3 to bind off, & it's just the right amount of loose. To read all the gory details, this sock is in my Ravelry notebook as Color is a Lifestyle.

For those of you who will inevitably ask, yes, that shoe I'm wearing IS a Fluevog; they're Minis in a color combo from about 5 or 7 years ago. Love x1000!

Now, I'm off to read about other Craft or Busters' week, and then cast on sock #2!

Tags: knitting, craft or bust, handknit socks

Craft or Bust Week 10

Just a checklist this week - whaddya gonna do?

• Took the stuff above & made the yarn below
  
• Big-ass recap of my Ravelympics experience
  
• Started some socks and then abandoned some socks
  
• Stashed some yarn - a lot of yarn
• Did a shop update with lots of new fibers
• Started some more socks

Not a bad week, don't ya think? Don't forget to mosey over to Silver's blog to check out what my fellow craft-or-busters did this week. See ya next Sunday for the lucky Week 11 recap!

Tags: craft or bust, crafting, knitting

Craft or Bust Week 8 & 9

Oops! I missed my first CoB update - doh! Oh, well. That's because I've been crafting my ass off! This update will be a 2-fer: Week 8 (Feb22-28) AND Week 9 (Mar1-7).

Week 8:

• Last of Ravelympics, & I: finished QTip crochet hat; spun a yarn for a UFO hat, Poppin' Fresh, and finished it; and I dyed some sock yarn (more about that below)
  

• did some stash enhancement: sock yarn from Play at Life Fiber Arts

• won a giveaway contest for embroidered pins on the Little Dear blog

• and on the last day, during the Olympic closing ceremonies, I tried mosaic knitting for the first time, making a blanket square to donate to the Handmade Memories Haiti fundraiser - I forgot to blog about that, so here it is!

Week 9:
Mostly, I spent Week 9 DYEING! Except for the looooong post, Adventures in Dyeing Self-Striping Sock Yarn, I haven't blogged much this week, so I'll add pics here.

• After having so much fun making self-dyeing sock yarn the previous week, I did it again! It hasn't gotten blogged yet, so I'll add a pic of it drying on the warping board:

• I dyed a pot of Cotswold locks from Homestead Wool Farm:
  

• I dyed a pot of Coopworth locks, also from Homestead; here they are with the last batch, drying in the spring sun:

• and I dyed a pot of Babydoll Southdown, Homestead wool again:

• besides dyeing, I also pulled out the stole I was working on before Ravelympics, & I finished it! It's my In a Theater Darkly, Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn, #9 needles (all that's left is the blocking!):
  

A pretty damn good crafting fortnight, I'd say. What about you? Are you crafting or busting??

Tags: knitting, dyeing, spinning, Ravelympics, Craft or Bust, crafts

Craft or Bust Week 7

CRAFTASTIC! That's what this week was. I'm bangin' out those lingering WIPs & generally gettin' down to some seriously crafty bidness.

1. Finished three long-standing UFOs, garnering me 3 WIPs Dancing medals in Ravelympics:
   • Saddest Project Ever is now Sad No More
     
   • Veltrelac Socks do NOT make me look fat, &
   • My World Record Scarflette is D for DONE!
     
   
   
2. Made mine Matchy Matchy: Knit a MM Hat to go with my MM Cowl, medaling in Hat Halfpipe, Stash Compulsory Dance, & Single Skein Speed Skate events
   


3. Frogged-but-not-blogged my UFO of the Damned, Bean's Bear, & Valentine Elf Topper, adding three 'new' yarns to my stash!
   

What else? Oh, yeah, still continuing on with my Year in Pictures: Work in Progress blog. What with Spring springing around here, I've been taking flower pictures some. First daffodils, first bloom on our new plum tree, & quince blossoms. Love me some spring!

1. Quince 52/365, 2. First Growth 50/365, 3. Harbinger of Spring 49/365

I also did a lot of reading this week, although that's not so crafty; but so what! ;) I read 2 books this week, & sent 'em both out into the world via Bookcrossing.com - my favorite way to 'recycle' books. I read The Grief Stop, by Vicki Stiefel, and A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George. Been in the mood for mystery. That brings my totals to 6 books and 3,033 pages read in 2010 - 12% of my goal of 52 books & 25,000 words!

That seems like PLENTY for one week, don't you think? And what about you, what did YOU do this week? Did you Craft or did you Bust?

Tags: knitting, reading, flowers, craft or bust

Craft or Bust Week 6

Week 6 of Craft or Bust! was CRAMMED with crafty goodness, what with Ravelympics, a book signing for 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse, and Valentine's Day all falling within it. All crafting, no busting!

I embroi-doodle-ry-ed yesterday to make Mr. Likevelvet a card, adding a heart to one of the designs in the Sublime Stitching Stitachable Stationary kit I won at Maker Faire last year. I used perle crochet cotton from the giant box o' threads I got from Kristy a few weeks ago; made it fast AND shiny! Cole loved it (as he should, lol!) and I got the obligatory box of conversation hearts to go with it.

And it wouldn't be Valentine's Day without heart-shaped bacon, right? Cole said it was an accident, but I'm not sure I believe him. ;)

Ravelympics occupied the rest of my crafty efforts this week, as this and this blog post can attest. In fact, between knitting, spinning, blogging, & posting all over Ravelry, I've developed an early wrist injury; good thing there is a First Aid Station for Ravelympics!

I continued to work on my Flying Camel Spin entry, Scraptastic yarn in colorway 'Go, Team, GO!', but as you can see by the photo, my painkiller-of-choice is beer, and that's never a good way to stay on-task, so I'm still not done with it after 2 spinning sessions, 1 Friday and 1 yesterday. Hopefully, I'll wrap it up today and be able to cross that finish line.

I received my first medal yesterday, for the Aerial Unwind event for frogging my Inflated Ego hat, yielding 2 skeins of the yarn below, Plymouth Rimini Rainbow; I've already found another hat pattern to use it, if I can get my hands on one more skein.

Other crafty doings this week include:

• FINALLY mailed off my swap package of handspun & goodies to filofee in France;
  
• got my One Skein Stole up to 33 inches before retiring it for Ravelymics
• picked out a stitch pattern for my HH4H blanket square
• created a Team COLORBOMBers roster image

Happy Valentine's Day, & see you in a week for Week 7!

Tags: Ravelympics, knitting, handspinning, handspun, Valentine's Day, Craft or Bust, COLORBOMB Creations

Craft or Bust Week 5

Kind of a quiet crafting week here in Velma's World. Mostly material acquisition, in fact. But I did get some crafting in around the shopping and the 1,000+ pages I read this week. And I did ship a lot of COLORBOMB orders! That's one in the photo above, some hand-picked LooseyGoosey™ wool winging it's way to Bloomington, Indiana.

Since this is a Craft or Bust! update, let's see what other crafty stuff I did this week:

• spun & fulled 'Rosy Nipples', the skein of yarn in the pictures above, for my friend Melissa; it's a new style called Turbanator™

• landscaping the yard: 3 fruit trees + 3 spruce saplings = new beginnings! mostly I pointed where I wanted Cole & Jeanne to plant things & I photodocumented with before & after shots (practicing my photography, that's crafty, right?)

• went to Purl 'n Hurl (our SnB) & worked on my In a Theatre Darkly stole; it now measures ~14"

• acquired a bunch of craft supplies: vintage fabrics, a giant box of crochet cotton, & an antique paper cutter - lots of plans for these goodies

• yarn p0rn stash enhancement: Noro Cash Iroha & Wollmeise 80/20

• attended monthly Midnight Madness at LYS - knitting 'til Midnight! captured the shot below, of Bea's baby booties
  

I guess I did get some crafting done this week! Looking forward to more in the coming week!

Tags: craft or bust, colorbomb

Craft or Bust Week 4

Somehow this week slipped RIGHT through my fingers, blog-wise anyway. Fairly crafty, though, despite my lax posting. Busy with Craft or Bust! instead, dontcha know. ;)

These crafty projects I wrote about earlier in the week:

• created TWO new Velma Signature cocktails: Sweet Surrender and Rob's Wanton Sister Velma Roy (links have recipes!)
• spun one of my Tufty™ yarns: 'Spruced Up'; more pics here, here, & here, in my shop here
  
• made a BOMBits custom colorway for Team COLORBOMBer members

But that ain't all! I started a new knitting project, something to do while I knit in the dark at the Arcata Theatre Lounge. 'One Skein Stole' by Katja Jordan, and I'm knitting it with a skein of Noro Kureyon Sock I picked up at Sock Summit last summer. I chose this project, which is my Ravelry notebook here, because I wanted something to work on while watching sci-fi in the dark and I needed somthing that I could use my KnitLites to work on.

Yep, they light up! I purchased them at my LYS Handmade Memories a couple years ago with knitting at campfires in mind, but hadn't gotten around to trying them out yet. They work great! There is a small light in each tip, and turning on just one is enough to illuminate my knitting adequately. I don't really care for knitting on straight needles, but in this case I'm willing to compromise.

As for the pattern, it is an easy one that isn't too much trouble for low-light knitting when I'm distracted by a movie. Yarn overs and simple multi-wrap stitches create a simple lace pattern that really lets the yarn shine. Once blocked I think it will be a real looker.

Tags: knitting

Craft or Bust Week 3

Busy crafting week in Velma's World! Even in the kitchen, which never happens. I created a new cocktail! You've heard of a Rob Roy? Well, this one's called 'Rob's Wanton Sister Velma Roy'. Want the recipe? I KNOW you DO.

How to make a 'Rob's Wanton Sister Velma Roy': mix 1 part whiskey (I used Jack Daniels 'cuz that's what I had in the house) with 1 part Santa Cruz Organic Limeade (or, I suppose, the fruit juice of your choosing) plus a dash of Grand Marnier - serve over ice in a rocks glass. et voila!

Now, I realize that the only thing this this drink has in common with a Rob Roy is whiskey, & that my whiskey drinking friends were appalled when they heard about it, but I don't care! I think it is delightful, and really the only way to choke down JD.

Here's some of the other crafty goings-on around here this week:

• continued with a Year in Pictures and started a blog to showcase my photos: YIP WIP 2010;

• stash enhancement! added 2 skeins of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool & 2 skeins of Knit Picks Bare to my stash courtesy of my stash dive in Chronicles' trade/sell page; blogged about it, asking for pattern suggestions on what to do with my bounty;

• created a photo-collage of my outstanding UFO WIPs, yep all 30 of 'em;
  

• picked out paint chips to paint our front door: red for luck!;

• started a Ravelry group for my crafty biz;

• sponsored Team COLORBOMBers for Ravelympics and made a Team Ravatar;
  

• completed my first FO of 2010: knit socks!

Wanna play along with Craft or Bust? Visit Quicksilver Crafter 2.o!

Tags: crafts, craft or bust, cocktails

A New Day, A New Blog

Still Life - Day 16 YIP

A decent photo, but criminetly it took a lot of effort! I took 72 pictures to get one I liked. I kept asking myself why, exactly, I was spending my Saturday agonizing over a stupid photograph. Oh, yeah, that's right: I'm trying to get better. And that takes practice.

The impetus behind today's photo was my acquisition yesterday of that cute vintage plaid Thermos. I filled it up with my collection of vintage straight knitting needles that belonged to my grandmother, and then looked for a sunny spot to photograph them. The shelf over the kitchen sink, that looks out over the side yard between our house and our soon-to-be-landlord's. I like our 'shabby chic' fence, although I fear the only thing holding it up are the blackberry vines on the other side in our backyard.

After finally finishing my photoshoot, I spent some time setting up a new blog, just for my Year in Pictures photos. 2010: A Year in Pictures, A Work in Progress can be found at www.yipwip2010.blogspot.com (I call it YIP-WIP, haha!)

How about a Craft or Bust update to wrap up the week? I've been plugging away on Cole's socks, the ones he was supposed to get for Christmas; I'm on the gussets of #2 after turning the heel yesterday. Maybe they'll get finished this week, & be my first FO of the new decade? I want to get 'em done & move on to frogging some of those languishing UFOs I catalogued; I'm itching to -get this!- start a new project, LOL! I want to do Ishbel with the Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool I bought from de-stashing Raveler Chronicles. It arrived yesterday along with some Knit Picks Bare that I want to dye using the warping board Cole made for me last year - stripes, here I come! I'd also like to do a project made from a pattern on the Help for Haiti list on Ravelry; there are several that have caught my eye, & supporting a designer that is donating the proceeds to the Haitian relief effort is, well, a good thing. I'd like to choose one that is donating 100% of their proceeds, but the Calm Waters Cowl is really intriguing, and 50% of my $4 purchase price would get donated. Hmmm, decisions, decisions.

I also thought and blogged a bit about creativity, learned a new Photoshop skill, and got a surprisingly cool self-portrait of myself knitting. Not a bad week #2!

Tags: knitting

It's Not ALL Earthquakes Here

But it is a lot of earthquake - 10/365

In case you didn't hear, we had a 6.5 magnitude earthquake on the Northcoast yesterday, centered right here in our own Humboldt County. Here in Arcata Cole and I fared just fine; no damage, nothing even fell down. I spent the 15-second temblor under our 6' wooden table while Cole looked on from a nearby doorway. Knocked the power out for about 5 hours, but the worst part for us was being out of beer, haha! Not so along Bar Row downtown, as you can see if you watch the Plaza Cam video posted on CNN.

No power means earthquake romance.

Our neighbors to the south in Eureka didn't fare as well: windows are out, a few historical buildings have been red- and yellow-tagged due to damage, several blocks are cordoned off, my friends Garth & Claire have a busted water main beneath their house... Sending out hopes to everyone that they escaped unscathed. BTW, if you felt it, be sure to visit the USGS website and share your account on their Did You Feel It? page for this event. And for a chuckle, here's a YouTube music video my old boyfriend Chad created - a the tongue-in-cheek recount of the Great Earthquake of 2010:

A note: We joke around here about these things when nobody gets hurt, but my heart goes out to the 20,000 people left homeless in the wake of a 5.0 earthquake in Tajikistan on Jan. 2nd and a 7.2 quake + a tsunami in the Solomon Islands on the 4th. Please send them your thoughts.

In other news, it's the end of week one of Craft or Bust 2010, and I used it to get my organize on! I let my inner librarian run amok, & organized my knitting/crochet WIPs, complete with photo-documentation of looong abandoned projects. I dug around and found 10, count 'em ten!, UFOs that I'd forgotten all about. That brings my total number of partially complete projects to a whopping thirty! Geez. So, let the cataloguing begin!

Bags:

1. I'm Not Old Enough...
2. 'Mater Vine
3. Bobbles Bag
   

Hats:

1. Inflated Ego
   
2. Bucket O Sheek
3. UFO of the Damned
4. Q-Tip
5. Vintage Fez
6. Helloween Hat
7. Valentine Elf Topper
8. 'Til Death Cap
9. Pink Pimple
10. Wrong Number
11. Matchy Matchy
12. Hatsie
13. No. 120
    

Socks:

1. Veltrelac Socks
   
2. Xmas Socks '09
   

Sweaters:

1. Troubleneck
2. Twinset on Fire
3. Sour
   

Wraps:

1. Saddest Project Ever
   
2. 100% BSG
3. World Record Scarflette
   

Other:

1. Bean's Bear
2. Hanging By the Chimney with Care
3. The Beast
4. Can You Hear Me Now?
5. LYS Sample Mitts
   

Now that I at least have them all wrangled and documented, I can begin setting to the brutal task of culling. There are a couple here that have been hanging around my neck like fibery albatrosses since 2001! Ridiculous. I don't want to see any of these lurkers come next year!The goal here is FINISH or FROG! There will be some of each, I guarantee (your time has come, UFO of the Damned! I have no time for seamed hats such as yourself). Decisions, decisions...

Tags: earthquake, Humboldt, craft or bust

I Can Haz 52 Weeks of Craft Challenge!

Looks like I'm not the only one in search of a crafty motivation to stay on task in 2010: my friend Crystal (Impstar on Twitter who blogs as Quicksilver) was inspired by our friend Tara of Blonde Chicken Boutique to challenge herself & others with The Craft or Bust Project.

Take the pledge with me?

I hereby challenge myself:
-- to work on at least one craft project per week in 2010;
-- to capture photographic evidence of said work;
-- to post a weekly blog update containing the above evidence written testimony as to What Has Been Crafted.

I'm a joiner by nature, but as you learned earlier this week, I'm not a finisher. But this is the year to change all that!! I can get behind this challenge 'cuz all it takes to reach the finish line is to work on my projects, not necessarily finish them! It's just 52 little, bitty mini-challenges all lined up in a row. Shit, I have that many in-process craft projects going already! As Crystal says: "Just craft, already!"

Today is the first CoB round-up over at Quicksilver Crafter 2.0 and in the CoB Flickr pool. I consider my effort this week to be Accepting the Challenge. Ha, I'm letting myself off the hook with mighty little actual crafting, aren't I? Actually, I think yesterday's Admission of Project ADD, Accepting I Have a Problem, and Organizing of the UFOs process to be a reasonable effort for the first week. And check out my mad Photoshop skillz in the photo, that's hella crafty! Oh, yeah, and I worked on Cole's Xmas Socks '09 too (sock #1=DONE!), so there was some actual knitting involved (photo-documentation here). But anyway, this is the start of Week 1; I've got 'til next Sunday to make actual crafty progress.

My personal challenge in the coming year is twofold (2 ways to succeed! ups my odds!): to finish or frog all my pre-2010 Ravelry WIPs AND to Go. All. The. Way. 52 Craft or Bust posts. 52 Craft or Bust pics. 52 weeks of crafting not busting. Yep. The full monty.

Wanna play with us? Check out The Rules.

Tags: crafting, challenges