Busty Betty comes out of the closet

So I realized the other day when I was down in our storage closet trying to retrieve my bust form, Busty Betty...

Ok, stop. Her name isn't really Busty Betty, but that's what Todd named her because she is, most definitely, more gifted than I, even when I'm breastfeeding the baby. I really need a new name for her. Any suggestions? She's actually a pant form, but she doesn't know that, so don't tell her, ok? I'm sorry; I meant to post a photo of her, but I'm out of town and forgot to take a picture of her before I left. (Besides, she was having a wardrobe crisis and didn't want to pose.)

Anyway, I was trying to dig BB out from among the boxes and backpacks and sleeping bags and I realized that I have way too many hobbies. There's the knitting machine, which hasn't seen the light of day for about two years. And the tabletop loom, which I really want to use but just haven't warped it up since taking my weaving class 3 1/2 years ago. There's the paper-making supplies, the soap-making supplies, the half-finished mosaic from a class I took at the Transit Museum years ago. And while I was looking at all this stuff I decided I really need to come clean and show you my jewelry. Maybe I'll show one secret at a time until you just can't believe all the stuff I've crammed into that little storage space!

Here are a few shots. It's all made of fine silver or gold-filled wire, semi-precious stones, and freshwater pearls. Occasionally I'll thrown in a few Swarovski crystals for a little extra shine and color. I love making it and have sold quite a few pieces but have never really pursued it as a business because I was either working full-time-plus or chasing after this baby of ours. Maybe now is the time to start marketing it and shopping it around to local boutiques.







I'm considering putting a few pieces up for sale in the Etsy store I recently set up. I'll keep you posted if you're interested and I'll take care of it when I return home.

Links of note

A few bloggy items I'd like to point out, in case you're not aware of them:

1. Alicia has written a fantastic guide to selling handmade items to retail shops. It's so great to hear from someone on the buyers' side of the transaction, and I learned a lot from this.

2. If you're a knitter, you might want to consider participating in the Knitting Olympics, hosted by Yarn Harlot. I'm amazed at the number of, what do we call them, competitors? If I hadn't already started my sweater I would be joining them. But I think I'll need more than two weeks at the rate I'm going.

3. Gina has given us a preview the soon-to-be-released Denyse Schmidt fabric line. I'm on the fence about it so far, but I'm waiting to see it in person to really decide if I like it. After all, Denyse uses mostly solids in her own quilts, right? But as far as prints go, the line does seem to have a hip, retro thing going on that suits the Denyse Schmidt aesthetic and I'm sure will sell very well.

4. Meggiecat posted a link to Fashion Incubator last week. I haven't had enough time to really sit down and read this blog yet, but I'm excited about it because Kathleen writes about the apparel business from a pattern-making, factory-sewing, knitty-gritty point of view, and it's very clear that she knows what she's doing. I plan to learn a lot from her. This sort of knowledge is invaluable and very difficult to come by in this day and age of outsourcing.

5. I'm not really a foodie, but I've been enjoying the Traveler's Lunchbox. Great photos, writing, and the recipes look good, too.

Like Anna says, talk amongst yourselves.

11 months

Like many parents, I try to document the growth of our baby on a monthly basis. I selected my old Paddington doll as the point of reference, I guess because he's relatively big and was approximately the size of the baby when she was born. So every month on or near the 21st I take a photo of Bebe with Paddington. And every month it proves to be a little trickier to take that photo, with the baby moving around more and more.

This month, don't ask my why, I thought it would be fun to include Parker, our cat, in the photo. So we did a little line-up: babydoll (we're learning "eyes" right now, and the doll doesn't scream when Bebe sticks fingers in hers), Bebe, Paddington, and Parker. I don't know how parents of more than one child ever manage to get a halfway decent photo of them together. This is what we got:

two subjects on the move.

two subjects nearly out of the photo.

At least one subject stayed put. Who knows where the other one went.

We may settle for this shot. At least everyone is in the frame and in focus, more or less.


And I wonder why my knitting/crafting time seems so limited...

I haven't posted a baby photo in a while

Three hats and three scarves and she almost wouldn't need a winter coat.



But note, also, the expression her dad is wearing...

It's just a hat!

Nothing like a simple project to bring you to your knees. I've already told you that I'm a rather novice knitter: I've never made an adult-sized sweater, but I've made (and even designed) many scarves and other smaller projects. So I consider myself to be capable if somewhat inexperienced.

Anyway, you're looking at attempts three and four of the Kim's Hat pattern in Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. If you're really interested (and bless you if you are - I wouldn't be if it weren't my own dumb project), here's the saga:

1. Measured my head and decided that it's a little on the large size (physically speaking, not metaphorically) so I decided to make the men's size instead of the women's size. This was not a good decision, as I neglected to take into consideration the amount of stretch in the knit. Net-net: finished the hat, tried it on, decided it was gigantic on me, frogged the hat.

2. Started the women's size, got about halfway done and discovered it was still too big. This is odd because I was knitting to guage. Ripped again.

3. Trying the child's size hat. Seems a tad bit small. Not sure this is the best approach, so:

4. Trying the women's hat again, using smaller needles and knitting a little tighter than I had been. Not sure of the outcome yet. I think I'll knit a little further before deciding whether to continue with this option or go back to option 3.

I certainly hope the Hourglass sweater goes a little more easily for me. My crafting time is so limited these days, and knitting with double point needles is such slow going, it just pains me to rip anything because I know how many days' worth of knitting I'm undoing! And I was planning to make a matching hat for the baby, too, so hopefully solving the big hat troubles will eliminate potential problems with the little hat.

So that's what I'm doing these days. That and laughing out loud while reading Julie and Julia!

Bloggorama

Several completely random, unrelated tidbits on blogging:


1. Congratulations are in order to Rosa Pomar, who today got written up by Urban Baby Daily, an daily email "what's cool" message that I highly recommend. I love to see bloggers get publicity! And if you don't have kids (and even if you do) Daily Candy is a fun email "what's happening" to receive too. Here's a link to a recent article on Etsy, which seems to be a popular sales venue for bloggers. I'm considering putting a few of my own projects up for sale using the site; I'll keep you posted.

Nurseryworks, the site that carries Rosa's dolls, can be found here.

2. We enjoyed another amazing spring-like day here. (Global warming, for all its faults, doesn't really have me too upset this month. Just kidding. Really.) We spent most of the day exporing the city, and part of that exploration time included chatting with the owner and namesake of the Jen Bekman gallery (there's a really nice show there right now - the James Deavin photographs are beautiful), who was telling us that professional bloggers (i.e. Gawker, etc.) need to produce something like 12 posts per day. I can't imagine coming up with that much content. But in my opinion there's a lot to be said for quality over quantity. On the other hand, I'm a blog "hobbyist," not a professional.

3. "Nowadays anyone with a crap laptop and Internet access can sound their barbaric yawp, whatever it may be. But the surprise is that for every person who's got something to say, it seems there are at least a few people who are interested. Some of them aren't even related!" -Julie Powell, in Julie and Julia, on blogging.

So thanks for being interested in what I have to say. I can't promise quantity, but I'll try to make it quality. Have a good weekend.

?

Bebe is nearly eleven months now and has recently discovered the joy of putting objects into containers. Put the bath toys into the tub, put the sea creatures into the toy fishbowl, put the dolls into the toy bin, the fun never ends.

Sometimes when Todd and I want to feel sorry for ourselves, we whine to eachother about how we are in our mid-30s and don't own a car, an apartment, a dishwasher or a washer and dryer. It's a little silly, really, because we've chosen to live in New York where it's not a bit unusual to not own those things.

But someday we hope to own the apartment and, with it, the washer and dryer. The dishwasher is not that important to me - I don't mind doing dishes and think loading and unloading a dishwasher is nearly as much work as washing them by hand. But doing laundry is another story; it takes hours and many trips to the laundry room to do the wash, and with a baby it seems as though we're doing laundry all the time.

Yesterday I let the baby play with my keys while we were doing laundry, and she continued to play with them when we returned to the apartment. I went to retrieve them later and discovered that the keyring had come apart. Only the apartment key was gone, and I was forced to use the spare to finish the laundry. I knew the key was around but was having trouble locating it.

Today I found it. She had crawled across the floor with the key and put it into the pocket of the diaper bag.

Now I just wish I knew where she put her little people. I suspect they may have been put into the trash basket under the desk. And I've already emptied the trash.

The "guys"

This is another favorite corner in our apartment. It's the central hallway between the living room, bedroom and bathroom, and we comissioned an artist to do this installation for us. Todd refers to the piece as the "guys" because the baby is fascinated by them. When she was younger, she could be crying inconsolably, but if we took her to "visit the guys" in the hallway she would instantly stop crying and start smiling, sometimes even talking to them. She still loves them and tries to pull them off the wall so she can play with them.

This photo shows just one corner of the hallway, but the rest of the hall contains more guys. It's funny to watch people's reactions when they see this piece: they either love it or hate it. It's intentionally a bit disturbing: the walls are painted a stark, clinical white, and the guys are meant to recsemble mold spores or something viral taking over the space. Unfortunately, the pieces have discolored over time and will need to be redone when we move - we think it was a pigment problem, but we don't want the artist to spend time remaking them until we've found a larger apartment where we will stay longer. After all, I'm almost out of corners to show you now that you've seen two - there aren't very many more in our tiny apartment!

The artist, Esperanze Mayobre, also made the baby's birth announcements, which I mentioned here and which you can see in the background here.

See other people's favorite corners here.

For the fun of it

I like the idea of stopping once in a while to take note of where we are in our lives. Not in the sense of January 1st resolutions, but in the sense of what occupies us and how our time is being spent. And I also love knowing what other people are doing, reading, watching. So here's my little list.

Reading: Wickett's Remedy, by Myla Goldberg. Really well written and a great story. I enjoyed Bee Season, her first book, which has been made into a movie.
Next up: Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell. Jane recommended this one, and I can hardly wait to read it!

Just seen: Brokeback Mountain. What an amazing, beautiful, devastating film! I highly recommend it, but be prepared to cry. Or at least I did.
Next up: Hardcore (1979). Paul Schrader, the writer and director of this movie, is alumni of the college from which Todd and I graduated. This film is a lightly veiled story about the community from which we, and he, are from. I've never seen it.

Working on:

My sweater
Some baby gifts like this one for friends who recently gave birth

Next up:
The baby's summer clothing
My quilt - either the silk one I started or a cotton Denyse Schmidt-style patchwork. I haven't decided which to make first.
Mrs. Beeton wristwarmers. I love them and just have to make them!
Fiber Trends felted slippers for Todd
A hat for me, and one for the baby, from the Kim's Hats pattern in Last-Minute Knitted Gifts (do you think I'm getting enough use out of this book?). Because I've always wanted to knit Manos del Uruguay yarn, and I bought two great colors. Two skeins is more than enough for two hats if one is baby-sized.

And there are lots more projects in the wings, but this is enough to keep me busy for a long time.

What are you reading, watching, and making?

Knit-along

I was looking around for more information about my sweater the other day, and look what I found: a knit-along! I'm so excited to find other people who are making the same sweater. Maybe I'll be motivated to knit more steadily and finish sooner by participating. So here I go.

Aren't small projects wonderful?

I can't do the big projects without a few small projects along the way so I feel like I'm accomplishing something. And so, the Pashmina Cowl from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, which took me much longer than the 6-8 hours the book suggests. Clearly I'm not a professional knitter.



Yarn: Karabella Boise
Content: 50% cashmere, 50% superfine merino wool
Color: 60 (beige)

I love this yarn! It was such a luxury to knit. I initially bought it in the green color I had been drooling over for weeks, but one block from the store I started thinking about how many green scarves I have. So despite my desire for color, I turned around and exchanged it for the beige, which I think will be very wearable. But I love green. I've been noticing a lot of green around me lately:


all those green scarves


and their (sort of) coordinating green hats



green carpets and a green stool


green pottery


and even green in the kitchen (which is supposed to be blue and white but hasn't quite gotten there yet)!

By the way, I had the pleasure of meeting the fabulous Joelle Hoverson last week. I stopped into her store when it was quiet and was able to chat with her for a few minutes. She's awfully nice and very helpful. I love her store; it's by far my favorite yarn shop. I would knit any yarn she carries. And the woman knows how to merchandise. It's easy to tell she's worked with an expert. That experience at Martha Stewart really paid off.

Welcomed change

It's taken far too long, but I finally have a new look - or the blog does, anyway. I've been meaning to do this for months, but the changes have taken a back seat to Christmas crafting and lots of other things. My thanks to Todd for making the changes take place. It's so nice to be married to someone who can figure this stuff out for me!

Speaking of Todd, we've been enjoying a little of his vacation time this week. This is the first vacation where we haven't travelled someplace, and we've been really fortunate with some amazing un-January-like weather the past few days. On Monday and Tuesday we spent time hanging out in the park with the baby. Weather in the mid-50's and mostly sunny, the baby napping in her stroller, decaf latte with a biscotti, a knitting project to work on while we chat: what more could I ask for?

Pattern for baby scarf

Ok, I finally sat down and wrote it out. Enjoy!


(Wow, is that a bad photo. Sorry.)

Use needles to match the size of your yarn. The gauge of the yarn I used was about 4.5 stitches per inch, but a thicker or thinner yarn could also be used.

Materials: double pointed needles and 100-200 yards of yarn depending on the thickness of the yarn

Cast on 2 stitches.
1. K2
2. K1, M1, M1, K1
3. all odd numbered rows: knit
4. K1, M1, K2, M1, K1
6. K1, M1, K4, M1, K1
8. K1, M1, K6, M1, K1
10. K1, M1, K8, M1, K1
12. K1, M1, K10, M1, K1
14. K1, M1, K12, M1, K1
16. K1, M1, K14, M1, K1
18. K1, M1, K16, M1, K1
20. K1, M1, K18, M1, K1
22-32. Knit
With double-point needles, slip 1st stitch on needle 1, 2nd stitch on needle 2, 3rd stitch on needle 1, etc. Odd stitches will be on needle 1 and even stitches on needle 2.
Work 1 x 1 rib for 1 1/2 inches on each needle respectively (break yarn after working needle 1, before working needle 2)
Holding needles together, knit 1st stitch from 1st needle, then 1st stitch from 2nd needle until all 22 stitches are on one needle
Knit every row until scarf is the desired length (for the scarf I made the baby, this section measured about 11" not including the rib or the end)
With double-point needles, slip 1st stitch on needle 1, 2nd stitch on needle 2, 3rd stitch on needle 1, etc. as done previously. Odd stitches will be on needle 1 and even stitches on needle 2.
Work 1 x 1 rib for 1 1/2 inches on each needle respectively (break yarn after working needle 1, before working needle 2)
Holding needles together, knit 1st stitch from 1st needle, then 1st stitch from 2nd needle until all 22 stitches are on one needle
Rows 1-11. Knit
12. K1, ssk, K16, K2 tog, K1
all odd rows: knit
14. K1, ssk, K14, K2 tog, K1
16. K1, ssk, K12, K2 tog, K1
18. K1, ssk, K10, K2 tog, K1
20. K1, ssk, K8, K2 tog, K1
22. K1, ssk, K6, K2 tog, K1
24. K1, ssk, K4, K2 tog, K1
26. K1, ssk, K2, K2 tog, K1
28. K1, ssk, K2 tog, K1
30. ssk, K2 tog
31. k2 tog, fasten off

And that's it! If you make a scarf using this pattern, please send me a photo. I'd love to see how it turns out.

My favorite corner

Amanda set up a flickr group for us all to post photos of our favorite corner in our homes.



I wrote about the baby's room quite a while ago. Technically it's not a corner, but the entire "room" is 4'6" x 5'6", so it's the size of a corner - it was the closet in our one-bedroom apartment before the baby arrived. I just love it now; it's cozy and brightly lit, the colors are fun and cheery, and the tiny rug is thick and soft. We keep some of her toys in the bottom drawer, so we sometimes squeeze into the room to play. There's just enough room for her bed, clothes, books, and a few little extras in this room, so it's a nice size for such a little person. More photos of the room here - it's so small it's really difficult to photograph!

See everyone else's photos here.

A frogging we will go

Here is the far-from-finished sweater I am about to frog:



because I have decided that I want to make this sweater instead:



I hate to rip out all my hard work, but in the three-plus years that have passed since I started this sweater I have lost interest in finishing it. I'm just not excited about the lattice pattern and, like I said before, I'm not expert enough to design the sleeves and armholes myself. I hate to admit it, but I've never made an adult-sized sweater with sleeves. It's about time to change that. Rip it, rip it!

Baby scarf

I couldn't resist. I had one ball of the discontinued Debbie Bliss wool cotton leftover from another project, and it seemed perfect for the baby scarf that I posted about the other day. So here it is:



I did lots of ripping and reknitting because I couldn't decide how wide it should be. But I'm happy with the results, and it fits the baby perfectly. I had about 3 yards of yarn left over! If anyone wants the pattern, let me know and I'll post it. It's very simple, and you could use many other yarns to make it.

Now I'm on to other projects.

Quilt brainstorms, anyone?

Well, this is my first post of the new year and also, coincidentally, my 100th post to the blog. So I guess that's a small milestone to celebrate.

Ok, readers, I need your help. Take a look at these photos:







My mom has 122 of these quilt "blocks" (?) that my great-grandmother stitched by hand and never used. Obviously that's way too many for a quilt. And since there are so many, and there are also eleven great-grandchildren, Mom thought maybe she should split them up and make something for each of us. Any ideas? How does one put them together? We were talking about maybe appliqueing them onto something else rather than trying to stitch each of those corners to eachother. Has anyone else attempted anything like this? Mom was considering making wall-hangings. Other thoughts? We would love any ideas you have.

I really like the vintage prints on the blocks, and some of the color palettes are pretty great too (pink and brown, just my thing right now). I wonder what she had in mind when she was stitching all of these together! Did she have a project planned, or was this just something she did to use up leftover scraps of fabric and to pass the time? I suppose we'll never know.