Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

So I have this friend and he has this band, Station. Wanna go? Its free. All the cool people will be there.

Saturday May 3 -- 8 - 10 pm -- NO COVER CHARGE -- Santa Monica Bar and Grill 3321 Pico Blvd (near the 10 overpass) All ages

Walk for the Animals!

Or jog, whatever, I'm not judging.

I've been to this event before and its quite fun. It raises money for all sorts of pup rescues, which is always good. I even brought the kids with me a few years ago and they were oddly well-behaved. I think Dick understood that *all* the dogs there were rescues like him so there was no reason to bark. And really, Jane just likes people, and dogs and good things to smell so she was happy.

Todd & I will be there....join us? Ain't no party like a dog party.*

*Whatever, it sounded good in my head.

Best Intentions

I'm in no way an expert knitter. People tend to like what I do and although I'm often my own worst critic I can usually live with what I've created. But, here's the problem with the experience level to which I've graduated: I think anything I'm going to make will just take a little while. Two weeks to k8's birthday? No problem! I can whip something up in two weeks.

Well, I can knit it in two weeks, but I always forget about the finishing. Its sort of like projects at work. I will tell you, dead serious, with nothing but love in my heart, I'll be done in two hours. I'm convinced everything work-related takes two hours. And, after doing what I do for 7 years now, you'd think I'd have learn this isn't true. Nope, I still believe, deep-down, that everything takes two hours. Luckily, I work for guys who are never ready for projects in two hours. Kind of like everything in L.A. is twenty minutes away.

Ok, back to the knitting...two weeks to birthday, no problem!

As we've talked about before, Regina & I dye a lot of yarn. Its fun. It amuses us. And, we make darn pretty colors. But, here's the thing, we have to start using all this pretty stuff. I'm staring at the bin' o dyed yarn in my bedroom (yes, until recently, I kept my special dyed yarn close, whatever, shut up)...what to do, what to do...k8's birthday, what to do.

So, I go to my library o' felting books.

Bingo!


See that backpack on the left...that's my girl. Of course I'm not doing those odd little squiggles or fair-isle. I'll let the yarn speak for itself. I gathered all the blues I've dyed, and off we went. Some yarn was dyed with Kool-Aid, some was dyed with jacquard, and some was redyed Kool-Aid with jacquard 1.5 weeks before our deadline when I decided that I just HATED the yarn I was about to work with so obviously, something needed to be done. Here are the colors we ended up with:


I was quite pleased. Regina was quite pleased. Gramma was quite pleased until she learned the bag wasn't for her.

Four days before the deadline, the bag and strap were felted. I'm feeling pretty good about myself. All I have to do is enclose the top for the drawstring straps, feed the strap through, sew the straps down and buy & sew in lining. And all of this is going to happen with Todd in town. Ok, for future reference, maybe I should write all of this down 'cause when its all in my head, it doesn't seem like much.

Ok, 2.5 days to go and Todd happily escorts me to Michael Levine's. He and I walk around the store together pulling out various bolts of fabric. We have slightly heated discussions involving polka-dots and Hawaiian prints and why we don't line bags in dark colors. I'll spare you the details but I will tell you it was nice having somewhere there who had a strong opinion and would actually listen when I would say things like "No, remember, nothing dark, she'll lose everything in there." 'cause then I'd pull a bolt out with some dark color and he would scold me ant tell me that she won't be able to find anything.

Here's what we both decided would be perfect:


I didn't mean to buy Amy Butler. I don't want to be one of those crafters who just waxes on and on about her like there are no other cute fabrics out there...but it matched perfectly and I swear I didn't realize that it was Amy Butler for Rowan until I got it home. Kinda funny it worked out that way...sort of like making fun of the "flyover" states my entire life and then spending all of my vacation time in those states for the last two years, but I digress...

Here's the bag, done at 6:22pm, in time for our 7pm birthday dinner. (Thank you 405 traffic doG for ONCE letting me run down the freeway at rushhour at 65 miles per hour.)



















Yeah, I know the pictures aren't the most even, but seriously, it was 6:23pm and I had to be in Marina del Rey at 7pm. I was pushing it even taking pictures.

Woo! At the restaurant at 6:50! I made it to the birthday dinner with wrapped gift in hand on time. Of course, I got work an hour early, didn't feed the dogs that day* and wasn't accepting personal phone calls until I went to dinner, but damn it, I finished that bag in two weeks.

Just like I planned.

Happy Birthday Kate!




*no skinny dogs starved in the making of this bag; gramma fed them.

Thrill A Minute

Not only does Gelson's have fabulous honey bran muffins for breakfast, but you can see celebrities in their sweats doing their grocery shopping. (And, if I may add, she looked quite fetching in her sweats.)

Mmmm, bacon and wine

Ya know, from someone who doesn't drink much anymore, this blog is getting a bit sloshed lately.

Who wants to drive me to this next week? C'mon! Nothing saying a good time on a Saturday like Oxnard! Besides, I love this company. I ordered a Christmas gift from them last year and they couldn't have been more fabulous.

Information from the nice email they sent me:

Attn: Southern California Palates

Save the date: Saturday April 26th
- "Take a ride" to Oxnard for our third Warehouse Wine Sale!
- Huge inventory of everyday drinkers to rare gems - all on sale!
- Artisan food items and accessories on sale, too!
- Stock up for Mother's Day, Father's day, and summer get-togethers!

You should make a plan to set aside some time on Saturday April 26th for The Grateful Palate's third ever "open to the public" warehouse sale. Our stock of previous vintages, last bottles, damaged labels and discontinued wines will be priced to move! There will be wines from most of our great labels including Noon, Greenock Creek, Shirvington, Marquis Philips, Rusden, Burge Family, Kay Brothers, Paringa, and many others. We'll have lots of wines for sale from $5.00 and up so it will be a great opportunity to stock up for summer parties, anniversaries and graduation parties. Many of our bacons, food items and accessories will be reduced in price significantly as well. We want to clear it all! Sale starts Saturday morning at 9:00 - no phone orders accepted. Limited to stock on hand.

Address:701 Del Norte Blvd #205 Oxnard Ca. 93030 For more info call (888) 472-5283

Hours:Saturday April 26th - 9:00 am to 5:00 pm

Seriously, who's with me?

Dear ol' Dad

Every now and again people ask me what my dad's up to. I sometimes point them here but, with my dad, you sort of need to see his take on something to really get the full feel of it. This is about a year old but I just found it on the Google. You'll need Real Player but if you've never met my dad its a good introduction. This is how he speaks. Even when you're at dinner. Seriously. Pop forward to 01:43 (yes, one hour, forty-three minutes) and you'll see a presentation he did.

Mama's got a brand new bag

And she made it too!

This bag is from Hollywood Knits Style by Suss Cousins. I have the hardback version of the book, just in case you were interested in my personal knitting library. I have all her books. I dig them all. They're written well, the patterns work and generally your stuff looks chic while being pretty darn easy to make. The purse above, knit & purl. I know, complicated right? And its a quick knit so for all you wacky advanced knitters that get bored easily, this will take you no time and yet be a go to bag. Its light, sturdy and just happy. In fact, lean in. I'll tell you a secret. I'm making one for my mom in summer colors. Shh, don't tell her.

Ok, back to the purse at hand. The handle and the yarn are also Suss. Both were bought on sale so yeah, not too useful for your current purchase purposes. But, if you do happen to swing by her next sale, the yarn is a red/pink (1 strand red, 1 strand pink) thick thin sort of thing called Suss Charm. I love it. I loved it when it was full price. I loved it on sale. I loved it on clearance. And, I bought it all three times. I have oodles. Love. it.

What you can't see (mental note take a picture and learn to share) is the lining, my particular favorite part of the purse. Its a skirt that I bought back in college that I love. LOVE. (I know, there's alot of love in this post.) I got it at Wet Seal (shut up!) on Clearance for $9.99. Hmmm...what year? 1996? Anyways, it was a slip style skirt, small slit on the side, elastic waist and black lace trim at the bottom. I was so cute wearing that with black mary janes and a black top that I would wear over it. I even wore it when I was personal shopping at Bloomingdales with a black sweater set, black tights, and yes, black mary janes. Sadly, I stopped wearing it years ago but just looking at it made me happy so I couldn't get rid of it.

*Idea*

I could reuse it (!) and get the same joy from that shiny leopard every time I opened my new purse.

Corntastic!

When Regina took me on my first foray to A Mano I was immediately enchanted with the corn yarn. I mean, its freakin corn. And its soft. And dude, its made 100% from corn. Seriously. Corn. How do you not fall for that.

As I discussed in my last post, don't put the yarn near a hot iron but other than that it was interesting to work with. Its a ribbon yarn texture but oddly sturdy...about wool strong but not cotton strong. I just finished a second project with it and it also has a nice drape. It was that soft drape that initially attracted me to it but knowing that Todd's mom would never wear a knitted cardigan or shell I set out to make a bag. After much discussion with Regina, it was determined that crochet would give this yarn the strength it needed to become a fabulous little bag.

The bag was pretty free form so I have no pattern to post other than I worked with an F crochet hook, with 10 rows composing each stripe. I think I cast on about 180 stitches and worked in the round from there. What you don't see are two belt loops on the back of the bag about two inches long to hold the "belt," also about two inches thick. Magnets hold the bag shut (the two circles you can see in the picture) where D rings hold the bag on my hips.

I thought the bag would be bigger when I cast on but the size dictated the function of the bag, a small hip bag meant to carry only cash and keys for shopping as I talked about below.

Once I got over the "iron incident" I really liked this bag, and the lining (see below) which says something since I basically hate everything I make. But, if I didn't like Todd's mom so much, I might have kept it. It would have been great for sample sales and Last Chance runs.

I like crocheting, now I just have to learn how to read crochet patterns.

Insanity, partially explained.

If someone could explain to me how to craft and work and have enough time for blogging, I'm all ears. I can't seem to do all three. Lets go on a narrative of my latest project which I think illustrates why I can't do all there.

When I'm starting a project, I'm easily distracted. The project is shiny and new and there's no end in sight. I can pick it up, put it down, not even really think about it or its finish time. However, once I turn a corner and I'm on the back end of the project, I turn into a woman possessed. I stay up later. I knit longer. I. just. want. to. finish. So I work and work and work and work and then sleep. And then I go to work. That doesn't leave a whole lot of time for ye old blog. Hmmm.

That brings us to last night. I was at the very end of a project, a wee tote designed from corn yarn (yes, corn, how cool is that?!?) because corn is cool and its soft and the sig. other's mom lives in place where they grow corn and I knew she'd get a kick out of a bag made out of corn. Its an easy little project. Regina taught me how to crochet in the round and change colors in a pretty way so off I went striping to my hearts content.

I let the bag tell me where it was going and what it needed. (Yes, yarn talks to me. You want to make something of it punk?) So, it finished itself and declared itself to be a wee bag to be used for garage sale forays or bake sale volunteering, small enough to wear on the hip and big enough for money and keys. Sounds good to me! But it needed to be lined.

Off to Michael Levine on Sunday, my first time by the way. I'll be honest. I expected it to be bigger. But once I started to look at the fabrics, my head almost exploded. Everything was fabulous. They even had yarn I needed that I had no intention of buying there. So that was a plus and saved me another stop or two to find the yarn. Another bonus was Santino. That sighting can only be appreciated by the true Project Runway fans out there. He's even taller and skinnier in person than on the show. But, he looked the same otherwise, hanging at the button counter.

Everyone at Michael Levine was fabulous and helpful and I left with everything I needed for the wee bag as well as Mom's Mother's Day project.

Last night I sewed the lining for the purse. Now, I've sewn exactly three things, all for me, none of which had to be perfect. But, this is a gift so I wanted it to be nice. Needless to say, I did the lining and redid the lining and then the iron burped on the lining so I did it again.

Finally.

I was done.

I put the purse down.

I turned to grab something.

I knocked the iron over.

Are you gasping?

Gasping now would be a good thing.

Yup.

Hot iron + corn yarn = melted purse.

At 11pm.

sigh.

As "luck" would have it, it fell on the top of the purse. And as any crocheter will tell you, one of the many nice things about crochet is that its damn easy to frog and put back together. So I cut out the burned portion, saved the lining (!), crocheted the top again, affixed the closures again and promptly collapsed at 2am.

Now, any rational sane person would have just turned the iron off, cursed the iron (because its obviously not your fault for being a klutzy moron) and gone to sleep...I mean....someone rational would know that they're not leaving for Minnesota until Friday so they could have spent copious amounts of time during the rest of the week fixing the purse.

Yeah, rational doesn't live here.

The blog doesn't get updated. I post a month's worth of 366 at one sitting. I crazy. But, on the plus side, since my last blog entry I've finished 2 purses both fully lined. I'm even using one as my daily purse. I'll post pictures as soon as I find the time to upload them.

After I finish this purse.

heh.