glittergoods

will knit for (small) giants

First grade is so much more tiring than any of us anticipated; it might be because he has to think all day long, though I'm not sure what my excuse is. 

The soccer craze continues apace, both in front of & behind the camera, plus when we got home from post-game brunch on Saturday we discovered the cable glory that is the all soccer, all the time channel & most of the family spent most of the rest of the weekend piled on the couch watching soccer (while one small portion of the family spent most of the rest of the weekend unable to believe that the rare TV bounty was being wasted on soccer & repeatedly, whinily, wishing that we could pleeeeeaaaase watch Cinderella instead). 

Turns out that a rainy weekend soccer marathon is the perfect time to be messing around with yarn, which may have something to do with the fact that for the first time in a few years, I'm feeling that old familiar Fall urge to knit.  While digging around in my archive of unfinished projects looking for a particular size of needle, I came across a bunch of Classic Elite '03 Tweed (nice of them to put the date right there in the name, so I can be very specific about exactly how long this project has been languishing) that was partially turned into (one back, half a front) a raglan sweater for my boy.  When he was much, much smaller.  So, I pulled those pieces apart, & am now making a pattern from Junior Knits by Debbie Bliss, this slouchy sweatshirty kind of thing that seems just right for this yarn.

One thing about coming back to knitting for my kids after a few years off is that they, particularly my son, are now the size of small giants, & so, granted, this is a long slouchy sweater & I'm making it a little longer than strictly necessary (I want this thing to last through at least one growth spurt, & my general rule of thumb when knitting for my long skinny kids is to knit the right size widthwise + the next size up for length), & so suddenly (ok, "suddenly") I'm knitting sweater backs that are longer than his entire body at birth.  My baby! 

Another, perhaps more pertinent thing, is that I am seasoned enough to realize that the ridiculous length of the sweater back is nothing, nothing! compared to the total drudgery that will be the sleeves.

yes, I'd rather be sewing

I'm a couple of days behind on the color fun, but here are white, black, and brown all showing up in a little Laura Zeck print on our dining room wall.  Her tiny etchings are fantastic.

The past few days have been all about...well, maybe not exactly prepping for the upcoming show, but certainly thinking about it.

I've been doing glittery kid shirts for a while now, & am finally going to roll out a few designs printed on adult shirts at the show, which means that a couple days ago this (appropriately color-themed) box arrived.  Yeah, that's a lot of shirts.

I've been kind of stuck on what designs to put on the adult shirts, but then last week I realized that I wanted to do a few craft-themed tees (particularly to take to the Maker's Faire/Baz Biz SF), & from there it was easy.

The new ink I was testing out was stinky & horrible to work with (although I actually personally like the worn-out look of a faded print,), so the art is good but I need to go back to my old ink for some nice crisp black prints.  I love the sparkly thread, though, & am also going to use it on some little sewing care + content gift cards.

(Can you tell that I'd rather be working on my next quilt?)

In sneaky crafty moments here & there, I've finished up my little knitted spokesmodel Kate (first knitting project in probably over a year, first knitted toy ever).  I think she'll be sweet on my table, particularly since I unpicked her head stitches & addressed the stuffing issue, so she's less pointy now (seriously, she was like the wooly little kitten star of Nosferatu). 

In retrospect, I think that I probably should have changed to smaller needles for the orange parts, which were Lamb's Pride Superwash instead of LP Worsted, & that one ear has a definite Max Schreckian quality, but she's done!

(Now, let us celebrate with a picture of the happiest cardboard box on earth.  I discovered this drawing when I was breaking down the shirt box for recycling.  The shirt factory is a place of joy?  My UPS guy is an artist in his other life?  Who knows?)

11th hour pink

I just saw, over on Whip Up, that Jess Hutch is going to be giving a workshop at the Maker Faire in April.  This caught my eye for two reasons:  I just last night started on Kate, & I'm going to have a table at Bazaar Bizarre SF, which is taking place inside the Maker Faire -- &, actually reason 3 (more accurately, reason 1 + 2), is that I'm specifically making Kate to hang out on my table at BazBiz in a spokesmodel capacity for these cards that I make which are designed to be given along with a knitted gift.  I would call this serendipity, except for the fact that I am going to be working the show & won't be able to go to any that one or any of the other cool workshops.  I could maybe send my husband, but I bet you that he's going to be way more interested in "Hands-on Hardware Hacking" or "Sheet Metal Work for Fun."  But, wow, I was just looking at the workshop list, & there's some amazing crafty stuff that's going to be happening over the weekend.  Who wouldn't want to take a Gocco workshop with Jill Bliss?

Ok, so, back to stuffed cats & (almost) serendipity:  last night I started digging through my yarn stash for suitable wool, & came up with almost exactly the colors called for in the pattern -- which is very unlike me, to do a pattern in the specificed colors, but I am embracing Use What You Have in a lazy sort of way, so, pink + fuschia, ho!  This is an exciting project for me, due to the inherent funniness of the cat, but also because I have probably not knitted anything more substantial than a swatch of my handspun in about a year.

I haven't gotten far enough along to be very interesting, but I'm posting this because alongside this pile of fluff that came home with us from the fabric store yesterday (this is what I get for taking the kids along with me in an attempt to browse for curtain fabric, my windows remain undressed but my daughter is going to have the pinkest dress-up skirt on earth),

it puts me in mind of Project Spectrum for this month -- on the very last possible day, of course.

Oh!  I also wanted to post about the new painting that came in the mail from Amy Ruppel today:

Isn't it gorgeous?  She works with paper & wax, & the painting is just so small & smooth & pretty!  Also please imagine how quickly I had to put down the camera & snatch up the painting to keep it out of the clutches of the (hello kitty stamp ink-smeared) hands attached to that blurry little head in the foreground.  I'm going to have to make them reach as high as they can & then hang the piece higher than that.