Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Bags and Yarn and Quiche, Oh My!

The Mad Stashbuster strikes again! I don't know why I keep knitting bags since I never use them as much as they deserve but I just can't help myself. And they are more functional than the stuffed animals. This is my version of the Icon Bag . It's got this cool chart that was originally from a 14th century Byzantine piece in etched silver. I haven't done a whole bunch of charted colorwork so this even though it was just stockinette in the round it still required my full attention. The only downside was that since I did this in Lamb's Pride it has the fuzz of the mohair that doesn't make the design pop as much as I would like. So I did give it a bit of a haircut to trim some of the fuzz and to accidentally snort mohair. I swear I was just experimenting and I will never do it again.

Icon Bag2

Here is my beautiful yarn that the Daft Crafter dyed for me. Apparently my yarn was so happy to be dyed that it took flight check out the photos here. So hence it's name, Flying Happy Jenny Yarn.

Happy Flying Jenny Yarn

And since my last culinary creation received such praise I figured I'd show off my latest yumminess, a mushroom and broccoli quiche.
quiche

Thursday, February 14, 2008

What the World Needs Now....

Must be something about Valentines Day as I have been very lucky to receive some serious internet knitting lovin’ this week.

First, I won a contest on the daft crafter’s blog. Who knew that having sick revenge fantasies would make me a winner? If I knew that before,I would have played the lottery back in high school when I dreamed of shaving the head of Bonnie N. the night before prom. Anyway, I will be the recipient of some (sure to be gorgeous) sock yarn dyed by the daft crafter herself. I will post pretty pictures when I get it.

Oh, and for the two of my readers who don’t already read her blog you really should. While she doesn’t post often when she does it’s chock full of stuff and completely hilarious.

Which brings me to more mutual admiration on the net. Ariel tagged me with a Make My Day award.


It was very cool of her to do so and be sure to check out her blog as well. If anyone's socks are going to tempt me to start knitting sock's it is hers. Hmmm....I will be getting sock yarn soon, I sense a conspiracy.

Now I am supposed to pass along the make my day award to others so here are bloggers who make my day. Some places say it should be 5, some 10. Yet again, I say screw it and will just put as many as I feel like.


Craft Pirate - I know she has gotten this honor already but her amazing photography of her knitting alone merits getting it twice.

beetlegrass - I first saw some of her work at the South End Open Studios and loved it. A great mix of illustrations, her collections and kick-ass finger puppets.

Daft Crafter - see accolades above

Lemonade Sandwich - Okay, so this is total nepotism and she hasn't posted original work for a while but there are photos of my adorable niece there and if anything makes my day that does.

floresita - things I've made - now only does she do great her own great work, embroidery, drawings etc she also has does another blog , feeling stitchy that showcases projects from the flickr embroidery group, tutorials etc.



One last thing that recently made my day, check out my mad frosting-piping skills on my Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting that I made for Cooking Club this past weekend. And they were fully baked! No goo!

Whole Lotta Red Velvet Cupcakes

Happy Valentines Day!

Friday, February 1, 2008

Good-bye January!

First of all let me tell y'all what an idiot I am....I changed some option on my blog that made it so I had to moderate any comments before they could be published. (I had one instance of icky spam comment and I was trying to keep that from happening) but apparently I never set it up to tell me that I had comments a' waitin' for my moderation so they were sitting there for 2 weeks. Whoops. Just gave myself a dope slap. But since it happened in January I am not all that surprised. It was not that great of a month and I am very glad it is over. It kinda sucked. Luckily I had some really good people around to cheer me up so it could have been way worse.

But one good thing that I managed to accomplish this month was to finish the Michellephant sweater. My niece really, really likes elephants and has amassed quite a collection for such a young girl. So one day I was surfing around on ravelry ('cause that rarely happens) and did a pattern search for elephants and lo and behold this sweater comes up. I know that she would love it but then it turns out that the pattern is from a 2004 issue of Knit It! How the hell am I going to get my hands on that? So I put a notice on a ravelry forum and a lovely woman in Oregon has the magazine and will send it to me just for the cost of shipping. How cool is that?

Elephant Pullover

I promise to add a photo when Michelle actually gets the sweater and is modeling it but I really wanted to post a photo of a FO and it's not like it will it ruin the surprise for her since she's not on the web. Yet.

My sister doubts that when Michelle looks at the sweater, she will say "Nice seaming, Auntie Sarah" but I am pretty proud of my seaming skills on this. Oh and in the theme of Fearless Knitting how great was it to tackle my first big intarsia project and have it come out looking like what it was supposed to?