When life brings you the Drama Llama, make yarn.

And oh, how I have been trying to this week. Life, that raging harpie with a capital L, has dumped a steaming pile of unsolicited drama into my otherwise peaceful existence and I’m just waiting for it all to go away. And to keep myself busy, I am knitting.

A word of advice: Anyone out there who does not wish to sob like a little baby should not watch Rachel Getting Married.  Consider yourself warned.

I heart Portland.

On Sunday while the rest of the city treated Mom to brunch, I took advantage of the sun and walked down to Colonel Summers Park where it was just me, some tennis players and the organic gardeners. (My mommy lives 1000 miles away, so she got a phone call that woke her up. Rise and shine, Mama!)

Colonel Summers Park organic garden

Among the things I love about Portland: the fact that a community organic garden exists and that I could sit embroidering in the grass under a tree and no one noticed a thing unusual. I’m still not used to that.

Also among the things I love right now: my new vintage cowboy boots. Love love love them. They go with everything and I’ve worn them every where. They are about a mens size 11 and my feet slide around while walking, and I couldn’t afford to eat much the week after the purchase, but those boots are my dearest possession right now.

Aside from admiring my footwear, I also worked a bit on my hankies with the Decemberists stitch transfers from Sublime Stitching (pretty sure I posted them back in the summertime). I’m now compelled to complete them, since Chrissy and I are going to their show in July, and the tickets were so expensive I had better be moved to tears and require a hankie to weep into. Convenience charge, my ass.

Anyhow, Monday was also my Lil L’s second birthday (who I can’t call my youngest nephew now that Baby S has joined the pack!) and my one year anniversary of landing in Oregon. Looking back, blah blah blah, all I really have to say is I’m in a much better place mentally, emotionally and physically than I was one year ago and I think it has everything to do with location.

Oh, and when I said my Ravelry page was updated, I totally lied. It’s more current now, but still missing two major projects. I’ll make sure to post about them here, too, but I added some little things to Ravelry.

That was an unscheduled extended blog break. To anyone still subscribed to my feed, nothing was wrong, no cataclysmic events, just… no blogging. I was crafting up the proverbial storm, but not feeling the need to post about it. If anyone is so inclined, my Ravelry page is pretty much updated and I’ll be adding some more to it over the weekend.

I’m planning on a nice boring weekend after a few months of too much partying and spending too much money. Ahh, Maker’s Mark, you get me every time So, I’ll be scrubbing my bathroom and rearranging the stash (exciting!) this weekend. With content like this, wasn’t it tragic I wasn’t posting?

I’ll also be celebrating one year in Portland on Monday. I could do one of those year end retrospectives that clog blogland on January 1st, but I won’t. Rest assured, this May 11th will be better than the last.

And how fabulous is the new Decemberists album? Do yourself a favor and get it now!

busy busy bee

busy busy bee, originally uploaded by staceyboo2.

WordPress remembers me? Amazing!

I couldn’t even remember the last time I posted here. I suppose it has only been a week, but GALLBLADDER SURGERY seems to distort time. Yup, I am now minus one internal organ. I knew it was coming, but didn’t plan on getting sliced up this week in particular. I have been getting an alarming amount of knitting done while I recuperate, to make up for the knitting time I lost in the hospital. An IV in the hand? Obviously not put there by a knitter. I’ll share what I have finished tomorrow (maybe), and since I only have two WIPs now, neither of which I’m too enthused about at the moment, I’ll hopefully have something new to share.

Natural selection hasn’t claimed me yet!

Blast you, curtains! Blast you!

There was a plan in place for this weekend. The need to improve the Crack Den Palace is upon me again, and I’m beyond bored with the industrial chic look of the white blinds with no curtains my windows have been sporting. I haven’t hemmed up the orange curtains yet (they of the hideous smell), but I had a plan in place. And it was a good plan. And now… ruined. I was going to hang up the curtain rods, hang the curtains, measure to see how much I needed to cut off the bottoms and hem accordingly. Viola, right? Umm, nope.

What went wrong? Rods, curse them, the rods!

In my lease agreement, there is a line banning curtain rods, and I figured that was meant for modern curtain rods that needed to be screwed into the wall and would leave huge gaping holes in the wall. My sister in law had just taken down a bunch of curtain rods from her and my brother’s house left from the previous owner that could be hung up with wire nails. Perfect, I think. I can hang up curtains with minimal damage to the walls. Swift thinking, right? Well…

I went to nail up the brackets yesterday and ran into a slight problem. See, my walls are thinkly plastered, being that this apartment is ancient, and I could have sworn that I would be able to hang a baby elephant from the wall if I so chose. This may be true of the interior walls, but not of the area above the windows. The nails sank in the wall like a knife through butter. Warm butter. Melted butter. Then they stopped sinking, because they hit the brick outer wall. So my brackets looked like this:

And pulled out of the wall when I set the rod on the bracket, leaving holes that look like this:

Building management is going to luuurve me.

So I have a few options. I could get shorter nails and try again, which will leave even more huge holes in the wall. I could not hang up curtains and deal with the eyesore that is my window treatments. Or I could tack up the curtains with thumbtacks. I think I’m going with the last option, just so I can have something better than white metal mini blinds to look at, and they won’t leave very big holes. Le sigh. I’m still frustrated. And what is a girl thwarted by curtain rods to do?

Knit a hat, naturally.

Hats. Wowee.

I’ve been down with a case of the “not feeling so good”, so I’m blogging to you live from my couch, wrapped in my owl blankie, sipping mint tea with a candle burning in hopes of eradicating the “aroma” produced by Cheech and Chong next door (note: it’s not working) . I made a silent New Year’s goal to get back with the blogging on a more regular basis, since my little corner of the internet is so quiet I’m not even getting spam comments anymore, but this week has not been so very kind to me. Stomach revenge and a service light shining brightly on the Coche dashboard, not so much fun. Anyhoo. We all come for the finished objects, right?

The Cabled Beret has been finished since the Great Blizzard of Ought Eight, about a month ago. It kept my head warm during numerous mornings waiting at the bus stop while the snow was falling, and didn’t let my head get wet when the snow melted after I got on the bus. A fine hat, indeed.

I’ve been told not to apologize for my cooking, and sometimes I think that sentiment should extend to other aspects of my life, but not this photograph. I apologize profusely for the blurry, odd angled, emo-kid-with-a-web-cam-ness of this pic, but it was the only one I took that got the whole hat in the frame, so there you have it. I’m a horrible self portrait photographer. Alert the press. But allow me to point out the reasons I love this hat. My head is apparently huge (22 whopping inches in circumference), and I have a hard time finding a hat to encompass my ginormous bobble head, so I’m pleased that this hat covers my head and my ears. Nice. Also, I think the cables to be quite nifty. Even if C did say it gave me a mushroom head.

A better view of the hat? As you wish.

This hat was so well liked by a similarly large craniumed co-worker that she requested one of her own. Who am I to refuse hand knits to solve a problem, especially one I know so well?

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to capture the color of this one, an aptly named “Italian Plum” colorway by Cascade, but trust me, it was so juicy and purple I wanted to take a bite. Are specs really necessary? Ok, fine.

Yarn: Cascade 220 in some green color and “Italian Plum” (yum!)

Needles: Crystal Palace Bamboo DPN’s US size 6 and 8

Pattern: Cabled Beret

Mods: none

Another Cabled Beret is in the works for another big headed co-worker (Sisterhood of the Buffalo Skulls, anyone?), and after that I think I’ll have to stop with the made to order knitting. It’s a bit draining when I can’t call my knitting time my own, and I think that’s a lot of the point with knitting for me. It’s time to call my own.

I have a few other projects in the works, but I do have a touch of the startitis right now, and keep thinking distracting thoughts of lace, while I already have the Lace Ribbon Scarf over 2/3 complete, and having daydreams of cables when I’m over half way done with the Druid Mittens (lazy lazy Raverly links, I know).

Who wants Meow Mix?

I have a backlog of FOs to show off, and I think I’ll start with my most successful this far. Behold, the Meow Mittens.

These mark my first foray into charting a design, and although the template was graciously provided by Hello Yarn, I’m a little proud of myself. (I seem to be having a problem with pride lately. Last night, I unclogged my bath tub drain all by my wee little lonesome, and I’m still basking in the glory.) I charted out the name Lily, in cursive, people. Cursive. No block letters for me, thankyouverymuch. And I freely admit the cats are a little goofy looking, but I’m no artist and cats aren’t my favorite animal, so I wasn’t very imaginative in that aspect. But Lily. In cursive, yo. Gratuitous close up:

Am I Lily? No, dear, my name is Stacey (for the three people who read this blog that I don’t know personally). So these mittens are clearly not for me. These little babies are for a coworker, who loves cats, if that wasn’t abudantly apparent.

And since these were the first FO of 2009, I tucked in a little surprise:

I’ve been knitting a lot more for other people lately, which is a bit strange for me. I’m the definition of a selfish knitter. I don’t look at patterns or dream up designs with anyone but myself in mind, so if I knit for someone else, it means true love. I am a bit more willing to knit for others here in Portland than I was in Las Vegas, most likely due to the appreciation factor. It’s a sad but true statement that Las Vegas is entirely lacking in a creative arts community, and Portland is filthy with artists. Where any sort of creative output in Las Vegas (especially of the crafty persuasion) is pretty much met with “Oh, how quaint. And why are you doing that again?”. Up here the reaction goes more along the lines of  “You make stuff? Me too!” Who loves Portland? I do.

And so the mittens were taken to work, oohhed and aahhed over, mass emails were sent out touting their awesomeness, and the orders came flooding in. Knit for hire? Hmm, I’m not so sure about that. But it’s nice for the knit to be respected, appreciated, and even sought after.

Specs:

Pattern: my own, using Hello Yarn’s Generic Norwegian Mitten template

Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull in pink and charcoal gray

Needles: US size 3

Size: About a women’s medium. Lily has smaller hands than I, so I knit them to be a bit snug on my huge man-like hands, and they fit her perfectly.

Gauge: ???? Sorry, I didn’t measure.

Ravelry Link, for those so inclined.

Christmas Rewind

Christmas has been over and New Year’s is a memory, but I continue to be lazy. I’ve been wanting to show off some of my favorite presents for a while now, but only got around to taking pictures yesterday.

Yes, that’s a garden gnome flying a bomber with a pin up gnome on the side. And yes, there is a story there. Gnome art genius C painted it for me for Christmas. I haven’t hung it up yet, due to a lack of hammer and nails, but it will have a place of honor very soon. Right next to this

You read right. L at work is a fan of Subversive Cross Stitch, and as I introduced her to the above phrase, well… She even used Stacey colors! Aww.

And I gave this as a gift, but I just think it’s cool.

Tibetan singing bowls, one for me and one for C. I got them at one of the little Tibetan stores on Hawthorne. We’ve been meaning to start going to meditation sessions at a dharma center, but haven’t got off our butts to do it yet. I thought they’d be a neat little reminder to get on the cushion, as they say. C and I tried to play them a little on Christmas, but instead of getting a nice ringing sound out of them, we only managed a weird alien humming. In time, I suppose. I haven’t practiced trying to get mine to actually ring in my apartment, Cheech and Chong next door probably wouldn’t like it.

I’ve also been knitting my little fingers to the bone this weekend, and have a couple FO’s to show off, but I’ll wait until I give them to their new owners before I post. I get to play Knit Fairy at work tomorrow, let’s just say.

Properous New Year.

Instead of a long, drawn out epistle on 2008, I’ll just say that it was full of stunning highs and crushing lows, and I have the distinct feeling that the universe is on my side this time.