Somewhere Over the Rainbow Socks

I would say I'm over the moon with these socks but it's more like over the rainbow. 

It has not been super warm yet for me so I am still getting a chance to wear these at night. 

The baseball season ended just in time for me to finish them. I can knit plain socks without looking at my hands so it gives me something to do but I still see all the plays. I often wish I could sew without looking too. 

I'm playing around with another appliqué skirt these days. When I have a quarter of it done I will grab some photos for you. It is extremely simple compared to the last one I made. 

Hope your summer is off to a good start. There are many more topics I need to fill you in on soon. Happy fun exciting ones. Ones that will warm your creative hearts. Stay tuned. 

Focus and lack there of

Creative work for me has its own ebb and flow.

There is always something going on, but things move between one focused project and several things getting worked on at the same time.

It seems the more crazy my non-creative life is, the less focus I devote to the creative side. 

Projects have been all over the map lately with none of them getting a lot of attention but lots of them getting a small amount.  I started reading 3 books at the same time if that tells you something about my frame of mind.  Isabel's Bed (long story) and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? are the two that I like the most.

The only thing that got finished recently is the above rainbow sock and that is just because of the amount of baseball games we have had lately and a bit of weekend travel of my part.

In case you're wondering, it's self-striping yarn from British dyer Fab Funky Fibers that moves through 15 different rainbow colors and has a decent amount of cashmere for a very soft feel.  I don't usually knit socks for myself but I will confess I'm keeping these even if they are too crazy to wear out and about.

I hope to have a quiet summer with some rare relaxation in store for me.  I have lofty goals of finishing a big quilt before the PIQF entry form deadline.   They haven't posted the entry form yet, but the deadline is usually in the August time frame.  

Some people don't like to see their quilts hanging in the show and find it annoying to have an unknown person officially judge their quilt.  I take the judge comments with a grain of salt and use them to improve future projects as best I can.  The real reason I like to have my quilts in the show is to inspire other people and hope it leads them to their own new creative fork in the road for them.

It's hot - can we go to the beach please now?

It isn't often you see beautiful beach photos in black and white.  The resorts want to show you all the glorious colors of the sky and the water.  

About 2 years ago I was in a state of mind where I only wanted to load my film camera up with black and white film.  I thought it was too progressive to shoot in color.  I've of course gotten over that since, but this shot I took in Maui in 2012 made me want to go there again - too cool off, if nothing else - but it I also kinda want to load up another roll of black and white film sometime soon.

Photography aside, the reality is that I am not heading to Hawaii again any time soon, but I am trying to stay cool and doing my best to entertain myself in parallel.

I've been knitting socks because the take zero prep work and are portable enough for baseball games.  We have been really enjoying a lot of games this year with the boys.

I have a strong urge to finish up some quilting projects still brewing, but the urge to get a little sleep has been winning out over the quilting these days.  I hope when the school year wraps up that I find some cycles to play and maybe start hand quilting a big quilt top.  That would involve me putting all the blocks together on one of my many projects.  

I guess I'll challenge myself to get on the stick and finish a quilt top in May.  That may be too lofty a goal, but it's good to have a stretch goal, right?

Hope your creative work is going well.  If you're heading off to some exotic beach this summer you won't bump into me, but feel free to send me a post card!

Shall the lost actually be found?

Name:  First Argyle Sock for my darling 8 yr old
Born: April 5th, 2014
Date Missing:  April 25th, 2014
Missing From: my messy office, but your guess is really as good as mine


Not to rip off the formatting from the side of a milk carton missing person's report or anything here, but I think it's time to put the word out.

I've always wondered if those missing people actually run away because of some horrible situation they are in or if they just found love in some other place.

Perhaps either of those could apply to the missing sock (can socks fall in love?), but I am at a serious cross roads here.  

Do I press forward and knit another one with hopes that the lost shall be found?  Do I dare knit 3 of these things?  (my DH has stated a prophecy that the first sock will literally fall from the sky and land on my head the moment I finish the 3rd one if I end up knitting it)

The best solution seems to be to taking a sewing break for the short term.  

Maybe I should put 'If Lost Please Return To' tags on my projects ala Paddington Bear.   

Either way, if you have seen my sock, feel free to give it back.   Now!

Argyle love

 I set out to knit a pair of argyle socks for my DH because after all he watched the boys while I took the class.

It turns out that these socks unfortunately fit our 8 yr old, and not my DH.  Oops.  Well, the boy is excited about them, even a little extra excited because he is getting them out from under the nose of his daddy.

I guess this means a second pair is in order.

The class I took was from Anne Berk, a wonderful teacher.  I would actually love to take another class with her.  She did a nice blog post about teaching our class where you can even see a photo of me and some girls from knit nite. 

I intend to buy her book when it becomes available.  It will probably be great.  Until then, I have about 3 more socks to make if not 5 if my younger boy chimes in.

Stitches West 2014: Recap

Stitches West is a knitting convention in San Jose, California.

They have lots of vendors and tons of classes so for me it's a great chance to pick up some cool new yarn and take a class or two.

This year I took the argyle sock class with Anne Berk.  She was an awesome teacher and everybody in class learned a ton.  Class was especially fun because three of my best friends took it with me and we had a serious blast.

The above photo is of swatches that we all made in class.  Mine is the aqua colored one near the lower center.  

I'm looking forward to making some fun socks with what I learned.  I may even make some mitts for the kids.  That would be even faster to finish.  

Spring is coming though, so time to knit faster is here.

I got some yarn from this vendor Plucky Knitter.  They have their own yarn base that no other vendor uses, it is made strictly for them.  It gives you amazing stitch definition and I think that may be due to it having more twist in the yarn.  Either way, their yarn is hard to come across so the booth was wall to wall people.  I did work my way in though so plucky socks are on the horizon. 

I also got some Bugga! yarn and started in on a shawl called Catkin.  It may take me a zillion years to finish it.  Maybe more than a zillion.  I'm still very focused on my DIY Alabama Chanin skirt, so the knitting is happening but...at a certain pace I guess.

Oh and I tripped over some stitch markers by Neese's Pieces that were made out of hand blown glass.  Very unusual and pretty.

Next year I hope I can take another class with my buddies.  I cannot remember when I've ever had so much fun.  See So Sue's blog post about it here, and check out my friend Sharon's blog Knits are for Kids too!

Stitches West 2014

There are only two 'events' in the quilting and knitting universe that make my pulse rise.

PIQF (of course!) and Stitches West.

Last night was the Stitches West market preview, so I took a run over there in the evening to check out the yarn and take advantage of the late hours.  It was a real hoot.

I ran into boat loads of podcasters, including the Knitmore Girls, The Yarniacs, and Never Not Knitting's Alana.  I also had a sighting of the Knit Lit Chicks but they were on the go so we didn't get to chat.

It was fun to see all the latest goodies in the yarn-land.  I ended up with a couple more balls of sock yarn because, well, one can never have too many socks.  Right? 

My family may be sick of all the hand knit socks I make them but they have yet to ask me to stop and the kids are growing out of them at times too.  I have a bit of a more is more approach to socks.

The most fun I had was of course in the A Verb For Keeping Warm booth where I could have just stayed all night, but resigned myself to a couple of yarn balls  (including what you see above) and headed home.

I'm taking an argyle sock class all day tomorrow so wish me luck with that.

Have a great weekend.  If you're in the California Bay Area, stop in at stitches...the colors are amazing and it smells like clean sheep!

Quilts Japan and Patchwork Quilt Tsusin January 2014

I look forward to seeing the first issue of the year come out from both Quilts Japan and Patchwork Tsushin because they have the calendars in them.

Some years I pick up a second copy for my mom because the calendar is so knock your socks off incredible.

Other years I cry over quilts that just don't speak to me or photography that could have used some help.

This year both calendars are a bit on the so-so side.  You can judge for yourself, but I'm not sure I'm over the moon about either of them.

The issues themselves are a different story.

Quilts Japan #156 is an incredible issue.  It's full of the bright primary colored floral prints that I love and have collected for a while.  The quilts are bold and beautiful.  This is one of my most favorite issues.

Patchwork Tsushin #177 was lukewarm for me.  It has a lot of holiday projects as well as some whimsical designs with pom poms and ric rack.  Not my personal favorite, but somebody with a sweeter cuter aesthetic might really love it.

Either way, it's nice to kick the year off with some Japanese eye candy, that's for sure.

Happy 2014!

Hope that your new year was full of joy and peace.  We had a great holiday in general and relaxed for once.

I'm still working away on lots of creative projects.  Progress is more tortoise than hare, but progress is progress.

My Alabama Chanin DYI skirt is almost 1/4 done after a road trip of working on it and some evenings watching movies.  It will probably be a while before it is actually done.  I may have to have a small party whenever I get another quarter of it finished.  I'm also thinking of playing around with some embroidery on the waist band just for decoration and to have some fun.

Some movies I saw were good, some not so much:

The Internship - feel free to skip it
South Pacific - time to re-watch this movie is always now, I could watch it all day
The Perfect Game - awesome, inspiration story of a Mexican little league team, highly recommend

Next up for me is The Lightening Thief.  I hope it's worth seeing.

I'm also knitting my first KnitSpot knitting pattern by Anne Hanson.  It's a sock pattern so very portable called Waffle Cream socks.  I'm knitting them for my DH.  It's a lot of 1x1 work, so slow, but looking ok so far.  Photos of that soon.

As for my theme for 2014, I think it will be Finishing.  I have so many incredible projects that deserve to be finished, let's see what I can do to put a fork in a couple big ones. 

Wish me luck on that.  It won't be easy.

You have your theme picked out?  Broken any juicy resolutions yet?

'Tis The Season

With Thanksgiving behind us here in the US our thoughts are starting to turn to the Christmas Holidays.

The kids and I made an Advent calendar together today 'Just In Time' to open the first installment on December first.

It was a lot of fun, I'll have to take a decent photo of it for you.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday we ended up visiting Southern California with a brief stop through Los Angeles.

The Last Bookstore is located in downtown LA and is a HUGE shop where you can get almost any book you could imagine, used, for a great price.  The kids went crazy in the children's section, grabbing up handfuls and handfuls of books, begging me to buy out half of the store.  I bought them a copy of A Light in the Attic which they have fallen in love with.  It makes them really laugh.

The shop itself is a beautiful space, I highly recommend a visit if you have the chance.

On the 2nd floor, there is a small but very interesting yarn shop called Gather.  I was smitten by their boxes of tiny 'mystery yarn' balls for $5.  You could make a lot of striped socks for next to nothing.  They also had sock yarn by a British company called The Uncommon Thread.  I picked up a skein of their Lush Twist in a cream colorway called Manuscript.  Very pretty, will have to finally knit myself some socks from it.

I also did some sewing on the trip.  I'm working on an Alabama Chanin style 'coaster' - meaning a very small piece of fabric that you may use to put your coffee cup on.  It has a ton of bead work on it and has been quite slow going.  Sewing with beads has proven to be fun but it is far from a speedy undertaking.  I want to eventually use this technique on a larger project but it will likely be limited to the lower couple inches of a skirt or the lower sleeves of a bolero or something.  Photos of it soon for you.

And in other news, Jay recently left me a comment to a link where you can get EVEN MORE Yoko Saito books in English (thanks Jay!), so check out this shop called Willow Lane Quilting Company - it looks quite cool.

Time for Knitwear

Our older son had a soccer play off series this weekend and the little one was sporting a little congestion.  My solution to this was to pull out all the knitwear I could find for him.

This included a beanie out of Madelintosh in a yummy copper color, a scarf that I knit ages ago that is too short for me, and a Little Oak Cardi  - pattern by Alana Dakos. 

The socks are cheating, just from SmartWool.

Still though, this was one very wooly 5yr old.  It was early and cold, so was a lot more cooperative about it than usual.

I have been knitting up a storm today and made some progress on a gift for somebody special.  More about that in a couple weeks.

Hope you're all out there keeping warm too.

And by the way, have any of you tried making custom photo moleskin books?  I think they would be cool for holiday gifts, but I'm interested in a recommendation....anybody?

Creative Queue

Do you have a creative queue of some sort?

I have a long running list of projects that I want to work on, with a priority/interest order that shifts with my mood, time, and my ability to concentrate.

I find this queue of creative endeavors to be unfortunately mostly managed on post-it notes stuck to my phone, my desk, and at times (dark times) my pants.

Do you have tips on how to manage your creative projects, how to list them all down, how to organize, prioritize, and keep them all in your thoughts to someday be at last completed?

If you have good ideas on how to do this, pleeeeeease, pretty please share them with me.  I'm all ears.

Until that happy day, here are a few things I'm kicking around...not really in priority order yet (I need help, obviously!).

• Wrist Warmers (above) out of Lollipop Yarn, colorway Life Is Beautiful
• Basket Quilt: applique handles down, baste it and quilt it (small, so will go quickly!)
• Owl embroidery project from kiriki - starting it as soon as my new embroidery hoop arrives, apologies in advance to the owl, your destiny is probably to become a pincushion!
• Sweater for my 8 yr old
• Socks for my mom 
• Wedding Signature Quilt: for goodness sake it's been almost 10 years, this awesome quilt deserves better
• Birthday Signature Blocks: you have seen me working on these for ages, time to pre-applique down all the numbers for my kids and nieces
  
  
  That's the short list, I swear!

To Taupe or Not To Taupe: That is the question

A recent post comment from Lynne had me laughing so hard I almost fell off my chair.  It's like a letter to the editor that just needs more discussion.

She mentioned that she still loves Japanese Taupe fabrics, but has seen a lot of chatter lately about how quilters are glad that we are moving away from this boring palette.

After some searching around, it is true that there are people out there that are tired of taupes!  Seriously!  Sick of them, and looking forward to their exit from the quilting scene.



Maybe I'm like one of those old hippies who still likes to wear tie die clothes 30 years after they stopped being popular. 

They will have to rip the taupe fabric out of my cold dead hands. 

Do you love taupes still?  Are you eagerly awaiting their demise?  


Leave a comment so I can get a better feel of what the quilting universe has to say on this one.



In other news, I've run into so many cool and interesting goodies lately, I have to share some of them with you here:  Enjoy.

Above socks by Zkano:  Made in Alabama!  Too cool for school.  Really comfie too.

Color Block Wallet:  Kids love this portable set of 100% beeswax crayons, made in Germany by NonPerishableGoods

Susan Frost Ceramics: beautiful, albeit not easy to order online unfortunately

Modern architecture & cool eats:  The Shed in Healdsburg, on my short list of places to visit

Greenware cutting boards: perfect gift for a new home or even just a treat for yourself someday

Poketo: if you like minimalism and clean lines, this is a very cool online shop for adorable goodies including some Japanese pots and pans

Oyo tiny figures:  Pablo Sandoval is by far my favorite from the SF Giants - not a Lego 'mini fig' but close and really cute

Twisted Limone Yarn: 2 Day Socks

I've never made a pair of socks over the course of a weekend before.

I would not have dreamed it possible actually, even for kid sized feet.  

Truly, 'kid' sized feet of an almost 8 yr old boy are getting quite close to the size of my own feet.  He's a little like a puppy with those huge feet.  I often wonder how tall he'll eventually become.  Much taller than me, that's for sure.

Instead of using 3 double pointed knitting needles (DPN's) to make these socks, I decided to use a teenie tiny circular by Clover.  Size 1, 9" circular to be exact.

Initially it was bothering my hands to use it because the needle itself is so short.  I almost gave up on making these with that needle set and cut over to DPN's.

It all seemed to just 'click' at some point, and it was really fast to knit them up.  The almost knit themselves really.

If this continues my family may become really REALLY sick of hand knit socks.  I take them around with me to swimming lessons, piano practice, soccer...before you know it, a pair or two show up. 

Magic!  

Yarn by Twisted Limone, one of my favorite shops.  Socks hold up VERY well to serious punishment.

Turtle Soup Recipe

Eating cute little turtles is hardly something I intend to start doing. 

In fact I was shocked that there are lots of recipes out there for them.  I was thinking that they are too adorable to eat.  Apparently not!

Anna Hrachovec, the mastermind knitter behind MochiMochiLand just came out with a pattern for a tiny turtle. 

I knit this to match my 4yr old's most recent socks.  He is actually willing to wear the socks now that he has a matching turtle!  Wow, a small miracle. 

Mind the Gap self striping yarn in tons of colors, made it easy to find a good color combo that pops.

I'm slipping a couple more photos in here for you, I just cannot resist.

After several hours of hard work, the tiny turtle progressed from the starting link on the ankle to half way up the shin.

He really is small as you can see.  Knit on size 0000 needles!  Yowza.  Teenie tiny.

Happy Fourth!

The 4th of July is one of my all time favorite holidays.


Some extra time with the family while school's out is an awesome treat.


This year the holiday weekend was a busy one.  Lots of running around:


Monster's University - enjoyable movie, albeit slightly scary to our 4 yr old at a couple of points

Giants Baseball - fun to beat the Dodgers!  We had some nice seats there this evening

Heath Ceramics - a beautiful shop in San Francisco...if you are looking for Alabama Chanin's new plate, better wait until it's back in stock.  I did not get my hands on one.  We bought a coloring book instead.

General Store - this funky spot in San Francisco is oh so much fun.  Japanese imported household goodies, and adorable hip clothes.  R.P. Miller t-shirt was my favorite discovery.  Unfortunately not shown on the General Store web site, but available here at Gravel and Gold.  I dislike un-soft or itchy shirts.  These T's are 100% cotton and soft as can be.

Oh, yes...and I finished knitting a pair of socks, and finished quilting my secret quilt project!!  How's that for progress.  Heh! 

Mind the Gap: self striping sock yarn

I am hand quilting away like a mad person, but top secret project so no news of it here.

These little crazy colored socks did get finished recently while on vacation, so I'm sharing a quick snapshot of them with you.  Even the presence of my mom's loving coaxing could hardly get the reluctant model to keep them on for more than a couple of moments.

They are done though, and they look adorable.  Maybe he will warm up to them.  They are slightly big, so he as some time to change his mind and get some use out of them.

The yarn is by British dyer Trailing Clouds.

Just Ducky

Anzula is a yarn company that makes perhaps THE softest sock yarn I have ever felt. 

The base is called Anzula Squishy and the colorway I picked up is called Ducky.

At $34/ball, it isn't for every pair of socks you want to knit, of course.  On the rare occasion you want to make something really REALLY special, I think this is a good contender.

My final vote for/against the sock yarn doesn't happen until I have knit up a pair of socks with it and worn them for a while to see how they hold up.  Stay tuned for that.  I'm toying with the idea of knitting up the Waffle Cream socks by Anne Hanson of Knit Spot.

Hand Knit Socks: Getting to know Cookie A (again)

The last time I knit a pair of socks by Cookie A it was her most famous pattern called Monkey.  Almost 17,000 pairs of them have been logged in on Ravelry.  Not bad for a little sock pattern. 

I decided to branch out and try  her pattern called Wanida, a significantly less popular pattern with only around 1,000 projects noted on Ravelry. 

Not sure why one pattern becomes more popular than the next.  Maybe it's the photos.  Maybe it's just viral.  Either way, I am enjoying knitting Wanida and hope to cast on the 2nd sock soon.

"Second Sock Syndrome," AKA "SSS" or basically a lack of interest in knitting the 2nd sock (no more mystery, once the first sock is complete) is my current state of being. 

What does one do when overcome by this disorder? 

My "helpful" DH has recommended one could have one's second foot surgically removed.  An interesting (sick?) notion.  I was sure I could come up with a better alternative to that.  How about....

Sewing instead!!

I may have a photo for you of my newest hand sewn creation soon.  Stay tuned.  So far, I'm navigating uncharted waters and having a serious blast.

Heavenly View

This image from my window seat recently got me to thinking how beautiful the view is up above the clouds.

I took a small knitting project on this trip with me, just a sock pattern.  When you create a new project in Ravelry, they let you name it something cute.  I called these my Red Sox Socks, after the Boston baseball team.  The pattern is not super complex, but is by Cookie A and is called Wanida from a book called Sock Innovation.  Photos coming soon.

When I read posts by other bloggers about loss in their family life, I never have anything terribly comforting to say to them since these events of course very sad.  It does make me feel less alone in this process and more like we are all just part of a greater plan.

My loss is of a person who has known me since I came into the world.  A person who did not have the easiest life but who always saw his glass as half full.  He loved to read the paper, have a morning cup of coffee, cheer for the Red Sox, and go on a drive in the car to nowhere in particular.

He taught me to count my blessings, even the small ones.  At times I don't take the time to recognize simple blessings in my daily life, but the real truth is that we are all quite blessed.