the one that got away?

we are on break from the quarter at work right now, and i took the first half of my time off and translated it into a road trip to nyc.  on saturday i had to entertain myself solo for about an hour while my traveling companion got a hair cut, so i went vintage shopping.

i hit three shops in an hour, and the last one, A Little Wicked, was by far the best fit for me.  they have great pieces, and they buy (thus stock!) pieces in my size range.  prices we not at all bad for vintage in nyc. sorry nyc, dc will always have better prices for vintage.

i did go home with a yellow gingham number that i am very excited to wear soon, but i have been pining after the dress i left on the rack.  i certainly hope someone as rescued her because she is a lovely thing indeed!

look at those polka dots!!!
i justified leaving her behind because she is probably a size or two larger than what i need, and i was trying not to be a spending nut.  still, i pine.

other shopping highlights include a fabric trip to Mood, a pilgrimage to purl soho, and a last minute purchasing of buttons for my current knitting project at M&J trimmings.  one can buy from all of those places online, but there is nothing quiet like going to the shop in person.

i have a lot of sewing in my future!  the balance of my break, however, we be spent gardening and visiting with family who are coming in from out of town.  good times, indeed.

absurdity as artform

diva sunglasses make my day

wednesday i was in a goofy mood.  i was starting to not feel very well  (i know now that i was coming down with a sinus infection.) so i needed a happy outfit.

the centerpiece is the skirt, which i made.  if you look closely at the print they are 1970s meets Art Deco ladies.  it is an Alexander Henry print i bought at Exquisite Fabrics, which is currently in the process of closing...  much to my dismay.

blouse is from antho...  odille brand.  but i bough it for a whistle and a song on ebay.  ebay is a great way to score anthropologie at a reasonable price.  or to get the "rare" pieces that are gobbled up before you can find your debit card.

i realize now that this outfit is also an homage to great vintage accessories.  the gold bracelet covering my RoadID is a 70s snake bracelet. (Polly Sue's Takoma Park, MD)  the necklaces are also great find.  the long coper chain and pendent is a thunderbird, also from the 70s (Moonshadow Takoma Park, MD) and the beaded guy is one of my prized thrift store finds.

it is baltic amber in four or five colors (including butterscotch amber, which kills me) and the good people at Value Village had no idea what they were selling. i stole it at $4.99 then sunk an investment of $5 in new clasp and extender chain on a piece that would retail between $150- 200.

i wish i could high-five myself.

to truly improve a bad day one must have victory rolls, diva sunglasses, and favorite cowboy boots.  heck, yeah.

piles

today i found this post i forgot i started on... um... monday... 4/27


i have not been blogging lately because i simply have had no time for it. i am creating neither content or posts to contain it because the new job has been pretty intense. i was hired very shortly before the new quarter began, so i have been developing my classes week to week.

summer quarter will be better because i will have a quarter under my belt, and i have 3 extra weeks to refine the 2nd go round.

i plan to be very non-specific about my new job because i had to sign my name to 8,000 sheets of paper and i am pretty sure one of them frowned upon blogging.

our apartment looks like a war zone. piles and piles of stuff. first, we have piles of grading.

then we have the other major culprit for the lack of knitting.... piles of sewing. for shows. i have a big one coming up, and the only way to tackle it is to buy, borrow, and build.... a lot. the sewing has been simple and enjoyable. i am just not looking forward to all the finishing and hemming.

in addition to the pile of cut out garments on the left, this photo also features the model tote bag i stitched along with my students. it is my new favourite purse.

yesterday was hot and beautiful.


...and that is where it ended. i am relatively certain i was going to tell everyone about the day i had sunday when it was very hot.

rW and i went to Lake Artemesia and walked around the lake for awhile. i think we would have stayed much longer if we had brought some water along. never the less, it was fun and beautiful. we saw a turtle sunning himself on a log. he looked great--what a life! stretched out, eyes closed, leaning into the sun.

ahh!

and
one more picture for you....


i call this a "pattern piece tumbleweed". this final pile is what happens when you leave you pattern pieces poorly weighted on a surface overnight and neglect to close the window.

i am so s--m--r--t.

several things

okay okay.
enough prodding. i've had things to do, folks. they are many. let's review.

1. go see Roundheads and Peakheads. running through March 15th at the Atlas Center, it was produced by Catalyst Theatre Company. buy tickets here.

2. Constellation Theatre Company, a theatre i am proud to be an Associate Artist of is being awarded the James Aniello Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company at the 2009 Helen Hayes Awards. okay. so i didn't actually do anything when this announcement came out. jump and down and stuff... but i had to share.

3. deer are awesome and have natural camouflage.

Looking Out My Back Door

4. i have decided i really need to sew through some of my fabric stash--especially the things i have already cut out to make for myself. see my sewing here.

5. i read The Friday Night Knitting Club. not as good as i had hoped. only it sort of was because my expectation was to not really like it as much as "i should". still i read it because customers are always coming into the shop and telling me "oh! you would LOVE it!". yeah. because i knit i will automatically like chick lit about a knitter? um. actually, you don't know very much about what i like beyond knitting, so it is hard to say i will like a certain book. yeah. so it didn't change my life. and the totally unrealistic portrayal of opening and running a yarn shop was a bit trying.

6. i have become a selfish garment knitter. my needles have focused primarily on vests and sweaters for me, and so far i am loving what i have made. all. for. me. muwahahaha.

7. okay. so i may have knit rW another hat and scarf.

8. owls are neat.

9. my mother sent me an awesome red hat for valentine's day.

10. on the homefront, rW and i went out the friday of valentine's and had a yummy dinner. then we saw my show on saturday. i gave him a neat-o tie and he gave me an excellent back massage to combat the serious neck and shoulder tension that my work and hobbies create.

11. rW's record collection (see right) has helped return my love of taking pictures. the geometric shelves make a great backdrop for my fabric creations.

12. i have been trying some new recipes and adapting a few old favourites to be vegetarian. pumpkin bread. i couldn't find my version of my mom's recipe so i may have tried Betty's.

not bad.

13. best text message i have ever received: "Whenever i take Collin's socks off he has lots of fuzz between his toes. I always tell him we re going to send it to Aunt Yvette so you can make a sweater."


14. and a great knitting-related email.... "OMG, another tempting cablelicious project to tempt me! I sometimes wish I were an Indian god with multiple arms."

and that is life for now. i have a lot of knitting i should post. i realize that 2009 has been a very lax year for me actually updating the knitting content. i am still producing, it just isn' t making it to a blog near you.

i will try to be better.

i'm nice to my boyfriend

first the catch up.

long time no blog. i have been busy busy with starting the first 5 shows of the new theatre season, opening Marat/Sade (my final show of last season), helping on season selection for one theatre company, working at the store, teaching crochet class, seeing a friend whom i have not visited with since 2001, and completing the wedding gown i designed for another friend.

she is getting married today.

congrats to R. and her man D. i hope she feels (and looks) like a million bucks today, and even more than that, i hope they have a long and happy life together.

i may post a picture of the drawing of her dress after the big day is over. i will put a photo up once they get the professional shots back. that will probably be in a few weeks.

now the yarn projects.
while i have worked on many things, all my finished projects have been for rW, as this post title suggests.

rW's Rockabilly Bathmat (and Atomic Radios Shower Curtain)
designed by kittything

knit in many skein bits of random cotton from my stash (doubled) on size U.S. 10.5 needles.

started: july 3, 2008.
finished: july 9, 2008.

rW. moved into a new apartment on july 1, and he was blessed with a bathroom that had a manly 1960s pink tile renovation. me being that polly-anna, lemons into lemonade sort, i made him some accessories that made the place a little more his style.

it started with the atomic era radios shower curtain. i bought some yardage at the fabric store and sewed it to the correct dimensions and added grommets. voila! $20 bucks and an hour at the machine is much better than $40 and an hour at Linens and Things.

to go with the pink tile and crazy colored curtain, i took all the scraps of pink cotton in my stash and paired them with the black cotton bits and made a random stripe bathmat. very straight forward and a fast knit.

now that i have given it a chance, i think i would like to try crocheting a bathmat or other rug for myself in the future.

the other nicey nice thing...

The Great Green Sock Tie
aka Koigu Tie
designed by Maie Landra

knit in Hand Jive Knits Nature's Palette Fingering (1 skein NP122 "spring grass" 100% wool.) on size US # needles.

started: june 17, 2008.
finished: july 24, 2008.

this was a fun and easy knit. if i had been more focused, it would have taken me much less time, but this was tv watching, commuting, long meeting type knitting. whenever i had the right combination of silence and good lighting, this project got ignored in favor of the cables or lace haunting me currently.

one last picture to show some stitch detail....

finally.... remarkable things!

1. rW asked me to knit him this "sock tie". (!!!!)
2. he picked out the yarn himself with minimal guidance from me.
3. he wore it within 48 hours of completion, and he is already talking about "the next tie you make me...."

someone knows ow to get a knitter to make them gifts.

my big fat greek tragedy

i have been busting my backside to get The Oresteia on its feet. i have been cutting so much fabric that i have a knot in one of my hand muscles from scissors use.

in other news, the Maryland MVA is not so bad. take your patience pills (as my mother would say) and you can get through the whole experience just fine. we will see how i feel about it once i go back in a week or two.

when i was awake and not working

another tech week has come and gone. this one was particularly tricky and energy draining for several reasons.

1. cast of 19 actors ranging in age from 14-40ish.
2. Chicago = musical. musical = always more work.
3. 118 mile round trip drive daily. (that is approx 60-75 minutes one way)
4. rain. lots of it.
5. i was trying to get 2 other shows under control at the same time.

but when i was awake and not working, some interesting things happened.

for instance, i learned that you can buy drain opener in a convenient 80 oz family size bottle. this is very good when you live in an old apartment and this elixir of life allow you to shower and wash dishes. i always just bought two bottles at a time in the past. score!

while picking up some props for the director of my next show i bought a second 6-drawer organizer. it is now filled with all of the notions, trim, crafty bits, and other flotsam and jetsam of being a costume designer. i used to keep this stuff in bags piled in my anne frank closet (yes, that is the name--and it is a story) with little rhyme or reason because i hadn't taken the step to get organized. now my sequins are all together! now i won't buy a 15th package of 3/8" wide non-roll black elastic!


this organizational bender (which was undoubtedly fueled by sleep deprivation) reveled that i own 9 tape measures. yes, 9. that i am aware of. new ones crop up all the time. but i can never find one when i want it. if you looks closely in my new and improved bag of tape measures (in a drawer!) you will see that one of those tape measures is still in the package. nice.


i finished knitting a mitten. production meetings are always so long, and you spend so much time talking about light cues that traveling with knitting is a must. i am lucky that my director for this show is a friend and he is married to one of my knitting BFFs. he gets it.

isn't the mitten beautiful?
i love it. i can't wait until i have two finished mittens! i am also excited about taking a picture outside in real light. the colors are amazing in real light. this is my own take on an existing pattern. don't look too closely at the top decreases they are hard to work in seed stitch and maintain the pattern.

can you believe it?

i have neither knit nor crocheted in 4 whole days. this is what happens when work takes over. those who also work in my field get it--if you spend all day generating creative objects, going home to another project (even of your own choice) can be difficult.

as you can see, i have spent most of my mojo on things like marijuana print bras and the angels featured in a post last week.

2 days until costume fittings.
5 days until dress parade.

i purposely took that photo in front of my sewing machine so i could show her off. the bra didn't need the machine at all, but i like my little Genie. she's a Singer from the 1970s.

sadly, Genie has a belt that is going, i think. i have to demand the bobbins wind when i use that feature and i can feel the belt not catching inside when it won't turn. sigh. oh, well. i know i got the machine in the mid-1990s, and it hasn't been serviced since Mum and I took it home from my grandmother then. and i can honestly say i don't know when my grandmother had it serviced before that.

so she is probably due, but i don't really have the $100 to get it done. will find a way.

i'll probably crochet while working at the store today. i may also bring pics of the great reorganization i did in our cottons and our kids yarn sections.

so, she does sew.

after making the knitting needle case as a gift, i decided i needed to move on to organizing my own supplies. i started with my crochet hooks because i have more of them, and frankly, they are a mess.

unlike the knitting needle case, this one is designed to hold the containers my hooks came in, rather than the hooks loose. i like having the packages because they have the sizes written on them. i have four packages (one pictured, the others are below the pocket line), hence four pockets. the loosey-goosey hooks you see are my tunisian crochet hooks (double ended) and a huge size S "speed hook"--perfect for making a 30 minute hat.

i also sort of like the book fold style. i still like the roll and tie knitting case, but this is nice to show off the pretty leafy exterior fabric.





ps- don't mock my cheap plastic and aluminum hooks. i don't yet have the $$$$ resources for bamboo or rosewood.

she sews, so she says.

i designed this needle case after seeing one in a store and deciding i had better things to spend $50 on. especially since i could make one myself! i had wanted to make one for awhile, but i was inspired today when i found some fat quarters in my stash that looked pretty together and will suit the taste of a knitting friend.

quilting never really stuck for me.
these tiny bits of fabric have met a much better fate than mouldering in the attic thanks to my cheap ways. i have enough other fun fabrics to make a needle case for myself and a modified version for my crochet hooks as well. i'll post them once i get around to making them. i don't sew for myself very often because it seems too much like everyday "real" work.

i'll also try to post directions so you can make your own!