boogaj

Quiet for a little while. . .

This is the project that I'm going to be taking with me this week on my somewhat unexpected trip to South Carolina.  A very close friend of our family is in her final days and we are going to be with her so that we can say our goodbyes and hopefully make her last bit of time here a little bit more cheerful. 

The socks are for Pete and this is the third time that I have started them.  This heavyweight Socks that Rock is throwing me for a loop!  I ended up knitting them with US 4's and did 48 stitches around.  Needles to say, they are knitting up quickly at that gauge. 

I'll be back late next week, but may not be posting until the following week, depending on my level of physical and emotional exhaustion.  Please send my friend good thoughts for a peaceful and graceful exit from this world -- she was a crafter at one time too. . .

Instant Bakelite Button Collection

So, after Pete & Maddie had seen about as many sheep and bits of yarn and fiber as they could handle, we headed out to see what Allegan, MI had to offer in the way of antique shops.  The first shop we entered left me happy as a clam as there was a booth filled with all kinds of buttons.  I ended up spending much more than I thought I would on buttons that day, but getting what I think was a *very* good deal on an instant bakelite button collection.  I even got an added bonus of three little bags of my favorites -- colorful floral plastics. 

There's something about the bakelite that is hard to resist -- I think it's the patina.  And my absolute favorite of the bunch?  This one:

And another picture, to try and give you a better idea of the color:

So now I fancy myself a button collector.  Pete is happy -- buttons are after all, quite small!  I've got these books on order at the library:

• Book of Buttons
• Buttons: The Collector's Guide
• Antique & Collectible Buttons

Do any button collectors out there know of any other button books I should read?  Or any button collecting websites?

Michingan Fiber Fest Re-Cap

This past weekend, Pete, Maddie & I went up to Michigan for the weekend.  We stayed up near Lake Michigan and Maddie had a blast walking along the beach!  And several hours on Saturday were reserved for the Michigan Fiber Fest! 

Pete & Maddie were very patient walking through all the booths with me, luckily Theresa showed up just as they had had enough and she & I browsed the last few booths as the rest of our families took in the show the herding dogs were putting on.

I didn't purchase too much, however that wasn't because of a lack of good things to see.  Pete actually talked me into buying that yarn pictured up top.  It's from Persimmon Tree Farm and it's a wool/mohair hand dyed "pot luck" yarn according to the label.  I have plans to weave it into a scarf or shawl of some kind.  I absolutley *love* the colors.  This is about as close to perfect as I can imagine.  All my favorite colors rolled into one colorway!

I also had to visit Alice from Foxhill Farm -- the Cormo woman!  (No website, I'm afraid.)  Orange was the color of the day, so I scooped up this 4 oz. bag of 90% cormo, 10% tussah.  If you see Foxhill Farm at a fiber fest, get some of Alice's yarn or fiber!  You'll be happy you did!

I also bought the last item I needed for my lace pal at the fest, so I can't show that here.  And I have something coming in the mail -- pictures when it arrives!

Perhaps tomorrow I'll show you my finds from the antique shops and outlet mall!

Superbuzzy -- new crafty Japanese import shop!

OMG!  Mariko and Kelly just opened a new shop called Superbuzzy!  It's got imported Japanese fabrics and trims with more stuff soon to come!  They even have the great ribbon I got at Stitches (for less than I paid -- argh!!) in both the red and black.  I already placed an order for some fabric.  Can you guess which ones?  I got two.

Yoshiko Jinzenji & Lots of Japanese Craft Mags

Imagine my surprise when I was going through my Bloglines this morning and saw that the purl bee had a post about Yoshiko Jinzenji.  Why is this surprising you ask?  Well, just last night when I arrived home from Michigan (MI Fiber Fest weekend -- more on that soon!) there was a box *full* of Japanese craft magazines and books waiting for me.  (Thanks goodness it didn't rain!!)  And there was a whole spread on Yoshiko Jinzenji in the July issue of Quilts Japan.  I recoginized the style of quilt and fabric instantly -- she is very unique! -- and that quilt had really struck me when I looked through the book last night.  Here's more:

The little lap quilt would certainly be easy to make since the fabric is basically a cheater cloth.  The magazine also shows some shirts and pillows made with her fabrics, as well as some other quilts.  She also has some more graphic fabrics available that purlsoho doesn't seem to carry.  The ones they carry are here.

Other things in the box include, but are not limited to:

Yep, the September issues of Cotton Paint, Cotton Time and Cotton Friend!!  I'll have full reviews for you soon.  Lots of good stuff here.  (I have to get caught up on work after having been away since Friday .  But I will take pictures and share -- I promise!)

Four Years of Blogging

I can hardly believe that it's been four years since I began blogging. In that time I've taken up many new crafts, began homeschooling my daughter, started a new business and even moved to a new house.  I've also lost my father-in-law to cancer and learned to deal with a life filled with migraines.  It's been a busy four years full of challenges. 

Online over the last four years I've started creating lots of additional websites: becoming the owner of the Knitting Blogs Web Ring, starting 2 podcasts -- Stitch-Cast and Booga Talk, launching the Pincushion Challenge and creating two websites for charities (click here to see the latest batch of kittens at the pet rescue charity -- so cute!)  And I write over at whip up too.

Right now I'm feeling like I'm in a slump.  I love challenges and I'm kind of bored.   

A lot has happened over the last four years now that I sit back and take a look.  I'm sure that something exciting will happen in the next four years too!  I may be in a slump, but if the past is any indication of the future, that won't last long!

WIP Confessional

It's time to lay it all out.  Well not all. . . I know I have more wip's than I'm showing here, but these are the ones I'll probably finish.  (Well mostly. . .)

Keepsake Shawl knit in many colors of Koigu.  I started this in 2004, I believe and I came up with a great system for knitting it so that I could just pick it up and remember exactly which yarn to use and which row I was on.  So why does is sit?  Who knows.  I really want to finish this one up, so I think I will make it my #1 knitting priority.

Ingeborg, oh Ingeborg.  I started you back when the knit-along began.  Was that 2004 also?  And every winter I pick you up and get re-invigorated . . . for about 15-20 rows.  Maybe this will be they year that you get finished!

Trekking socks started for the "Trek along with Me" knit-along.  I never did take a picture of me trekking along.  Is it still going on?  I'm *awful* with knit-alongs (see Ingeborg above) and should never, ever join them.  These socks will get finished though.  I love Trekking yarn!  It just takes me several months to finish a pair.

New felted bag design I'm playing around with.  It's a smallish bag and I'll finish it up in the next week or two.

What is this thing????  Why am I making it?  Okay, this is the Amineko and I decided to make it with Encore from the stash.  I should have gotten a different yarn.  I didn't really want a red cat and I don't really care for this yarn, so I never work on this project and the featureless head is all that has been made.  Time to rip this one out and start over with a new yarn, I think.  This was my only crochet project in the works and it's a failure.  Ugh!

Oh!  My quilt!  I love these fabrics and want to get back to work on this soon.  The last month has been so busy and I really need time when I want to quilt, so this has been neglected.  I know that cooler, quieter weekends are on the way though, so it will progress!

Mountain Colors woven scarf.  I love how the weaver's wool from Mt. Colors is sort of striping, sort of not in this scarf.  A free hour or two and some good podcasts to listen to and this will be finished!

I'm still making good progress on that lovely pink fiber from Blue Moon Fiber Arts.  The third bobbin is well on it's way to getting filled up and then it's on to plying.  I have no doubt that this will be finished up very soon.

Paradigm Lost cross-stitch sampler.  I often want to work on this but there are several impediments to my progress -- First, I don't have good lighting pretty much anywhere in the house and I really need it to work with this dark thread on linen.  Second, it's in a small basket, so I have to keep it stored off it's stretcher bars.  So I can't just pick it up and stitch a bit -- it requires set up time.  Third, my eyes get tired at night and that's usually when I find time to craft.  Hmmm. . .

Elsa Williams Jacobean Crewel Embroidery.  Not sure why this has stalled, other than the fact that I have so much going on. 

I realized that I haven't listed the Kumihimo braid I'm working on either.  And I'm sure there are other things.  Maybe posting photos of my wip's on a regular basis will get me excited about them again.  It seems to have worked.  I'm already looking forward to getting in some rows on the Keepsake Shawl!

In other news, guess what tomorrow is.  It's not my birthday, or wedding anniversary, but it is *an* anniversary for me. . .

Habu Silk Yarn & Japanese Linen Ribbon & Thrifted Buttons!

What a busy weekend!  On Friday, Maddie & I headed out early and went to the Joliet Farmer's Market to pick up some fresh fruit.  I got some lovely peaches and blueberries -- fresh from Michigan.  Then we hit Starbucks and any yard sale we could find on the way back home.  All we found was an old copy of Richard Scarry's Going Places for only 25 cents which Maddie thought was a very funny book!  Friday night I pulled out my King Arthur Baking Book and made a peach cobbler, which was really yummy!  So far that book hasn't let me down.

Saturday morning found Theresa, Bonne Marie & I at Stitches Midwest.  I think one of my favorite booths was Habu, where I picked up this orange, slubby 100% silk.  They only had 4 cute little balls/bails -- whatever you want to call them.  I love them because they are neat little center pull balls and they have a nice piece of tissue in the middle that you pull to get the starting thread out.  How clever! 

But I digress. . . So they had 4 balls in this perfect orange color and I decided that I'd just make a shrug.  So far I swatched and the texture is quite nice due to the slubs.  Hmmm. . .

My other favorite booth was the ribbon & button booth -- Nifty Thrifty Dry Goods in RI -- where I got this super-cute linen ribbon.  It's a japanese import and it cost way too much, but I had to have a yard of it.  She also had lots of vintage buttons that were not matching but went well together and were carded together.  Not sure I'm explaining this well at all, but they were so wonderful!  I could have just spent the day in this booth.

And since I was thinking of buttons, I took a picture of the buttons I got from Goodwill a few weeks ago for 99 cents.  They were all taped up in a bag and you couldn't see what was inside, but I figured I couldn't go wrong for that price! 

Sunday was spent at the river for my sister's birthday.  The water was wild!  We took my mom's boat up the river to a restaurant and just had a nice afternoon, but everyone was exhausted from their various weekend activities so we weren't a very lively bunch. 

This week is for organizing.  My office is a mess and it's time to take control!

Maddie's Socks Finished!

Last night I finally grafted the toe on the second of Maddie's socks.  I really shouldn't say *finally*  since I just started these sometime around the end of June or beginning of July.  You have to love little feet which require equally little socks that knit up so quickly!  These were knit with Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the color Uptown using US size 1 dp's and my usual sock pattern.  I have to say though that I recently started using the heel turn from Lucy Neatby's book Cool Socks Warm Feet and it's now part of the "standard sock" pattern I use.  Yeah, someday I'll try that new-fangled short-row heel thingy.  Maybe  :)

Maddie even consented to model the socks:

And then she didn't want to take them off!  It's still a bit warm for wool socks though, so I got her to remove them by promising to make her a second pair.

But first I'm knitting Pete a pair out of heavyweight STR -- yes, my first pair of Socks that Rock.  The heavyweight is throwing me for a loop though!  I've decided to use size 4 needles (recommended needle is 5-6, but I just can't imagine knitting socks on needles that big!)  I cast on 56 stitches after much calculation, knit a good part of the ribbing and it just looked too big, so I ripped it out.  ARGH!  I'm going to try 52, but according to the mathematics, I really can't go smaller.  The yarn is very tightly spun and isn't really like any other sock yarn I've worked with weight-wise.  I'm a bit confounded.  Anyone reading this knit a pair with the heavyweight before?

Spinning Blue Moon Fiber

It's been very busy around here the last week, preparing for the 7th Annual Tim Klotz Memorial Golf Outing which was held on Tuesday.  It's exhausting emotionally and physically, but it raises a nice bit of money for local charities and it also gets together a lot of my Dad's friends so that they can chat about him and recall his antics which is always fun.

But I have found some time to craft too!  Last week Theresa come over for a spinning day and I finished up my first bobbin of this lovely shocking pink Blue Moon Fiber Arts handpainted roving in the colorway Cranberry.  The fiber is 50% Alpaca and 50% Blue Faced Leicester -- yum!  It's been an absolute joy to spin.  I spun the second bobbin up this past weekend and just need to spin up bobbin #3 so  can make my three ply.  After that, Maddie will be getting a nice new pair of mittens and something else -- a matching hat or scarf or both depending on the yardage.  (Alden Amos would have my head.  Before I started spinning, he would have me calculate my estimated yardage according to some complicated weighing and measuring of a sample.  Forget that!)

I've also got a weaving project on the loom and Maddie's socks are almost finished!  Two incredible books arrived on Tuesday too, so I need to review them.  Oh my goodness, I have a lot to do!

Dad, I still miss you.

Daddy + Julie
Daddy's Birthday
Nov. 1971

Cafe-Tasse Noir Amandes

Cafe-Tasse Noir Amandes is a Belgian dark chocolate bar with Almonds -- the almonds appear to be chopped or crushed, rather than whole.  I really enjoyed this bar!  I'm a fan of Belgian chocolate and while I do get excited by some of the fancy new combinations with wild spices or some of the uniquely flavored single origin chocolates that are available today, there are times when I want a comfortable bar.  This is it.  The chocolate was neither sweet nor bitter -- a nice dark bar that you could really sit down and enjoy.  When I saw that the almonds weren't whole, I thought I would be disappointed, but they were really well suited to the texture of the chocolate and in the end I didn't miss the crunch I was originally hoping for. 

One nice thing about the Cafe-Tasse bars -- if you get the big flat one like I got, is that they are not broken off into squares, but rather into long skinny bars -- perfect for dipping into coffee!  Ah -- hence the name, I suppose.  At any rate, this chocolate is even better warm & melty.

Yesterday Pete, Maddie & I went on a little shopping trip and I'm happy to say that I am all stocked up on chocolate for a while:

Actually two things pictured are biscuits -- so we can't count those, can we?  And the Hello Kitty thing is Maddie's (it's one of those Yan Yan things where you dip the biscuit in chocolate -- like diy pocky).  Oh and the CurlyWurly was Pete and Maddie's -- they ate it last night and it's an old fashioned Marathon Bar, repackaged!  Remember those?  The chocolate covered caramel braid?  So anyway, that's only seven candy bars for me  :)  I'll give you a full report as I work my way through them.  Maddie promised to help me out! 

Shout out for 52 Projects!

Remember a while back I wrote about this really cool book called 52 Projects?  Well, the author, Jeffrey Yamaguchi, has website -- also called 52 Projects.  And today he was kind enough to post about the Pincushion Challenge! 

He posts about lots of inspiring stuff, including crafty things, so go check it out!  (And check out his book too -- it's sure to spark your creativity!)

Chocolate Alpaca & Tussah Top

I finally decided to do something with the chocolate alpaca/silk single I spun  up a while ago.  I originally wanted to knit it up into something lacy as a single, but after soaking it I decided against that.  All the kinks came out, and it really wasn't twisting very much, but it felt too string-like to me.  I knew that this stuff -- being alpaca and silk -- could be *much* softer.  So ply, I did.  (And I couldn't get a decent photo for the life of me -- maybe it's the shiny silk that was messing me up?)

After plying I ended up with a nice soft, drapey yarn.  And I still have a respectable 84 yards or so from my 2 ounces of fiber.  I should be able to find something to knit out of that. 

You may see a bit more spinning on the blog in the next month or so.  I finally picked up my copy of The Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning that has been lying around unread for ages.  Just reading through it has given me the spinning bug!

New Pincushion Challenge Theme -- Recycle

The new theme is up at the Pincushion Challenge website.  Whew!  I'm going with the flow on this one.  I've been so inspired by Wardrobe Refashion and all those cool t-shirt books.  And now there's the latest whiplash: wardrobe surgery.  I'm not sure if I'm up to the task of making my own clothes yet, but I think I could change some of my old clothes into pincushions!

I'm also trying to figure out all the logistics of a pincushion swap.  Anyone who has run a swap before -- do you have any advice?

Pincushion Challenge Gallery Up!

The new gallery is up over at the Pincushion Challenge website. And I'll be announcing more stuff this afternoon!