Mail Call!

I have been terrible this year keeping up with all my mail and postal follies. I have been sending and receiving it in droves but haven’t been documenting it or cataloging it with the same level of detail I’ve done in the past. In an effort to remedy this a little bit, here is a little collage of images of some of the incoming post from the past month or so.

mail grid

(from top left: a fabulous package from Annie of Curbside Treasure, an order from The Letter Writers Alliance, a whole pile of mail from friends which my cats were quite curious about and my over-stuffed bin from a rash of pen purchases on Ebay lately.

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Crazy Hair Day

hairrainbow

About a year ago, my favorite stylist at Chop Tops Morgan, put a bleached “doodle” in my hair and we’ve been playing with various colors on it since. My favorite has been the white but when we add the bright Manic Panic-ish colors to it, sometimes they don’t come back out. I’m going in for a re-doodle and thinking this time I might go purple or a pastel-ish color. A rainbow of hair, for sure!

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What’s Making Me Happy: Dr. Who

dr-who-fire

The last week or so, we FINALLY started watching the new series of Dr. Who. I really like Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor in Season One but everyone told m how much they liked David Tennant. We are now well into Season Three and I’m beginning to appreciate the lighter, more playful character that Tennant brings to the Doctor. So glad we finally started watching this and that I have four more seasons left to watch. Dr. Who OD!

(available on NetFlix Streaming and Amazon Prime)

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Knit Love

trunk_show_pile

I am sure everyone has a source for great knitting links and blogs but I’ve found over the years — with Ravelry and Instagram and whatnot –  fewer people are blogging. I like to read about other people’s knitting ideas, successes and where they overcome those horrid knitting hurdles so I thought you might too.

Here’s some of the people I’ve been following lately:

What are some of the knitting blogs you read?

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I’m All Wound Up

the oranges

So, a few months ago, my friend Cathy and I got this idea to buy up the whole KnitPicks Palette sampler — all 150 colors for a whopping $419 — and divvy it up into smaller mini skeins so that all our pals could have a little swatch of each color. What better way to plan your next color project.

the blues

Well, we collected the funds and ordered the yarn and it showed up on my doorstep in a box so big I had to drag it into my house. I guess I didn’t really think through exactly how much space 150 balls of yarn might actually take. Then I started trying to figure out how to best divide the yarn evenly into mini skeins. I ended using my mini skein winder niddy noddy and figured out how many wraps would evenly divide each ball. And off I went.

I didn’t realize that it would take about 30 minutes per ball to wind off a dozen mini skeins so this project is taking a lot longer than I anticipated and it is not at all portable so I can really only work on it in the evenings or on the weekend.

The first weekend, I wound about two dozen balls but was not using proper winding techniques and jacked up my shoulder as a result of the repetitive motion so I’ve limited myself to winding only a few balls at a time while watching TV.

Wound bundles

Progress is being made. When all 150 balls are wound into mini skeins, my pal Laura offered up her house for a label-and-sort party so that we can get this yarn distributed as quickly as possible. I know people are anxiously awaiting their swatch bundles and I’d like to get to actually knitting!

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What’s Making Me Happy This Week? Bunheads.

Bunheads

I loved Gilmore Girls. Its up there with everything that Aaron Sorkin ever did in my pantheon of great TV so when I heard that Amy Sherman-Palladino was doing a new TV series. I was thrilled. Then I found out it was going to be a show about dancers. Ballet dancers. Oh. TV never seems to get the world of ballet right and if they did, I’m not sure I would enjoy it. Its like cops watching cop dramas. Just unrealistic or just like being at work. I have felt this way about The Office for years… but that’s a story for another day.

That said, I will be the first to deny that I would ever like Bunheads. But I do. Really. Like. It. Its whip smart. Its got Palladino’s signature rapid-fire dialogue peppered with pop culture references only a Gen-Xer with a TiVo would get. And the dancing is good. Really good. And sometimes set to Tom Waits or They Might Be Giants. Bonus points. There are still inaccuracies to what life in a ballet studio is really like but the show entertains so I can’t complain. And I love the characters.

So, I hoovered all 18 episodes currently available — some via Amazon Prime, some via iTunes download and the last two are on ABC Family’s web site. And now I must wait, impatiently, for the next episode. Don’t make me wait too long, Amy!

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Oh, look. She knits.

I’ve been on a bit of a knitting tear of late. One of my goals this year is to knit from stash which sounds easier than it is. I did go on a yarn-buying spree just before the new year so I stocked up on sweater quantities worth of yarn. I started my rampage knitting big projects with big yarn and even small projects with big yarn to knit fast and have a sense of accomplishment.

yarma

I made Bob the Sal Paradise Vest from Nikol’s new book Literary Knits. I love the concept of the book and lots of patterns in the book look fabulous but, in the end, I’m disappointed in this vest. The neckline is too low and the silk/wool blend yarn I used stretches so now the neckline is even lower. I think this will be getting frogged and either knit into a new vest or I’ll just make Bob a new vest with different yarn and pattern. Because of the unusual construction of the Sal Paradise vest, I don’t think I’m smart enough to re-engineer the neckline.

Agnes with pocket

I made myself the Agnes pullover from yarn in my stash but ended up buying a ball of contrasting yarn for the pockets. They look darling but the double thick aran yarn UNDER the already bulky yarn sweater made me look super-dumpy. So, I pulled out the pockets and frogged back to the split for the pockets and then reknit the bottom of the sweater in the round. Once blocked, the sweater grew a lot. And it still makes me look dumpy. And its hot. Even for me. Have been debating frogging it but I’m not sure what I’d do with all that bulky yarn if I did…

Bella mittens: modified

Next up is the modified Bella mitts which I knit out of a mysterious ball of Lion Brand acrylic chunky. Great color but why in the world did I have a big ol’ ball of acrylic is beyond me. I used a modification on Ravelry to make the mitts  more mitten-ish and less sparkly vampire lover length and I love them! Didn’t use much yarn at all — just under 100yds. And now I own mittens that fit!

Laurelhurst sock #1 complete

I completed one Laurelhurst sock but I’m too lazy to cast on the other one. I was so happy to work on the colorwork and was feeling like such a pro mastering the two-handed colorwork with continental- and English-style knitting that you’d think I’d be dying to cast on the second sock. But no. Hello, second-sock syndrome!

yarma

In a distinctly pinky turn, I finally used up the one ball of Louisa Harding Kimono Angora and made a pair of the Gardening Mitts. They were warm and cuddly and ridiculously girlie. When my friend Juli complained of having frozen fingers at work, I gave them to her and she seemed pleased to put the pinky princess mitts to good use.

yarma

And while we’re talking about pink, I did finish my NaKniSweMo cardigan, Levenwick at the beginning of January. It was also a stash burning project, using up a mess of confetti pink Peace Fleece. Its still a little scratchy even though its been dipped in wool conditioner and I wear it with long sleeves. It turned out nicely though I find the neckline a little wide and the whole cardigan is a little big overall. I really need to start blocking my swatches. The pocket is a fun detail.

yarma

So, of the six most recent knits, I am happy with half of them. The Levenwick is a meh. Agnes is a meh. And poor Sal is a FROGGER. My knitting odds are not so good right now, huh?

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What’s Making Me Happy This Week: One Upon A time

wallpaper_once_upon_a_time_2_by_alexandreholz-d516w5h

While I was in Chattanooga last month, my mom recommended a show called Once Upon A Time. I remembered the show premiering last year along with another fairytale-themed show called Grimm and we chose to try Grimm over Once Upon A Time. We watched a couple episodes of Grimm but it didn’t hold our attention so we just skipped the whole televised-fairytale-in-modern-times series altogether. But on my mom’s recommendations, we decided to dive in to Once Upon A Time, thanks to Netflix streaming having the whole first season and let’s just say I’m making some great progress on my current knitting project because I’ve been glued to the TV. The special effects are sort of 80s-era BBC cheesy but if you can overlook the evident green screens and cheeseball Morgan Fairchild make-up on the fairyland Wicked Queen, its actually a great story with layered characters. Go ahead… you know you want to. I’ll even pop some popcorn and make you a cup of cocoa.

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The Airing of the Stash

madtosh

I’ve listened to Brenda Dayne’s Cast-On podcast for as long as I can remember and I always love her “airing of the stash” details. Every year, in January, she hauls out all her yarn and organizes it, catalogs it and sorts it into “keep” and “toss” piles. By “toss” I of course mean that she donates it, sells it or trades it. Unless the creepy crawlies invade, no one actually throws away yarn. Proof of this exsisted in my stash when I found little one yard bits of yarn. Seriously. Pack rat.

That said, I discovered that a lot of my yarn had never been added to my Ravelry online stash and if its not on Ravelry, I don’t remember that it exists. So my first order of business was to photograph and catalog everything on Ravelry. Then I sorted it back into my three big bins according to “Sweater quantity,” “sock yarns,” “everything else”.

green-yarns

There was a small bag (okay, its a big bag) of yarns that I’d like to swap, trade or donate and a load of scraps (those bits exceeding one yard)  I need to find uses for or hand them over to an art teacher to use in kids craft projects.

Now that I’ve catalogued everything I will start finding projects that I’ve queued or favorite-ed on Ravelry so that project can meet yarn and live out their lives happily. Yarn without a project buddy will be paired up soon or it will be paired with other yarns to make a larger project.

Can I tell you how good it feels to know what I have and start to plan projects for each ball, skein or hank? Do you do this?

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