a tree

just in case you haven't seen anything beautiful yet today. how did nature come up with this stuff?

fort wetherill

db and i went up to rhode island this past weekend. we did the usual see everyone you possibly can thing, but on saturday for my bro's birthday we planned to take him on a mystery daytime adventure. what did we do? why play in broken glass and rubble of course!

we drove down to forth wetherill in jamestown with some flashlights, raincoats and a camera to spelunk in the defunct military base. originally the fort was named "fort dumpling" and was built by the british in the 18th century. very british name, no wonder they lost the revolutionary war with forts named like that. really? storm the DUMPLING? not intimidating but very amusing. it was used by the british then the french and then the us and eventually fort dumpling was knocked down to build this guy, fort wetherill, in the same spot. it was last used in WWII to protect narragansett bay from U-boats. after that it was turned over to the state and now it's a public park. most of it looks like it was blocked off with rubble but it's all be pushed aside so you can crawl around in there. it's really really big, i would guess over a football field sized area of crazy underground buildings and totally NOT zombie proof tunnels that weave around in complete blackness. it was shitty and rainy out but somehow the drear was really fitting.

it was really cool, if any of your guys live near it i totally suggest wandering around. it was interesting to imagine what it was like when it was being used and what all the random rooms, tunnels and tracks on the ceilings were for. there's something so beautiful about the decay of time.

baker's doz: there are many other things i should be doing right now...

so, i wrote this list of projects i want to complete this year, when they're allowed to be started (either date or relative to other projects' progress) and whether or not i have all the supplies ready and waiting. sounds like a great idea right? it worked really well at first, but all good things must end. plus it's no fun if it's not rebellion, even if it's rebellion against my own past planning.

the downfall of all project organization happened because as a quite late birthday gift db ordered me a pair of monogrammed signature needle arts needles in the size he knew i wanted! he didn't wrap them and present them in a normal way though, he told me to "check on my yarn because he saw a weird creature this morning". i went hunting thinking there was a demon moth trying to wreck what's left of my good yarn but instead saw these needles jammed in a ball of yarn. way better than a moth! they look like mini rocket ships, i was so excited i cast on the boxy sweater i had planned as my casual over the summer knitting/carrot i was dangling in front of myself to finish a few less exciting projects right then. i literally sat down and cast on within 5 minutes. apparently i save my willpower for cheese exclusively.

so to the project. it's going to be the super fabulous pullover, boxy! i had myself on Joji's message list for when the pattern got released but couldn't find the tomato madtosh i wanted to make it with, so it just got put it on the back burner until i'd have the yarn and time (ha). when madelintosh announced the colors they were discontinuing for 2013 and grapefruit was one of them, i went online and bought the last 3 skeins eat.sleep.knit had. voila! an amazing, cozy sweater in my fave yarn of all time. that worked out well right? now to ration working on it so i get something more timely done.

i have too many awesome things to work on and do, but as my grandma says "idle hands, devil's workshop!" so something along those lines just might be what db had monogrammed on my needles...

baker's doz: short row sweater 2.0

here it is, another silly knit half sweater... my specialty. i knit one of these last year and loved it so much i made a second one in a color i like more. this one i changed a little to make the back dip the same as the front, all about it.

short row sweater by purl soho (modified)
madelinetosh sport - winter wheat

i can't believe i've already finished 9 projects this year! not so bad. i sort of fell into a rut with making doubles of patterns and losing interest while simultaneously having less time to work on things because i got an outside of the house job and a string of very fun visitors. hopefully i'll get back on it, i have some fun stuff in the works and some surprises i can't wait to post about. secrets secrets!

belmont plateau

this weekend we went to belmont plateau in philly, seriously every park around here is ridiculously cool. we packed a bag with supplies (beer) and db lead the way into the woods because he mountain bikes there. we heard weird birds and smelled some weird smells, uzo hopped over logs like the hardcore off road dachshund he is and i retaught db what poison ivy looks like for the millionth time. we had a beer picnic on a log in the woods while uzo sniffed around and decided he owned everything around us. db had been talking about making a terrarium since right when everything died in the fall, so we brought the supplies he needed to nab a few plants and rocks to build it. that was saturday and it's still not dead... pretty impressive. i decided i'm growing peas this spring and nabbed some bean poles from a dead tree in the woods too. i can't wait to have my very own pretend tree on the deck! plus we get to eat them. i remember peas being the only crop i'd ever grow when i was younger that would actually work out. carrots on the other hand can kiss my ass indefinitely.

also,

led zeppelin IV anyone?

greebrier mountain bike adventure

last weekend we went to greenbrier state park in maryland for a mountain bike race db rode. the weather was absolutely perfect and the drive was pretty cool. this place was three hours from philly and on the way we drove by baltimore which was way way smaller than we were both expecting, got to see some intense hill/mini-mountain landscapes that were different from anything we'd ever seen before and and saw an entrance to the appalachian trail.

there were so many people racing and uzo and i got an epic spot on a hill to watch and chill in the sun while db was shredding. this was his first race in a higher cat and he was really happy with how he did. i saw him ride by all three laps and managed to time it well enough that a victory picture of him crossing the line (leaving his competition in the dust) was procured...
stomp that shit! anyways, i was really hoping he'd do something stupid like mark cavendish while crossing the line so i could have told everyone about it, but he's either too smart or too sad and lame to have thought about it... or maybe he was just thinking about the taco truck at the end of the tunnel. there's always next week right?

after he blasted by me and my ears recovered from the sonic boom, i wandered over and found him in all his muddy white jersey-ed glory complete with mud in his mouth which he didn't know about. pretty fucking hilarious. bikes are fun.

donut picnic!

i can't argue with this look of happiness caused by a donut in a park on one of the first warmish spring days a few weekends ago. we rode our bikes to federal donuts* in center city and got some overly delicate donut fuel for our ride to/around belmont plateau. it was awesome, db takes me to the best places. i love spring! i sometimes miss having a whole yard to lay around in but for now a little patch of grass in a square does the trick surprisingly well. this counts as "leaving the city" now haha, go figure. i've turned into a city person maybe? it's hard to not like walking and riding bikes everywhere while eating fancy donuts.

*so... there's music on that link which usually is a huge no-no for me BUT it's pretty funny, like i watched it twice funny.

uzo is 3 years old!!!

today is uzo's birthday! so far he's gotten to lounge in the sun, on the deck and cuddle under a blanket. we went for a mini-walk, he got bits of cheese and tomato and was subjected to this photo shoot with his awesome solo cup birthday hat. his hat has a bit of a long story origin, but basically my mom made it for a photo-op to text me last year because we weren't with him on his birthday which was sad, and as you can see it's AMAZING/RIDICULOUS so i kept it. on his most notable of third birthdays it seemed only fitting to add a new year to his fancy birthday hat and make sure he still thinks it's scary a year later. like how he's leaning away from it? is it wrong that i think this is ridiculously funny and adorable? later we're going to take him to the park, give him a special food treat and let him pick a toy at the puppy store down the street. the day is young!

i think i may like his birthday more than i like my own, i love making an extra nice day for him since he makes all my days extra nice. plus there's a birthday hat involved, that's always a good sign. happy birthday big man!

what i've been up to

so here's a small and obtuse peek into my life as of late...

for a while now i've been dyeing silk and learning different shibori techniques. i've realized that i'll do just about anything to play with color and poison at the same time, it's what i end up doing at the finish line of any endeavor one way or another. so far i've only wrecked my favorite leather flats and dyed my hand bright red once. i've done worse... like the time i almost died because i refused to wear gloves for months while handling solvents in the printmaking lab in college, that was smart. because of that basically anything short of death is a victory at this point. since i don't want to lose the ability to work in another medium i like, this time it's all rubber gloves and dust masks. fucking glamour, but so worth it. the things i'm pumping out of this crazy glass jar are pretty superb.

it's still fairly abstract, but sooner than later i'm going to have some lovely pieces for sale and it's super exciting. i can't wait to show you all what i've been doing this winter!

flowers!

db has this tradition of buying me a plant or little something when i get a new job, isn't that so nice? i still have the first one he got me which was apparently 7 years ago, her name is Harriet. this time he wanted me to pick the plant myself... but i just looked around our living room at the 20 plants and was like, one more plant and this place will cease being a house and become a jungle. i like dancing the fine line right before my plant ownership gets ridiculous. anyways, i came home from my first week of work and these lovelies were sitting there waiting for me! living the life right? i get the perfect most ideal job ever AND surprise flowers? killin' it.

back in a bike shop people, it's just as much fun as art studio in college only i get paid. sweet.

blanket LOVE

a few weeks ago a package the size of a copy paper box arrived at our door. now surprise packages are always fun to begin with, but when the return address happens to be one of your crafty, awesome cousins it's probably even more awesome than usual. when db got home i yelled down to him "hi! we got a package from Alice AND WE HAVE TO OPEN IT RIGHT NOW!!!" ...imagine that as all one word and that's probably what it sounded like.

so we did, and out came this raddest of rad blanket! Alice made it for us for an apartment warming gift and it's not only warming our apartment, it's making it look far more homey-fabulous as well. the colors are so bright and awesome and it's huge. i've taken like 50 pictures of it all straight and neat on the bed but i like this one the best. uzo loves it and makes nests for himself in it as soon as i make the bed everyday. it's really cute but also makes me ask myself why i bother making the bed in the first place if it stays looking good for 30 seconds, it's way too adorable to get upset about though. anyways, i like this best because it's the blanket in its natural habitat; kinda crumpled, under a cute dog and glowing from reflected light coming in our windows. Alice said she wanted to make it free form and it came out like this organically. she was always working with a color she felt like working with, pretty cool right? i love how the stripes are all different, totally my jam. it is awesome. i'm always so impressed with people that can make blankets, blankets are so big! and they're always perfect, too. i just knit sweaters and that's a kinda big deal sometimes. mind? blown. along with the blanket she sent a funny card with pictures of her new yarn obsessed cat supervising its creation in various stages, it's pretty hilarious.

so how lucky are we?! what a crazy and amazing surprise! thanks Alice!!!

here's the ravelry link if you want to check it out, cat pictures included :)

baker's doz: vavó's birthday shawl

my vavó is awesome. she taught me how to knit the scandinavian way, always made me eat a bowl of soup as big as my body when she would babysit me and would without fail tell me i was going to have nightmares every time she'd catch me watching MTV. we don't speak the same language, but we have always managed to be able to communicate about food ("comer mais!") and making things by hand. when i was probably 15 she brought me into her room and spread all the styles of doilies she could make out on her bed and asked which style i wanted for my wedding gift someday. it was a funny exchange of gestures, pointing out details, nodding and smiling. when she finished crocheting them maybe a year later, she pulled me into her room again, opened a little box lined with tissue paper and showed them to me. she told me she would keep them safe until my wedding, then wrapped them up and put them away to wait. how cool is that? when i got engaged she was so excited she brought them out immediately, the look on her face was just as amazing as the doilies. those doilies are at the tip top of the 'what will i save if my house is on fire?' list. even if i'm not using them i know exactly where they are at all times, just in case.

since i've started making things that i can actually wear she has totally noticed. now whenever i visit she asks me if i've made what i'm wearing. it's really cool, she and my aunt connie both investigate whatever garment it is and talk to each other in portuguese while pointing at seams or turning it over in their hands. it's really funny, the things i have in common with the older people in my family are generally considered lost arts. i think it might be kind of novel to them when people of my generation are interested in making things by hand because it seems like not many people do anymore. i think it's cool because it's like i have something in common with them that other people don't get, like a secret club.

well, this year my vavó is turning 100 years old. it blows my mind, it is just beyond rad. she remembers the first time she saw a car, and the hindenburg used to use the islands my family is from as a checkpoint when flying/floating over the atlantic. they had no idea what it was and she remembers that. is that not insane? so, for her 100th birthday, one of her youngest grandkids is giving her a lace shawl in her favorite color made the old fashioned way. we may not be able to use words to talk about it, but she'll know exactly what it's all about. i'm sure there will be a few gestures, pointing out of details, nods and smiles. i really can't wait to give it to her, i hope she likes it!

here's a pic of it being all shawl-like. i don't wear them this way but maybe she will, she is 99, she can do whatever she damn well pleases right?

anteros shawl by mari chiba

madelinetosh pashmina - windowpane

look up.

some of my favorite local building's aesthetic upgrades. i like to pretend it's talking directly to me... sometimes it is.

i look up a lot walking around this city. i don't care if people think i'm a tourist because i'm so in awe of all the beautiful things going on. i'd rather people think i'm just visiting when they see me smiling noticing fun graffiti, a cool building's architectural details or how cool it looks when rust runs down concrete, than to walk around looking straight ahead missing everything like everyone else i see. i'm never in that big of a hurry to get my sandwich, bike tube, sewing needles. i like participating in my surroundings, when other people leave their traces around i like taking note. isn't our entire world at this point just a series of interactions? interactions with each other, with the environment, with materials. we are living in a world of results, but none of them are end results. isn't that cool to think about?

baker's doz: luxury monster triangle!

sweet, sweet victory! this lovely mass of silk and merino wool was put into shape thanks to a wonderful birthday gift of the pattern and possibly one of my favorite souvenir gifts of all time, the yarn. seriously, fellow yarn lovers know where it's at in both cases. i wanted to make this enormous and totally powered through the last lace stripe and a half that would take and HOUR to do one repeat of right side and wrong side. so worth it! this thing is awesome. it was hard not to wear it a lot to keep it sharp looking long enough to take nice pictures. now? all bets off.

about the pattern, i loved it. i modified it a little to make the lace stripes a little wider and the triangle itself wider so i could wear it more like a gigantic scarf thing (details on it's ravelry link), but i really liked this pattern. it's really easy to memorize, is lace but works surprisingly well with loud variegated yarns and the finished shawl is amazing looking. finding a good pattern is always really exciting, and i usually end up using it more than once...

anteros shawl by mari chiba
blue heron silk merino - deep blue sea (which appears to be discontinued)

spring.

it is so coming for us.

this weekend we sat in the park for what felt like two hours and could have actually been two hours for all we know. we ate breakfast on the deck and rode our bikes without gloves. there were new birds around. it was the best.