fingerless gloves aka the gloves I KEEP LOSING

These things are possessed by some weird energy. I'm convinced. I made a grey pair about 6 or 7 years ago and never lost one once. These things? I finished them less than a month ago and have lost one or both, IN THE WILD, FOUR TIMES. Both in Philadelphia and Rhode Island. What is that?! This is ridiculous. Probably only made more ridiculous by the fact that someone somehow always find them. Mixed in with leaves on the street of the same color, five or more houses down from where they were dropped... and by myself, Dillon and two other people. Like what is that? I'd have something other to say about them but the fact that they're on the loose is by far their most interesting attribute. I knit them up with long discontinued Mission Falls 1824 wool which I bought in bulk in Northampton at Webs not a month after it was discontinued and whipped them up in a mere 5 days which is pretty quick. They're warm, they're brownish (what was I thinking?) and they kind of almost don't clash with my now three year's old "new" winter coat.

Happy fall all, I hope your gloves prove to be more boring than mine!
PS. The pattern is a heavily modified version of some pamphlet I bought in like... 2005. I've been meaning to write it up for a while so maybe I'll get around to it soon because there rule and I've knit 8 pairs now!
PPS. Yes I look like a lunatic but I mean... WHY SUGARCOAT THE TRUTH???

acid wash

This summer was way too hot and I don't miss it, but I do miss wearing matching acid wash with my babe.

Mom jeans and overalls for the win.

Shorts - American Apparel
Overalls - Vintage Osh Kosh B'Gosh

yarndale

This past weekend I was lucky enough to be able to go to Yarndale! My fiber loving cousin told me about it last week and after investigating I realized not only did it look rad, but going was totally doable. I got dressed in my very best handknits and Db and I hopped in the car for the 2 hour drive to Skipton, armed only with cookies, bananas and reusable bags because there was likely to be some yarn related retail therapy happening.

We needed the cookie and banana fuel, and the bags. It was a victorious day.

Yarndale was really cool even before we got inside, they decorated the trees with bunting and pompoms and there were people scattered all over the grass chatting and knitting together while wearing amazing handknits. I loved it, it was great actually seeing people working with yarn and wearing handmade garments. Ravelry is great and I love it, but being surrounded by actual humans who think fiber craft is cool was a whole other level. Someone recognized my cardigan was Grace by Jane Richmond, it blew my mind. Inside there was an entryway with the most epic crocheted bunting that likely exists on Earth (6,212 triangles total), yarn bombed bikes and maps so you could mark where you were from. Upon inspection Db and I saw that no one had pinned Philly so we got to mark our spot. In the actual show there was a massive number of vendors, most of which were local to the UK and sold UK made goods. I'd only heard of two before! There was everything, seriously, everything. Fleeces, roving, carders, spinning wheels, drop spindles, swifts, dyes, knitting and crochet tools, patterns, finished garments, felting tools, peg looms, a booth just for vintage tools (I died, and scored gorgeous things) and every imaginable kind of yarn. I was overwhelmed. They even had little sheep, alpacas and angora rabbits that you could pet. Of course, we pet all the animals, that's kind of my life moto at the moment.

It was a really fun time, it totally put fiber festivals on the radar for me.
For more pics, read more >>>

summer, it's the real deal.

This weekend is going to be full of packing and other unforeseen moving related foolishness, so we're going to eat strawberries, have a few drinks and power though it.

I hope you all have a good one, the first day of summer ain't nothin' to shake a stick at!

fancy new O.D. iphone case!

whilst at work my trusty iphone 4 was stolen. long story short, i ran down the street and found the thief and her friend getting into a running car with two men and still failed to retrieve it. i confronted her but didn't get all crazy like i wanted to, what if they had a gun! running car full of confirmed criminals wasn't worth the risk. people tend to kill each other a lot more here than back in providence, i didn't want to get shot over a stupid phone. so the bitch got off with my pictures and my awesome case!

i was a medium sport about the whole thing, no use crying over something that already happened right? i was super pissed but it's not like being upset about it would get me my phone back. i spent a few days amusingly phoneless then finally dragged my sorry ass to the att store and got an iphone 5 (fancy! however i can no longer yell at my phone pretending my siri is ignoring me). my last casemate custom case was pretty rad, it only cracked from being dropped after almost an entire year and the printing stayed on there pretty well too. it was totally a good enough case to get again. plus it turned out to be surprisingly useful to have a piece from my portfolio as my case. when people asked me to describe my paintings i could just pull out my phone and show them.

last time i got one made with a pic of my favorite painting, so this time i got one made with my other fave! i gave this painting to my dad because he really liked it and he's a hard guy to get a reaction from about art. when he told me it was his favorite, it didn't matter that it was also my favorite, i gave it to him right then and it's still up in my parents' living room. now that it's on my phone i get to see it too. pretty cool.

here's the link to case mate if you want to make one too, they're way awesome. what would you put on it?

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!

you will not regret watching this

this commercial is ridiculous, the 60s were ridiculous. these children grew up and are now wandering unmarked among us knowing this happened.

i love the internet.

!!! i just watched it again and there is a MONKEY on the branch next to the kid at 35 seconds. A MONKEY.

paris intermission, because nail polish waits for no one.

so db and i went to the grocery store last night for the first time in probably a month and we're all excited to cook our fave meals again. on the way he was like "what's the one thing you're most excited about getting at the gs?" fully expecting me to say something normal and food related, but instead i squealed "NAIL POLISH!" laughed, and then said hot dog buns and something else dumb. i would say i hope we never grow up, but seeing as it hasn't happened yet, i think we're in the clear. FUN FOREVER! what a fantastic life goal.

i'm going to be honest, i have no idea when nail polish became exciting to me again. it kind of just snuck back into my life without me really noticing. my fingers were bare for probably over ten years and my toes were the same light pink all ten of those years, too. i threw out all my old slimy polishes forever ago but then all of the sudden last fall i decided i wanted a new color. i got lincoln park after dark which is a warm, very dark purple by OPI and ever since nail polish has been fun. for some reason in my nail polish wearing younger years i never owned a red though. i'm not sure if it's because i didn't want one or because i was a child and my parents didn't want me slipping down the path to dolly parton, but either way this is my first ever reddish nail polish. it's got a good dose of orange in there so it's still bright and fun, reds usually look really stale and flat to me but this one is like a neon red if that's even possible. clambake baby! now let's just try to ignore that the reason it's named that is likely inspired by cooked lobsters which is fairly gruesome.

now i've got cool colors for summer, warm and dark colors for winter and GLITTER. i think i'm done... right? eight is enough! i need the rest of my money for beer and bike parts.

more paris pics tomorrow!

good aim

if i ever need to catch a cat i know where to start. no wonder cats domesticated themselves on farms, this looks like the shit.

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chain surfinggg

why? because we're adults and we can do whatever we want.

my brother came to visit this weekend and while we did some pretty cool actual adventures like going to the mütter museum and riding our bikes everywhere and getting rained on, somehow chain surfing was the pastime of choice. we went to this chain more than once every day he was here. take uzo for a walk... past the chain, walk home from the bar... past the chain, going to miss your train... let's go to the chain first anyways. we even had team chain surfing. only one serious digger (it was me of course, and i made it look good apparently) and by yesterday we'd gotten pretty good.

there's going to be a lot more freestyle aggressive chain surfing in our future, there's already been talk about how to build our own haha. knarlyyy!

life is a carrot giver

go home and make your own pops kids! because let's be real, carrots < ice pops.

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pickles!

scanning the produce section at the grocery store last wednesday i happened to see "gherkin pickles" in a bin, so i immediately nabbed enough to fill two pint jars to make my own pickles! it was nasty easy and they taste AWESOME. i adapted the ingredients from this recipe but the directions are basically the same.

here's how:
- 6ish gerkin pickles
- 3/4 c apple cider vinegar (i bet white vinegar would be good too)
- 3/4 c filtered water
- 2 tsp sea salt
- 2 tsp dill seeds
- 2 tsp black peppercorns
- 4 garlic cloves peeled and kind of smashed
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 pint jars

chop both ends off each pickle and cut into spears or whatever shape you want.

combine vinegar, water and salt in a small sauce pan and bring to a boil. while that's warming up split the dill seed, black peppercorns and bay leaves evenly between the two jars and pack the pickles in fairly tightly.

pour gross smelling hot vinegar liquid evenly between the two jars. close the jars and let them cool on the counter and then when they're cool put them in the fridge for a day to pickle-ify. no sneaking pickles early! shake the jars up a bit to mix the spices more evenly in the brine.

seriously, they will be the crispiest damn pickles you've ever eaten and they're pretty tasty. i don't think i'll be buying pickles again. my only advice is do it on a day you can open the windows because hot vinegar funk will linger in your climate controlled home way longer than you want it to.

soo good!

weekends

... they start out so normal and then you open a box that has bananashark in it. does this sort of thing happen to anyone else?

weekends are the best. this weekend i'll be at a bridal shower wearing as many floral things at once as possible and bringing massive amounts of glitter into a non-glitter requiring situation, you know, the usual. i wonder if bananashark will be a stowaway...

happy weekend!

Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus: Sarcophagi iphone case!

i've done lots of fun stuff the past two weekends, so what am i going to post about? an iphone case, complete with ridiculous photobooth mirrored pic of myself oohing and ahhing over it.

in my endless internet wanderings when i was trapped in the extended stay in NJ for two weeks, i discovered that case mate prints custom phone cases. seeing as i'd dropped my phone while riding my bike home from the bar taking a video of my bro and db doing stupid bike tricks and cracked the case, replaced it with the same case and cracked that one too within a week of receiving it and the stupid crack was catching in my hair all the time... that case was dead to me, i was kinda looking for a new one. it was not going well, so many ugly case out there people, not into it. plus in the scheme of things a new iphone case isn't really that important. when i realized i could print my own with any pic i wanted though, it was one of the fastest goodbyes i've said to $30 in a while. i chose my fave painting from my portfolio, the one that will be on the wall of my living room later tonight if we can tear our eyes away from the olympics long enough to put a nail in the wall. pretty sweet right? ordering it was the last thing i did before my computer got dropped and the hard drive containing my portfolio was lost to the world. just in time!

a reasonable bag in an unreasonable world

as i've always thought "what's in my bag" posts were pretty amusing and pointless, i was inspired to do one to share with you guys after a particularly ridiculous adventure into center city. basically, walking around with my bag looking like this. it was an epic haul and about damn time we got to a yarn store and a bike shop. we've lived here for two weeks, which is about two weeks longer than that should have taken to happen.

so, crammed in my bag:
- patent leather pouch wallet thing. it used to have a really cool ball zipper pull which sadly broke off because i played with it way too much.
- dog poop bag (oh the glamour)
- keys, yes that's a squirrel bottle opener
- a business card from a particularly handsome engineer with his digits written on the back
- philly dog license tag (not sure why this was in there)
- spare sd card (this either, it's full)
- iphone
- my fabulous shades
- a skein of madelinetosh tosh sock in posy
- a pair of mks touring pedals for my mixte
- philly bike map!
- adorable small dog to assure everyone we encounter is friendly
- my trusty camera which i used to take this pic

far less glamorous than most what's in my bag posts but whatever, i'm not one of those girls who carries three different pretty mini perfumes in their bags anyways. it may look cute in a picture but where would i have crammed the bike pedals? plus i think caring about how you smell and caring about bike pedals might be mutually exclusive activities anyways, right?

4th

the only thing cooler looking and more exciting than a firework is one that totally misfires. don't worry, no one was maimed even though this happened more than once.

bunny swarm

in lieu of posting anything of unimportance, here is this picture. while it isn't me (which is a huge problem in my life i'm working on right now), it's still pretty far beyond my wildest dreams on the cuteness scale. i just want to know how do i make this happen for myself? what magic does she have in that bag? do i need to knit myself a cabled sweater dress to attract bunnies? are bunnies attracted to knee socks and bangs? i could make all of these things happen. or, on the other hand, are they all just attracted to their dead friend on her coat and this is really just a bunny death swarm?

so many questions.

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handmade pay it forward!

do you like handmade gifts and making handmade radness for other people who feel the same? then check this out!

Melissa at misocraftyknits posted something awesome that i've never seen before, a handmade pay it forward. can we all just agree right now this idea is far less depressing than that movie? no one should be getting shanked at the end of this hopefully. anyways, super lucky me i managed to get in on the fun! so here's the deal...

i will send a surprise gift to the first three commenters on this post. the gift will be handmade by me and it will be sent sometime in the next 365 days. it will be a surprise. surprise gifts in the mail = always awesome.

1. in your comment, tell me your two favorite colors (that will help me make an appropriate gift).
2. to join the fun and receive a gift, you must play along, too. pay it forward on your blog by promising to make a surprise for the first three people who comment on the post.
3. you must have a blog (that is updated, as i will blog stalk you to find the right gift for you).
4. after commenting here, you must re-post this or something similar to your blog in 48 hours. if not, i will choose the next person who comments.

sounds pretty fun right? i know i post a lot about knitting but what i make and what you make doesn't have to be knitting, it can totally be anything you like to craft by hand. spread the love!

puppy pony

i won't be doing anything as ridiculously amazing as getting towed around by a horse sized dog in a carriage this weekend, but i won't be waking up before the sun rises so it will be almost as amazing.

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IRENE STRIKES!!!

LIVE from Providence, Rhode Island, storm coverage of HURRICANE IRENE!

the horror! the beer! THE NEWS. only here, on Olneyville news channel 60.