The Towel Makes It Home

So I've been a bit of a slacker these past few weeks in terms of blogging. While I've been pretty busy in my real life I haven't had much to show for it in my crafty life. I've been knitting away on a stashbusting log cabin afghan, some mindless knitting that has been keeping me warm as I knit it while watching "The Wire" DVDs.

Remember several months ago I posted about a Super Secret embroidery project I was working on? Sure you do. Well just about a year ago, I was lucky enough to be able to participate in the original Tea Towel Tour for Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching. Well, unfortunately that towel never made its way home to Austin to the Sublime Stitching offices. Since most of y'all reading this are knitters you are probably not familiar with Jenny's work but I have always love her patterns and her work is really amazing. Not to mention to that I was able to go to an event of hers a few years back when her book came out and she is really an inspiring person for women-business owners, craft-y type people or really just anyone.

So after a six month journey across country the new towel was hand-delivered to Jenny.

Jenny Hart with the Secret Tea Towel!
Originally uploaded by burb_mama

There is some really great work on there so be sure to check out the close-ups on craftster . I mean there is a pin-up girl sitting on a wheel of cheese, people!

Think it may be time to pull out the old embroidery hoop. and learn how to balance my time between more than one craft at a time. So lookout, there may be more dancing garlic and flaming martinis coming at you soon!

All in the Family

Recently my cousin, a hooker, uh, I mean crocheter decided to start knitting as well. So I passed along some books, needles and yarn to feed her new found habit. I had already introduced her to my own version of crack, ravelry, and she just got her invite. May the time sucking begin! Hopefully she will enjoy knitting as much as I do and I can't wait to see what she does! Knowing our family it will involve stuffed animals.

Last month I showed off the completed Elephant Sweater and I did say that I would post pictures when I finally gave Michelle her sweater so without further ado....



And because I am the world's biggest goofball I decided that since every little girl who loves elephants needs an elephant sweater then surely every elephant who loves a little girl needs a Michelle sweater. This is Soggy, Michelle's favorite stuffie, the beginning of her love of elephants and a very snazzy dresser. Funny thing is the Soggy sweater which I made in one night was just as big a hit as Michelle's sweater that I worked many, many hours on. Such is life.

Bags and Yarn and Quiche, Oh My!

The Mad Stashbuster strikes again! I don't know why I keep knitting bags since I never use them as much as they deserve but I just can't help myself. And they are more functional than the stuffed animals. This is my version of the Icon Bag . It's got this cool chart that was originally from a 14th century Byzantine piece in etched silver. I haven't done a whole bunch of charted colorwork so this even though it was just stockinette in the round it still required my full attention. The only downside was that since I did this in Lamb's Pride it has the fuzz of the mohair that doesn't make the design pop as much as I would like. So I did give it a bit of a haircut to trim some of the fuzz and to accidentally snort mohair. I swear I was just experimenting and I will never do it again.



Here is my beautiful yarn that the Daft Crafter dyed for me. Apparently my yarn was so happy to be dyed that it took flight check out the photos here. So hence it's name, Flying Happy Jenny Yarn.



And since my last culinary creation received such praise I figured I'd show off my latest yumminess, a mushroom and broccoli quiche.

What the World Needs Now....

Must be something about Valentines Day as I have been very lucky to receive some serious internet knitting lovin’ this week.

First, I won a contest on the daft crafter’s blog. Who knew that having sick revenge fantasies would make me a winner? If I knew that before,I would have played the lottery back in high school when I dreamed of shaving the head of Bonnie N. the night before prom. Anyway, I will be the recipient of some (sure to be gorgeous) sock yarn dyed by the daft crafter herself. I will post pretty pictures when I get it.

Oh, and for the two of my readers who don’t already read her blog you really should. While she doesn’t post often when she does it’s chock full of stuff and completely hilarious.

Which brings me to more mutual admiration on the net. Ariel tagged me with a Make My Day award.

It was very cool of her to do so and be sure to check out her blog as well. If anyone's socks are going to tempt me to start knitting sock's it is hers. Hmmm....I will be getting sock yarn soon, I sense a conspiracy.

Now I am supposed to pass along the make my day award to others so here are bloggers who make my day. Some places say it should be 5, some 10. Yet again, I say screw it and will just put as many as I feel like.

Craft Pirate - I know she has gotten this honor already but her amazing photography of her knitting alone merits getting it twice.

beetlegrass - I first saw some of her work at the South End Open Studios and loved it. A great mix of illustrations, her collections and kick-ass finger puppets.

Daft Crafter - see accolades above

Lemonade Sandwich - Okay, so this is total nepotism and she hasn't posted original work for a while but there are photos of my adorable niece there and if anything makes my day that does.

floresita - things I've made - now only does she do great her own great work, embroidery, drawings etc she also has does another blog , feeling stitchy that showcases projects from the flickr embroidery group, tutorials etc.

One last thing that recently made my day, check out my mad frosting-piping skills on my Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting that I made for Cooking Club this past weekend. And they were fully baked! No goo!



Happy Valentines Day!

Good-bye January!

First of all let me tell y'all what an idiot I am....I changed some option on my blog that made it so I had to moderate any comments before they could be published. (I had one instance of icky spam comment and I was trying to keep that from happening) but apparently I never set it up to tell me that I had comments a' waitin' for my moderation so they were sitting there for 2 weeks. Whoops. Just gave myself a dope slap. But since it happened in January I am not all that surprised. It was not that great of a month and I am very glad it is over. It kinda sucked. Luckily I had some really good people around to cheer me up so it could have been way worse.

But one good thing that I managed to accomplish this month was to finish the Michellephant sweater. My niece really, really likes elephants and has amassed quite a collection for such a young girl. So one day I was surfing around on ravelry ('cause that rarely happens) and did a pattern search for elephants and lo and behold this sweater comes up. I know that she would love it but then it turns out that the pattern is from a 2004 issue of Knit It! How the hell am I going to get my hands on that? So I put a notice on a ravelry forum and a lovely woman in Oregon has the magazine and will send it to me just for the cost of shipping. How cool is that?



I promise to add a photo when Michelle actually gets the sweater and is modeling it but I really wanted to post a photo of a FO and it's not like it will it ruin the surprise for her since she's not on the web. Yet.

My sister doubts that when Michelle looks at the sweater, she will say "Nice seaming, Auntie Sarah" but I am pretty proud of my seaming skills on this. Oh and in the theme of Fearless Knitting how great was it to tackle my first big intarsia project and have it come out looking like what it was supposed to?

A Modern Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there lived a young princess who awoke,after hitting snooze several times, to find herself late for the gala ball. (Yeah right, she was late for work. Again.) Remembering that the fortune tellers, ahem, meteorologists predicted a "winter mix", she grabbed her umbrella and affixed her YakTrax over her shoes. Her YakTrax, a gift from her fairy brother-in-law, kept the fair maiden steady on her feet and prevented her from wiping out on neighborhood sidewalks.

As luck would have it her green steed was waiting for her and she began her journey. She traveled long and far to reach her home away from home.....Dunkin Donuts. The troll behind the counter tried to trick her but she was prepared with the magic words: "No Cup!" and she emerged victorious with her iced coffee.

The kind Silver Line carriage driver stopped to take the princess on the final leg of her journey and with all her good fortune the princess was not going to be as late as she thought.

As she crossed the parking lot to enter the ball she sighed "Oh, crap!" in that dainty way that princesses do. She had lost one of her Trax! Alas what would the princess do? She did what any modern princess would do. She went to find her own damn shoe. She snuck out of the ball and scoured the land where the carriage had dropped her off. She ventured into the dark labyrinth of MBTA lost and found. "Call this number", "...your call is important to us", "try this number". But all to no avail. The trax was gone.

Maybe the shoe will magically be on the carriage she takes home.

Maybe a fair prince will appear with Trax perched on a purple satin pillow edged with gold brocade.

Probably the princess will just make a stop at Eastern Mountain Sports and buy a new pair.

But even with one shoe and no prince she will live happily ever after......

Happy New Year!!!

Welcome 2008!

I am going to begin 2008 by posting the last few projects from 2007.

Here is the matching hat and mittens I made for charity and haven't actually sent yet. Whoops! Okay - 2008 battle procrastination. And I know you all wish you had a mannequin head of your very own.



Mini Sweater Ornament


The Kitschy Christmas Tree I made for Meg because everyone should have a tree at Christmas. Decorated with a pretty garland of silver beads.