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Aug. 18th, 2009

I've had my nose to the...feed dogs?

mood: industrious


A pile of bags and zippies and a needle case and box bag all to be listed today.

I've been busy sewing! FYI, the feed dog is the crunchy metal bit that comes up out of the sewing machine to feed your fabric through. Putting your nose to it would actually be quite horrifyng as it would be getting pierced by the needle...bleargh. Then I was busy cropping photos and today I will be busy updating Etsy and then I will be going upstairs to start it all over again!

I have been knitting as well, I have one sleeve done on mky Bohus sweater, I am now in a sea of stockinette for the body. Hopefully this evening I can take some tine to chill out and just knit knit knit on the deck for a while. Ahhhhhh.

Oh, we dd not get basement water after all. Knock on wood. The heaviest rains skirted around my corner of Milwaukee, so we were good.

Speaking of Milwaukee, our mayor kicks ASS.

Oh and I ordered a spinning wheel......
 

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Jul. 28th, 2009

All the fuss about Bohus....

mood: indecisive

So there is a sweater I have been lusting after., and I do know it is pronounced "bo-hoosh" but I could not think of a work to rhyme with -oosh. Well, except douche. And this post will not be involving douche. My life actually does not really involve douche.....but the word cracks me up. Because I am 12.

So the sweater, yeah, back on track. It's here:
Bountiful Bohus

and isn't it glorious? I have the book, I have been threatening, umm, planning to make this sweater for quite some time.
But what yarn to use?! I have a couple of options, all in the stash so in theory, no additional monies need to be spent. This is an option that appeals to me as I am saving up for a spinning wheel, a new deck and possibly a car.

I can do a chocolate brown kettle dyed for the body with two shades of pink for the color work. or pink and cream for it. Or lime and cream against brown....

Or I could do the body all in a muted lime and then do the two shades of pink for the yoke...
When I say muted I just mean not day-glo. it's still quite a perky lime green. Leafy spring green.


My original plan was to go for the green body and pink accents. I have 17 balls of Nashua creative focus superwash ready to go.
But then there are 10 skeins of glorious 100Purewool merino.....
here are my options:




And option 2:




The Nashua is superwash, so less worries about felting.and I have over 3500 yards of it, so I am sooo good to go on yardage.
The 100PW is oh-so delicious, though. AND this sweater is steeked, which means I will be knitting it all in one piece and then...sit down...I will be cutting it up the middle. I know, it makes me catch my breath, too. But the grabby non superwash wool might be better for my first steeking project. I am close to the limit on yardage, though, but I think i should have enough. i could alwys cheat a bit and do a band of the pink around the cuffs and hem if I had, too. I cannot get more of the 100PW as their colorways are a bit of a crapshoot on the best of days since it really is all done by hand, and I don't think it is always the same hands and it can REALLY vary.


So here is where I am:
NASHUA:
PROS:
machine washable
pretty green
I have 2 shit tons of it
nice, basic yarn that should give me a sweater to last for years
less pilling
already wound into tidy balls
pink and lime is my favorite color combo
It probably won't itch because it is superwash

CONS:
not as sticky as regular wool for the steekage
it's a LOT of green on a fat girl
A fat PASTY girl, the green will reflect on my face to some degree and could make me look....greenish. Or act as a concealer for my pink cheeks in winter. oooh this could be a con and a pro...



100PUREWOOL:
PROS:
it feels like malabrigo
really pretty semi solid brown loveliness
The color name is chocolate lace. Wearable chocolate!
probably more practical than lime green and will last for years, but I'm also probably going to still love green and pink for a long time.
I just freaking LOVE this yarn.

CONS:
It will pill like 27 bitches
the variegation might be just a bit much for the sweater
I was eyeballing the chocolate lace for a second Lady Sweater because I have way more than enough yardage for that.
I really really like the green and pinks together!

I need to figure this out and then I want to cast on!
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Jun. 26th, 2009

Tito, hand me a tissue!

mood: crafty

I know, I already have the express pass to hell.

Way back  in time when my sister was less psycho crackhead (well, less crackhead anyway....), George MIchael wasn't sexing himself up and passing out in Land Rovers, Michael Jackson was Awe. Some. and McCauley Caulkin was but a zygote.
You know you spent more than one afternoon painstakingly learning The Thriller Dance. The wolfish raised arms to the side part, the scrapey foot in front while doing the sideways head bop part and the impossible turn and step to your right while doing tiny little pelvic thrust maneuver. I was pretty good at it if I was one of the backup zombies where looking stiff and disjointed added to my overall performance.

And I seem to remember an entire, glorious, weekend spent at Nickie Patrick's house where she choreographed a truly awesome baton routine to PYT. Yeah, that song got pretty creepy in the 90s.....

I was a Wham! girl, though. I was all about Wham! and Culture Club, my taste in swanky gay Brits was established early on, surprisingly influenced by my father. In perhaps his one good parenting move he took me to Sears (god, remember when Sears sold record albums?!) to buy the Quiet Riot album I could not live without. As we stood there in line at the Sears in the Concord Mall  my dad flipped the record over and looked at the song titles. Loves a WHAT? Bitch? Cum on..WHAT? This was unacceptable! I was nine, I just thought they were lousy spellers.
He dragged me right out of the queue and back to the records to put it back. He was huffing and puffing at the salesman about how there was no way he was going to buy THAT for his little girl. There was a huge Boy George poster on display and I remember him saying "Who is that? Is she any good? Yeah? She's not dirty? Great, give me that poster and that album." The middle aged man happily picked them out and rang us up and 25 years later I still love me a big old nelly Brit.

But my sister was all about Michael Jackson. She had the yellow sweater poster, you know the one with the yellow bow tie? She used to sing Ben and Rockin' Robin all the time. She also had one of those cheesy Tiger Beat magazine faux scrapbooks and it was a prized possession. Interestingly enough, her next huge crush was Corey "wanna be Michael Jackson" Feldman! I guess she had a type, too.
 
Fighting wih my sister when we still had to live in the same state house was pretty much constant. She would pick at me behind my mother's back until I just lost my shit and then I would get in trouble. And she was quick to get physically violent and even though I was much taller and two years older, she was crazier and meaner. So I had to be sneakier to get to her, something that was rare because I was too quick to fly off the handle. But really, you would be, too if you'd been stuck with her.
She did something to me, I don't remember what it was, but I was obviously quite upset about it. Upset enough to search out all the leftover wallet size photos  from my third grade pictures, some scissors, and a bottle of Elmer's glue I took her beloved scrapbook to the basement one afternoon and set to work. I spent hours cutting out a pile of my heads from the picture packet and then carefully pasted them next to her beloved Michael in every photo where he was with a date and let it dry so the pages were not glued together. Then I cleaned it all up and put the book back where she had it and waited.
It took weeks for her to see it and lose her shit for a change, but they were sweet weeks filled with anticipation knowing that I was going to get her and get her good.
It was worth it. Honestly, it's one of the fondest memories of my childhood.
So, to you MJ, before the cheese slid off your cracker, you were pretty cool and I recreate that happy afternoon using a snapshot from homecoming 1990:
:

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