Arts and crafts

Here are some of the projects I’ve been working on recently.

Plum and white, cotton/poly blend

I made a blanket for the baby of some friends through whom we found our wedding photographer. Elspeth was born on her daddy’s (and great-grandma’s) birthday, which is also our anniversary. I was touched when, in writing her birth story, Elspeth’s mom chose to include a photo of the little on on the blanket I made.

Guess which one isn't mine?

This one is mine.

I had to lightly pencil in the vines in order to figure out where to put the white flowers

If you guessed this one, you were right! Ain't it a beaut.

On Wednesday, I biked over to Karen’s house and I made two more pysanky. I really like how both of them turned out, but neither holds a candle to Karen’s amazing handiwork. Gorgeous.

Waste not, want not. Or some shit like that.

We tore out two of the three palm trees in one of the side yards, and I didn’t want to waste all those palm fronds. I did some googling and learned how to make palm frond flowers. After an evening of stripping, fiddling, weaving, and fending off curious kitties, I ended up with a wee bouquet’s worth of flowers, which I brought to Leah at her bachelorette party. Traditionally, I guess, the stand-up girl makes a bouquet from the ribbons gleaned from wedding shower packaging and gives it to the bride to be used at the rehearsal. For this wedding, there’s no shower (that I know of) and probably not going to be a rehearsal, but I thought Leah might like a little bouquet anyhow.

A girl and her giant crotch mojito

And oh yeah. I planned a bachelorette party. True to Leah’s wishes, we had a zillion colors of nail polish and girly magazines, tasty food and beverages, with brownies made by Moose and this super-cute banner by Sara and cupcakes from Holly and champagne from Kristin. I made simple syrup and brought mint from the garden for mojitos. We wore comfy clothing, and my wild idea of changing up the movies we might watch at the party from BBC-style costume dramas to traditional sleepover 80s movies turned out to be the least surprising thing about the night. (No, the stripper was NOT my idea. But I haven’t laughed that hard since maybe my own bachelorette party, during which I got a lap dance from a large African-American man named Simone dressed as a French maid.) Alas, neither 80s movies nor popcorn were consumed, but I think a good time was had by all.

I stuck my dollars in her shoelaces, but he didn't remove them with his teeth.

Pysanka!

Pretty eggs

One of the benefits of living in the ‘dale for the past six months has been reconnecting with old friends, people with whom I went to high school and maybe kept in touch with via social media but hadn’t actually seen or spent time with in years before we got here last fall. We’ve really enjoyed getting to know some of my old friends as adults, and found at least a few kindred spirits. Two of those folks are Karen and Andriy, who live in the house where Karen grew up along with Karen’s sister Amy and her son. We’ve had them over for tasty meals and games, and they’ve had us over for tasty meals and games, but hadn’t seen them in several weeks due to bad weather and general busyness until last weekend. Karen had messaged me on Facebook, asking if I or we would be interested in participating in a traditional Ukrainian Easter craft that she had started doing since not long after she and Andriy, whom she met when he was an exchange student from Ukraine at our high school, began dating.

The craft is called Pysanka, a style of decorating eggs for Easter. The technique involves several layers of dyeing and wax resist/batik to create amazing multicolored designs on the shells of eggs. Traditionally, pysanka is done on raw eggs, but Karen and her family blow the middles to only dye the shells, as they last much longer that way. Karen has been creating pysanky for more than a decade, and she’s saved many of the eggs she and her family have created to display in the spring.

Traditional Ukranian bee motif

I was super excited to try my hand at the pysanka method, as I’ve seen photos of the gorgeous Eastern European eggs since I was a kid and always wondered how they were made. I even went so far as to try to make one when I was a teenager. I got as far as blowing out an egg and painting half of it with watercolor paints before getting bored. So in preparation for our afternoon at Karen’s house, I looked them and the process up on Wikipedia and drooled over the photos I saw.

Image from one of Karen's books

This is how you make a pysanka. First, you blow the raw egg out of the shell, either the two-hole method or a one-hole method that involves some sort of a tool that Karen has. Then, you soak the egg shells in vinegar to make them more susceptible to dye. You acquire the special dyes you need and prepare them according to directions. You also acquire the various tools you need, like wax and special styluses in a variety of line widths. You light a tea light candle, and you put down some paper towels or newspaper, and you’re ready to begin.

All the colors

The important thing to know about pysanky is that you have to plan your design out in advance if you want it to look cool. You have to think about the colors you want to use, and the designs you want to use, and you have to figure out the order in which to make your designs in order to have the colors show up in the right way. First, you fill the stylus with wax and heat it in the candle flame, and you fill in the hole in the shell to seal it. Second, you use the stylus to draw on the egg any part of your design you wish to remain white, refilling and melting as you go.

You can tell it's Dan's hand because he's a lefty

When that is finished, you decide which is the lightest dye you intend to use (yellow, orange, light green) and dip the shell in the dye, turning it and holding it down long enough to create the color you want, and then you pull it out of the dye and wipe it off with a paper towel. Next, you use the stylus and wax to draw any part of your design on the egg you wish to remain that first light color. Repeat as necessary, dying your egg progressively darker colors, adding wax to preserve each color according to your design, and finishing with the darkest color dye (black, dark purple, dark blue, red) depending on which color is the darkest in your design. You can use q-tips to spot-dye areas along the way if you don’t wish to dye the entire egg that color, and there’s always one dye that isn’t made with vinegar (in this case, it was orange) in order to have a neutral dip between colors to help preserve color integrity.

Dan adds wax to preserve the yellow parts of the design

When you’re finished with all of the dying and all of the layers of wax, you have two options. When the egg has dried or rested a bit, you gently scrape or pull the wax plug out of the hole in the egg that you made at the beginning of the process so it doesn’t blow up in the next step. Then, you get to decide: oven or open flame? If you have a board with very small nails sticking out of it, you can prop the egg up on a nail and put it in the oven until the wax melts off. If you don’t, you can use a gas stovetop or a fireplace and slowly turn the egg, wiping it on a rag or a paper towel, until the wax is all melted and you’re left with your pretty design.

Dan's blue/orange, Andriy's Pepsi egg, my two in the back

During our pysanka adventure, Dan and I each made two eggs. I was much happier with my second egg than my first (I looked at the first egg as a practice run, just to learn the techniques), but I still like both of them. For my second egg, I tried to really plan out what I wanted to do, and modified my design because of the few times the stylus dripped wax in an unintended place.

Paper towels used to wipe dyed eggs

Karen tends to follow a pattern in a traditional Pysanky book with traditional motifs like bees, oak leaves, and flowers, while Andriy does similar things but he freehands them out of his own imagination.

Perfection!

Amy made the prettiest egg of all, in my opinion, and she spent hours working on it. Amazing!

Making pysanky is definitely both interesting and challenging, and I’m already looking forward to my next pysanka adventure on Wednesday. I can’t wait to put the designs in my head onto eggs!

New projects: Circular Baby Blankets

Stripes of leftover yarn bits from other projects

Two of my friends (hi, Nancy!) had babies in October, and I knitted similar blankets for both of them using the same pattern. I forgot to get any photos of the one that went to baby Patrick, since I finished and mailed it during our crazy moving time in September, but I finally finished, blocked, and mailed the one for baby Natalie in Seattle. (She came three weeks before her due date, and so it was only two weeks and not five weeks late, adjusted.)

Patrick’s blanket used the same multicolored speckled yarn, only there weren’t any stripes, and I crocheted a border in blue and green cotton yarn around the outside.

 

About 38 inches in diameter

I mailed the blanket for Natalie on Friday, and her parents received it today. Yay for the prompt service of the USPS!

(Thankfully, the next baby in line isn’t due until late March, so now it’s time for Giftmas knitting!)

A blanket for Spats Turkey

Once upon a time, my pal Jive Turkey went and got herself all knocked up. This was a long-awaited occurrence, and I was so happy when she told the internets the big news that I wanted to do something for her and for Husband of Said Turkey. So I decided to make a blanket for the baby-to-be that became known on her blog as Spats.

Just after that, a new issue of the online knitting magazine knitty.com went live. In it was an amazing pattern for a baby blanket called Op Art, and the example shown was in black and white. The pattern was designed by someone who had studied infant visual development and was intended to be visually interesting for babies. I found this to be fascinating and decided to make this pattern (albeit in more interesting colors yet maintaining the dark/light contrast) for Spats. I found this gorgeous soft yarn in a pearly white and wine color, not too Christmas-y but still with the visual contrast to make the pattern functional in addition to cool-looking.

Then, one of Leah‘s friends went and made the same blanket for Wombat so the blog world had seen the blanket. That blanket was black and white, so mine would be different, but I was glad that I’d decided on this pattern for Spats and not for Wombat!

When it came time to actually start the blanket, I was, to put it mildly, a little confused by the directions, which say to use two circular needles – something I’d never done before. After about six false starts I gave up and just started the thing on double-pointeds, transfering up to circulars as it slowly got bigger (the blanket is knitted from the inside out, with increases evenly spaced each quarter of the way around). At one point I had over two hundred stitches on one long circular and was running out of space, so I knew I had to switch to two, but I had no idea how. Solution? I scoured the internet for other people who had made the pattern to ask advice. I found some videos on youtube showing a two-circular knitting technique. And finally I had the courage to give it a try myself – and it worked! Yay! It was like wrestling badgers, but it worked. I never did figure out how to knit the pattern mindlessly; I had to count every stitch I knitted to make sure I’d be increasing at the right places and even marked my place verbally to Dan whenever he’d say something to me so I wouldn’t forget and have to recount.

The directions call for much thinner yarn and a smaller gauge needle, so I knew I wouldn’t be making the entire thing according to the pattern. I learned a lesson with Wombat’s blanket; larger blankets might be nice for later but babies need small things if they are really to be useful. I didn’t want Spat’s blanket to get too big, so I finished up at about 450-odd stitches, bound off, and called it a day. Blocking was challenging; the pattern called for wool yarn which I can’t use (allergic) so I’d used a lovely soft machine washable acrylic but acrylic is far more difficult to block into shape (blocking is the process of getting a finished garment or object wet, stretching it out to size, and letting it dry that way). I usually block the things I make even though they’re less likely to change shape because it does help even out stitches and makes things look nice and finished, but unfortunately what was supposed to end up a square will probably be forever kind of an odd shape. Oh, well; I think it looks pretty cool the way it is. What do you guys think?

I took photos in the morning before I mailed it last Thursday. Someone didn’t want to get out of the bed.

Secret Project: A blanket for Oldest Friend

A little over a year ago, Oldest Friend sent me a box of her old t-shirts that she’d collected from high school, her various trips post-high school, college, her trips post-college, shirts from wineries where she’d worked, 2 baseball caps, a pair of boxer shorts and a big-ass piece of soft maroon fabric. “I was hoping you could do something with these for me,” she told me, and I told her that I’d get to it but make no promises as to when she could expect to see her t-shirts back or in what format she might get them.

The box sat in my closet for more than a year, during which time we planned the wedding and got married and I knitted lots of projects and I never thought much about the Big Project. Then, when we were doing our big cleaning a few weeks ago I climbed into my closet and spied the Box O Shirts on my upper closet shelf. “Self,” I said to myself. “Oldest Friend has a milestone birthday coming up soon and wouldn’t it be nice to get this box out of here?” So the decision was made, and I spent my day off (President’s Day) cutting the interesting pieces out of the shirts and washing them along with the large maroon fabric. Once that was done, I sorted it all out on the bed to get an idea of how all the bits might fit together. Because they were all different shapes and sizes, I knew there was no way to make it be even or remotely geometric, and I knew that working with primarily t-shirt material would be difficult (that stuff bends and stretches, especially the cut edges). So I had to make a Plan of Action to carry out over the next couple of weeks to make sure it was finished in time for my trip to LA for Oldest Friend’s birthday.

As you can see, rolled edges.

First, I needed to decide exactly how I’d configure the blanket (for I concluded it would be a blanket; it’s not really a quilt since there’s no batting plus my sewing machine isn’t really set up for quilting). My first thought was to use the pieces to cover an old blanket and use the maroon fabric for the opposite side, but the only blanket I had to use didn’t seem to want to cooperate and I thought it might be really difficult to sew together. Instead, I spread an old top sheet down on the living room floor and spread out each of the pieces into a similar configuration to what I’d done on the bed, did my best to iron the edges of each piece, and pinned them down.

Note the uneven border, which later gets fixed with other pieces of fabric.

Then, I had to baste. I hand-basted each piece onto the sheet, making sure that the spots where edges didn’t quite meet up were given special attention so that either they were going to be covered later with something else, or I stretched fabric to make sure it would all look OK. I cut pieces of the boxer shorts and another (non-T) shirt and bits of 2 other fabric swaths she’d sent and fit them into where there were blank spaces in an otherwise mostly-square shape and basted those down as well.
Basted!

Now came the hard part – tacking the t-shirt-covered sheet to the backing fabric, making a rolled edge, and sewing it down. Out came the pins, and Dan helped me hold down the layers while spread across our dining table and I rolled and pinned the edges. My sewing machine hadn’t seen light since I made the bridesmaid dresses last year and I was nervous about working with so much material, but it seemed to work out OK (though there was a lot more bunching and stretching than I expected). I managed to break a needle while the machine was in the middle of a seam, which was frustrating, and finally Dan figured out how to remove the broken needle. We went out to find new sewing machine needles and I learned that I’m supposed to change the needle every time I do a new project, which was news to me since I’d been using the same one since I got the machine. Oops!

Pinned blanket border
The kitties helped by sleeping cutely on the remainder of the maroon fabric.

Needle successfully changed, I began machine “quilting” over the basting stitches, sewing all the layers of fabric (t-shirt scraps, sheet, maroon fabric) together. This was the most difficult part of the project because the layout was random rather than evenly geometric in any way and I had to change directions on the same seam a whole bunch of times and sometimes I had tons of material gathered up on my right side which made even seams difficult. I decided not to care that it didn’t look perfect, and finally got it all done. After I finished that, I hand-sewed the pieces of baseball cap and one t-shirt bit that was too small/seams too narrow to machine stitch.

I had to hand-sew the baseball cap bits. This is why I do not sew for a living.

Back of the blanket; you can see the seams.

The last step was to remove all the basting stitches and to tuck in the seam ends that were all over both sides of the blanket. This was also tedious but I did it while home sick so it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. And on Friday, I washed and dried the whole shebang and folded it into my suitcase, but I took a photo of the finished product first.

All finished!

Tying it up

1. Once upon a time, I asked for suggestions on how to use my Aveda gift certificate, which was due to expire in early March. I got a lot of good feedback, and still wasn’t sure what to do, and then we had dinner with Julie and Steve. They’re going to a wedding on the East Coast this weekend and Julie talked about how she really wanted a haircut and highlights done before they left. They’ve fallen on some tough times (as have a lot of people, because duh) and I offered to let her use my gift certificate to get that stuff done at the Aveda Institute. She was all over that, and when we went in yesterday to set it up they told us they weren’t taking any more appointments for the day. Denied! The girl extended the expiration on my gift certificate and Julie’s mom offered to pay for her haircut so now I’m back to where I started.

2. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I’m going to LA this weekend to attend the 30th birthday of Oldest Friend. Because it’s a ball I wanted to find a fancy dress or something otherwise appropriate to the occasion, and did a lot of looking around online and in regular stores. I found some actual, no shit ball gowns in a store in the racetrack mall (the store is called FT Casuals yet there’s nothing casual in the store); they sell prom and quincenera and wedding dresses and hooker shoes, and lots of dresses in the store could have worked for my purposes but a) they were all kinda oogly, and b) I still wasn’t willing to spend that much on a dress. I tried a few costume stores, thinking I could find something vintage or something I could alter but didn’t have much luck. So I called her up and asked if I could wear the dress she wore as my Best Woman – when I made the dress, I made it to fit me because I knew it would fit her; we’re the same size. She said yes! So, that being solved, I went about Project Gloves. My first stop was Claire’s, thinking that it’s prom season and they’d have them if anyone did. Nope, all they had were bright-colored fishnet gauntlets and tacky black lace Madonna gloves. I went on a wild goose chase into 3 other stores to no avail. I guess the girls aren’t wearing the formal gloves no mo. My mom has several pairs that belonged to her mother but they’re in northern California and I needed some for this weekend; no time to get them to me. Luckily, I mentioned my predicament to Julie because I figured she might have some, having been in about 8 gazillion formal expensive East Coast weddings over the years. “I’ve never been asked to wear gloves in a wedding,” she told me, “but I inherited a giant box of gloves from my grandmother.” Her wealthy, New York Jewish grandmother. Who attended umpteen formal functions over the years. I went over to her place and we went through the piles of gloves (and a few hats). Oh. My. There were leather and kid gloves of all lengths and colors (even blue!), there were forearm-length fabric ruched bright yellow and bright orange. There were simple, short ones, black and white, with intricate beading. Many of the gloves had obviously never been worn, since they had the tags still attached and cardboard inserts. It was a fun glove-trying-on party and I’m borrowing four pairs (one black velvet elbow-length, two white kid (different lengths), and one gray forearm-length) to see which ones look best when I have the whole outfit put together. I’ll be wearing silver or black shoes, a mask also borrowed from Oldest Friend, and one of four different wraps. Oh yes, there will be photos!

3. I have one project at 95% completion that you’ll get to see on Monday and another at about 90% that you’ll get to see after I mail it to Jive Turkey. I want them to be surprises, so no peeking this time!

4. Please, think good thoughts for me. My cold took a turn for the worse last night and I woke up this morning with some new symptoms (sore, constricted throat, dizziness – maybe my inner ear is affected?) – a relapse, or have I gotten another cold on top of the one I had? Either way, I ended up going home early from work and napping for some of the afternoon and may not go in tomorrow, just to rest up for my plane trip. I get to stay with Monkey and spend time with Oldest Friend and attend a ball and eat homemade Indian food and I don’t want to be sick! No more sick!

It’s my opinion birthday balls should be held every night.

The past week or so has been filled with productivity, accomplishment, and a general getting-stuff-done attutude around these parts.

Case in point: The house is clean. It took 2 days, but it looks awesome.

Case in point: I spent Monday (had off for dead president day) doing things like culling books and working on Secret Birthday Projects in between the running in the park and the lounging on the bed and the playing with the kitties.

I am definitely feeling better. Saturday’s highlight was a surprise from-scratch paella (made by Dan) accompanied by the best appetizer ever (smoked salmon, Humboldt Fog cheese and fancy herb crackers) and 2 amazing Spanish wines. I made dark chocolate mousse for dessert, making a 2/3 recipe from the Joy of Cooking and it still took us 3 days to eat it all. All of our laundry got washed, dried, folded and put away (even the throw rugs!); all of our dishes were at one point washed, dried, and put away. Spending part of Monday in the house felt good instead of oppressive.

An interesting thing has happened recently: I have reconnected with some old friends through one of those social networking sites all the kids are talking about these days. Except these aren’t just old friends, they’re people who at one point were like my brothers that I wasn’t actually genetically related to. The younger one goes by a different first name than how I always knew him, but in his photos he and his brother look just like they did when they were kids, except they also look just like their parents. And like themselves. I might meet up with them the next time we go to California; there is something both nostalgic and immensely satisfactory to trade stories with people with whom one shared one’s childhood. We were at each other’s houses multiple times a week. We took baths together and had sleepovers. They were my brothers 20 years ago, and now they can be my friends.

Four overdue packages got mailed off yesterday: housewarming, thank-you, and new baby boxes are winging their way to the East Coast and to California. My newest cousin baby (#4 for them) was born in January (and thankfully her name is a real one, Jenna). Here is the blanket I made for her.


(As you can see, it’s significantly smaller than the one for Wombat.)

And here is the sweater that I made Dan that got finished in January. He wears it all the time, so I think he likes it. Either that or he is just trying to make me feel better for spending so much time on it!



(He was thrilled that I wanted to take a photo of him in it this morning, obviously.)
I want to share photos of Super Secret Birthday Project, but I think the recipient might see them, so they will have to wait. It’s not a knitting project, but it’s going to be awesome.

Speaking of birthdays, I have been invited to a 30th Birthday Ball in Southern California for Oldest Friend. I will be attending. What should I wear to a ball? Gloves? Mask? Should I actually try to find a ballgown, or wear something I already have? I’m excited about the prospect of dressing up but I’m already flying and renting a car, so don’t exactly have hundreds of dollars to spend on a fancy dress. Ideas?

Good things

*Tomorrow we go to New York City. I’ve never been. I am thoroughly excited, and will get to meet up with a few different friends while we’re there. We plan to see a broadway show and eat some pizza and spend hours walking around and saying hey, I’ve seen that before!

*I finally finished knitting Dan’s sweater, and have only some finishing touches to add (grafting the armpits together, weaving in ends, etc.) Photos forthcoming.

*After 2 solid years of looking, I finally managed to find acceptable work pants to buy. NY & Co, a store I’ve never actually shopped in before, had a great sale and I got 3 pairs of well-fitting work pants that don’t make me look hoochie for 40 bucks this weekend. SWEET.

You can call it faff, or you can call it not so faff.

Most interesting thing I saw this week: (tie)

1. Guy on the free shuttle bus dressed in silver, painted with silver, so I figured he was one of the buskers that does the painted statue thing. As soon as the bus started moving, however, the guy witnessed and prosyletised loudly and with great gusto to the entire bus for about 10 blocks. He was impossible to ignore.

2. Last night, the release party for the magazine Dan’s class has been working on all semester was held. The party was a lot of fun, particularly the part where Ooh La La presents performed. I got to see both dudes and chicks take off their clothes to music. Sweet! This burlesque group is, shall we say, a bit less than traditional (two of the acts included a woman in a straightjacket and a woman in an octopus costume).

Thing I have been thinking about most this week:

The impending arrival of Wombat, who seems to have learned that teasing can be fun (even in utero!). I intend to give him a piece of my mind when he finally arrives. Because teasing isn’t nice, especially when so many people have been waiting to meet him for so long.

Cookies I intend to bake this weekend:

Rum balls courtesy Cil; mocha slice cookies courtesy Sara via Martha Stewart, also possibly some of my family’s traditional cookies, including Mexican Wedding Cookies and Austrian Chocolate Balls. Now I just need to figure out what to do with them all. Who wants me to send them some cookies?

Knitting projects I am currently working on:

Too many to really name, especially since some recipients of said projects are blog readers, and there has to be some surprises left in this world. Photos forthcoming.

Number of angel tree-type gift requests we were able to fulfill this year:

six from the grocery store tree(!), one from my work (an 11 y/o girl who likes historical young adult fiction! I got her Anne of Green Gables, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond).

I would also like to thank Hillary for letting me totally steal the faff thing. She has pretty hair and cute doggies. And faff is such an appropriate word!

A baby blanket for a wombat, in numbers

The plan was developed in stages. I went to the store, looked at yarn, and found what I wanted back in July some time.

Initial skeins of yarn: 5 (2 multicolored, 1 green, 1 purple, 1 yellow)

Skeins of yarn purchased by the end of the process: 9 (3 multicolored, 2 green, 2 purple, 2 yellow)

Dan and I tossed around ideas for how to use the yarn I bought. We each used colored pencils and graph paper to brainstorm. Dan’s design ended up being the one I used. Then, he calculated how many of each kind of square I needed to knit (4 solo multi, 10 half multi half multi/purple, etc.)

Ideas drawn before determining a winner: at least 10

Squares in winning design: 64

Patterns used in squares: 64 different (each square a different pattern)

Patterns I made up myself, either stitch patterns I knew or ones I concocted using graph paper: approximately 40

Patterns I obtained from a pattern book: approximately 24

Squares with suit patterns I made up: 4 (1 heart, 1 club, 1 diamond, 1 spade)

Size of each square: 6 by 6 inches (approximate; some squares were slightly larger and some slightly smaller)

Size of blanket, finished: 4 feet by 4 feet (after blocking, it appears to be somewhat bigger)

Hours spent knitting blanket: approximately 100. Maybe more.

Places I knitted: the couch, my national conference during sessions, hotel rooms, airplanes.

(Loki liked to help, too.)

Hours spent stitching blanket together: approximately 6

Time spent blocking: 1 hour, plus 15 hours drying time

Time spent finishing (crochet border): 2 hours

The yarn is machine washable and dryable and I hope I have constructed it such that it will be fully functional and easy to care for. Mostly I hope that it helps keep a very special baby warm through a cold and damp Bay Area winter.

Made with love,
Emily, who met his parents on the internet