But I'm still not keen on February.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, I'm not a fan of February. But it is a month that contains a holiday and a holiday gives me excuses to be crafty. It's a good way to distract myself from the winter dullness.

This little hat (made from the last leftover yarn from Mom's Ugly Sweater and The Very Hungry Scarf), has gone to live with a young friend of mine.

This mobile was inspired by several different projects I'd seen on the interwebs over the past few weeks.
It's made from free origami paper I downloaded and printed out ages ago (So long ago, I can't remember where I found it. edit I found it again.). I cut out various sized hearts, put them back to back and sewed up the center of a pair. I pulled a few inches of thread out and sewed the next pair until I had a few strands with 3 hearts on each. I hung them on a wooden hanger I bought a couple of years ago at Ten Thousand Villages (one of those things I buy convinced that I will someday find the perfect use for it...and I finally did).

I miss the elementary school classroom Valentine's day parties with milk cartons converted into mailboxes decorated with construction paper hearts on everyone's desk. Class Moms would show up in the afternoon with trays of cookies and cupcakes and jugs of red punch and we would all walk around sticking valentines in each other's mailboxes, get all sugared up and then they would send us home to our poor parents. Does this still happen?

When it comes to Valentine's Day, I still act like a schoolkid. Every year I make Valentines for my coworkers and distribute them before they all arrive in the morning. I'm a giant dork, I know. This year, I crafted flowers using an orange wool sweater picked up for a few cents at the Salvation Army. I threw it in my washing machine on hot and let it run until it had turned to felt and then cut small hearts out. I used some old telephone wire I had kicking around for years (and almost threw out more than once) for the stems. These were inspired by these paper flowers (please don't tell anyone I'm stealing ideas from Martha Stewart. It's so embarrassing....).

As always, I would like to thank my faithful Photography Assistant Lily for helping me set up the shots...
And making sure the flash was working...
She's a bit of a camera hog, but I really couldn't do this without her.

A cloak of lead

I dislike February. Living in New England, where we've already had two months of winter, I'm fed up with snow and ice and being cold. Some of my favorite authors have said some truths about February:

February is pitiless, and it is boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those?
The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine’s Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine’s Day on February’s shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.
– Tom Robbins

Though February lay about her shoulders like a cloak of lead.
– Tom Robbins

In February, the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the locals. The snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers, to the cuffs, and once you’re inside, the snow clings to you psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor. The past soaks into you in this weather because the present is missing almost entirely.
- Charles Baxter

I have an ongoing collection of quotes about February and how much it sucks. Anyone know of others?

**UPDATE** Just found another one from old Bill Shakespeare:

Why, what's the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?

- William Shakespeare,
Much Ado About Nothing

Green Squirrel

I made this hat for my sister for Christmas. I had found this little corduroy squirrel iron-on in a funky shop in Northampton and decided I must knit something for sis that I could iron it on to.

Once upon a time, when my sister was in college, she had green hair. She also carried on conversations with the squirrels on campus. Her friends started calling her Green Squirrel. She's a little nuts, I know, but I love her anyway. I love her enough to design a hat around an iron-on patch. It was going to be a plain green hat with the squirrel on the front, but I love this tree cable and it seemed to be the right thing to put on a squirrel hat.

I've finally gotten around to knitting another one and writing up the pattern which I have named in honor of my baby sister and her crazy hair dying, rodent whispering ways.

The pattern is available as a free download on Ravelry, or you can email me and I'll send you a copy.

The original hat was done in some Classic Elite Skye Tweed that was kicking around in my stash. Since that yarn has been discontinued, when I went to write up the pattern I turned to my favorite yarn - Berroco Ultra Alpaca.

The tree cable is adapted from Barbara Walker's Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns - a book I adore. If you are a knitter and don't own all 4 books in this series, go out and buy them now.

The intertwining trees sit on a reverse stockinette stitch background. (And don't you dare moan at me about all that purling - it's not a big deal, I promise.) The cable instructions are both charted and written out depending on which way you prefer to work.

The final version is about 17 1/2" around by 7" deep. Stitches could be taken out of or added into the reverse stockinette section to make it bigger or smaller around. But you'll have to finagle a bit with the crown decreases. (Do let me know if you figure out a good way to do this....)

To shorten the hat, skip some rows in the trunk section of the trees (rows 1-8 of the chart).

Thanks to my coworker Tara for modeling for me. You're a star! And I owe you lunch.

Sunday morning craftiness

It's going to be a full on craft fest in my house today. The ladies of my tribe are coming over for Crafty Afternoon and Jaz has offered to help assemble the reusable produce bags. I've got all the supplies for the bags: 250 yards of tulle (!!!!), two shoeboxes full of ribbon for embellishing and two sewing machines. I have all the other supplies we need too, including: chocolate, guacamole, tea and the My So Called Life DVD Box set.

I was sitting here, sipping my coffee, considering getting dressed and vacuuming the living room, when I got to thinking about this little paint can. It arrived at my work a couple of weeks ago in the mail. It was a gimmicky mailing that contained some chocolates and an invitation to a workshop (there was some punny sort of reason it was in a paint can, but I can't remember what it was...). I brought the can home thinking it would be a good container for something. It's been sitting on my kitchen table ever since.

The leftovers from my Inauguration Day scarf have been sitting in a pile on my coffee table for the last 4 days. It seemed like the perfect marriage of materials and a good way to start Crafty Sunday. I tied all the yarn scraps together and started winding them around the can. I ran out before it was completely covered, but decided I like it that way.


So simple and completed in the time it took to drink one cup of coffee.

It reminds me of a pencil holder I made in school and gave to my grandfather when I was little. It was a frozen juice concentrate can with twine wrapped around it and seashells glued all over. It sat, full of pens and pencils, next to my grandparents' phone for years.

Atlantic Scarf

This scarf was inspired by a conversation I had recently with an old friend. Not long after we spoke, the design popped into my head and it became a drop-everything-and-work-on-nothing-else until it was finished sort of project.

The cable I saw in my head didn't exist in any pattern book I could find, so I ended up creating it myself. It has two columns on either side of busy twisted cables. Every so often a part of each cable branches off and intertwines in the center before being pulled back in the direction it came from.


After some thought, I decided it should be done in reversible cable (so that it could be looked at from both sides and all angles), but after a weekend of failed attempts I gave up. The only way to recreate the image in my head was to make it one sided. Better to be true to my original vision than attempt to turn it into something it didn't want to be.


I had planned to make the scarf using one of my favorite yarns, Ultra Alpaca, which is a 50/50 blend of alpaca and wool. It comes in many shades of blue, but none of them was quite right. I wandered around Webs and stumbled on Classic Elite's Inca Alpaca in the exact color I wanted.

It's 100% yummy squishy alpaca. The cables do not pop as much as they might with something with a bit more wool to stabilize it, but this scarf is luxuriously soft. Bury your face in it soft. If it was practical and sensible to wear handknit underwear I would want all of mine made with this yarn soft.

The pattern is available as a free download on Ravelry, or you can email me and I'll send you a copy. The cable instructions are both charted and written out depending on which way you prefer to work (I do aim to please everyone...).

Maybe I need to eat more comfort food

Dear Writers and Producers of Lost,

I’m completely hooked on your show. I have been since the very first episode when the plane crashed on that damn island. I watch every week.

I’m on the bus. Ok?

So there is no reason to end EACH and EVERY episode with a cliffhanger. I’m going to tune in next week no matter what.

And most of the time, you don’t just end them with regular cliffhangers either, but scenes with mysterious happenings or people that make no sense in the context of the episode. Scenes that force me to go to the internets and look stuff up. I get that you've created some sort of revolutionary melding of the medias, but, at the end of the day, I just want to watch TV.

Case in point: This week’s season opener ended with Ben talking to a woman who was facing away from the camera. She kept almost turning around, and the music was building and we waited for a huge reveal. When she finally turned around the music hit a note that made it clear we were supposed to exclaim, “Oh my god it’s Ms. Hawking who sold Desmond an engagement ring for Penny in that store in London the first time he time traveled and told him that he would never marry Penny!” Instead everyone in the room where I was said, “Who the FUCK is that?”

Because? You didn’t include that one little scene from that one episode in Season 3 in the recap episode. Because we watched that hour long recap episode before the season opener. She was not in it. (You also neglected to touch on the themes of time travel in the previous 4 seasons. Information that would have been VERY USEFUL to be reminded of before watching the new episode.)

Jerks.





However..... I do have to forgive you a little because you wrote the terrific line delivered by Hurley after Sayid broke him out of the mental institution:

“You know, maybe if you ate more comfort food, you wouldn't have to go around, shooting people.”

Love it.

It's not over until Dianne Feinstein sings

Some members of my tribe made the journey to Washington, DC to join in the Inauguration craziness there (Tina has lots of photos). Those of us who were left behind managed to celebrate fairly well in our own way I think....

I donned my Inauguration Day Scarf (all 365 rows thank you very much) yesterday morning and Traci and I headed to Eleanor's house for a champagne toast and a little Obama Dance Party.
From there we walked downtown to join some other friends at PCT (the home of Drinking Liberally). My little town was all decked out for the day:
PCT had put out a good buffet spread, but I couldn't eat once the day's most important activity started.

When the master of ceremonies was announced Traci thought they said Singer Dianne Feinstein instead of Senator. We waited and waited hoping she would burst into song.... She never did.

Our new VP took his oath first:


Our new president (He's really the president!!!!!!) ushered in a new era with a sobering, but somehow, joyful speech (or maybe I'm just projecting the joy I was feeling). In PCT (where we booed loudly when Rick Warren was introduced) a cheer went up when Obama gave a shout out to atheists:

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."

Look Elly is radiating happiness! (Or maybe I need a new camera....)

And, finally finally, the now jobless George Bush left town. I wonder if he understood why 2 million people were cheering there in DC and if he imagined the celebrating that was happening in homes and bars across the world as that helecopter left the ground?

Back outside, we found more decorations had been put up in the center of town. His sign says, "Will work for food."

Everyone on Main Street was beaming. The sun was shining, we have a new president and, right then, nothing was wrong in the world. We walked around grinning like idiots and resisting the urge to hug strangers.

We wandered over to the radio station to visit Jaz (who was busy spreading the good news across the valley) and pick up our commemorative t-shirts. "The world is changing. Are you listening?"

We were late for the after party at Mama Iguana's and most people had gone. We decided to have a few margarita's anyway...


It still doesn't seem real, but all reports are that he's doing good things already.