East Bay Depot made me do it.

   So the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse in Oakland has a gazillion little rectangles of necktie silk that they are selling for super-cheap. They are so nice and come in a ton of different patterns, I really had to be strict with myself about buying too much. I settled for three packages of eight rolls of ten rectangles for a total of 240 rectangles for $12. So what am I going to do with 240 rectangles of necktie silk??
   Well the first thing I needed to do was get a sewing machine. I asked my Aunt if she had one I could borrow and she pulled out this cute Singer Featherweight.


   I can't believe I told Abby it was about the same size as her's; when I got home it looked sooo tiny!















   So I made a little drawstring bag out of one rectangle (only 239 to go!)








   And today I made a tote bag out of two dishcloth using a pattern I found on What's that gonna be?. The only difference is that I joined the inner and outer dishcloths by sewing the gussets together instead of using fusing; and its still completely reversible. I like that the dishcloths are pre-hemmed, so you get to the fun sewing part right away. By contrast, the silk drawstring bag is really fiddly and probably took longer to sew than the tote bag.

Exciting Ikea furniture

Most of the readers of this blog will know that I recently moved and so I've been living in chaos for about the last month. Well, I took a stab at organization with this cool little bathroom thingy. My new B-room has fewer drawers and less counterspace than my previous one and so I needed something for all the little fiddlely things that collect in a bathroom. Well I think this caddy solves both my problems great!


Now, this was no intro Ikea project. I actually had to get out my drill and put in the holes for the countertop, door handle and castors. I'm happy with the positioning on everything though, and was really pleased with how it turned out. I celebrated with swedish meatballs!

never mind the blue blanket...

... I have a new niece!
Linnea Anne Block arrived just in time for Christmas on 12/23.
Here she is!

And here she is with her Auntie,


stoned Auntie.


manic Auntie. (you're glad I removed the red eye)


Auntie getting frustrated with how long this is taking.


And finally Auntie looking like a human being.

A quick, but cozy baby blanket

My procrastinating lifestyle extends to knitting as much as anything else. So as the months of my sister's pregnancy went by, my baby blanket plans were pared down more and more. Ultimately I used a bulky alpaca with and easy stitch that took me less than three weeks to complete. That lightening fast for me! And, if I say so myself, it turned out great.

I used Plymouth Yarn's Baby Alpaca Grande in blue mix (2564) and turquoise mix (2566). I cast on 60 sts. with size 15 needles, started each row by slipping one, and otherwise used a 1x1 seed stitch. The 1x1 seed stitch involves alternating 1 knit and 1 purl; knitting the knit sts and purling the purled sts on subsequent rows. I changed yarn every 15 rows to make the stripes. Changing yarn was actually the trickiest part. I started by just knitting with both colors for about five sts and then putting down the old color. But the sts made with both yarns were bulky and my eye was immediately drawn them. Ultimately the best way I found was to slip the first stitch of the row, like I did for every row, then make a slip knot in the new color and pull the loop through the next stitch. Then I cut the old yarn and pulled it through the second stitch too. I know knots are less than ideal, but they were less obstrusive than the double knit sts. What do you think? Are knots in knitting bad?

Anyway, the blanket turned out great. The seed stitch is really stretchy, so although its a little small, it can be wrapped around the kid easily. And the alpaca is soooo soft, everyone at my sister's shower oohed over it.

By the way, if anyone out there decides to try making this blanket, let me know, I'd love to see it!

More on HI

After my mom went home, I had another 2.5 weeks in Hawaii visiting the Hawaii Volcano Observatory. It was a nice visit, I had a lot of time to chat with the scientists there and with the volunteers. HVO would grind to a halt I suspect if it weren't for the volunteers, most of whom seem to be recent college grads and who work for free. I think they should at least be called interns and given minimum wage, it feels like the government is exploiting them. The volunteers were so happy when I gave them my leftover food and one of them said he would pick up the recycling at my house so he could get the deposits! Moreover, I think HVO's reliance on volunteers is a big reason why they don't have a lot of grad students hanging around; I would have thought the place would have at least a couple grad students from UH working there. Grad students would stick around for a couple years and publish papers with HVO scientists, which would be good for the Observatory. Anyway, enough of that.

During my stay abby and nick came to visit. I went back to the Lae'puki lava entry with them and this time we hiked out as far as the rope barrier that the park service put up. As you can see by comparing the photo below with the one from the previous post, we were quite a bit closer.

It started to sprinkle while we were out there, so nick suggested we head back. I thought it would pass, but within 20 minutes we were in the middle of a huge downpour. Then the thunder and lightening started. The lava rock was so black it was impossible to see any definition outside the range of our headlamps, then there would be a flash of lightening that would blind us for a second. It was so easy to take a mistep that it was like playing freeze when I was little; when the lightening struck I would just stop, midstep or whatever. Luckily none of us were struck by lightening, but we were soaked down to our socks. The next morning, the backseat in A and N's rental car was still wet where I had sat during the ride back home. I hope there wasn't a butt shaped mold spot when they returned it.

The next day you would never have known it had been rainy, we had beautiful weather for our hike out to a green sand beach.


The sand is green because it is made of olivine fragments. When the surrounding lava rocks are eroded to form sand, the lighter basalt is carried away by wave action and the heavier olivine crystals are left behind, creating an almost all olivine beach. abmatic has more pics on her site.

Kick ass haul

Well I didn't go to Rhinebeck and I was in blog embargoed HI, so couldn't participate in kweaver's "didn't go to Rhinebeck". But here are some pics of my Mountain Hardwear sample sale haul.


I didn't find out that this was sample sale weekend until Saturday afternoon, which was the afternoon of my sister's baby shower, so I really couldn't drop everything and run over there. On Sunday, I arrived only an hour before it was all over, which is pretty foolish since most of the good stuff is likely to be gone, but on the other hand, some things were marked down even further. The T-shirts were all 2 for 1 at the sale price, so they were $5 each and my roommate got a tent for $50 that was being sold for $100 on Sat. (retail ~$230, I googled it). I'm not sure which find I'm most excited about, the $25 fleece or the $15 Men's hiking Kilt. The kilt kind of rocks, but its an XS and I probably could use a S.
What did you get at the sample sale/warehouse sale?

btw, there will be some knitting on this blog sometime. I recently gave my sister the baby blanket I knit for my nieceephew without getting a picture of it first. I was up too late trying to finish it before the baby shower to think about photographing it. But it turned out really nicely, so I will try to get a picture soon.

Lazarus the plant

I wish I'd taken a picture of this plant when I first returned, but I thought it was a complete goner. It was totally flat; all the little stems were flopped over the pot. Now its starting to come back.

I suspect the leaves that look blackish are really gone, but I'll continue to keep track of its recovery.