Such Sweet Hands

So I’m in Texas…

I come from a bunch of crafty folk, so this week has been filled with all sorts of fun crafty visits.

I’ve gotten my cousin Courtney working full tilt with a hook and yarn. She will be greeting her first days of middle school with a very cool bracelet bag. She had a bit of a rocky time keeping track of where she was in a row and kept skipping stitches. I encouraged her to be mindful of her work and keep a close eye on each stitch. She came over yesterday with her solution to the problem; a record of stitches she calls the “Counting Buddy”. She’s keeping track of every stitch in each row as she works. She’s learning how to recognize skipped stitches and what it looks like when she works too many stitches in a stitch. Her first crochet project is looking neat and nice thanks to her care and attention. Promise to show off the finished project as soon as she finishes!

Crocheting at the kitchen table with my Mom, Aunt, Grandmother, and Cousin while Sunday dinner smells waft around us… It was a lovely Sunday.

This is all anyone in our household feels good for right now:

My sticky miserable sweaty waiting for handyman to fix the kitchen sink kind of day was instantly cheered by the smile on the puddle of fur.

I think this pose is worthy of Cute Overload, for more pics see my flickr.

I’m home!  It was a fantastic two weeks.  The departure from the habits of my yarn hermitage has done me much good.  I met some great folks and thankfully now have a full plate of new projects in front of me.  I’ve still got great new content brewing for the site.  Things have moved into full gear!

And as soon as this evening (possibly) pics and stories from the trip.

About to run out to the Renegade Craft Fair… Yippeee! It’s been a crazy week… TNNA, road trip with Kim and Shannon, bits of work and meetings and picking up more work and of course visits to yarn stores. I’ll be sharing pics and stories soon. For now, go ask Miss Kim why her toiletries were left to live out the rest of their time in backwoods Pennsylvania…

We have a restaraunt problem in Koreatown. Many great places to eat. Not one delivers. Most of the great food isn’t exactly deliverable. Though I’d love to see a BBQ on the go business where they show up with a BBQ and that yummy marinated goodness and cook it right outside your door!

We’ve tried a few places that deliver over the years and experienced the worst Indian, the worst Thai, the worst pizza, the list goes on. It’s like we live in a delivery vacuum. We currently live 2 blocks away from the cut off street used by most of the restaraunts in the mid city area. We gave up on the hopes of good delivery a while ago. Last night we were starving and cranky and both working too hard to care to cook or even go pick something up. We tried a place a neighbor recently found and *insert angelic chorus, angels holding pizza* the pizza wasn’t bad! It wasn’t our favorite, but good enough to please our picky selves. The idea that we can pick up the phone and bid someone bring us food is such a happy one. Hope it isn’t a mirage.

I am getting very excited! Next week I head to Indianapolis to hang with all my bestest Fiberleague buddies at TNNA and then hopping in a car with Shannon and Kim for a roadtrip to New York for a spot of crochet work. The 3 of us in a car for many hours…

I am intrigued by headbands. I’ve been wearing the Spiderwoman Belt wrapped round my head. More headband thoughts are on their way I think.

At this moment Rob is pacing the place waiting for his new cell phone to arrive in the mail, the cats are chattering at birds out the window.

I go warm up some pizza now…

There seem to be two shades of sick for me. Sick, but completely aware of all the things I’m missing out on or falling behind in while I’m down for the count. Sick and completely unaware that I previously had any life or any responsibilities.

Guess what kind of sick I was for 8 days? Yep, the last week is a blur of coughing and little else. I did manage to take a purdy picture of some roses from our courtyard, a pleasant distraction from all the work I forgot existed.

~~We indulge our cats and let them have the tiniest bit of milk left at the bottom of our cereal bowls. This means that the sound of a spoon clattering in an almost empty bowl calls them to sit and stare at the cereal eater, they don’t blink when they sit like this. Why am I telling you this? At this moment, I’m slowly eating a bowl of Kashi Strawberry Fields while working on this blog entry. Kal has been sitting at my side (unblinking) for what he considers to be too long to wait for that tiny bit of milk. He’s attempting to take matters into his own hands, standing on his back paws with his front paws on my desk, trying to see the cereal bowl. He is very concerned he’s not going to get his milk… ~~

I visited Kinokuniya in Little Tokyo for a Sunday Japanese Craft Book Happy Spectacular with my friend Bridgid. Bridgid is the kind of cool librarian who really keeps up on things and looks for cool stuff for the young adult readers set. She has a knitting group going and everything. And of course, she’s been curious to see if she can find an amigurumi book that would be appropriate for her library.

Bridgid and I had a good time catching up on each other’s lives while flipping through the books. We went through almost all of the craft books, I found so many inspiring things. I certainly got some ideas for an upcoming podcast. I poured over the amigurumi books and Ooohed and gushed over the cuteness. And don’t get me started on the way Japanese quilt books inspire my crochet thoughts…

In the end I only brought one book home with me. This book rocks. I love stitch pattern guides and this one has some combos I haven’t seen before. Each stitch pattern has a clear symbol guide. There is no need for language in this book, only some understanding of crochet. If you need explanation of a specific stitch symbol in one of the patterns, that symbol can be found in the back of the book alongside step by step illustrations. A variety of yarns are used to showcase the feel of different patterns and all of the yarns seem to be no thicker than a DK weight. It will be interesting to see how these patterns play out in thicker yarns.

The Book: ISBN 4-529-02890-9

And why don’t I visit Little Tokyo more often? That well of fantastic craft books not to mention all the other inspiring Japanese twists on my Los Angeles life. I feel so silly for not visiting for years. When we get back from London I plan to spend another lazy afternoon perusing the shops.

A very old tortoise passed away today… read here or here or here.

Must have been an interesting life.

This is Rowan Cashsoft Baby DK with Kid Silk Haze on the edge. This will turn into a sweater…

I’m crocheting a lot of simple arches lately.

I’m working with South West Trading Company’s Phoenix… this soy silk feels awesome in my hands. A smooth easy to use yarn coupled with a simple arch pattern makes a project go so fast! The right yarn and the right stitch combo, so satisfying…