so, as i was saying in my last post, i was chilling with lisa and virginia at the point and the topic of flickr came up. lisa mentioned that she wished there was an easier way to save her photos in iphoto, edit them in photoshop, and upload them to flickr without having to export the photos to her desktop over and over. i said, WHAT? why would you do such a thing? then i thought, wow, i must have the secret touch when it comes to streamlining. i’m always looking for the easiest approach to a problem whereas some people may look for any kind of answer at all and continue to do it even though it’s not easy.

well, here’s a quick tutorial on how to make getting your photos into flickr easy peasy. i’m including steps if you have iphoto, though, i’m sure there’s some software on a PC that will do it as well. i wouldn’t know. skip down to step 8 if you want to just blog your images once they are in flickr. (full tutorial in the extended entry)

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on friday, i was just itchin’ to get out of work and head over to the point to see the spiders and plan our trip to the new york sheep and wool festival, lovingly referred to as rhinebeck by the majority of knitbloggers. i was actually sitting in a meeting and mentioned my upcoming trip to my coworkers and got the blankest of blank stares. what? city people actually go to the country? stephanie, you knit? oh boy, looks like i just came out of the wooly closet.

early saturday morning, the brooklyn spiders all met up at kaitlyn’s to head up to rhinebeck which is about 2 hours north of the city. the sun was shining, the sky was clearing up after two weeks straight of rain, and i was playing DJ and navigator in the passenger seat. after hitting a small amount of traffic, we made it to rhinebeck around 11:30AM and proceeded to shop. we shopped pretty much all day.

we also, ate:

saw dogs catch frisbees:

watched naked sheep being hearded:

sighed over the beautiful, changing leaves.. ah, it really is fall:

and, of course, laughed and had a great time:

but i know that you really want to hear about the yarn. i got one skein (550yds) of brooks farms duet (see picture below), 4 skeins of brooks farm four play yarn, one skein (665yds) of silver alpaca DK weight yarn, two skeins of 4 ply soft yarn from morehouse merino, sock yarn, eehhhh, i think that’s it! more pictures of yarn to come when i actually have projects started for each of them.

by the end of the day, when we were in the car on the way home, everyone was blissed out and in a yarn stupor. lisa was on a yarn high that infected us all! it was a great time. i ended it all yesterday by sitting down and winding up a MASSIVE ball of the duet which will be made into a capelet for a black tie christmas party i have to attend in december.

do i really have to wait another 365 days for the next rhinebeck?

more photos in the gallery

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i got off my butt this morning and took a few pictures in order to keep those foaming at the mouth for knitting content satiated. but before i get to that, let’s do a little recap. battlestar galactica is STILL the best show on TV. i just want to make that clear as there are some people out there that still don’t know about it. each week, i’m surprised and left wanting more… on a friday night, no less! since i’m gaining in years, i’ve noticed that i no longer like to go out on friday nights. after a long, stressful week at work, i like to kick it back with my hubby and a nice glass of montepulciano and watch TV. battlestar galactica is the perfect way to end my week. i look forward to the next one the minute the episode is over… then i re-watch the episode over the weekend to pick up all the stuff that i missed. the good news is that i’ve hooked kaitlyn into it (sorry about leaving the DVD at home last night! doh! i can be a real airhead sometimes…) and i have joy and KP as well to talk about it with. the other good news is that i got katie into firefly (i feel like a drug pusher, “just try the firefly. you KNOW you’ll love it.”) now KP and i will have someone else to go see serenity with in september.

other than these few things, i’ve been doing a lot of freelance. my current client, marc, JUST introduced me to phpicalendar which i’m nuts about! i’ve been looking for a substitute for .mac for a long time and i think that this will really do the trick. when i get it installed, i’ll leave it open to the public for a while so that you can see how it’s working. i plan on being involved in the dev process of it since i know some PHP. gotta love the internet.

ok, knitting content. not much is going on. i’ve been working on the christmas gifts which is fun although not that fulfilling because i know that none of it is going to me. once i get to 75% done on each of these, i plan on starting up 1) the tubular camisole from glampyre for myself in debbie bliss cotton cashmere & 2) the circular shrug from yesterknits in lamb’s pride bulky medieval red, also for myself (backpack: patterns in the queue). it’s nice to have more than one project going at once!

here’s the beginning of mom’s cabled sock (pattern from brainylady… see backpack for more info). i like this pattern. it’s very simple and easy to understand. alison does leave out a lot of the directions so you should know that this pattern is not for sock-newbies. give another fully written pattern a try first and then try this with those techniques you learned. i’m going to try the short-row heel on this one. hopefully i understand it enough.

after ripping back the clapotis, i’m back in business and i think that i’ll have enough yarn to make a decent sized version of it. yeah! the only bummer about this thing is that the darn straight rows take FOREVER! this is why i have more than one project going on at once. too boring otherwise.

and, in closing, i present the clapotis-race-to-the-finish! which i think that lisa is going to win.. she’s crafty, that one.

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well, it’s a long weekend (at least for me, i decided to take today off from work so that i could upgrade my computer to tiger) and it was well spent. on saturday, the spiders were all in brooklyn (minus joy and amanda) to swap yarn at kaitlyn’s stitchy sticky summer yarn swap. kaitlyn doesn’t live that far from me so i walked over there with a large bag of yarn and some wine. the day was bright and beautiful but not too hot. perfect for some outdoor fun in the shade. sandra, lisa, katie, sarah, abby, and valentina were among the girls that i already knew. there were some new faces as well that i have already forgotten the names to (help!) kaitlyn has just updated me with thos names.. the lovely girls who showed up at the party were sarah and mary.

we had fun putting yarn on joey.

we documented the stash.

we showed off our new yarn!

we fondled all the yarn.

see the gallery for more photos! all that yarn completely went to my head! lisa and i left around 6:30PM and met up with KP at barnes & noble so that we could get the newest vogueknitting and interweave knits magazines. the rest of the weekend i spent hanging with KP because he’s back in milwaukee now working. i finished up the second sock!!

and started a new one skein wonder…

this is possibly THE most luscious yarn i have ever knit with (and that’s not a stretch of the imagination because i haven’t been knitting for long!) so smooth. it’s like buttah’. i’ll be updating backpack once it’s back up from maintenance with my crafty status. in the meantime, enjoy the gallery.

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well, i’m tired and at home after a loooooooong weekend. thankfully, i had today off from work (4 days weekends are tops) so i hit some of the summer sales in manhattan and even stopped by school products for some cashmere/silk hand-dyed hanks for a clapotis to be made as a christmas gift (who’s the lucky recipient?) i have other ideas for other presents but they are stash-busters, thank goodness.

so, since i’m feeling rather lazy, i’ll just link to my new gallery for pictures of my truly, lovely ladies of knitting…

mmm, pints, goldfish, and knitting.

oh, and i finished my one skein wonder!! it’s a little small so i might see if it fits anyone who looks vaguely smaller than me amongst my group of girls. just vaguely, mind you. wouldn’t want to be blatant about it.

(mind the books.. i must find a better location for posed shots.)

so i’ll be back with an extended entry tomorrow including more battlestar galactica talk since it is an all-day marathon on scifi tomorrow (set your DVRs!) and the new season on july 15th.. then harry potter and the half blood prince (book six) is released on july 16th! i’ve decided, after some start-stop-started-again plans, that i’m going to go to an independent book store in brooklyn to pick up the book at midnight. i figure, why not? i never stood in line for star wars so harry potter it is. maybe it’s the whole wand thing?

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after four years of carrying around the behemoth, i finally decided it was time to get a camera that i could actually carry in my purse. i love my leica, don’t get me wrong. it’s a fantastic camera with a stellar lens and all the manual features you could ask for. it’s also HUGE and quite slow. i bought it four years ago and, at the time, it boasted one of the fastest capture times (to the card and also the time between when you press the shutter and when the picture is actually taken) but they are woefully inadequate nowadays.

thinking back on it, i’m not sure what has changed with my photography style that makes those camera qualities so inadequate now. i think that i’ve become a photographer that likes to catch moments as they happen and not stage them. i used to setup shots in portrait fashion but now i like the photojournalist style of seeing something and capturing that smirk or that smile in the split second that it existed. this really requires a camera that’s fast and the leica just wasn’t cutting it.

i decided to upgrade to a 7 megapixel casio exilim which i picked up at J&R last night. the startup time is blindingly fast and captures photos to the card quickly so that you can take a multitude of pictures over a short period of time. it also take MPEG-4 video which one amazon customer claims is not for apple users… but he’s mistaken. if you spend $30 on the upgrade to quicktime pro, you can view and reformat MPEG-4 movies to whatever you like. one thing this camera is missing from it’s previous incarnation (the 5 megapixel version) is the “pre-shot” feature which lets you double-expose your picture. i’m bummed about missing out on that feature. i thought for sure that would be one that carried on from one version to another. oh well. the camera excels in every other way.

here are my new things this week: camera, OSW almost done (with corks to protect the needles!) and a new set of denise interchangeables that i got for a steal on ebay (of course).

since last week was project playwright: the show, i took over 250 pictures with my leica of the production and still need to get them into iphoto, correct them, then upload them to the madair gallery. mixed in with those photos are ones from friday@the.point of me and my fellow spiders (this is what my husband likes to call us.. we knit, we’re on the web.. go figure) and i need to get those posted as well. you won’t be seeing them till monday at the earliest. i have a nice holiday weekend (4 days!!) ahead of me and i plan on relaxing. once all that is taken care of, i’ll be upgrading to tiger finally!! should i totally reformat or just archive & install. i have a ton of apps and files that will be a pain to reinstall? any suggestions?

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almost forgot to post something about this and then i saw that someone had searched for it recently… i have received my pink (and other colors too!) hair accessories from my secret pal! she lives in holland and really went ALL OUT on my gift. i’m not sure if she has a blog so hopefully she’ll come and comment and introduce herself.

she packaged up the hair accessories and included the dutch translation of numbers on each packet of hair clips.

and when they were all open, i was ecstatic to see what i received!

thanks swap partner! i’m so very happy!

also, my secret partner received the goods that i sent her and posted pictures to her blog.

p.s. if you haven’t noticed already, i’m HORRIBLE with remembering people’s names which is why this blog is mainly anonymous! it’s not because i worry about people’s privacy, it’s because i’m completely blanking on your name.

p.p.s. i’m thinking about getting new digital camera that i would keep with me all the time. i LOVE my leica. it takes gorgeous pictures but it’s bulky and doesn’t fit in my pocket… or my purse for that matter. i’m looking for something non-sony (i absolutely refuse to buy their proprietary memory cards), small, and adjustable.. i’d like it if the camera could be put on almost full manual (shutter speed, aperture, film speed) but that’s not a requirement. any suggestions?

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things around here have been running on overdrive since, well, since last year it seems, but this past week has been especially busy. saturday evening, i was in astoria for a surprise birthday get-together. sunday, my husband and i were in NJ celebrating memorial day and my grandfather’s 88th birthday (happy bday again grandpa!) and monday, we had our friends lee and jackie over along with their friend kristen and their three little girls (from age 5 to 8 months). tuesday, i was especially exhausted after work and just went straight home after the gym to watch some firefly. but yesterday, i was out about with some new friends!

kat, of pinkurocks fame, is in town this week and staying with friends in queens. she, kay (of mason dixon knitting fame), and i met up in rockefeller before heading down to downtown yarns where i fondled basically every skein of yarn in the shop. this is a great shop although it’s small and has a small selection of karabella yarn (my favorite). i love the shop’s dog, frankie, and the wide variety of rowan yarns. it’s a great find for knitters in NYC.

we then walked over to SOHO where kay left us to go home and relieve her babysitter. kat, her hubby darin, and i headed down crosby to a gallery where teva durham was having a book launch party for her new book, loop-d-loop. i love it! i was looking at all of the patterns last night and i hope that i can get around to making one of the short row sweaters this fall. really gorgeous. at the book launch party, i met up with some nyc knitbloggers who i previously didn’t know. i’m terrible with names but amongst the women i did meet were sassy stitchess and dynamite knits. i’m hoping that by running through their blogs over the next few days i’ll run into some of the other women that i met last night!

we all left the book party around 7:30 and went to antique garage for dinner where we proceeded to talk a little shop and get acquainted. the night became a blur after that. i remember looking at sassy’s newest project and riding the train home with the girls. i was so tired when i got in yet i forced myself to stay up and get the pictures downloaded from my camera so that i could post them today. you should take a look! other albums have been updated as well (and there’s this genart album in there that has no pictures.. sorry, i ran out of time this morning and really had to book it to get into work. will upload them and write about it tonight!)

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i’ve finished my new messenger bag! hooray! what i love about it is that on the outside it looks like a normal black bag but the inside is a cute happy veggy pattern. i used a stellar tutorial from crafster.org to make it and will post my pictures there next week. i have lots of other fun fabrics that i plan on making bags of as well.. maybe something smaller and tote-like next time. the best part of making your own bags is custom.i.zation. i made sure that it was just the right size to fit my essential things and that there’s a space for my mobile phone which usually gets buried in my purse and i never answer it on time. so, i’ve updated the crafty and around town galleries. will be adding a mobile (keitai) gallery soon.

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i can’t think of anything interesting that’s going on with me. it’s been a busy couple of weeks at work, and after work i spend a great deal of time either working out at the gym or going home to work on crafty things (slowly, i might add.. i must be the slowest crafter on earth.) since my hubby is still traveling for work, life is lonely at home. i miss my daily talkathons with KP where i let everything loose that’s happened that day and feel the stress just melt off of me. since we both are not great at talking on the phone, the talkathon time is greatly limited and i feel even more rundown than usual because i can’t lift the weight off my shoulders.

i love spring. i really really really love spring. there’s something about feeling the sun on your face after so many months of frigid cold new york weather. there are a few things that i could do without though. it’s a time of year that most people go berserk. i have a friend who has repeatedly ignored me for the past two months and i get the feeling that it will only get worse now because the weather is getting nicer. another friend opted out of a trip to visit me in NYC so that she could take a last minute trip to japan. i’m feeling a bit slighted by all this. it’s going to be a long time before i can get the money together to make my trip to japan and the opportunity is starting to drift away. i’m beginning to wonder if it’s even worth it to keep dreaming about it. i’m the only one from my japanese class who has not been to japan and i feel like a freak, like i’m some silly japanophile that really has no right knowing as much as i do about japan and its culture since i haven’t even been there! ah damn, i promised myself that i would never turn this blog into a pity party so please don’t mind me. i try not to get too down about this sort of thing. i’m healthy, have a good job, married a wonderful guy, am still alive, and that should be enough, no?

in the meantime, mainichi daily news keeps me abreast of the sakura sightings. cherry blossom viewing (hanami) is a national sport in japan and it’s even better if you throw in some beer and food at an all-day hanami party. take a look at what’s on offer this year.

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ever seen photography that makes you have to pick your jaw off the floor? i do and did and thought that i would pass around my one of my favorites. tracy over at sh1ft.org has a really beautiful photography site called shutterbug and you would be wise to check it out. oh yes, very wise indeed. the lazy kings entry is my favorite… i could look at it for days.

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i’ve updated the majority of my galleries since i’m feeling under the weather and not in the mood to write. have a good new year!

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well, we’ve been there and back. the honeymoon is over. KP and i got married on september 19 in brooklyn amongst 100 of our close friends and family. it was amazing. simply the best day of my life. even though i was running on 3.5 hours of sleep, completely naseous and anxious, i had the best time imaginable.

we woke up the day before to a torrential downpour. the remnants of a hurricane was making its way through new york and i began to panic. weather.com, though, predicted a sunday free of rain, cool (68°F), and partly cloudy. since i asked grandma to pray for good weather over a year ago, i knew that i could count on the day being gorgeous despite 24 hours before. all our friends came over. we sat and ate and i kept my mind off of the impending event. everyone asked if i was nervous and, amazingly, i was not.

well, not until 12.45am when i awoke, hot and sweating. you see, i have enormous stage fright. i generally don’t like being the center of attention. i can hold my own in small gatherings or situations where the multitudes are so large that everyone feels anonymous. but on my wedding day, i knew every single person sitting there watching me… and you don’t know my family. i was desperate not to do anything that i would regret like tripping over my dress while walking down the aisle. i would hear about it for the rest of my life! my family would be telling my kids someday, “you should have seen the way your mother hit the floor!” needless to say, i got almost no sleep that night. thankfully i had my friend jenniko there to talk me down off the ledge.

sunday itself was brilliant. the day dawned with no clouds—a bright blue sky. it was chilly but i was very happy with that. my dress weighed at least 10 pounds and 85°F and humidity would not have been welcome. i made it through the day with the help of a snickers bar, diet coke, and a smoothie (with protein powder!) half of my family got caught in traffic at the holland tunnel. ironically, the san gennaro festival was going on in little italy (gennaro is my mother’s maiden name) and caused a back-up of 2 hours in jersey city so we delayed the ceremony a bit in order to account for those who were on their way.

the ceremony was beautiful! thanks goes out to kim kirkely, our officiant, who put together a wonderful and touching reading. everyone loved it! we did san san kudo, the japanese sake ceremony. i managed to make it to the front of the aisle and back without tripping or falling!

the reception was obviously the best part of the event. i did a lot of work on the decorations. i folded hundreds of red cranes that we put on the tables. KP and i ate close to 60 jars of artichoke hearts over the period of a year so that we would have tea light votives. i folded numerous other paper origami decorations and designed all the invitations, table cards, and place cards in illustrator and printed them on our epson at home. the menu was organic vegetarian and vegan cooked up by the lovely girls at fancygirl catering.

Roasted Heirloom Tomato Tartletts with Olives, Basil and Fresh Sheep’s Cheese

Sourdough Spelt Pizzas with Caramelized Onions, Potatoes, Herbs de Provance, Pecorino Tuscano and White Truffle Oil

Roasted Corn Squash & Wild Rice Risotto Cakes with Roasted Garlic Aioli

Summer Succotash Salad with Edamame, Tomatoes, Asparagus, Yellow Wax Beans & Basil

.. were some of the options on the menu. my mom made a gorgeous cake! the flowers were the dark reds and burnt oranges of early fall.. lovely arrangements by the awesome team over at flora in soho. it really all came together beautifully. i was so pleased. kristen truong of truong studios took amazing photographs. (the photos that i’m posting here are ones taken from my camera at the event. if you and i know each other, please use the contact form to get in touch with my for links to our professional photography).

KP and i then went to curaçao on our honeymoon. for those not aware, it is an island in the caribbean dutch antilles. american airlines screwed up our tickets for the way down to curaçao and tried to blame it on us. after we denied being contacted about the change in flight times (which we weren’t) the ticket agent booked us in a room in miami so our whole vacation got moved by a day.

curaçao is a lovely little spot. KP and i love the dutch. we were mistaken for dutch many times. curaçao, though, has a very good marketing department.. “the shopping capital of the caribbean”? almost half the stores in willemstad were out of business and the rest of them were full of junk. but we weren’t there to shop necessarily… we were there for the beach! the pool! the sun!!! which we got plenty of.

the island is quite small. you can traverse the majority of it in a day if you rent a car. beware of iguanas sprinting across the road in front of you and the wild, rabid island dogs located in “san pedro springs”. if you ever get to go, be sure to check out knip beach and knip grotto on the northern end of the island. simply gorgeous. if you are a gambler, the only casino worth going to is the princess casino at the superclubs breezes resort. all casinos within the main area of willemstad (otrobando and punda) close their tables at 9pm! i only ever play roulette (hate slots) and KP likes blackjack so those casinos get major thumbs-down for the lack of fun play. we stayed in beautiful kura hulanda located in otrobando, willemstad. they have an extensive museum on the slave trade that’s worth seeing, and the staff there are friendly and accomodating.

a word of warning for vegetarians! curaçao is not very veggie friendly. there are a few italian restaurants in punda that are good but generally close early, especially if business is slow. kura hulanda’s jaipur restaurant has a few veggie options and their thursday asian buffet has even more. but don’t bother trying the chinese restaurants. one tofu dish is just not enough.. and the only thai place on the island (sawasdee) was closed. if you are staying for an extended visit, buy food at the local supermarket. you’ll save a bundle that way. KP and i did this.. we ate peanut butter sandwiches almost everyday for lunch (which, admittedly, gets old after a while but what can you do.)

anyway, enough of my long-winded entry.. i think that the photos speak for themselves.

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i have finally finished vamping up my new gallery for photo projects! i used to use BetterHTMLExport from iPhoto to create static webpages for my photo gallery. unfortunately, every time i would add a new picture, the export from iPhoto would re-create everything instead of just updating the html and images so each time the export would get longer and longer. it was quite a pain. i may still use it for small family albums (it’s still a fine tool) but i had to move on.

i spend a lot of time looking at other people’s photo blogs and was very impressed by the features that gallery provided… all free of charge (though they do accept donations). i also found this small OSX application called iGallery that interfaces between iPhoto and the online gallery app. it’s a little tough to use the first time (you have to create an empty album in gallery first before using iGallery to pair it up with an iPhoto album) but it’s well worth the download. since i recently became a big fan of PHP, i figured that i could take the gallery app and make it do exactly what i needed it to do. unfortunately, the app relies heavily on tables so now gleek.net is not totally CSS anymore *sob* but i think that the commenting system for images, easy access for upload, and fine usability of the application far outweigh the small issue of tables. there’s one thing to note though. i have changed the gallery app to fit my purposes on gleek.net. it is the holiest of all holy hacks. i seriously changed almost every single PHP file i could find. i even made sure that the rendered html was formatted to my taste. this was not a standard redesign by any means. at this point, it’s fair to say that i know the app inside out.

for the unveiling, i have just put my standard two albums up there: principle photos and around town. i plan on updating both of these over the weekend. also, in the fall, i will be presenting a small protest gallery in honor of the republicans coming to town (BOOOO!!!!) and some other things i have been working on. enjoy!

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well, spring has sprung in new york and all the women are out baring skin and all the men are watching them. i’ve had a few chances to go out and take some pictures. i love the conspiratorial looks of these two bar goers. KP and i also got around to painting our bedroom! i’m going to be quite busy with other work this week so hopefully these photos (check out all the photos by clicking on the thumbnails in the right nav) will keep you sated for now.

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during the summer, bryant park (midtown manhattan) is crawling with people trying to get a little sun and relaxation in on their lunch hours. i spent some time there with my camera, on my lunch hour, and here’s what i saw.

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my friend, jeff, mentioned that i have a good eye (just the one) for photography and that i should show him more of my photographs. so since i haven’t really had much to say lately about any of my topics… given the fast paced season of spending and merriment, i thought i should learn how to post picts to my log and show off some of my work. i used to post my pictures at fotolog but they went through a transition earlier a couple of months ago and for a couple of solid weeks i couldn’t log into my account and update my photos, and once i start procrastinating, it’s all over. i’ll be reposting the majority of the images here. enjoy!

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