only two more days and the peanut will be ONE YEAR OLD! holy crap. we managed to make it through her whole first year without any fatalities. amazing. i’ll have photos to post after this weekend. tomorrow we’re heading upstate to my parents’ place for some R&R before the big party on saturday. KP’s hoping to golf with my parents and i’m hoping to get a little knitting done. we’ll see. it’s a whole new house to explore now that she’s crawling.

mobile!

here she is in action. i can’t stop her now! good thing i ordered a baby gate from amazon yesterday.

in honor of the peanut’s big day, i made myself that skirt. the drafting turned out pretty good and i got to work last week on the actual sewing. had some problems with the zipper, of course. i guess you can’t install a regular zipper like an invisible one like i thought i could. lesson learned.

skirt done!

here it is! it fits reasonably well and it’s lined with the cotton sheeting that i used as a template. check out that blind hem stitch! i used this tutorial to figure it out. in the end, my zipper looks passable.

my zipper install

but here’s what i’m going to do different for the next skirt.

• install the zipper along the center of the seam. i used this video tutorial to install it and she had it placed to the side of the seam. well, it didn’t turn out that great and i think that my stitching would be straighter if i placed it on center. if anyone has any tips, please pass them along.
• i’m going to make the rise the same in the front and back. currently, my pattern has an extra .5″ rise in the front and 1.5″ rise in the back. this is what my measurements said to do but i think that i can cut it back to .5″ on both the front and back and just use one pattern piece.
• i’m going use this technique for hemming a curved hem. MY GOD i wish i had seen it before i tried the first time. my first hem was ATROCIOUS. so much so that i ended up hacking off the damn curve along the bottom. i made the hem straight and, while it doesn’t look bad, i think that it would look better curved.
• still gotta cut out a little more on the hips. man this patterner’s got HIPS!
• i’ll make the next one a little shorter.

so all in all, a good experience and i like the outcome. now what? i think it’s time to cast on for the second sock. this one’s a little lonely.

in randomness, one of my favorite authors, arthur c. clarke, died this week. i distinctly remember reading childhood’s end and rendezvous with rama as a teenager. ah, summer reading on our sun porch back in michigan! these two books really ignited a spark in me for great science-based fiction that has yet to die out. i really loved this article at wired about him. he was a truly great man and will be missed.

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i cast-on for the peanut’s pants but it’s nothing to show yet. i also washed and dried some fabric this week that i’m going to make a skirt out of. i’ve been reading up on pattern drafting and i hope to do all my measurements tonight and start on it tomorrow. so, since there’s not much to show, i thought that i would pass on some randomness to give you something to do this friday.

first off, i ran across this article on wired on how to speed up your mac. i did pretty much everything that it suggested and i do see an improvement on my powerbook’s performance so i’m passing it on to you.

and here are some videos (click through from RSS to see. i promise. it’s only good stuff.)

(more…)

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well, i’m all switched over to using flickr as my primary image source. thanks everyone for the encouragement! i mentioned it at spiders on friday (yes, i actually made it into the city for a fun night on the town!) and had the most baffling conversation with lisa and virginia about how they upload pictures for their blogs. it’s convoluted to say the least! so i’m going to write up a quick tutorial this week on how to streamline the process if you use a mac.

i do have an FO to show! i love it. i think that i even managed to make the right size for my head despite my laziness to make the bigger version.

gretel complete!

all the stats are on ravelry, of course. i decided to make the “regular” size and not the slouchy size after i decided that i really don’t like cables. first koolhaas and now this, really, i’m done with cables for a while. they are pretty but so darn tedious!

from the top

now, about this DB pure cashmere. i didn’t think that it was any softer than the cashmerino. it’s nice, yes, but not as nice at the cashmere that jess and lisa got at rhinebeck two years ago. the plies of DB pure cashmere were perfect for a cabley project though. they really make those cables POP!

showing off the handknits

the peanut and i got a chance to go out and show off our handknits yesterday. it wasn’t particularly warm but it was sunny!

ok, now for a little video i’ve been holding on to (no, it’s not a peanut video. i still have to upload those!) saw this a few weeks ago and couldn’t stop laughing. i love improv everywhere! (click through from RSS feed for video).

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don’t tell anyone.. but i’m knitting this sock for the spiders one-sock swap. no details as i don’t really want to give away who it’s for! all i can say is: koigu and nutkin (ravelry). i think that i’ve said too much already!

spiders one-sock swap (say that ten times fast)

so anyway, when i picked up the needles to cast-on for this project, KP cleared his throat and reminded me that i still had to knit him a companion sock to the first one i had completed. i think that i had to stop my head from spinning around and fire shooting from my eyes. after taking a good look at ravelry the other day, i realized that it’s been 10 months since i’ve knit something for myself. at this rate, it may be a whole frackin’ year until i do! no wonder the knitting mojo is so low. lovely virginia asked me if i would be casting on something for myself soon. god, i hope so! i’m hoping that this sock swap will give me an FO fast! like before the peanut turns one would be nice.

speaking of the nut, it’s been a banner week here. i feel like whenever she gets her immunizations she gets smarter. some big milestone always occurs right after. this week, she spontaneously started clapping. before the nap, she had no idea what clapping was. after? she was clapping. amazing. i’ve been trying to get her to clap since she was 6 months old. really, it takes forever for the smallest thing with babies! i also introduced her to some new foods this week and… a FORK! my god, TOOLS!

look at that coordination!

now she no longer has to pick up the cold and wet cheese with her fingers (god forbid.) she loves it. i, of course, have to put the cheese on the fork for her, but she does put it in her mouth. she also, this week, started holding her own bottle. the first night she did it, she laughed like a crazy person after she was done. so proud she was. wow. by the way, this is so much more interesting than going to an office everyday. just sayin’.

and because i spend a lot of time on the internet, i’m introducing a new gleek.net feature.

randomness

- did you know that the US is due to run out of helium? strange. i had no idea that it was so hard to come by.

- if you think that inhaling helium and talking like a chipmunk is funny, then this is even funnier.

- why i would never look good in a sweater dress.

- people tetris (love the “music”.)

p.s. i’ve decided to end all pretense of me using proper english. i generally do and i’m a pretty good speller as well, but my speech patterns are a helluva lot more conversational than the way that i write here on the blog. i’m changing that now. you may find that i sound a lot like dooce. thanks for the compliment. when i read her blog, i feel like i’m talking to my alter-speech ego. anyway, it’s a new year! time to be more like myself.

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