Weight slowly lifting

I guess I over schedule myself. Work has been hectic. In addition, I've been trying to get another orchid out in the span of a week and that added to it. I would wake up and have a headache within an hour and go to work. I'd come home from work, take a quick nap and continue with the orchid and my head would continue to hurt. Well, work is still...work, but the orchid is done. I spent most of the day today at Bead Obsessions working on the orchid and just hanging out and socializing in a non workplace environment. I needed that because I haven't been able to get out because I've had to be some place where I could work on it. So, the finished piece is now at the shop. Class is scheduled for August 25, 2007 (Saturday). I will be sending the pattern to my two testers in the next day or so.


I also knitted a little on a Monkey< for myself in Schaefer Anne:
This is just the first sock

I also started in on Mystery Shawl 3. I actually started last night with black (Toho #49) hex beads but they blended in with the yarn too well. My initial instinct had been to go with this pewter/gunmetal colored hex bead that I thought I had. But I didn't have any, until today, when I was at the shop:


While I was at the shop, Patricia was playing with some earrings and that inspired me to make some earrings with the silver beads because well, all I had was the knitting! So while I was looking at beads for the earrings, I saw the silver curved tubes and remembered that I had been wanting to make another bangle bracelet, so I did both:


This is basically the bangle bracelets and beginning earrings class at Bead Obsessions. It was quick and easy and just what I needed.

So after all of that, I came home and took another nap, and my brain doesn't quite feel like it's just in seizure mode, but just a little bit. It's getting better. Tomorrow is a force 4 hours in front of the ultimate brain musher...the new tv :)

Venting

A little quiet this week, been busy at work. But right now, I'm not venting about work. Lesson learned today: It's a good thing I religiously check my credit card account balances every week.

This morning, I looked just to see exactly how much damage I did over the weekend at Home Depot. I'm scanning through the list of recent charges and see a charge of $435.27 to Amazon.com and go, "hmmm, what did I buy for $435.27?" I left it alone because I thought maybe the amazon.com was a place holder name for something to be determined since it was my amazon.com credit card. I checked again tonight because it still nagged at me and no. Okay, so, I spent money on a new tv...but that was on a different credit card. I spent money at Home Depot and Ikea, but each of those charges were for < $100. I can't say the same for the total, but I did make a lot of trips to Home Depot. So, gee, it's not like me to not remember what I spent $400 on, especially when it looks like I bought it a couple of days ago! I called up the credit card company and they said, "No, we don't use amazon.com as a placeholder. It really is a charge to amazon.com. You'll need to talk to them." So, I called them and found out that someone ordered a Sony Handycam. Just the words "SONY HANDYCAM" told me that I definitely did not order it. You can all read my incoherent post on photographs and I can tell you it applies even more so to video capture. I personally see no point in video capture because you are pretty much wasting moments of your life reliving other moments of your life. Time that you can spend doing something else productive. And you end up with more crap to lug around. So thankfully, amazon was able to track this order and saw that it was going to Springfield, VA but was undeliverable and is on its way back to the warehouse. I've told the cc company to change my account...and man...well...I had beady things to do tonight but I may just go to sleep now.

Unauthorized use of your credit card. Yes, it happens. Be warned. Check your accounts often.

What I've been doing all weekend

First, Friday night, I painted. I needed some way to de-stress from last week and it seems that destruction/construction on my house does a good job of that for me. So I taped and got 2 coats on the wall in about 4 hours and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, the color was a lot bluer than I had expected but that's okay. Saturday, I had a class at Bead Obsessions where I ran into this pretty little girl


and found that I couldn't leave the shop without her. I'm going to make her little beady arms and today at work, Svitlana gave me a suggestion on how I could position her arms so it doesn't look like she's being crucified! After the class, I stopped at Costco to check out a tv to see what it looks like in person. I think you all saw that post :) Sunday, I went to the Fairfax Costco and picked up the wall mount since I figured that would save time for today and then had fun with a power drill. Mwhahahaha! Now I'm dangerous. Today, I talked two of my friends into helping me go get the tv. I figured 2 guys to move a tv would do the trick. They got into cuz well, it was a tv. And now, this is my basement:



No I don't have an HD signal coming in, but I'm still happy with it. See the painted wall behind it. The guys were impressed with how quick this was and how all they had to do was lift. So...who wants to sit in my basement this weekend and knit? The first MS3 clue comes out on Friday!

Guy moments

I've decided to start another category. This is the "I'm such a guy moment" category. I think this is because a good number of my good friends are guys and I have this tendency to run off for a weekend for sports related events and drinking. So today's moment...

I went to Costco to check out this 42" LCD tv because it's going on sale on Monday and I've read "love it" reviews and "I really hate that shitty thing" reviews. I had to go see for myself. I liked it. The images were sharper than the tvs around it and the settings weren't even turned all the way up. I was getting a little excited...you could even say, turned on. And then, somewhere in the loop that Costco has playing was a commercial for "NHL on NBC". THIS was the reason I started madly looking at HD. OH. MY. GOD! I was ready to cry tears of joy. I was turned on/excited by a piece of electronic equiptment of the audio/video variety.

Some fiber to look at

Way back at Stitches East 2006, I bought this ball of alpaca:



I had started spinning this up a while back, aiming for a 3 ply yarn that's somewhere around worsted weight. It was frustrating because I had to keep picking the vegetable matter out of the fiber and 3 bobbin fulls take a while to spin up, even though I was pretty much doing the long draw. But over the weekend, I sat down and finished the 3rd bobbin and immediately started plying. I like plying because you're just SO CLOSE to the finished product. I plied and set and it's been hanging out to dry. Now, this first skein is dry and ready to use. It's inspiring me to finish the rest of the ball, which doesn't look like it has gotten any smaller.

Just throwing stuff out there

My brain hurts and I have some pictures.

Progress of the Maple Leaf Shawl. I'm into the 2nd leaf pattern repeat here.

The orchid I was working on for the last couple of weeks. I'm taking a breather and then will be starting on the shop piece for Bead Obsessions. Class is on August 25th.

Me and my Tims. I've known these two guys since high school and are still two of my best friends. One of them is moving to Arizona next week so this was the reason for my trip up to NYC.

Laceweight! Laceweight!

I just ordered a 1 lb. cone of Jaggerspun Zephyr in black. I only need 4 onces but I figured that:

1. I shouldn't have to join ends
2. I could always use black
   

So there. It's done. Anyways, I love how Zephyr knits up.

Look!

Chicago Pics

I've put the pictures from the Chicago trip here. You'll all get the see the psuedo-fam whom I spend holidays with. I grew up with Lynn and Tina. I met Lynn when she was 2 and I met Tina when she was a week old. And now Lynn has graduated from college. Aww...

I also finished the first of the grasshopper socks during graduation. Hey, if I had to sit somewhere to wait a couple of hours for a ceremony to start and then sit through a ceremony where they read off 1000 names, you bet I'd have knitting! The last picture in the set was a picture of the sunburn I came back with.

I'm not dead, just tired

Right, so, I went to Chicago this weekend for a college graduation. I got some really good sushi and also incredibly sunburned. Why didn't I use sunscreen? I've never been sunburned before and so never thought about it. SPF 15 tends to help me tan lightly and SPF 30 turns me white. I've been working on an orchid for Beth, not so much time for other beading though you'd better believe I've got ideas in my head, cleaning my house and doing some light re-org, and going nuts at work, so...the usual! I still haven't found much motivation for knitting though the Elann Esprit is helping to inspire me with a couple of ideas. I also just got my invite to ravelry.com so I'm loading some of my projects and stuff in there. It comes in at a good time when I'm trying to gather all of my yarn and it will allow me to inventory. Pictures to come at some point. I'm still too tired and lazy :)

There are some days....

There are some days when I feel like SUCH a moron! I've been going nuts for the last couple of days thinking that the checks to the credit card company had been lost in the mail! My credit card balance wasn't getting any lower and neither was the amount of money in my bank account. I was paranoid that it was lost! At least my bank account hadn't decreased cuz then I would've really been worried about stolen checks and such. It had gotten so that I even called up the credit card company to ask what was up with it! Well, as I shuffled stuff around on my desk, what do I find, but the unmailed envelope to the credit card company! Ya...I feel like a moron. I wonder what else is buried under here that I thought I had mailed!

I was obsessively doing this over the weekend

It wasn't my favorite stone out of the bunch, but it was the first to speak to me and say "Make me into this!" And it's also come time for me to stick watermarks on my pictures. After the whole ebay debacle of a few weeks ago...I guess it was time. There's a couple of more shots, including one with it on my neck...I'll get around to those. And yes, this is going to etsy.

Hubba hubba!

I had shown Amber and Svetlana the new Joan McGowan Michael book Knitting Lingerie Style: More Than 30 Basic and Lingerie-Inspired Designs. They flipped through it, there was interest in some of the patterns. I mentioned the heavy use of Cascade Fixation with the cotton/elastic combo. They pointed me to elann's Esprit yarn. Of course, on the front page of elann.com was the LARA PINWHEEL SWEATER WITH CROCHETED EDGES and I drooled. Wow! I think I found my circle jacket! I also really like that crimson color!

On a somewhat hockey related side note, I have this superstition that whenever I wear red while Cornell is playing, we lose. Sometimes, I've noticed that when I wear the other team's colors, the other team loses. So...if I went with the crimson color, does that mean that Harvard loses?

well

A lot of beading, some blogging, even a little bit of knitting, and I even did some updates! I cleaned up judyyiudesigns.com just a little bit. At least right now, it's something I think I can work with...so, it's good. It was a refresher course on CSS.

Another finished orchid

Now I can post this!



I needed a bit of a refresher on how to make these orchids and Amber's birthday provided a perfect opportunity. Now that I've actually given it to her, I can put the picture up on the blog. I really need to lighten this picture, it's a little dark.

I must admit, starting to make this again was a little interesting. The notes I took made sense at the time, but looking back, I had to decipher them a bit. And there were some parts of the assembly that I did forget to write down...oh well. It was a good dry run for the pattern writing!

Materials and other techincal details for the beaders

I had bought these really amazing looking 2 cut beads in New York in January and I thought they looked perfect for an orchid. Amber, Patricia and Helena who were all with me at the time also loved those beads. So perfect, I had my main beads. The lesson learned from Anne's orchid was to use a bead for the sepals whose shade or finish is slightly different from the actual petals. I found some in Tohos at Bead Obsessions. Then I added in some yellow to accent. Once I had the flower colors settled, it was time to look towards the greenery portion of this plant. Well I have something like 3 master hanks of these size 10/0 olivine iris 3 cut beads that are just beautiful and I thought they would go very well with this plant. I strung them up and made the first leaf and it looked wonderful.

In all of this time, I was also thinking about the final presentation of the orchid. I was initially going to plant it in a pot, like a regular potted plant but at some point, I realized that Amber has very little surface space left in her place. While an potted orchid is pretty, there are more important things surface space can be used for. Then I realized that I had a couple of shadow box frames that I had bought at Michael's a few years before when I was experimenting with beaded flowers in shadowboxes. That experiment didn't work too well because of the glass piece. But looking at the orchid, I realized that if I mounted it in and left the glass out, this turns more into a sculptural piece of artwork than I had originally intended. The whole shadowbox idea definitely worked because I know she has wall space. I also verified this by sneakily checking out the whole place while I was over watching Grey's Anatomy on Thursday nights, so I knew this would fit.

So, how did I mount the thing in? First I cut a stake that would fit diagonally across the back. Orchids are held up by stakes and this one, even if it's fake and framed, isn't going to be any different. Then, I made 3 pairs of holes on each side of the stake in the backing using a hammer and a small nail. Then, I used 30 gauge green floral paddle wire to wire the stem and leaves together, and into the back. Yes it stays. I didn't put another backing on to the frame to hide the twisted wires in case she ever wanted to take the flowers out of the frame to dust or wash.

It was a wonderful Friday

Yesterday, started out at work, where Svitlana and I had agreed to bring in all of our beaded goodies so we could stare at them. It looked like this:


You can click here for more pictures. Needless to say, we didn't get much work done. Of course, we had to drag some coworkers in to say, "Look at all these pretty things!" and I even managed to sell one of the necklaces in the process. My etsy shop is a little empty now.

After work, I made a quick stop by Whole Foods for some seafood to grill and some summer roll wrappers and headed over to Anne's house to start chopping my vegetables. It was a little gathering to celebrate Amber's birthday. We had the birthday girl, Amber, Svetlana and her little cute little boy, Nina, Patricia and her husband Chris, and of course, Amber's parents, Anne, Tim, and her brother Kevin for a little bit. It was a great day and we were able to grill and eat outside. Time flew and by the time the presents were opened and we were sitting around chatting, it was late and I was ready to fall asleep on the couch!

graphics and templates and lack of sleep

I'm really quite tired but I'm up playing with websites. Another step in getting my computer up and running involved downloading ftp software and getting connected back to beadedflowersdb.com and Judy Yiu Designs. Something for you all to learn about me. You've seen the beautiful works that I can create and you'd think I'd have some artistic talent. Well, it works great in 3D but when I have to go 2D, I really suck. Don't believe me? Take a look at both of those websites. I think they can both use an overhaul, the Judy Yiu Designs site especially.

Okay, so by day, I am a software developer working in the likes of html and asp and sql. But you know what? I'm just arranging text and form fields on a page, though these days, it's more of a project management role and making sure people get their work done and done correctly. There's nothing involving graphics there. I don't do 2 dimensional graphics. I don't do layouts and designs.

These days, I've been thinking about either paying for and working with a web template or just hiring a graphics person to provide a general template design that I can then maintain. Of course, I can always take it one step at a time and do it slowly. But you've got to remember that staring at this stuff for 8 hours a day, I don't really want to do it any more when I get home!

So, I'm here, soliciting opinions for either how I should present either of the pages mentioned above, or your opinion on getting someone who specializes in graphics. I know the websites need to come up to snuff since I am trying to turn this all into a self supporting hobby. I can't deal with website editors. I am a software developer, therefore I deal in code. I would prefer to open the html page in Notepad and edit the straight text than to open it in a WYSIWYG editor and go nuts because I can't specify things to my preference. So...HELP!

moods

One goes through moods. I knit, I spin, I make beaded flowers, I make beaded jewelry. Depending on my moods, I focus on one. Well I really haven't been in a spinning mood. I think it's the fact of trying to spin down a 1 lb. ball of fiber and I think I'm doing it 3 ply and I've only got a bobbin and a half. So, that's the spinning. The knitting, I'm stuck in between projects and I haven't been inspired so I've been keeping busy on the grasshopper sock - the April kit from Socks That Rock. Flowers...well I did just get through some. I still need to take some pictures. And I guess I'm in more of a beady mood right now. I dunno. Maybe just more beady things in my future for now.

Another weekend with finished objects

This is the fossil stone necklace.



The stone is called fossil stone and I was in a mood for fringe. Some Czech glass beads are dangling off the bottom here while there are little pieces of moonstone in the necklace and some unknown stone I had picked up in China last year. I'm currently working on the fringe of:

this piece of torquoise. I have to admit that I'm not really a big fan of the torquoise you normally see out there. However, when other colors start coming out, like in this piece there are deeper blues, I get all warm and fuzzy inside.

My problem right now is that my goal is to add at least one new piece to the etsy shop each month but May is getting close to the end and I don't know which piece to add. I really like this fossil stone piece so I don't know how I feel about putting it up. I've thought about a black cab piece that I've worn out a few times...Anyways...

Finished Objects Galore

Yes, I've been a busy girl. This section on the top down raglan is also posted to the Sweet Life Knitters blog.

Finished Top Down Raglan

I finished my top down raglan last weekend. It started out that I wanted to finish a cotton green summer top before the Mother's Day outing with Amber and Anne. But when I finished that on Saturday, my hands were still itching to knit, so I picked up the top down raglan and kept going! I finished off the neck, weaved in the ends, and was done, and I wanted to knit more! So I picked up some socks to keep knitting. Thankfully, it was night and about time for bed :) But here's a picture of Amber modeling the sweater. The picture came off of her camera. It was a chilly day. She wanted to wear the sweater, so we brought it along:


Yarn: Patons Wool Classic
Needles: Knit Picks size 8 circs, Knit Picks size 6 circs for the neck edge
I had measured the neckline of a sweater I had liked and calculated the cast on stitches based on that calculation. I started with the sleeves and the back edge. The front was cast on by first increasing a stitch at each end, then I cast on 2 stitches at each edge, then 3 stitches, and finally, I cast on the middle front so that I had just a few more stitches on the front section than the back. I have the actual numbers around here somewhere :) Then I knit, increasing at the raglan seams every other row. When I got to a point where the sweater was a comfortable distance below my armpit, I put the sleeve stitches on spare yarn and continued knitting the body. For the body, I started decreasing 1-2 inches below the join and decreased 4 stitches (2 stitches each side) every 5 rows, 3 times. Then I knit another couple of inches and began increasing back out, 4 rows every 5 rows, 3 times. Then I kept knitting until it was long enough to my liking and I actually put the stitches onto holders so I could work on the sleeves. I wanted to be able to keep knitting if after I finished the sleeves, I decided the body wasn't quite long enough.

The sleeves I picked up and knit. Every 25th row, I decreased 2 stitches until it was long enough. I chose to do a gradual decrease because I didn't want bell sleeves or anything resembling bell sleeves and I was afraid that would happen if I didn't do the gradual decreases.

I did end up picking up the stitches from the lower sweater edge and knit a few more rows and then bound off. Finally, I picked up stitches along the neckline and went down 2 needle sizes and knit an inch or two. It was just enough to even out the neckline and bring the edge in more so that the neckline isn't falling off my shoulder. Many of you have heard me joke about this being the "Flashdance off the shoulder sweater" but no, I need something that stays on my shoulders and I don't have to worry about falling off. This neckline works.

Comment on the yarn. I love it! It is so soft and I love the fact that I can spit splice and not worry about too many ends!

Finished summer top in sage green

Pattern: Sirdar Spinning Ltd. - Pattern 5083 - sleeveless version

Yarn: Classic Elite Provence in a sage green (2609-303), 3 skeins

Needles: Knit Picks size 5 for the body, Addi size 3 for the borders

Notes: My gauge swatch was bigger than what the pattern gauge called for. However, I was able to work out the math so that with my pattern gauge, I could follow along the instructions for the smallest size. My rows per inch ended being half a row more than what the pattern called for so I made up for this by knitting 6 extra rows into the main body, just above the lower edge of ribbing, before I started counting for the waist shaping increases. Then, at the arms, just before I start the neck shaping, I knit two extra rows. When I went back to pick up around the edge, I still followed the instructions for the smallest size for the number of stitches to pick up (without adjusting for the 2 additional rows).

Final thoughts: I really enjoyed making this. The pieces knit up really quickly. The seaming was quick and easy because it was a one for one seam. For the sleeves, you pick up stitches along the sleeve edge and knit two rows and then bind off. That really completed the pieces and finished off the edge beautifully. The only problem I have with this top is the neck edge is a little wide and because this is cotton, by the end of the day, the neck is ready to fall off of my shoulders. I'm going to need to find a way to keep this on my shoulders.