Kiss My Knits!

I spun and plied the last remaining cormo/silk batt that I had. It turned out so well-balanced that I took pics before remembering that I needed to wash it and set the twist properly. So the really finished pics and details will have to wait until the hank finishes drying.

My wonderful Italian husband who cooks like a dream made a fabulous eggplant rolatini Sunday evening. He used an enormous eggplant from our garden and made the sauce and ricotta cheese from scratch. No, really, he made the cheese. Like from a gallon of milk, chopped spinach, garlic, and something that I can only describe as “Pure Essence of Flavor” a la Bender from Futurama.

Pictured eggplant is actually storebought and slightly smaller than the garden one. We bought an extra in case we didn’t have enough. We did.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Ladies and gay guys, marry a man who can cook!

Ran out of yellow yarn after packing up several kits this morning. This afternoon, a cone of yellow arrived! Yay! It’s a one-pounder, which should get me through until my monstrous four-pounders arrive. Hat orders are flat, but kit orders are up, so I’m actually going through the yarn a little faster than usual, since I tend to send more than is strictly required. I’m making a yarn counter for myself that should be more accurate than my homemade PVC niddy-noddy (pictured left), which will help me keep costs down – especially important since postage rates went up. I’ll still send more than is strictly required, but maybe not, like, two hats worth of orange in a single kit. Heh.

Am now off to bed, and already looking forward to blueberry cornmeal muffins and coffee in the morning. My daughter actually asked for a muffin after I made them today, and since she never wants any new foods, I’ll take that as a major victory. Yay for cool days that inspire one to bake!

Question: pics opening in new window. Good, bad, or indifferent?

Cribbed from

37%
Well, that ain’t good. Apparently my desire to try to locate my relatives would most likely doom me. Oh well.

Drove up to Greensboro yesterday to pick up some more yellow yarn, just to get through the crunch. Also snagged some spinning fiber, 70% cormo and 30% silk. There’s more VM (vegetative matter) in it than I’d like, but I do like that it’s undyed. I’d like to take a shot at coloring it. I’ve recently spun up all the cormo/silk blend that I got from eBay, and will be plying it very soon. The store had Buffalo Gold buffalo fiber for spinning, but at $45 for one ounce, I think I can soldier on without it.

Many thanks to for the cool T-shirt for Emily. That exclamation point is the only thing keeping her from looking like a mime today. I’m trying to branch out my html skills, so the pic to the right has a bit of code that should make the larger picture open in a separate window. Hopefully it will work!

Last night, the local mall had its Independence Day fireworks early. We were able to see them from our driveway. I stood on the bumper of my car and steadied myself with a hand on my husband’s shoulder. We got a few mosquito bites (my husband got more than a few) but I felt it was worth it. I won’t speak for my husband.

Emily’s doll is mostly knitted. Only part of an arm remains. Today Emily dug out my bag of polyfiberfill stuffing and stuffed the two legs and arm. She’s very anxious for this thing to be done. I’ll try to finish the arm and sew it up some tonight.

Hope you’re all staying cool – assuming it’s hot where you are!

I’m a little too tired, busy, and tired to make a proper post. However, here’s the alpaca rose, before and after felting. The leaf didn’t felt down nearly as much as it did last time I made one. Maybe I cast on fewer stitches last time. Hm. I need to stitch the rose to the leaf more firmly, and attach a pin back.


Emily is really putting the screws to me, sibling-wise. For the last two days, it’s been nearly constant “I want a baby sister.” Then she conceded that a baby brother was okay. I’ve been telling her that it’s just not going to happen, so she got clever and said I could adopt one. She found a set of magnetic kid poetry words that we’d been hiding to dole out later. Note subliminal message. Nice try, kid.

I think she’s just wanting someone to play with. Her camp this week only lasted four days, and was very chaotic and noisy, so it wasn’t really a good way to make friends (not really her strong suit anyway). I’m going to call the mom of one of the other girl scouts and see if we can go get ice cream together or something. I also want to clean the house more so I’m more comfortable having people over. Not that I know whom we’d have over.

Just tired. And a little down. And hungry. Mostly tired. But there’s an Office marathon tonight, so we’ll watch that and maybe order take-out that we really shouldn’t, try to get to bed at a reasonable hour, and then it’ll all be better.

Emily’s going to Vacation Bible school at a very liberal Baptist church (liberal is good) this week, thanks to my mom’s gracious sponsorship. I asked Emily today if she heard any stories.

Emily: “Yes! I heard… ‘Baby Jesus 2: Search for the Wise Men.”

Wow. Let me tell you, it was quite the story. Apparently Mary and Joseph had to find the wise men. Then Mary and Joseph built the wise men houses out of straw, sticks, and bricks. Then the houses broke, so they had to live in the “manger scene” with Mary and Joseph (I imagine this part of the story as a wacky sitcom). Then the wise men took the angel to a playground. It reminds me of when she told us Noah sailed on the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, but two of them sank.

I knew Mom’s church was liberal, but c’mon. (I kid, Mom!) Good imagination on this kid.

Here’s an artist’s interpretation of Emily’s new doll, who has apparently been demoted from Elizabeth’s sister to her friend. She’s also turned from redhead to blonde. Emily told me that she wants to take the doll to the beach, so now I’m on deadline. The two pieces of the head are done, and I’m making a leg. Dr. Frankenstein’s got nothin’ on me!

Today I’m calling around to various nearby cities to see who’s got more of my yellow. I’m perilously low (that’s a very old pic), and the order I placed to the mill won’t be ready for another couple of weeks. I could have made it if I hadn’t made the extra charity hats, but that was my call, and I’m glad I did it. It makes me happy to think of them out there, and it did seem to raise a fair amount for Equality Now. So I’ll be sweating a little today while I try to get my mitts on more yarn, but it’ll all work out. It always does!

I’m part of sock_kit_swap, a group of LJ users who were, as the name implies, swapping kits for knitting socks. Packages are supposed to go out in the month of June. Well, today, I got a package from Canada.

Eeeeee! My kit arrived! Pics and details under cut!

Orders are up a little for Jayne hats, including one from a person who just missed winning a bidding war for the hat at the St. Louis screening. It’s not suprising that orders are up. However, if things follow the same pattern as last year, then orders will pick up more in about a week. What happens is that someone is dragged to the movie by an overenthusiastic friend, falls in love with it, watches the series, then wants a hat. A week or two is just about enough time for all that to happen.

Tanya Morris, our event coordinator, reports that we sold 194 of 200 tickets, and that our screening raised $2600 for Equality Now. Last year we raised $479, so that’s quite a jump. Go us!

The cards, by the way, were well received everywhere that I’ve heard so far. I haven’t heard from all the screenings yet, but I got a lot of compliments at the Charlotte screening, and Raleigh and another screening – I want to say Denver? – also wrote to say that the cards rocked. Good. Hopefully people will want to keep them.

I’ve got a non-Jayne project going for a client. A felted purple rose like this one, but without the bee. It’s almost dry. It turned out well, I think, so we’ll see if she likes it. If not, eh, someone else will want it. I’ll post pics once I’ve got it nicely formed and attached to its pin backing.

That purple purse from yesterday looked like it was the right size for Elizabeth, the doll that I knitted for Emily, so I slung it over her shoulder. This renewed Emily’s interest in Elizabeth. The two of them had a sleepover party yesterday. I was very pleased to see her playing with the doll, since I spent so much time and effort on it. Then:

Her: “You need to knit another doll.”
Me: “Another doll?”
Her: “To be a sister to Elizabeth.”
Me: “… um… well, would she be bigger or smaller or the same size?”
Her: “The same size.”
Me: “Would she look the same?”
Her: “She would have red hair. And white pants, and a blue shirt. I’ll think of her name after you make her.”

So apparently a very patriotic sister to Elizabeth is now on the knitting list. I should have just hidden the purple purse. Oy.

Emily’s off at a morning camp, so I’m off to get a few things done before she comes home.

Well, that was a blast! We nearly sold out the theater, and the preliminary numbers raised for Equality Now sound very good. I met a Greenville Browncoat who had one of my kits there. She was a fairly new knitter and wanted pointers on picking up stitches for the earflaps. We went through it, and I showed her an alternate method that worked better for her. She picked it up (so to speak) quickly.

I went with Turtlegirl, Amy (whom I don’t think I’d really met), and who had never seen Serenity before. I realized this when at that big surprising moment in the movie – you know the one I mean – she gasped. There were at least 10 gasps in the theater, so that’s a good group of new recruits.

Hearing the gasps reminded me of the time I saw The Empire Strikes Back when it was re-released in theaters. There was a girl sitting near us who, 25 years after the original release, had never seen the movie AND was completely unspoiled. One has to assume she was raised in the Amazon. In a cave. By wolves. During the Middle Ages. Regardless, it was so cool to hear her gasp in amazement at Darth Vader’s big reveal and whisper excitedly to the guy she was with. Really took me back to 1981. This was like that – you can never get back that moment before you knew what was coming, but you can still feel a certain vicarious thrill.


In addition to donating a hat for the silent auction (it went for well above retail, thanks to that Browncoat for her generosity), I also loaned my mannequin for displaying an authentic costume from the movie. This nice young man carried it back to my car. He also gave me back my glass head used for hat display, leading to this exchange between me and .

Illiane: Hey, want to see my new car?
Me: Absolutely! I just got my head from this guy, let me go put it away.
Illiane: A college guy gave you head? All right!
Me: Yep. I’ve still got it.

It went on. You get the gist. We were a little punchy. I imagine the young man would be appalled to learn of this conversation. His mother would, too, since I know her.


Moving on!

A lot of us met up at Fuel Pizza afterward. They very graciously gave our group vouchers indicating that they would donate a portion of profits from our meals to Equality Now. I heard the cashiers talking. They said they’d only been expecting about 20 people. Instead we took over the upstairs. So a good time was had by all, and it was a good haul for Equality Now, too. It was good for Fuel Pizza too, of course, since I know I had a good time and will go back, and I’m sure others will as well.

All in all, it was a very successful evening. Once everybody’s rested up, we can start thinking about next year. Can’t stop the signal!

If you don’t already have tickets for your local Serenity screening, GET THEM NOW. Most places are having their big-screen showings tonight, and many of those locales are selling out.

I’ll be at Charlotte’s tonight, at the Park Terrace theater. Seating begins at 7pm and the show starts at 7:30, but there’ll be check-in and activities from 6pm onward. Last I heard, there were fewer than 25 tickets left for a 200 seat theater, and they’ve stopped selling online. If you don’t already have tix, arrive early or take your chances!

Great film, great cause. Highly recommended. Go.

You probably didn’t know this, but is a talented seamstress who used to sell her beautiful handmade purses. She very kindly gave me the ritzy gold number to the right to pass on to Emily a couple of weeks ago. I held onto it until today since I’m trying to dole out the toys over the summer. Emily was delighted to receive it. Thanks, Illiane!

Getting this toy prompted Emily to dig out a little stuffed doll she had of Lilly, the mouse in the story Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. The problem with this is that she’d shown zero interest in this doll for quite some time, and the purse was gone. Of all the various tasks of parenting, number one on the hate parade is searching for small plastic pieces of junk toys. It causes my blood pressure to rise within seconds. Of course I don’t display this to my child, but you have to imagine cartoon steam coming out of my ears. We looked for a while, then I asked if I could just make her one.

I had some purple fabric which Emily approved, so I fired up the sewing machine and knocked one out. I couldn’t remember the trick for turning a tube of fabric inside out, and my clumsy attempts with a crochet hook to snag the end and pull it through didn’t work, so the seam on the strap shows. I gave it to Emily, who glanced at it, then without looking, set it at the edge of a table where it fell to the ground. She was busy doing something else. Le sigh. I asked if it was too big, and Emily said no, so I went off and took a shower.

When I got out, Emily had taken the time to look at the purse more closely. She said that yes, it was too big, as I suspected. I got her to show me where she wanted it to fall on Lilly, then remade it. I was glad I hadn’t expended any extra effort to make that strap look nice. (Illiane, I need to get you to show me the strap-turny trick.) Emily said this purse was good. Then she put the doll aside and hasn’t picked it up since.

So this is my day. Making little fabric purses for a stuffed mouse at the request of a cute little ingrate. (Note: when she didn’t offer, I did prompt her to thank me for each purse.)

Welcome to parenthood. Duration: LIFE.

Emily’s new dress.
Also, happy birthday, Mom!

Hats up for: FL, NC, NC