mmm.... coffee.....

when you had little voice or none

the olympic sock went to NYC for a long weekend so i was unable to post about it until now!  the sock visited the dream coffee machine, played nintendo til 4am, slept late, saw some of the city, did a little shopping & hung out with my sister & jo.  it was finshed just in time, despite gross amounts of unknitting (which i am now quite skilled at) and it even fits.  perhaps a lace sock pattern was not the wisest choice of a first sock, but i think i would have otherwise been rather bored.  i knit a bit at lunch times last week, so i took a few in-progress photos of the sock at work with me:

i was making a giant box for an artist's book that is shaped like a fan & in the upper corner you can see the sadly broken porcelain ring that used to close it up.  i also started another sock while in NYC, a toe-up version of grumperina's jaywalker, my neighbor on the bus was quite entertained & watched me knit for an uncomfortably long time:

some things have been stressing me out lately & it was really great to go away for several days & see my sister on her little vacation.  there was, as always, good food & great company.  we talk of moving other places, but it will be sad one day when we're farther apart because i have so enjoyed getting closer to her.

quails:1 america:0

it finally snowed!  we got a huge blizzard this weekend & i loved it.  despite being a little sore from all the shovelling (my landlord is conveniently away in Florida) it was great fun being "trapped" inside, forced to work on my olympic knitting.  (seen posing with the sock knit by clementine's shoes)  it's turning out to not be much of a challenge after all, i may have to adjust my plan to seeing how many socks i can knit before the closing ceremony!  there was quite a bit of unknitting here & there, i started it then had to frog because i finally decided to knit the elfine's sock.  the sock has progressed over the ankle & has been nearly finished since that photo, but it's hard to take good shots at 2am.  here are some knitting & snow photos in no particular order:



as you can see i was fueled by olives for a good part of the knitting.  it's a childish thing, i know, but when i was young my mother wouldn't let me eat too many olives.  "you'll make yourself sick," she said.  when i moved into my first apt & went grocery shopping i bought a jar of olives & yes, made myself sick eating them.  they're just that good.  you can also see the poor little craptop in all it's blueberryness - i finally found & deleted all the "laugh" sound files on it so it no longer giggles at me.  there's my new roommate, rachel, who being from texas is not quite a fan of the snow.  i was also fueled by those new strawberry yogurt burst cheerios, buy some, they're awesome.  allright, that's all you get, pictures of kool-aid dyed yarn saved for later - i need to go trek through the snow to buy some more sock yarn!

and in my leaves - now shed & gone - the linnet lodged

i knew there was still a bookbinder here somewhere!  it's the first thing i list on my business card, but i don't often make books any more - my days are filled with boxmaking & my nights with sewing.  i have been doing a little teaching lately & was also inspired by my machine quilting to make this.  it's a little present for the person who is patiently waiting for me to decide when the orange & green quilt in finished.

the cover is drawn in pencil, scanned, then printed onto the bookcloth with an archival ink printer.  the cloth is iris from talas & the sewing is done with dmc cotton pearl embroidery thread, i don't remember what the paper is - i found it in my stash.  the binding is based on the traditional sewn-to-spine photo album technique, but with a bizaare variation that exists only in my brain.  you can see some of the insane sewing peeking between the signatures in the 2nd photo 2nd row.  i am quite enamored of it & will definitely be making more in this style.  huh, that's rare, i usually don't feel like i want to duplicate my books, mostly i just like the one by itself & leave it at that!  so that is what i channeled this week's energy into.  i stayed up wicked late last night sewing that (twice) because, as teresa said, sometimes when you get an idea you have no choice but to do it! 
  i might be alone in this, but i'm very excited about the possibility of being snowed in all weekend.  of course my landlord will be out of town so we'll have to shovel the drive!  it's been such a non-winter this year and  i appreciate the lower heat bills, but i do love the snow.  it's the 7 degrees days & frozen pipes i can do without.

christine, come crash on my floor

i was cleaning my studio this weekend & came across a little pile of izone polaroids & a box with my sketchbooks, all from college.  especially while going through my sketchbook from 2nd semester freshman year, i was struck by how often we miss connections with each other.  there were once friendships & relationships with people that are now forgotten.  i'm not feeling sorry for myself, i know it is often me who doesn't keep in contact.  i also know that i conciously chose to cut people out of my life 2 years ago as i tried to understand my anxiety.  and i know that many of them didn't understand & still don't, that's why they're gone.  i'm sorry for that because i do like people, i like having friends.  despite that, i can't possibly imagine what i could have done to deserve the following.  someone actually hates me enough to fake being the art director of ReadyMade magazine, email me that they saw me at the Bizarre Bazaar Boston and ask to profile me in a new section.  i thought it was fishy because of the address, but i responded briefly to see what would happen.  this is what i got back:

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Maili Holiman"

Date:  Wed, 08 Feb 2006 07:18:11 -0800

Dear Erica, The author of this letter is truly, truly sorry.
It's something that sould have never been done, and I'm sure karma will come back.
This email is the product of someone you hurt and someone who is bitter.
This was intended to hurt you, and done in a moment of weakness.
It was stupid, and crazy.
As wrong as it was to do this I still wanted you to know that as sensitive as you are sometimes you don't think of other peoples feelings .
Please except my apologie, and be grateful that you are not like myself the type of person to come up with such a desperate act of bitterness.
You do lovely work and the author of this letter is going to work on letting things go.
I really couldn't feel worse about what I did to you.
So sorry,sorry,sorry,sorry,sorry,sorry,sorry.
I will do 7 acts of penance!

so, whoever you are, yes, you have hurt me.  in a completely strange & pointless way that changes nothing.  do you feel better?  i doubt it.

well, back in the real world where pink bunnies like to nest in allison's yarn: i have officially joined the knitting olympics!  (thank you, yarn harlot!)  i have decided to knit my first sock with this gorgeous ArtYarn's merino sock yarn.  just one sock, i have been itching to knit a partner to the gorgeous sock knit by the talented Di at Clementine's Shoes.  have i ever shown it to you?  i wear the poor lonely thing all the time, but am very careful on my hardwood floors.  i don't have a photos of it right now, instead please admire my practice sock (seen watching the weather channel) upon which i learned how to turkish cast on:

cause missdemeanor said so

since you asked: i mostly figured out the kool-aid dying from this article on knitty.  she even made a sample set with labels so you get an idea how things will turn out!  luckily i haven't been able to get to the grocery store lately otherwise i'd have an excuse to buy some white yarn...  the amazing & evil dharia of skeintily clad dangerously offered to let me visit & use some of her undyed yarn & dyes...  evil!  wasn't i just talking about having to start making vinyl things again?  must. stay. away. from. the. fiber.

i sheltered you with leaves & flowers

i made this last night for no reason.  it's just a tiny bunny sewn out of felt.  all pink & cute as a ... bunny.
  well, alright, not for no reason, it comes from a lot things: like my idea for making holiday gifts for the craft group, but then we decided to just get teresa presents, and from the cat toy i just made, it reminded me i like to work with the wool felt, also relating to the jabberwocky creatures (shh, don't say that too loud or people will start emailing me again!) i wanted to make a strange creature out of felt, a weird creepy thing, but somehow i just ended up making a cute pink bunny.  sigh.

that is my attempt to photograph the (i think) super cool machine-quilting i did on the large solid space on the bottom of the orange & green quilt.  i drew it out by hand with an evaporating marker, straightened the lines with a ruler, then just sewed it on my little pfaff.  what?  not my necci?  no, the pfaff has a larger surface arm thing to it which makes machine-quilting so much easier.  and it's still wicked hard, i need a friend with one of those long-arm quilters...  i also need some undyed yarn & many packets of kool aid:

i dyed this yarn (recycled from an old wool sweater of my mom's) many many months ago.  abby had left behind some packets of kool-aid so i thought i'd give it a try & i've been dieing to do it again!  (oh yes, pun entirely intended)  the yarn came out really sweet, turns out it knits up quite pretty, too.  yeah, i know, i said i wasn't going to knit any more, but did you see the yarn harlot started a knitting olympics?  can't i just knit one sock?  please?  of course that means i'd have to buy some sock yarn...