Transforming traditional crafts, indeed.

My third issue of Craft magazine is mocking me.

You call yourself a crafter?

When's the last time you set some stones in a bit of twisted wire? Or made your own lip balm? Or silkscreened something?

When??

Never?

Huh.

Okay. Well, when's the last time you made some doll clothes?

Yeah. That's what I thought.

So, have you ever stuck eyeballs on anything? Like, say, a lamp?

No?

Fed up and sure I'll never say yes to anything, the magazine dispenses with the questions and just goes with a list.

Used a mold. Recycled pull tabs into art. Made a finger puppet.

Still, nothing?

My magazine shakes itself at me. (Not having a head, this is the best it can do to demonstrate its overwhelming sense of disdain.) Unable to resist, it hurls the obvious last zinger at me before slamming itself shut.

And you call yourself a crafter.

Half-Fetching review

One Fetching mitt. My left hand. Meh.

Pros

1. As promised, this mitt knits up quickly and requires but a tiny speck of yarn.

2. It matches my brother's hat, and that makes me happy. I realize that may not be an up-side for you, but it's worth noting that it's leftover yarn from that hat -- the yummily soft Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted (100% Superwash Wool) in color 102. Mineshaft!

3. How can Mineshaft! be anything but an up-side?

Cons

1. Tiny cable needles. I wanted to try making the cables without a cable needle, but I didn't. This was not Fetching's fault. This was Slime Corner's fault for having another outage in my area, preventing me from going online for the awesome Grumperina tutorial. So I had to wrestle with the little cable needle, and that was tedious.

2. Stripes and cables. Again, not Fetching's fault. I went a different direction from the solid yarn it called for, and maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

3. My apparently super-long thumbs. As written, the pattern's thumb part is a little short for me, not providing the thumb coverage I desire. My lower thumb is all exposed, making me look like a real floozy.


Hey! Sidebar: Just now, as I was trying to think of something really long to compare to my thumbs (e.g., giraffes' necks are long, spaghetti noodles are sometimes long), I got stumped for a good one. So, I Googled "long things." Yes I did. Unfortunately, this yielded results for "how long things take." Not helpful. So I tried "list of long things". Yes. Maybe this could help... Oh, no. Not what I was looking for. But I do now know that the record for "Beard - female" is 11 inches.

Never let it be said that Dr. B. doesn't use every resource at her disposal to bring you quality content.

I'll test out the no-cable-needle method on the Right Mitt for my next fun adventure.

What? So I used "adventure" when I should've used "geeking out." And? What is your point?

The Glorious Haul from NYC: Part III

Fabric.
Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo. Grab some tissues, my friend, because these fabrics are gonna make you cry. (Other possibilities: They might make your teeth hurt, make you want to sock someone, or make you want to rock and flap in the corner. Totally up to you.)

After reading Parts I and II, I hope you didn't think that I thought a ball of yarn and some beads constitute a "haul". Hardly. If that's all I'd gotten in New York, I might've called it "some great items" or "a few things I picked up". A ball of yarn and a few beads do not a glorious haul make. This much I know.

So, it's gonna get ugly up in here. The Haul is ON.

First stop, Purl fabrics. As you know, I can't say enough about how great the Purls are. The fabric folks were just as friendly and helpful as the ones over at the yarn store. So much so that when I asked for a recommendation for marking tools for quilts, the woman recommended a tool, and then even did a demonstration for me to answer my questions.


This is the Clover Hera marking tool. It makes a crease in your fabric that tells you where to sew. The crease stays there until you wash it.

On the plus side, there's no need for white pencils, pencil-pencils, or disappearing ink pens. Just use the sharper edge (it's not sharp really) to mark your line, and you're set.

On the not-so-plus side, it does require adequate lighting to be able to see the crease once you've made it. I think this is the beef some people have with it, though there may be others. I also am not sure what to do if you make a crease in the wrong place other than remember which crease is wrong and which one is right.

(By the way, I figure I've really outsmarted Quiltie this time. While I wouldn't put it past him to spitefully dim my lighting to make it harder to see the creases, at least he can't eat the creases.)

Anyway, at Purl I got the little fat quarter fabric bundles that are up at the top there, and these:

My P-I-C and I have been looking for small prints for our reverse applique projects, and these fit the bill nicely. Huge props to my brother for finding the tiny bundles in the back of the store. He's the most!

Then, my sister-in-law (SIL) suggested I go to B&J Fabrics in Manhattan. You should know that my SIL is half adorable, half trying to kill me. It was the latter half that sent me to B&J. I'm sure of it.

There's a huge and fantastic selection at B&J. At one point, my brother and I tried to find the most expensive fabric in the store just for kicks. We stopped looking after seeing a cashmere herringbone fabric from Italy that was $135 US/yard. That was plenty expensive, so we moved on.

So here, my dear friend, is the rest of the Glorious Haul. Please forgive the dim lighting. (Aaaargh! Quiltie! Got me already.)

Ouch! Cherries and daisies hurt Mommy! Too cute. Too hurty! Little kids playing with kittens? Meh. They'll do. They're pink and cream.


Three colorways of those apples and pears? Yummers. At $10.95/yard, I took a bit of them all. Also, how great do those dots look with that blue one? Sooo great!


Another print for the Small Print department.


Now this. This! This is the crowning achievement in fabric acquisition. My SIL and I really wanted to make ourselves pajamas out of this fabric, but we didn't have time to find a pattern. That would be adorable, right? Check out that duckie wearing a space helmet perched on that flying saucer thing. Ha! PJs, mister. That's what these are. Jealous?

So that, my friend, concludes the Glorious Haul of '06. It will be a good day when these turn into actual items. I think as long as I keep Quiltie away from them, they'll have a fighting chance.

The Glorious Haul from NYC: Part II

Yarn.

Lucious, wonderful yarn. (I say this like I live in some remote area of the globe where yarn is impossible to come by or something. I live in Los Angeles, for frack's sake. What is my problem?)

Here's the point: Purl is great.

They have two little stores -- one yarn, one fabric -- a few doors apart from one another on Sullivan Street in Soho. Benefits of this include: if one store is packed with people (as the fabric store was when my brother and I went in), you can hop over to the other one with ease, and hop back once the pack has cleared.

This will be a tale of my hop over to the yarn store. The hop back to the fabric will come along in Part III. (And, funny enough, Hop Back to the Fabric is the name of the terrible hip-hop record I should've put out in 1987.)

Ok. So. You know who's rarely prepared? Dr. B. Not with all things, just with some. Packing for a trip? Always overpacked and super prepared. Leaving the house? Always so much stuff in my handbag that I'd surely win every prize on Let's Make a Deal if it were still on the air. Going to a yarn store? Rarely in possession of the pattern that would tell me what I'm doing at the yarn store anyway. I never really have any idea what to buy, how much to buy, or what the eff I'm doing.

This was no exception really. However, it helped that my fantastic brother was with me, and he is a man who needs ear coverage in the winter. This made it easy to focus on securing a yarn of his choosing to make the hat from that issue of Knitscene that forced its way into my home.

I didn't have the magazine/pattern with me, and the store didn't have it, but why let that stop me? I pointed my brother in a general direction, and he picked this super-soft yarn in the most beautiful colors (photo above).

Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was Lorna's Laces "watch-my-colors-pool-in-odd-blotches" yarn. But it really was one of the softest things I've ever felt, and the colors looked so good, we just went for it.

What's that you say? How did I figure out how much yarn to get without having the pattern? Who do I think I am, you ask? Well, more on that story another time. (It does not involve the internet or some secret mathematical skills. You'll see. I'll tell all in another post.)

A very important thing to say about Purl is this: the people who work there are honest and helpful. In a discussion about double-pointed needles (dpns), the woman who was helping me was very candid about her experience with the new Blue Sky ones in the fancy tin vs. the Latern Moon ebony ones. She said she preferred the latter for their speed, and she felt the Blue Sky ones were too expensive. (The website only shows the full set of fancy ones for $195 US. But I think if you buy them a la carte, they're $28 US.) Granted, the Lantern Moon ones were still pricey at $23 I think, but I really appreciated her candor.

Purl: You can't beat 'em for great yarn and great service.

Oh, here's the progress on the hat so far:


I don't mind the way the colors are pooling. I think it's good for this hat.

Still to go: seam up the back, crochet around it, and add the ties at the bottom.


As I've mentioned, blocking is not my strong suit. Desafortunadamente (my favorite word in Spanish), I think that's the next step in order to be able to sew up the back.

Wish me luck.

Part III will be all about the fabrics, baby.

The new Blogger and Sublime Stitching: mini-reviews

I just switched to the new version of Blogger, so this is mostly just a little test to see how it is.

For people wondering about the switch (Blogger geeks):

• I was able to drag and drop that image up there. Easy.
• I can select the image and then hyperlink it, rather than having to mess with the html. (Could you do that before, and I just couldn't?)
• Making the switch over from the old version to the new version was really, really easy.
  
• I haven't tested anything else out yet, but so far, so good.
  

For people who read my blog who couldn't care less about the switch:

• This is the best part, as far as I'm concerned: If you're looking for something on my blog, it's gonna be easier for you to find it. Hopefully soon, I'll have an index over on the side with categories like "quilting" and "knitting" and "things that make my teeth hurt," and then you'll click on what you want, and all the relevant posts will pop right up. (I sound really confident about my ability to do that, huh? Yeah. We'll see about that.)
  

As for this book - Sublime Stitching by Jenny Hart:

• It's great. Really great.
  
• Her writing and diagrams are very clear and easy-to-follow. She spells out how to do some traditional stitches and also a couple of really cool ones that she invented (the "twinkle stitch" and "scalloping chain").
  
• The bulk of the book is a bazillion iron-on transfers. Really - a bazillion. And there are pockets in the book to store the sheets once you've taken them out of the book.
• If you've ever thought about wanting to try embroidery, I'd say this is the book to get. She walks you through the necessary materials and ways to try it out on the cheap.
• If you're already someone who embroiders, these transfers are a must.
  

More on the book another time. I'm feeling an overwhelming urge to start labeling things.

Let me know if anything seems out of whack. (Or, more out of whack than usual.)

Knitscene uses wily tactics

I've made a commitment recently, and it is this: no magazines. It's very simple. Magazines instantly become pillars of shame all around my home. And I don't like shame. Shame steenks.

I don't need piles of glossy papers taunting me for not reading them, not clipping them, not living by their guidelines. I've made the mistake before (in the not-too-distant past). And you know what? When I've got magazines in my house, people come over and ask what smells. And I have to say, "Oh that? Huh! I don't know! It can't be the smell of the shame emanating from those neglected magazines, can it? Because that would just be ridiculous." And then I covertly kick a magazine or two under a couch.

So, I've made a commitment to not renew, order, or let magazines into my home. No magazines past the velvet ropes, thank you very much.

But Knitscene somehow got past my guys at the door.

I'm sure when it sidled up, my guys looked right past it. And I imagine it was quite cocky at this point. "Come on. You're not gonna let me in? I'm a Special Issue. And, I've got a Latina on my cover."


And my guys were like, "Sorry. The doctor has given us strict orders not to allow any magazines in."

Then it probably changed tactics (because it's crafty) and was all, "You know what? You look like you could use a nice bag. Check out my page 20."


"And your ears must get cold out here sometimes." And then it pointed to the hat on that same dirty page 20.


I'm sure my guys then said, "Those are very nice, but you're going to need to step back. You're not getting in."

At this point, I imagine it kinda started losing its shit a little bit, flipping the page, "Doesn't the doctor need a cute cabled hoodie for just kicking around? Look! Page 23! She'll love it!"


My guys are good. They're really good. They stayed strong. "Yes, the doctor would like a hoodie, but not when its pattern comes in the form of a full-color, 105-page magazine."

But then -- and this is just my best guess -- I'm betting the magazine really went inward, thought carefully, and unleashed:

"You like flowers, don't you?"


The killer! That did them in. I just know it. As I said, my guys are good, but no one - NO ONE - can resist these flowers. Or their free online pattern.

I'm not letting any other issues in. I swear it. So Interweave Press, creators of Knitscene, can just suck it. Suck it, IP!

(Hey also, when you come by, don't mention the smell. It's rude.)

Pottery Barn has good intentions

Ah, organizing. As you may know, I find organizing so pleasing that I've used the hard sciences to determine that it is 50% of the fun of crafing.

So, it follows then, that I would love a crafting room. It would be so dreamy to have a whole room that would be beautiful and light with dedicated space for each of my 95 (is it up to 95 now?) hobbies. Nooks for my yarn. Shelves for my fabric. Slots for my collection of cardstock. A place for my boxes of (impeccably organized) unmounted rubber stamps. Places for scissors, needles, threads, inks, rulers, glues, paints...the list, I am a little ashamed to say, goes on and on.

So, it's like Pottery Barn divined my dream and thought they'd make it come true. Match made in heaven, right? Here's the hip and casual lifestyle they themselves have convinced me I want, married with the organizing I've convinced myself I do. Just one problem.


This is weak. Weak!

Let's start with that hanging cabinet/shelf with the dowels and the corkboard on the doors. Do they honestly think a real crafter would find this useful? Look at it. It has three dowels for wrapping paper or ribbon or whatever, and a little shelf above it that looks tiny. I'm willing to be wrong, but this appears to be virtually useless for the hard-core crafter. Nay, even the medium-core crafter would have issues with this. Oh, wait. I just looked more closely at it, and there are little chalkboards on the other side of the doors. So, that makes it worth THREE. HUNDRED. DOLLARS. What?! (Yeah, they're charging $299 US for that thing. And, I'm no dummy. That's really like $300.)

So let's move on to that middle island table. Do you see how they have all of their supplies shoved over to one side of the table top? You mean to tell me that shit is not gonna fall right off the side in about half a second? And do you see how there are more rolls of wrapping paper in the side of that island? Don't you want all your rolls of paper in one place - not some in the 300-dollar cabinet and some under the table? Isn't that part of the reason one organizes - to have everything in one place?

Argh. I could continue. I could talk about the discomfort that my back already feels thinking about sitting on that barstool while I craft. I could talk about how ridiculous it is that I have so much stuff. But, I'll just leave you with my sense that someday, somewhere, somehow, someone will devise a craft room so perfect I shall go in it and never leave. And that, my friends, will be heaven. (Well, all my friends would have to be there. And my dog. And my family. But, you get the idea.)