progress report

hello? is this thing on? didn't mean to fall down a rabbit hole, but the home computer wheezed it's last the other night... there's a whole story about a stink like burning band-aids and computer shopping with a kid whose jacket smelled like cat urine, but that'll have to keep for later. for now, lemme show you this:

the 'serendipity scarf' ala cami. yeah. i had to start one. addictive. to the point of pain. winter coat a sedate charcoal wool. this scarf will stand and holla, y'all. i giggle every time i pick it up. that's actually a good thing.

down here, the 'authentic' collection from sweetwater. yeah, it's moda. yeah, they mostly are damnable fiends for not reprinting their fabrics (thusly ensuring widespread panic and manic stashing amongst quilters when new lines are released)... much as i hate to admit it, this line sucked me in. here while it lasts. and yep. that is a bundle of all 34 fats.

here is monday/tuesday mandi. hauled her out to lunch at my new favorite place evah, the irish lion, in bloomington. we only tried four whiskys for lunch. she's a little lit in this pic. some yarn shopping happened, as well. somehow yarn spun from waste silk off the floor of an indian sari sweatshop ended up in my possession. no, you cannot see it... yet. people turn 60 this year, and they are nosy, greedy beings. i will not have my surprises thwarted.

new opal. there is, of course, way more than these few colorways, and another collection ships soon. selling the daylights out of the scarf kits, so clementine's opal consumption is way up. keeping a few balls of all the new stuff on the shelf, though, for the die-hard socksters out there.

time to get out the door. you go be crafty. smooches, pooches. c

Go look, but don't say I didn't warn you...

Nothing good can come of dancing in public with duck feathers strapped to one's head, but do I listen? Of course not. Would I do it again? Most likely. This was to be my 'year of living dangerously', was it not?
Your curiousity is showing... go on. Have a look. I'll wait here.

p.s. Those scarf kits from two posts ago? Flying out the door! A HUGE thank you to Redrhonda for her superior stunt-knitting skilz, and to all the faithful/hopeful/cursed knitters who can't wait to make their own version... no two will ever look alike. Kind of cool when you consider how cookie-cutter some projects knit up. Release your inner Bohemian. Get one on the needles now. C

Haunted Hips Hafla

Because I know that really good opportunities to embarrass ones own self come so rarely, and if I'm to make a spectacle of myself I'd much prefer a sympathetic audience, and because I get to see Anna so damned infrequently...
well, here's the info.

(Please use it for evil. I know you can.)

'Haunted Hips' hafla to be held Saturday, Oct. 17th at the
Imagine School's auditorium
2000 N. Wells St.
Ft. Wayne, IN. 46808

Festivities begin at 7:00 p.m. and admission is five bucks. Herr Becher and all assorted chirruns are coming to see what's the fuss with Frau Becher's new hobby. You can't possibly imagine what shenanigans we're up to, so come see for yourself. I. Dare. You.

bwahahahah

Serendipity scarf

Redrhonda has been doing a bit of stunt-knitting for Clementine again. This time it was a reprisal of the mitered squares, ala 'modern quilt wrap', bit with less agonizing over color placement and those dreadfully wispy 'Kidsilk' ends to tangle with. Making it's debut and available already kitted up, the scarf in nine different 'Opal' self-striping yarns.

You either love it or hate it... but I personally think it's drool-worthy. This is also hyphen-day, apparently, so gaze on this beauty for a few moments and when you decide you can't live without it, call me. The kits are ready to mail out immediately.

as you requested...

Seeing as how I'm not one to stand in the way of a girl and her cloth, here are the pics of the "Love" collection, the latest from Amy Butler. I can't express my relief at seeing a bright palette again.
The colors are richly saturated, with an unfussy, modern Balinese flavor...

Much to love about "Love". I'm hoping to make a fun 'English strippy' nap quilt from these. All of them. At once. Yeah, baby.
The latest colors to arrive from 'The Fibre Company'. This is "Road to China Light", a blend of baby alpaca, silk, cashmere, and camel. Bettah than buttah. It's naked yarn. Don't be coy. You know what I mean. Just one skein will make a decadent neck warmer, something to snug down into and nuzzle. Don't miss playing with this yarn!

Project updates: the 'pickle' scarf is on it's last ball of yarn, but the 'Feb. Lady' has taken over. Mine has been re-dubbed 'The Dragon Lady', as I've found the coolest pewter Celtic dragon clasps to close her up with. Button holes are not my friend, as evidenced by a wretched button hole swatch I killed the better part of a day with. In hindsight, a simple yarn over button hole would have sufficed for toggle buttons, but I'd already ripped back twice. A girl has her limits, ya know.

Posting info on the belly dancing kerfuffle in a few days. I'm still trying to pretend I didn't say yes. There was prolly whisky involved, but That Amy is holding me to it, evil task-mistress that she is. It's just a good thing she's cute... it's hard to detest cute people. C

just a note...

for all the fabri-holics out there. *ahem* (mi-mi-mi-mi...) The new Amy Butler collection has just been deposited here at Clementine's by the sturdy and strong UPS man. I was so engrossed in slicing open the first box I neglected to hold open the door for the other two. He might have grumbled a little. I merely snarled at him and continued to unearth the pretty fabrics. Now I need to put it up on the shelf. Pics tomorrow. *mwah!* C

two weeks already?

En route to my weekly nail beautification appointment this morning, I heard on the radio that Someone has discovered that as you age, a certain enzyme in the brain starts to decrease. It seems that the scientific Someone also discovered that it is this particular enzyme that acts as the 'little voice' in your head that keeps you from saying Inappropriate Things. What can we conclude from this? I apparently was thirteen going on thirty, which would account for my current, enzyme-deficient adjusted age of 56. This also explains several branches of my family tree. I'm just grate4ful (heh, heh. I love new nails!) to have a bona fide excuse, because letting people assume I'm always a wretchedly rude old battle-axe was growing tiresome. Nevermind that I 'prolly deserved it.

New yarns have been arriving in the shop. The 100% silk 'Alchemy' yarns are glorious. Knitting a mitered scarf, the "tres tres chic kerchief" in their Silken Straw as a shop sample. It's the kind of yarn that requires a certain level of nakedness to be properly appreciated. If you can't make it to your LYS to fondle firsthand, you have my sympathies. The Silk Purse yarn is the stuff of dreams. Also recently added are yarns from The Fibre Company. Excellent stuff, espcially the 'Road to China' and 'Organik' yarns. My 'February Lady' sweater is being knit in 'Organik' color 'crater lake'. It might be the best, non-pilling, merino/silk/baby alpaca blend ever. Evah. Srsly.

New knitters have been joining the ranks of the hand-craftily superior in droves. I think Clementine has been personally responsible, especially as she has thrown several cr*cheters at me. I can't help those people. I did order in some special yarn, for those hooker-y types. My allegiance has to end there. Do not ask me to sort out your loopy yarn mess. I. Don't. Know. How.
See, confession is good for the soul. All better now.

Last tidbit for the day... if you are in or near the Ft. Wayne area on the evening of October 17th, be advised that I, your intrepid fiber hostess, will be (forcibly) performing a bellydance. In public. With an audience. Of multiple humans. There is more to be said on this subject, but I cannot bring myself to type the words aloud without whisky, and I have to drive home in an hour. Suffice it to say, there are (in my case), leather and feathers involved. Why do I feel a youtube video coming on? Oh yeah... 'cuz it'll likely be up five minutes after we finish performing.

No, I'm not slurring... yet

No photos. I have to burp the camera of it's many and varied collected snaps, and really, aside from the Magnificent Short-row Heels I just completed on some shockingly pink Koigu, there ain't all that much to see. Oh, 'Pickle' has fully consumed the second ball of Malabrigo, so a dip into the yarn stash ('search and rescue', to be more accurate) for ball #3 will be required this evening. Love the cables. Easy pattern to memorize. Even with the PVC adhesive fumes leaking in from the construction project next door. Not to worry, once the dizziness wears off, so does the urge to faint/puke/cry. The upside is that the weather has been gorgeous, so having the shop doors propped open hasn't been a hardship. See, I'm *such* a 'Pollyanna'. I can play the "glad game" all. damn. day. Cuz' I have the Bushmill's. And a spanking cute La Push, WA shot glass. Be prepared. With a penis, I'd have been a hell of a Boy Scout.

I'm gonna go tend to my socks now, as they are appallingly pink and in dire need of more ribbing. Toe-ups often become high-maintenance, which may cause them to become anklets in this instance. Don't push me. I may be re-dedicating myself to the simple beauty of the after-thought heel once these damn pinky-pies are off needles.

knitter, interrupted

I am an erratic knitter. One of the sideline problems to not being able to consume copious amounts of my ADD medication is my already short attention span is constantly stuttering and hiccuping onto the Next Great Idea. Sometimes I can disregard these impulses. Other times I can channel them onto a 'list'. And sometimes inspiration trounces you unawares, say, at your mailbox, and you know you haven't got any choice but to trudge back to the haus, grab up those four skeins of "lettuce" Malabrigo worsted, and push the cat out of the way...

This is pretty much how messy my side of the bed is all the time, and you will notice I've set aside the super-steamy, sexy, hawt highlander novel for this, the 'Rivulet' scarf. Yeah, I'm still knitting away on sixty-eleven pairs of socks, have a gob (that is the official standard unit of measure) of raspberry pink silk/merino awaiting transformation into a sweate4r (oooh, look! e4 is back. Must be the new nails.), and have shelved all plans for home-organization beyond just knocking down the cobwebs in the kitchen before they try to beat me with my own tasting spoon... all because this would not be denied...

Every time I pull it out of the knitting bag, someone (No-Amy, just fer instance...) exclaims that it looks like a pickle. She may have accused it of smelling like a pickle, as well. The hazards of pub knitting. All that lovely knitted texture, cables done to perfection, and she likens it to a pickle. *sigh* It's growing pretty quickly, and my continental knitting skills have improved dramatically, what with all the purling required of this design. Texture is the new yoga.
What's not the new yoga: freezing on the beach. Here's a pic of the fandamnly (sans moi, the photographer). Lake Michigan, mid-August, just as the fog began rolling in. Looks like torture, right? Trust me, I was in no quick hurry to snap the picture and miss the cold crash of the surf around their ankles. I feel no compulsion what-so-ever to figure out the auto-timer on that camera. Nope. None.

business or pleasure?

Tomorrow our Clementine turns two. Not the most earth-shattering announcement, but after the first year, I didn't expect to be tucking another anniversary under my belt. Embarking on year three in the face of the financial disaster currently riding the rails might seem like a doomed mission, but not for nothing do I come from tenacious a**hole stock. The knot is tied at the end of the rope. Commencing to hang on through the thick and thin of the coming year, secret stash of bourbon at the ready.
Today is 'Love Your LYS' day, according to the Harlot's page-a-day calender. Now, I get that she's a Canadian, she has unlimited access to 'Screech' (Newfoundland rum rocks!), and her depth perception may nay be so good, but, honestly... August? WTF? How freaking nuts is a yarn shop appreciation day in the heat of summer? I demand to know who is responsible for this abomination. It's nearly ninety degrees out, so humid even I have kinky hair today, and I'm supposed to believe that yarn shops around the world are rejoicing, reveling in their day of recognition. I can only shake my head and wonder at the desperation Ms.McPhee must've been faced with to feel compelled to pop that corker into her stack of fun factoids for her first-ever calendar...

Middle Child turned 10 yesterday, and had a celebration in spite of our last minute guilt trip to Milwukee. Getting home with exactly zero days to prepare for a child's birthday party tends to make a parent frantic, which leads to Bad Decisions... decisions like letting said child loose in the Barbie aisle, carte blanche. Oh yes, there was an overdose of pink and purple plastic in her shopping cart, which has had the added effect of turning her play space into something of a cat house, swathed in slutty dresses and replete with two alarmingly cheerful Ken dolls. *sigh*

no excuse for it

It would seem I've become an Olympic-level participant in blog-avoidance. Not much to blog about, here in the heartland during the dog days of summer. Not complaining. Just trying to stifle the yawn.
Monday/Tuesday Mandi has shown a remarkable ability to talk me into the strangest things. Case in point: the creation of new yarn displays. I had a notion when the shop first opened about screwing paint cans to the wall, to display hand painted sock yarns. Imagine the shock on every one's faces when I pulled out of Lowe's with these in tow...

Yes, that's a roadster's-worth of cans. There were six more in the 'trunk'. Made a helluva racket driving back to the shop. The stares from men in tall trucks at stoplights were more than entertaining. Next up... remembering to bring in the drill to get the display built.

Still working on my Seattle disease... the skinny clap. Once it's finished I can go apply for my passport. That's what it takes these days to make progress. High-end bribes. I ordered gobs of 'Alchemy Yarns' and have future projects piling up aplenty, but this wee scarf is nearly done. Yay, me. To complicate matters, the skeins of yarn my clap is reposed on is still more of the 'Blue Heron Yarns' rayon metallic. The idea of a knitted tank won't go away, but since I'm trapped on the 'forever plateau' weight-loss wise, I'm hoping to put off the urge to knit clingy things for a while.

There's been a few new developments on the quilting front, the most alarming of which is my fascination with curved seams. Not the wavy, staggering drunk, careless seaming of a novice patch worker, but full-on, deliberate curves.

Yeah, baby. Gonna stitch it like I mean it... just as soon as I get my tired old machine to co-operate. This is the worst possible to for it to go all temperamental on me, but I'm learning to stop flinching and just roll.
That's all for now, my darling chicas. Clementine is starting a couple of knit-alongs for back-to-school. New yarns and fabrics arriving almost daily, which prolly 'splains my acute sense of impending doom. I did warn y'all not to use the words "stimulus package" in range of my hearing, right?

string theory

New 'Farmhouse Yarns' fingering weight sock yarn. Lil' friend Susan requested it be caked up to show off the colorways better. Yes, it does make them prettier, and yes, she's quite smug about this.

Finally got around to finishing the 'beach glass' modern quilt wrap kit. Miss G will be knitting these bits o' fluff into submission. Me, I'm still knitting on my 'Blue Heron Yarns' clap. Five dropped stitches so far. Mandi has three. No-Amy is choking us with her knitty-dust. She's knitting like a woman on fire. Last time I checked she'd dropped ten stitches, but a day has passed, so I figure her's should be about finished. I'll try to mooch a photo of it for y'alls.

With the demise of our most beloved Amy Butler fabric lines ('Belle' and 'Lotus' are sadly discontinued), I thought it was time to package up some of those exotic prints into quilterly stacks of gooodness. Behold, fabric-mavens: the quilt-in-a-box. Twelve half-yard cuts of mixey-matchy cuteness, crammed into a recycled grape tub... 'cuz Miss Rob always brings me weird stuff to re-use.

The county fair starts today. Trailers full of four legged animals have been pouring into town, the rides are nearly set up, and my almost over-whelming urge to stomp over and order a deep-fried Snickers bar/dill pickle from one of those scary, carney grease-wagons is getting harder to resist. I also realize that it's been over half a year since I made an honest attempt at sewing anything, so tonight, whilst the chicken and noodles sit in the simmering oven, I'm hauling out the box of half-finished quilt tops and seeing what I can make 'go away'. The fact that we're having an unusual break in summer's torturous heat makes thinking about quilt tops seem nay so crazy. Maybe clearing some of life's thready excesses out of my closet will make it easier to look ahead to new projects with fresh, less jaded eyes...

quite done moping

Sooo... boo, already. A month-long hiatus seemed just the thing to cure my blog ennui. Not for nothing am I known as the Procrastination Queen. That four of my five children have celebrated birthdays since the day after my return flight from Seattle, (with the resultant flurry of required activity that cake and gift-shopping beget) should be 'excuse' enough. Factor in a mild bout of post-vacation "Washington-is-more-fabulous-than-chocolate" depression, and you have the empty shell of me, able to do little more than drag my arse to yoga and belly-dance classes, drink double Bushmill's (neat, thank you), and stay up way too late reading romance novels. It has actually served to extend my vacation, delaying the pain of re-entry for a month. Now we're back into 'life as usual', the kids and Herr Becher are learning Japanese (Rosetta Stone rocks, btw), and I'm tagging along, knitting in hand, keeping the avalanche-prone laundry mountains from smothering anyone whilst they're the nether-regions of Becher Haus, and sneaking a clove smoke on the front porch when I need to hide from the noise of chirruns.

I was pretty sure I had photos of new sock yarns to show you, but Wednesday is nail day, so I dashed off without the proper equipment to photograph the 'Farmhouse Yarns'. Tho thorry. Now, since it's quiet here and tonight is movie night for the chirruns (we have to arrive early to get seven whole seats in a row), I'm going to go read some Scots romance/p0rn. A girl's gotta keep her mind active, ya know? C

Jamie's 'knitting'

As some of you know, the concept of yardwork or 'landscaping' is foreign to the residents of Becher Haus. So, bearing that in mind, allow me to show you a few scenes from the grounds around 'chez jamie', the other half of Miss G.

 

 

 

 

Digging in the dirt is Mr.G's knitting... his happy place, which is now festooned with everything from strawberry-scented roses to avocados and kiwi. The Scottish moss was my favorite... he let me dig my toes into it. Now, to wrangle an invite back to the house of hounds...