you win some..etc

Ok, I am exhausted just reading the 136 descriptions of what you all are handmaking this season from my coffee giveaway comments. Exhausted! I random generated a winner, and she's been notified.  Thanks for entering. 

 

at the Fremont Fair in Seattle

No one mentioned that they have an art car they need to complete as a holiday gift. I adore art cars, don't you?  It'd take me a lot of coffee to get through this kind of brilliant crafting.

Joan & I originally had art cars and the art car community in Craft Activism, but we had to drop it due to space limitations and logistics. I'm still crazy about them, though.

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And because this is the perfect place  to kvetch, may I take a moment to acknowledge mercury in retrograde and its (predictable) effects in my personal orbit? As of noon today, the machines that have ceased working recently include: our clothes washer, the coffeemaker, the electronic throttle adjustment system in my car and the hard drive on my laptop. While I take the attitude that they're all, after all, just things not people, still.....ugh.

coffee giveaway, notated

Coffee. Love everything about it*.  A big honking hot mug to start the day, every day.  Iced on a summer afternoon.  Coffee ice cream? Yes. Decaf with a shot of liqueur for dessert.  I like the kick from caffeine, the smell of  beans roasting, the ritual of the coffee break in a group setting.**  And professionally speaking?  We location photographers are notorious, and deeply opinionated, coffee snobs.***

 
3 of my many wips: a sweater re-do, a baby blanket, one of 2  Fussy Cuts in progress

You know what goes great with coffee? Projects underway. I spent a lot of time in crafters' studios last year working on Craft Activism .  Everyone had some kind of mug within reach. You know how it is, you look at what you need to get done, go brew yourself a pot of coffee, take a sip, feel all centered and gathered and refocussed, and dig in. Making stuff and coffee. They just go well together.

Which explains why I'm doing this uncharacteristically commercial****  giveaway (keep reading! details coming!).  In September I taught photography at a crafting event sponsored by Starbucks. There were coffee urns all over the place, full of fresh brewed java, and coffee stations in the hallways, and coffee beans in our goodie bags, coffee fumes in the air, and even a coffee tasting with coffee chefs ***** in the hallway. It smelled divine. It tasted fabulous. I may have overindulged just a bit ******And at some point, possibly just after discovering I really like Italian Roast, I entered a raffle.

 

I completely forgot about it, until the email saying I won. Mmmm. Coffee shipped to my door, with accessories. Since I have good manners, I sent a note of thanks, which led to a conversation about my deep, deep appreciation of coffee, which led to the totally cool folks at Starbucks offering me a giveway for the blog.  Just in time for that need for extra fuel this crafting gifting season, right?

 

GIVEAWAY: 4 bags of Starbucks coffee and a mug, shipped right to your home

HOW TO ENTER: leave me a comment saying what you're making this holiday season. Or maybe you're buying handmade, or commissioning a handcrafted gift, or brewing beer or steeping fruitcakes.....just let me know about you and handmade this season in a comment and include your email address.  I'll do a random number for the winner.

DEADLINE:  12 noon est Dec 4th.The Starbucks folks will ship it to you.

 

Good luck ! 

________________________________________________

and now for the notations

* In truth, I don't like coffee stains. Sadly, I am really really good at collecting them.

**  I met Dave when looking for someone to take a coffee break with while studying in the library at the U of MN.

***  Location photographers are always traveling, and we need to kill time, or get shelter, or use the internet, or a bathroom while on the road. Coffee shops, good for all of the above. The snobbery? Well, when I  was first working with Joan Tapper, we were traveling through Arizona to meet the Navajo Churro sheep ranchers. She  accused all photographers of coffee snobbery. I vigorously denied it, and less than 5 minutes later made us go several blocks out of our way to find a cup of coffee I deemed "good enough". You know what I love about Joan? She doesn't gloat.

****  Can I just say? I like to support local coffee shops when I can but man, when  I can find a Starbucks in the middle of nowhere, or a small place serving their coffee, I am beyond happy. (Also, they always have decent bathrooms, music and good egg salad sandwiches.)

*****  I am not sure they were chefs, but they were dressed like chefs and knew a lot about coffee. I don't think I was hallucinating. But you never know.

****** The top of my head lifted off. Just a little.

on un-convening

Doesn't the first Monday of the new year feel like you're plunging back into the water after a break out on the floating dock?

I'm jumping in with plans of happy collaborations. There's the new book project with Joan Tapper (my Shear Spirit co-author)  about craft & knitting & community & action. It gives me the chance to collaborate with a bunch of folks I enjoy and  admire. And to travel!  There's the upcoming Photography for  Knitters Workshops, (btw? New Haven on January 24 only has 2 seats left but Hartford area on January 16, come on down, plenty of room).

I even took a leap of faith and signed on for Fiber Camp Boston next weekend, January 9 & 10.   Do you know about this? It's  an Un-conference for knitters &  spinners. Another brainchild of the Common Cod Fiber Guild.  I have to admit at first feeling partly confused and partly not quite cool enough. An un-conference? There's no staff, it's crowd sourced. Umm, yes, really.  You register online. That part's not  hard at all. Then you look to see what classes are being offered, in 1/2 hour or 75 minute sessions.  It's updated all the time.  Or you can teach any class you want- you describe it in advance on the wiki that's linked online to the home page, and people comment on whether they're interested. Or you can list a class you're dreaming of taking and someone might offer it. Anyone who signs up can teach. When you get there you can take any class that's listed until it fills up on the board. I haven't seen anything about pairing wines with what yarn you're knitting but if they offer a tasting, I am all over it.

Sounds so crazy it might just work. The oddness of going in and editing the website to join in might be putting some folks off. Do not fret! Somehow it's going to all fall in place, and the fee to play is small.  You can't actually break the wiki. If you put something in the wrong spot, it'll get edited by someone else correcting the flow. So very MMX isn't it?
I offered to teach Photographing FO's on Real People Models, on Saturday, if you're interested in playing along for 75 minutes.  Bring your camera, of course. Maybe I'll see you there?

a net

is not as slimming as one would hope for a sweater fabric. But I'm still happy.

I like a rumply cardigan I looked too buttoned down when I had it buttoned up.

pattern: Annette from Knitty Summer 2009
yarn: the lamentably discontinued Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed
(that there is a link to a place that seems to have it in stock. Pounce!)
needles: size 6 us
notes: I started this in the sunshiney days believing I was knitting a sweater a month in 09. In late July I thought it'd be a wonderful cap sleeved little cardi to wear over a black tank top. It became an autumn knit and long sleeves were obviously the way to go. First I knit a long sleeve using the diameter of the short cap sleeve in the pattern. It was wide & blocky. Starting over wanting a fitted sleeve, I cast on 41 stitches and knit it up from the cuff, increasing gradually until I'd reached the cap sleeve diameter in the pattern.

Funny yet embarrassing story: I was seaming the sleeves at SnB, and my friend the Archiknist, who designs fabulous sweaters & has an analytical eye, wondered why the sleeves weren't designed to be knit in the round. I agreed with her, and then said I wish I'd thought of that, and we even had an extended conversation on how lazy designers could be, not wanting to write out a 4 row lace stitch pattern in the round vs back & forth as in the cardi body, tsk tsk tsk. I was looking at the seams and the way the increases on the sleeve row edges were forming solid little stockinette islands along the inner arm seam, I was thinking that the designer could've maybe been more clever with that, too.

Then it struck me. She didn't design any long sleeves at all. It was my idea to knit them flat and to increase on the seam. Forehead smack. Thwack!

And, Ok, Lulu was right about the buttons.I guess she saw the writing on the wall. Very smart.

If you are coming to Make Mine Local in Boston Friday night, the indie fashion show put on by the Common Cod Fiber Guild, you might just catch me wearing this. See you there?

Sweater photos posed by my new favorite coffee shop. Vegan BLT's? what is not to love?

1st tuesday in november

Is it weird that this is what I consider an all-american image? I heart diners.

My day as an Election Official got off to a whomping headstart. As bad as the 5 am call time at the polls was, the as-yet-unexplained way that I read the clock wrong and was ready at 4 am, fully dressed and out the door was even worse.

No matter. There's something about being hands-on so close to the nuts & bolts of democracy, and the nuts & dolts of my community, that I have to love it.