Oh my gosh you guys, I am SO freaking excited that tomatoes have just appeared on my plants!  Look look look!!

A little (semi-embarrassing) background info from a couple weeks ago… I was trying to be super good, learning how to grow things successfully, reading about how to prune tomato plants, and I misunderstood some things because I don’t know what I’m doing yet (hey, this is my learning year, misunderstanding is to be expected), and I WAY over-pruned.  Once I realized what I’d done wrong, I feared I’d seriously damaged the plants and either killed them completely or majorly affected the time it would take for tomatoes to start appearing.  So when I saw these three tomatoes today while watering - 2 on the middle-sized plant, one on the biggest plant – I was ecstatic!

And then, the pickling cucumber plant I added (into this raised bed) less than 2 weeks ago…

…has three of these little future-cucumbers appearing already!  Yay!!  Extra exciting after learning a bit about pickling, and getting eager to try it out!  (By the way, all these photos were taken super close-up with a micro lens – all these little future-foods are bitsy right now!)

Aaaand, the carrot seeds I planted at the same time are starting to sprout!  Hooray for carrots!  Yumyumyumyum!

Lastly for the foody goodness… the California Wonder pepper plant I added at the same time as the cucumber is flowering – not doing quite as well as the other guys though.  That blackness around the bases of the stems is worrying me… the photo on the left was taken the day after planting it – all green – then the new photo on the right was taken today:

Then there’s my herbs!  The yard came with a pretty stocked herb planter when we moved in – healthy looking sage, oregano, some dying thyme, and what I think is tarragon, but I’m not sure since there’s no tag and I’ve never cooked with tarragon so I don’t know what it smells like… what do you think?

And just yesterday I discovered some mint in another part of the yard, so that’s rad… then soon after we moved in I planted some rosemary and sweet basil.  A few weeks ago, the sweet basil seemed to have been totally killed by the horrible cold streak we had in June, but now it’s come back to life!  Then I added African Blue basil at the same time as the cucs and peppers, which I totally love!  I don’t want to put any effort into anything that’s not edible, so when I saw that I could have a basil with pretty flowers as a bonus, I went for it!  Side note – the photos below (left = today, right = just after planting) are a great demonstration of the difference between shade vs. harsh direct sunlight:

One last thing from my yard – these narrow raised beds are empty now (were filled with dead things and weeds, which I got rid of yesterday) and I could totally use them for something new, but what?  Any suggestions for things I don’t already have, small enough to fit in here (width is around 8ish inches), not too late in the season to plant?

And some extra bonus photos, snapped for fun while walking around Lents Park awhile ago…

These are some awesome looking plants that I liked – no idea what they are:

Ok I’m done!  Happy gardening!

Well, this stupid sickness has much delayed my knit design work, but luckily finishing my website updates required slightly less energy, so I got it all uploaded yesterday!  Some of this stuff had been in progress for several months, so I’m so happy for it to be public, but there are some other more minor updates still to come in the near future!

So, the two major things you’ll notice on the blog and on any page within leethal.net are the new headers and the new drop-down menus.  There’s also a new link to a search leethal page in the blog menu to make that easier – there has always been a search bar on the leethal.net home page (since the new site went up about a year ago) but now there’s an obvious place to click here on any blog page, hopefully helpful!

Anyway, I’m really excited about those drop-down menus!  A lot more work than I’d expected them to be, with my limited understanding of css and javascript (code is from here), but so totally worth it!  Now you can basically get to any page within leethal.net from any other page!

And, the headers… those were a sudden burst of inspiration that happened right after the summit last week… I love headers that look crafty and real (like here and here and here for example) so I made mine kind of as analog as I could – these are the photographs I took that got edited to become the header, with different photos plugged into the frames for each leethal section:

And then, there’s some new content!  Finally, photography prints are now for sale in the leethal shop!  I put together these photo trios and matted prints way back over two years ago, and had many of them for sale on etsy for awhile, but etsy and I don’t really get along, so I’d been planning this update for quite some time… There will be further updates to this section, as you can see eluded to on the page, but for now – affordable artwork, trios of 4×6’s or matted 8×6’s for $15!

Other more minor update – I separated my knitting patterns into ebooks and single patterns, since there’s kind of a big difference, and I have more ebooks coming soon, so it seemed like a good idea.  You can still browse through them all together on the same page, but now in 3 separate categories: ebooks, single patterns for sale, and free patterns.  Oh, and I keep forgetting to say here – my ravelry designer page is now viewable to non-ravelry members!  So, that link is in the patterns drop-down menu also, for easy clicking.

And gigantic update #2 – brand new leemeredith.com!!  This one was a loooooong time coming, always pushed down on the to-do list, until finally I had a burst of inspiration from somewhere and just went ahead and built it!  My superold photo portfolio that used to live at leemeredith.com still exists (in major need of updating!) through this new page, but now this page makes a heck of a lot more sense to who I am now.  Through this home base, you can click over to leethal.net, do stuff! blog, photo portfolios and shop, my twitter, my flickr, me on ravelry, bad movie bingo, me on blip.fm, and more…

And after some extreme coding frustration, I was eventually able to get my blog’s feed (and twitter and flickr feeds) to show up in the drop-down menu on the page, yay!  I don’t know if it was worth the effort, but I wanted to make it happen and I did, so I was happy about it!

Oh, if any of this stuff looks super different (bad) on your screen, or doesn’t work or something, if you could let me know what browser you’re on and what the problem is that would be excellent – I’m on a mac with firefox and safari, so I’m just hoping everything works out fine in other systems…

Ok that post was much longer than I thought it would be… hope you enjoy the new stuff!

Ok this post was supposed to happen sooner, but sickness delayed it… there are a ton of photos, so I’ll be keeping the text brief… if you want to read more about the Summit of Awesome and how truly awesome it was, check out posts by my buddies Diane, Kim, Susan on Craft, or Hello Craft’s posts, and see hundreds more photos in the flickr pool!

So, the story of the Summit in photos and links… Got there Wednesday to sign in and pick up this fantastic program bound inside a custom made journal, with plenty of blank pages in back, love it!

Also got a swag bag with this excellent knit swatch poster and lots of fun buttons and cards and stuff:

Then I stitched up my name tag – since I arrived a bit on the late side, I kept it simple, just some embroidery on felt:

On that first day, I attended a couple of great learning sessions – Getting Press for your Business with Kari Chapin and Christine Ernest, and Green craft: sourcing materials and business practices with Becky Striepe, Stephanie Weber and Christine Claringbold:

Then Pete joined up since it was his day off and we ate with a bunch of rad crafty people…

(photo of us by Christine) At the welcome party that night, we got to screen print our own Summit tees – so cool!

Day 2 was the longest day – 5 sessions of awesomeness!  Since I did just learning sessions on day 1, and I was going to be teaching on day 3, I decided to make day 2 my fun day of making, so I chose to attend only workshops!  First up, Encaustic Painting with Bridget Benton!

I knew absolutely nothing about encaustic painting going into this session, and was SO glad I decided to try it out!  Holy crap it was fun!!  The photos above and below show other workshoppers working on their pieces – here is a photo of me working on my painting by Hello Craft, sort of.

And my finished piece!  Still hot and super foggy, then cooled:

Next was Mighty Ugly: Challenge Yourself to Make Some Ugly with Kim Werker!

The above photo is by Susan, and here’s our “class photo” by Kim (or someone holding Kim’s camera actually, since that’s Kim in the middle there):

My mighty ugly creature!

And below is Vanessa’s fabulous preppy creation, Blane (or is it Blaine?), and Heather working on hers:

After Mighty Ugly was Glass Etching with Amanda Siska, which I was super excited about since I’ve been a fan of Amanda’s work for some time!

Above is another etcher using the dental drill, and the photo of me etching above is by Hello Craft.  So, we got to use that dental drill to freehand etch, which is how I made this glass:

(You can see other views here and here, and Amanda shot it before round 2 of etching, before I added more details and made it look less kindergarten-drawing-y.)  And then we also got to make vinyl stencils and use a faux etching paint stuff, which I used to make this candle holder:

Next up, Craft Throwdown Hour with Kim Dorn and Christine Ernest! It was fun, but super stressful, making things with a 15 minute time limit – first a Viva Las Vegas themed towel (photo of me making it below by Hello Craft), then a garden themed headband, and last was mythical creatures themed bunting, which I forgot to get a photo of…

The crazy flower headband was definitely my best out of the three objects, but it was not well put together – I want to fix it and turn it into something wearable…

Last for day 2 was Book Making with Mark Montano – I chose this one because I’m a huge fan of Mark’s books, so it was fun making something instructed by him:

I was bummed out by the details of the project though – this book-making project could be so easily done with 100% recycled materials, but instead we made the books with new scrapbooking paper, new cardboard, and new copy paper… Oh well, now I know how to make my own books (with ALL recycled materials!) at home on my own:

That night at home, I finished prepping for my classes, including making a new light box (since my old one got destroyed and tossed in the move) – here’s a photo of everything I made throughout the Summit!

Day 3… first, I taught Photographing your work with your own camera (photo by Hello Craft):

Then I let my brain rest a bit by sewing up a Cup Glove with Becky Striepe – fun!

(Above photo by Hello Craft) Here’s my glove… I really enjoy hand-sewing, I should do it more often!

During lunch, we got to hear Mark Montano speak about his career path (I didn’t know he started out in the fashion world!) and tips for success and stuff (like: no days off and no tv without multi-tasking, both things I already do!)… Then I taught my learning session on Publishing your own patterns, which I think went super well!  Hooray for self-publishing!  (below photos by Susan and Hello Craft)

To end the awesomeness, we all gathered in front of the Kennedy School to take a class photo!  The actual photo isn’t up yet, but here is one Kim took while we were getting set up…

And the photographers shooting us (shooting me shooting them, silly!)…

A few last notes – having the Summit take place at the Kennedy School was GENIUS!  It was so great to have free good coffee whenever we needed it, good catering, the built-in hotel for out-of-town summiters, and bars and restaurants right there in the building where everyone could hang out together at the end of each day.  And, I love that now I can say I was a teacher at the Kennedy School!

Hello Craft is planning to do the Summit of Awesome every summer, in a different city each year, I believe… so if they take it to anywhere you can get to next year, I recommend so highly that you go!!  As we all agreed, it was total summer camp for crafters!

Check out today’s Oregonian Homes & Gardens section cover:

That’s my studio, and my foofy kittenhead!  You may remember a couple weeks ago, in a photo-of-the-day post, I mentioned having had a photographer visit – well, it was for this article!

My studio landed the cover and a whole spread!  So exciting!  You can read the article over here…

To kind of go with this, I was interviewed (about yarn-making and knitting mostly) for the Oregonian’s knitting blog!  There are also a few more shots from the studio photoshoot over there.

I don’t think I ever mentioned here that a couple months ago my studio was featured in the Craft: blog!  That was fun!  With an interview about craft space organization, in which I was pretty honest about my naturally messy nature!  Unfortunately, having had to photograph the room back in January, in Portland, I had to deal with terrible lighting, bummer.

So… today was supposed to start my series of me showing you the studio, until I went to sort through and edit the hundred-ish shots I took a couple weeks ago, when it was in perfect condition and there was good natural light, and… horribleness… I somehow managed to delete them from my memory card before transferring them to my computer… gone forever.  So sad.  The room is not in such perfect shape anymore (fixable though), but I do need to wait till tomorrow to re-shoot since it was too late in the day and the sun was setting by the time I realized what had happened…

So, these are a few shots to hold you, and next week I’ll be doing the series, telling you about where things came from, tips and tricks, etc, complete with good, well-lit photographs!

Let’s take advantage of this delay – if you see anything in these photos that you want to know more details about, tell me in the comments!

It’s pretty silly that I’m finally posting about my studio as I’m packing it all up to move… yeah… oh well.  It should help motivate me to get it looking fabulous and functioning asap in the new house!

It’s about time I show you what was in the March leethal quick knits club packages… But first, I think I’ve gathered a few new readers in the last couple of months (hi!) so, I’ll make sure you all know what the quick knits club is!  Once a month, I send out packages to all the members which always include: a 15 yard mini-skein of recycled hand-dyed yarn, a 10 yard mini-skein of spun recycled yarn, patterns to go with each of the yarns, anything that the patterns need to complete the project (could be buttons, ribbon, a piece of fabric, etc…) to make it a full kit, plus some extra fun goodies, which all fit into a theme for the month.  (See examples of past club packages here; I also have the patterns from the first 4 months in a mini-ebook here.)

I’ve been doing the club since last August, I totally enjoy coming up with all the stuff to fit a theme, designing the mini-patterns, putting together the extra goodies… fun stuff!  Unfortunately, membership has seriously been dropping the last few months, so I really hope I’m able to continue doing it for awhile (I planned to keep it up at least through this year, if not longer)… If it sounds fun to you, you can sign up for a 1 month kind of trial membership, or a 3 month subscription at a discounted rate – sign ups for April are up through the end of this month.

Ok with that said… March’s theme was photography!  Yay!

The dyed yarn was an unknown wool/blend from a reclaimed, hand-knit sweater, a light grey-green overdyed with blue, for a teal kind of shade… I named it Pale Green Things (after a Mountain Goats song).  The spun recycled yarn was a fine, 2-ply, 100% shetland wool yarn, which I overspun, then navajo plied, turning it into a cabled yarn.  I named it Pale Blue Eyes (after a Velvet Underground song).  With the 15 yards of dyed yarn, I designed a picture frame:

I’m so happy with how the frame worked out!  Lots of trial and error, ripping out and redesigning, but in the end, I think it’s pretty neato!  Basic cables over garter stitch, short rows to turn the corners, and a piece of mat board in back turns it into a functioning frame.  The kits came with the piece of mat board (remnants from my local art shop), and a piece of inkjet printer photo paper, salvaged from my old photo lab day job – photo labs have so much waste, it sucks, so I would take usable scraps whenever I could to save them from the garbage.  (The inkjet photo paper came from the expensive large-format prints, so it’s really nice, top quality epson luster paper, rad!)

For the 10 yards of spun yarn, I designed a camera-shaped patch… My original plan was to design a wrist strap, for point-and-shoot cameras, but I couldn’t figure out a good, functional design idea, so I made the patch instead.  But then I included a bonus alternative option – if you don’t like the patch, you could use the yarn to cover your camera’s wrist strap with i-cord!  So everyone got the 2 patterns, as usual, plus a bonus how-to sheet for the i-cord strap.

For the extra fun stuff, everyone got… a camera! Just kidding… that piece of mesh fabric taped over my camera serves as a “star filter” – check it out… taken with that point-and-shoot:

And this one was taken with my DSLR, for a pretty different effect:

I even tried it with my crappy phone camera, and it worked, so it could be used on any kind of camera each club member has.  So, everyone got that piece of mesh fabric, an instruction sheet with how to use it, and shooting in the dark tips, plus a button that was made with a page of an old photography how-to book from the 80’s:

And lastly, everyone got 2 old slides, rejects rescued from my local reuse store.  I am planning a tutorial for slide earrings (soon!); as for other ideas for just 2 slides, I bet you could make a nightlight (though I can’t find a tutorial online for one), or a cool pendant… If you can come across a collection of old slides at your local thrift store, flea market, yard sale, here are a few links to crafty things you can do with more slides: window hanging, curtains, lampshade.  I’m totally planning on making a slide curtain for our new house!

So that was March!  I haven’t decided for sure on a theme for April yet, but I have a list of great themes to choose from…. I’ll throw this idea out there to see what you think:  the clubs have always been a complete mystery until they are mailed out, but would you prefer if I at least revealed the theme early, before the sign-up deadline (not the specific patterns though)?  Would you be more willing to sign up if you knew what the theme was going to be?  I like total mystery, but maybe most of you would rather know…

Woooo it’s up!  I first started designing this hat way back last summer, then once I developed it to be any-gauge, perfect for handspun, I decided it might fit well into Knittyspin and submitted it!  Yay Knittyspin!!

So yeah, it’s a simple hat, but what makes it awesome is that it can be knit in any gauge, with any yarn, and you don’t even need to swatch first!!  As you probably know by now, I love any-gauge patterns, but you may not know that I hate swatching!  This hat was specifically designed to be magically knit in any gauge with no swatch needed – just cast on and start knitting (from the top down), then figure out the measurements later on based on the gauge once you’re able to measure it – SO easy!!

And, since it’s so versatile with yarn size, I made it versatile with actual hat size as well!  There are 3 size options – cloche, beret, and super slouchy style – something for everyone!  Out of my samples, the commercial yarn version (in Dream in Color) is the only cloche style, and the striped white alpaca and hand-dyed colors version is the only super slouchy; the other 3 are beret style.  As you can see, the same size style in different yarn weights can look pretty different.

Another thing I like about this design is the cool swirl you get at the top when working with any kinds of stripes!  (oh you know how I love swirly-ness!)

Oh and as for the buttons, also a different look depending on yarn weight… you can choose how many buttons you want to use, but generally, less buttons look better on bulkier hats (like the one big one on the super bulky, and the 2 big ones on the bulky blue version), and more buttons look nice on finer gauges (I’d actually meant to use 4 on the grey commercial yarn sample, but it didn’t work out for some reason… but 3 is a good number!)…

Do you like my themed photoshoot?  Pete and I had fun shooting at the Rhododendron Garden (blogged at the bottom of this post), assigning one old camera to each hat.  I even shot some film that day on a couple of those cameras!  (I’ve shot with all five of them at some point, yay film!)

I think that’s everything I’ve got to say about it… queue it on ravelry here, find it on knitty here, see it on my site with my other patterns here… I’m so happy to be in this issue with so many amazing patterns and designers!  I won’t get into detail, because you should check out every pattern yourself, but I love the know it all bag and the gams most of all!

I put together this basic photography tips photo presentation about a year ago to share with Craftstylish bloggers, and put it up on flickr so anyone could check it out, but now that there is a lightbox-along happening in the craft community, I thought it would be a good idea to share these few tips here for anyone interested!  For more info about this light box making fun, check out Heather’s post on Croq Zine (with links to multiple tutorials), and also check out Heather’s photo tips for craft bloggers!

So, first of all, I built my light box using this tutorial on Strobist, using a cardboard box, a piece of white poster board, recycled white tissue paper, and packing tape.  The main thing I did that the tutorial didn’t do was to cover the outside of all the tissue paper with a layer of packing tape to make it more durable – it doesn’t affect the function of the light box, and it prevents the tissue from tearing:

I normally use the light box just with natural sunlight through the window – I am lucky to have a nice camera and an awesome lens with a huge aperture (f/1.4) which means my camera lets in a ton more light than most point-and-shoots, or DSLRs with standard kit lenses. I may do a post in the future that gets more into shooting stuff, like aperture (any interest?)… I’m just telling you this now so you know that I have an advantage with my camera that you may not have, so you may need to rely more heavily on artificial light with your light box. Here are a few examples of photos I’ve taken in my box using sunlight through the window:

Now for artificial light… When the sun isn’t an option, set up a light or multiple lights around the box – just be sure to set your camera’s white balance accordingly, and do whatever editing is necessary. By placing a light at the side of the box like this, you’ll get harsh results (not good!):

So if you are using a light box with just one artificial light (mine is a super bright desk lamp from Ikea), placing it on top will give you better results:

Another option – you can add some foil to reflect the light on the side to give the affect of having another, more subtle light to the right:

I don’t have any examples for you, but using multiple lights coming at different angles is a good idea with a light box – or, using the sunlight that you do have, and filling in with some extra artificial light to make it bright enough (just be careful with white balance if using 2 different light sources – you’ll probably need some major editing).

I have some tips for shooting without a light box, too… that photo above was taken next to a window with bright sunlight, plus a secret prop:

(I learned this foil reflector idea from Jared Flood – check out his work for some really great photography using natural light and cheap tricks like this one.) If the same yarn is shot next to the same window, with the same bright sunlight and no foil reflector, this is what you get:

See how the right side is totally dark? If you have a good spot below a window, so the light is coming from above and isn’t too harsh, it can be excellent… this photo was taken on my desk, with no box or extra lights, just the window, and the camera pointing directly down at the subject:

So these were just a few tips… let me know if you want me to turn this kind of thing into a regular subject – I love to talk photography, but don’t want to bore you!  Also, comment with specific photo questions if you have any, and I’ll either answer in the comments, or turn it into a whole post if it’s a major topic.

It seems fitting to end this photography post with a peek at my new stitch set, which I plan to release on Monday!  (some camera nerdery – that’s the same Argus camera that I carved into a lino block, which you can see printed on a couple shirts here, and it’s the camera that took these photos.)

(update: I ended up getting everything finished earlier than expected and the cameras stitch set is ready to order now!)

Exactly 5 years ago today, I met up with an old college radio acquaintance at a coffee shop in Costa Mesa for a non-date that ended up lasting 6 hours.  And the rest is history!

These are some oooold old old shots of us, mostly from our first few months together in 2005.  February is a fun month for me, with our anniversary on the 9th, my birthday on the 11th, and then silly Valentine’s Day, which we mostly ignore, but it’s fun to have 3 days right there in a row.  This year is extra fun because Pete took a 2 week vacation from his day job, to work in his studio and hang out with me, so I’m taking some vacationy time also.  Yay!

So I just wanted to show you this cute little mini anniversary card I made with some reclaimed pretty patterned cardstock from Scrap…

This print company gave a bunch of great looking cards and things to Scrap when they closed down their shop, so I picked up stacks of these tags for a dollar an inch, sweet!  They are about the size of standard bookmarks, with a score in the middle to fold into tags:

So I took one of each color/pattern, freehand cut two into hearts, used one as the card base, and turned them into a little card, which would be perfect as a Valentine, if you happen to have some pretty patterned paper/cardstock around in your stash!

Oh and I did a roundup of heart projects on Threadbanger last week, so if you’re looking to do some V-day crafting, you might want to check that out!

I love you, Pete!

So I meant to do this forever ago, but I finally made the time to add a bunch of new photos to my free wallpapers page!  I wanted to add some of the crafty shots I took for the Knittn’ Kitten ebook, so while I was at it I made more and more, and I ended up adding a total of 16 new shots!

Well, not new new – they are mostly old photos from years ago when I used to shoot for fun more often, and play with film (yum, film!).  I chose a variety of different kinds of shots and subjects and stuff, so hopefully you’ll find something you like!

I had planned to release new wallpapers in December as kind of a holiday gift to you, but oh well, happy January!

I’ve been a bit off track for the last week or so, first due to trying to finish a new project that I’d planned to release on Monday, but then due to food poisoning everything got bumped and I’m hoping to finally release it on Friday. And this post was supposed to happen on Sunday, but yeah, here it is – everyone should definitely have their packages by now, except for possibly the few far away international members…

November quick knits club!  The theme was Winter giving…  First, the yarn!  The spun yarn was a wool/mohair/nylon icy blue and white strand, wrapped in white angora/nylon, for a cold as ice, fuzzy-tastic bulky yarn, named Winter Wooskie.  The dyed, Winter A-Go-Go, was lambswool/angora/nylon, dyed shades of green over a bright white base, with white showing through to look like snow on green leaves.

And the patterns to match: Winter Leaves and a Wee Gift Bag (rav links).  The cute drawstring bag can be given as wrapping for a special gift, or it can be for the knitter to keep for storing something special (it would be a great way to hold some nice stitch markers with your notions stash!); the leaves can be used however the knitter likes… decoration on a wrapped gift…

turned into tree ornaments or home decoration… or made into a necklace…

I know the necklace is kinda crazy, but I really like it!  In addition to the necklace how-to, I included a pom pom how-to for anyone interested.  Each club kit included 2 pieces of ribbon, to be used for each pattern – for the bag and necklace – or to be cut into ornament pieces or used any other way.

Each kit also included a set of 3 yarn photographs, taken by me of yarn that I either spun or dyed or both, to be used for anything, but I included a note with a couple of ideas fitting with the theme.  I gave a link to Alicia Kachmar’s photo ornament how-to on photojojo:

And gave the idea of cutting them into gift tags (yes, that is an awesome “knit” gift bag, I think from the dollar store!):

So, with the 3 photos, you could make 2 ornaments and 4 or 6 gift tags, or 1 ornament and up to 12 tags!  I also included a pair of paper fasteners to be used for one ornament.  Or, of course, the photos could be framed, or used in any kind of photo craft or art project!

And lastly, everyone got a copy of my winter mix!  It’s called I wanna be buried in snow, and it’s in a floppy disk sleeve!  I won’t tell you the track list yet (that’s still a secret) but I will tell you that the yarns are both named after songs on the mix.  By the way, the floppy disks all came from Scrap, and the ribbons all came from Knittn’ Kitten!

So here is everything that each member received…

And here it is all made up!  (If you’re wondering how non-members might obtain these patterns, I am planning to release a mini-ebook of the first 4 months of club patterns in February – so at that time, you’ll be able to knit yourself a moustache, superhero mask, back-to-school set, ankle pouch, and everything from this kit.)

The club has gotten some great member feedback so far – Kristin Roach wrote about it on Craft Leftovers, and April blogged about her package on Studio Strategos.  I need to start a feedback section on the club page; if you are a member and you’ve blogged about your package, be sure to let me know so I can link to you!

One last club thing – there’s no December club, but right now you can sign up for January, or for a 3 month subscription Jan-March.  A club membership would make a great gift for knitters – if signing up as a gift, you can let me know and I’ll put the recipient’s email address on the list so they receive the pdf on mail-out day (and of course, put their mailing address in the paypal order).

Now I get back to work on this secret to-be-revealed-on-Friday (hopefully) project… want some hints?  It involves a knitting pattern, and a ton of hand-dyed recycled yarn in very special custom colorways!  Happy Thanksgiving to you all, and enjoy your turkey if you’re into that kind of thing, or your mashed potatoes and vegetarian gravy (yummmmmmm) and stuffing and cranberries and veggies and pie and pie and more pie………..

Find me?!

How about there? Here’s a harder one…

What a fun costume!! The only problem with it was that I felt bad for the other members of my group, since I got all the silly comments and stuff! Such as “I found you!” and the more clever “Hey I’ve been looking for you all night!” and the weird “Waldo” said kind of like an insult while walking by. It was great when our friends Kate and Kit were meeting us at Beulahland and they had to search through the crowd to find Waldo!

I did put a few hours of valuable knitting time into making the hat, and Pete and I spent a huge chunk of our day off at the freakin’ mall trying to find a red+white striped shirt, which was totally worth it to be Waldo, but it would have been a boring costume without my buddies as the Waldo world townspeople!

Pete found a grey+black striped sweater and wore my Mary Tyler Moore striped+pompommed hat and his piano scarf to be a stripey Waldo nemesis type guy; Star wore red+white striped socks and gloves, a red+white polka dotted shirt, and a white hat to throw off the viewer; and Caitlin+Patrick provided more hats and stripes in the scene.

And then Kit joined in as Woody the cowboy to add to the picture! And awesome Kate (who was Amelia Earhart) took the photos!! Yay, thanks Kate!

So there’s me as Waldo – simple costume, but not easy to find a shirt like that!! Ended up with a hoodie (folded the hood under) from this weird store called GenX on 82nd. Knit the hat from recycled cotton (improvised design – 2×2 ribbed brim, then stockinette, works well as a slouchy hat with brim unfolded), and the glasses are “nerd glasses” from the Halloween section at Value Village, with the lenses popped out.  (Downside of the costume – couldn’t see too well all night without my real glasses!)  Plus Pete’s cane from when he hurt his knee, a backpack to complete the look, and I tried to keep my bangs swished to the side all night to look like his!

Our night might have been a little silly (our Halloweens usually end up that way) but I’d say the group costume was a total success!  Yay!

Oh hey, did you know that Waldo is a spinner?!

So that was our Halloween group night, but now I need to move backwards to Halloween afternoon at Twisted! Fun times!

I came to the event just as they were finishing the web, sadly, armed with my unneeded wheel and alpaca.  The web was rad though!

And I got to help hang it up in the corner, so at least I was able to contribute something to the project!  Then I spun a bunch of dirty alpaca, straight from the fleece, just for fun!

I got to meet Jimbo and Inga and Jimbo’s giant crochet hook!  Carved from a solid log of wood, it’s heavy and smooth and rad!!

And then, for some crazy but awesome reason, Jimbo decided to give me one of his hand carved nostepinnes that he’d brought for prizes!  So beautiful!!  (More photos in my flickr – it’s so photogenic!!)

When I got home, I wanted to try it out right away, of course!  So I found a nostepinne how-to on a blog (Fiber Fool), which I glanced over quickly then proceeded to not really follow the steps when I stepped away from the computer to try it out.  It was fun, but a bit of advice: when trying a new fiber winding technique for the first time, don’t use a freshly spun fuzzy alpaca single!

I stopped at this point and wound it into a hank, with much tangling, but no breaking!  Anyway, here’s my alpaca skein (174 yards) before washing – it’s pretty much bright white fiber, with the off-whiteness being the dust.  Spinning straight from the dirty fleece is fun!!  (With alpaca, not wool, because alpaca doesn’t have the greasy/waxy lanolin that wool has.)  It’s soaking in its 3rd soapy water bowl now, with lots of rinsing between soaks, so it’ll be nice and clean by the time I’m done, don’t worry!

So yeah, fun Halloween!!  Thanks Twisted for your awesomeness!!

What’s that?

Oh, it’s Photojojo! the book! Which is released today!  And why was it open to that particular page?

Hey look! That’s my name! My name, written inside a Kate Bingaman-Burt drawing, on a page of a freaking amazingly awesome diy photography book!!

And that’s a digital pinhole photo of me with the book, which is what I contributed! Based on the tutorial I did here on do stuff! a couple years ago, when they contacted me about contributing the how-to for the book I was crazy excited because photojojo has been one of my favorite blogs for quite some time!

As you can see, I had some camera-remote-fun today showing off the book, hah! But hey, dudes, enough about my contribution excitement – if I had no personal part in this book, I would still be way superduper excited about it! It’s so my dream photography book!

Filling its 192 pages are all different kinds of projects for using photos you’ve taken, ways to have fun with photography, and ways to hack your camera! I want to do pretty much every single project, seriously! Here are images of some of my favorites, for your viewing pleasure……

Some major craftiness going on in those pages! So if you don’t think of yourself as a photographer, that doesn’t mean this book isn’t for you – this is a fantastically rad book for any creative person with a digital camera!!

My tutorial, by the way, happens to be the very last one… Pete says that’s a good thing because the first and last are most memorable… I say, shrug, it’s my first book contribution ever, and I still can’t believe that I’m actually in such an insanely great book!!

And lastly, just for fun, since the pinhole photos in the book were taken by Amit+Kelly, here are some of my digital pinhole shots:

ok this post is way belated – this is the first part of our fun times with pete’s parents playing tourists, before the berry picking and stuff from my post a couple weeks ago.  i’ve had the photos plugged into a draft for weeks, and now so much time has passed, i’m just going to show you the photos with brief captions…

those above 3 are inside the timberline lodge, on mount hood, where there was lots of cool crafted stuff, like hooked rugs made with recycled uniforms, and that crazy old loom.

we ate some super yum food, and got to sit on the other side of that window you can see above, with that view of mount jefferson, so majestic!

pete got tillamook mac n cheese and i got some awesome pasta salad – timberline lodge, thumbs up!

coming home from mount hood, we took a scenic route through hood river to the 84, which we ended up regretting due to a hay truck on fire ahead, stopping the freeway completely for 3 hours (for us – others had been stopped for several hours longer) once we hit the jam.  lucky for us though, the point where we stopped happened to be at a shoulder along the columbia river gorge where we were able to pull over and walk around.  so i took a lot of photos…

i think that’s the closest i’ve ever been to a (moving) train.  i had fun with shutter speed experiments.

cameras are fun!

then the next day we drove out to the coast, stopping on the way at mcmenamin’s grand lodge (not super interesting when we’re used to kennedy school, edgefield, bagdad, etc).

and stopping along the side of the road in various naturey spots to take a few photos…

…before arriving at the tillamook cheese factory!

it was a fun time! cooler than i would have thought to see the cheese being made, in various stages, and interesting to learn about tillamook and their happy cows!  and we got some free cheese samples, and ice cream!

then we headed up to seaside…

this was my first time seeing the oregon coast, after living in portland for 2 years.  as i’d been told, it’s way different from the southern california beaches i’m used to.  cold but very scenic and photogenic!

i took some hooded family shots…

and more…

then up to astoria for dinner at fort george (yummm anaheim pepper veggie burger!) and to see the column and the view:

we didn’t go up the column (too high!), but i did take a picture looking up the stairs:

and here’s the view looking the other way… oh oregon, so green…

good day trips! fun times!  i like playing tourist without traveling far – well, i love traveling far, but since that’s not possible, day trips are a fun alternative.

to keep you updated, it’s looking like the new site won’t be up till monday night or tuesday – the next do stuff! post should be the site announcement!  then i’ll catch up on yarn… i’ve been successful in keeping up with tour de fleece, although i’m probably going to take tomorrow off, then spin on monday which is supposed to be a day of rest, because of my schedule.  yay yarn!

pete’s parents came up for a full 2 week vacation, and pete was able to get a total of 6 days off work to hang with them; i managed to take most of that time off too (working on knitting patterns in the car whenever possible) so we had all kinds of adventures! there’s so much to show, so i’m dividing it into 2 posts, and i’m going a little backwards, starting with last friday/saturday.

besides being taken out to amazing portland meal after meal, i’ve been eating fabulously at home the last few days, after we picked berries on sauvie island!  as i write this, i’m drinking tazo awake tea with local honey from the island, mmmmm.

it was a new experience for us all, walking through the farms and filling our baskets with fresh fruit.  we drove on to the island, and started looking for berry picking signs, with no specific farm in mind, so we started at a small-ish blueberry field.  (it actually seemed pretty huge, until we had our second farm to compare it to, pictured above)

the blueberries were easy!  they were mostly at good ripeness, and the ripe ones fall off easily when you wiggle them, so you pretty much shake the bundles with your basket underneath and the good ones fall right in!  between the 4 of us, we got a huge bag full (the total ended up filling 3 quart-size ziplock bags) for about $4!!  unbelievable!  and delicious!

then we wandered around the island some more and came across a raspberries sign…  it ended up being a huge farm with dozens of different things growing, the main ones on that day being raspberries, blueberries, and cherries.  there were also smaller patches of peas, lettuce, and some others that i can’t remember, and the not-ready-yet sections included tons of marionberries, and lots of herbs and other stuff i can’t remember…

the raspberries were at the very beginning of ready-ness (i’m pretty sure it was the first day for them, so we lucked out!) so they were trickier.  it was more of a hunt to find the ripe ones hidden behind tons of unripe ones.

but oh was it worth the work!!

and then, i saved the best for last… this wasn’t even on the sign at all, but the lady told us there might be a few hood strawberries left!  they were just at the end of their time, but we figured we’d go search around and maybe find 2 or 3 good ones.  it was definitely a search – so exciting to see a red spot inside all that green!

but we ended up finding a bunch of them!!  mostly small-ish ones – that photo below on the right shows our bucket; the top layer is all strawberries!  yummm!!  oh and, guess how much that huge thing of fresh raspberries and hood strawberries cost us… just guess… ok, ready?  $2.60!  for real!

last weekend i made a batch of vanilla/white chocolate chip cupcakes to try out my yard sale cupcake book, so after berry-picking i ate one with raspberries and blueberries – so good!!  then for a couple breakfasts in a row i had oatmeal with berries.  i’m going to have to make sauvie island a regular trip now, food just won’t be the same without it!

the day after sauvie island i didn’t take any photos, but i have to tell you a bit about it.  we went to the portland art museum to see the escher show – i didn’t think i was that into it, but i always love art museums, so i was up for checking it out.  wow, i was so wrong!  i am a total escher fan now!  especially as someone who does printmaking – it was so cool to see his actual lino blocks and wood blocks, and to see several process series.  like, the original concept drawing, then another drawing designing it more, then 2 separate block designs, each printed on its own, then the final print with the 2 (or 3) different blocks, and the blocks themselves.  so cool!  (not my personal favorite, but this is one where we got to see the actual 3 woodblocks.)

and then, weirdly enough, the patterny works were really inspiring as a knit designer.  i think it’s the same kind of thought process that turns organic shapes into a seamless pattern, and turns rows of knit stitches into a shape or pattern… am i crazy?  i need to go to art museums more, they can be so creatively inspirational in a unique way.  anyway, this is another print i really liked, and this was crazy awesome to see, taking up a whole wall.

lastly about those days with pete’s parents, roundup of pdx food highlights!  sweet potato pancakes at gravy (they taste like carrot cake!), falafel at ya hala, veggie lasagna at sub rosa, then on the days pete had to work but we still had a few meals out with them – hash brown scramble with veggie gravy at jam was best!

guess who had a birthday the other day!

our foofy kitten is now a whole year old! (that shot was taken the day before her bday.)