Photo time!  Within this chunk of my life, my parents came to visit for 3.5 days and we had all kinds of fun times (like food, yardwork, driving around, house-stuff shopping, more food, farkle, beer, trivia, and some more food), and it was also my frantic club planning, building, sorting, etc time of the month… let’s go!

9th – Spent the day doing some cleaning and unpacking, and finally crushed these dried herbs into jars!  I let them dry for longer than I was supposed to, because I didn’t have jars to put them into, so hopefully they’re ok, probably not the best though.  The whole process was a lot of work for that tiny amount of dried herbs, so I might be using them fresh from the garden most of the time instead of doing this…

10th + 11th – I forgot to take a photo on the 10th, the day my parents came into town, so I snapped this shot the next morning of some of the boxes they brought with them – since we have a house with lots of storage space now, they loaded up the car with these plus several more boxes and bags full of all kinds of stuff from my childhood, artwork all through high school and college, etc… When I have time to go through it all, it’s gonna be so much fun!  Their first full day here, we all headed up Mt. Hood to the Timberline Lodge – we met a dog in the parking lot who was awesome and named Bruno, then we saw this painting in the lodge! Ok, not the exact same dog, but it looks just like him…

12th – The next day of their visit was pretty nuts – I had to teach a class in the middle of it, Pete had to work all day, so I had breakfast and a little pdx exploring with them in the morning, then we went our separate ways and they headed up to the zoo.  By the time we all reconvened in the evening, we were all super tired from long days, and we tried playing Taboo for awhile… our brains were all so wiped out that we all were terrible at the game, it was pretty funny.  Anyway, also, see those rings on the table?  My dad gave me those, which belonged to his parents – family story is that the bigger (non-gold) one was made by my grandpa during the war, from a nickel!

13th – The next morning was Waffle Window for breakfast!  One of my favorites, for sure, and now it’s my mom’s number one favorite breakfast spot in the world!

14th + 15th – While they were here, we took a trip to my local nursery (which is HUGE, by the way!) and I got some new plants for the garden, to try out during my learning time – the more experience I pack in this summer, the more I’ll know how to have an awesome veggie garden next year!  I got a pickling cucumber plant, a California Wonder pepper plant, carrot seeds, and an African Blue Basil plant!  So when I was reheating some leftover pizza, I grabbed some of the basil, and some oregano too, from the yard and threw that on there – oh my gosh best leftover pizza ever!  And, these days started my club-making, lots of unraveling!  (the color in this yarn photo is super inaccurate)

16th – I was having some trouble making my club plans fall into place, so I took a brainstorming walk, browsed craft supplies at Jo-Ann, and headed to Lents park, where I wandered and brainstormed and found this table in the shade to sit down with my sketchbook.  Perfect plan, totally worked!  Sorted out all my issues and got the elements all planned out on paper!

17th + 18th – Taught a class in the morning, did some birthday shopping for Pete on Mississippi (after lunch at the carts), and headed to Scrap and Knittn’ Kitten for some club-related supplies (like recycled mailing envelopes).  Of course, I got much more than club stuff!  Oh Scrap, I can never leave without a huge box full of goodies!  Also stopped at Twisted for this skein of yellow bulky Lanaloft – love!!  The next day, after working hard on club patterns all day, we got to hang with birthday girl Elif and Vivian for some birthday drinks and pizza…

19th – Club package sorting this month included these gorgeous vintage 50’s chevron beads, found at Knittn’ Kitten – I wanted to buy all of them, in all different colors, but I limited myself to these three bags.  Enough for all club members, plus plenty left over for me to play with!  I already made 2 orange ones into a pair of earrings a couple nights ago…

20th + 21st – These two days were Pete’s days off, before his birthday, when he had to work, so we treated these days as his “birthday weekend” and did all kinds of fun stuff, like breakfast at Genie’s, watching a weird zombie movie, him playing video games while I taught a class…. He decided he wanted to have an Angel “party” – this was modeled after a Buffy “party” we had back in October, which meant we bought an assortment of junk food which could vaguely relate to the Buffy-verse (like garlic toast and monster candy, since it was Halloween season this was easy to find).  So we found what we could – Devil Squares, parmesan+garlic Cheese Its, Twizzlers (blood colored), and I drank red wine (like blood) with a bunch of orange juice mixed in – instant sangria!  It was a fun Angel party!  Oh I know we’re supernerds, I know.

Oh then the next day was a little more of a real party – we ate pizza and homemade pesto crazy bread and played games with our buddies Star and Grant, fun times!  We tried out Huggermugger – holy crap that game is tough!  Star and Grant are not just word lovers, but crossword puzzle makers(!) so they did much better than Pete and I did, and before playing this I thought we were both pretty good with words too!  It was fun though, just made me feel dumb, hah… oh yeah and I drank Busch Light, that was silly…

Well that was a wordy post!  These photo-a-day posts are kind of like a diary for me – a glimpse into my life if you want to bother reading it all, but you can also just skim over the photos and leave it at that.  Coming soon… interested in a garden post? You’ll probably be getting one!  And, oh my gosh it’s taking me what feels like years to get this mitts pattern finished, but that’s my next top priority, so you’ll soon(ish) be seeing not just a new pattern, but a new technique!!  Soon, I promise!

I let these pile up for awhile again, but I missed a few days because of sickness (nothing interesting to shoot those day anyway… they may have been shots of cough drops or noodle soup…).  Let’s go!

22nd – A couple nights before this, Pete and I did karaoke out and had so much fun, so we broke out our ps3 karaoke game we’ve had forever but rarely play, and we totally rocked out in our living room! It was superfun!

23rd + 24th – We hung out with Star and went thrifting and to trivia at Zach’s, where Zach was excited to tell me about the Corona on special that I could get instead of my usual PBR.  I hadn’t had Corona since college in San Diego, so I got one for old time’s sake… and felt very silly about it… Anyway, then the next day I forgot to take a photo, but I did take a photo booth shot of this top I got at Goodwill the day before – love it!

25th -  It was a certain little foofhead’s birthday today!  Our 2-year-old kitten:

26th + 28th – These were sick days, during which I had the energy to make cold brewed coffee for the how-to I did, and not too much else, like take photos-of-the-days…

1st – Enough energy to knit on this hat, and I even remembered to photograph it:

30th + 2nd -  A couple of food shots… sick food (plain wheat pasta with olive oil) on the 30th, then by the 2nd I was feeling better enough to make a yummy wrap for lunch:

3rd + 4th – Tired of sitting on the couch, I worked on the library a bunch!  Yes, we still have a ton of unpacking to do, after having moved in over 2 months ago (we’re busy people!) so I unpacked all the CDs and rearranged things so that the library started looking more like a real room and less like a big storage closet.  On the 4th, we hung out with our buddies in St. Johns and saw some faraway fireworks from the bridge.  This photo actually makes the fireworks look much closer than they were (but it was fun!):

5th -  Spent most of the day working on my mitts design – after gathering all the feedback from my testers, I decided to make some kind of big changes, so I now have to re-test pretty heavily myself.  I’m really happy with how the pattern is turning out, but I probably won’t be able to complete it till after my July club goes out, which means an end-of-July release… man, this pattern is taking forever (I started this design in March)…

6th + 7th -  More knitting and design work, along with lots of Netflix Instant watching… Then a weekend day with Pete – we had lots of fun times out thrifting and eating and game playing, and in the middle of the day we did a wee bit of housework and Pete pruned the crap out of our hydrangea in the front yard!  I wish I’d taken photos of it before, though it was looking a bit weird – I think due to the weather lately, it’s been blooming all uneven, so lots of the flowers are still green, and many of them are already wilting.  We know nothing about plants, so maybe this is normal and we’re supposed to be pruning often.  Anyway, it was taking over our ramp to the front door and our driveway and everything, so Pete cut it all back out of the way, and put some of these flowers in a vase on the table… within 5 minutes Banzo was trying to eat them, so I snapped some photos and we threw them all out, so sad…

8th -  I did a ton of back yard work – mowed and pulled weeds mostly, but the yard still needs lots more work to look decent… in the 90-something degree heat, I discovered that when the doug fir tree is shading part of the yard, it’s a drastic difference in temperature and totally nice to be outside under the shade, so I ate lunch out in the yard for the first time!

I also got the little air conditioner up and running yesterday – so nice!  I’ve never lived in a place with any kind of AC, such a treat!  Between that and our multiple ceiling fans and movable fans, this summer will be so much more bearable than last!

My parents are coming into town tomorrow to hang out for a few days, so it’ll be a bit vacationy for me, fun times!  Sure to be lots of delicious Portland food involved, yay!  Happy weekend to you!

Ok so yeah I’ve disappeared for a little while – holy crap dudes, the Summit of Awesome was so much more awesome than I could have imagined!  It officially ended on Friday, but there were related events happening all through the weekend, so I’m still recovering from all the awesome.  I’ll definitely be posting a way-too-huge post about the Summit sometime this week, but I wanted to catch up on photos-of-the-day first since I’m so behind… so starting with 2 weeks ago…

8th – This day was filled with recycled club yarn unraveling, then wet hot american trivia at night, always a great time!

7th + 9th – I made an egg creation based on this idea for lunch, but I didn’t do a good job of putting together ingredients I had on hand and it ended up looking much better than it tasted… oh well, I learned from my mistakes.  I did a photo shoot for Pete of all the clothes he’s been finding at thrift stores lately, including all these fantastic ties:

10th + 11th – Club yarn-making and designing days – tons of spinning, and I used my thrifted Ashford niddy noddy for the first time ($1 still in the original packaging!)… This month’s club featured the smallest gauge thing I’ve ever designed – lace-weight-ish yarn on size US 2 needles!  (I know that’s nothing for all you sock knitters, but I’m a size 7’s and up kind of knitter!)

12th + 13th – Shooting the back of my own head (without my tripod+remote set-up) is damn tricky – this photo is one of many outtakes.  Club skeining, sorting, packaging, etc….

14th – I forgot to take an official photo of the day this day, which was filled with last-minute club packaging and pdf-building, trips to the post office and Twisted, and the beginning of Summit teaching work, but I did take this computer shot of some very important Summit prep!  My hair was getting so boring, it’s about time!

15th + 16th – Because the club stuff took me longer than expected, my Summit class prep ended up happening all on the day before the conference started – luckily, I’d been thinking about it for a month or two so I was able to get everything onto paper in a day… Then Wednesday was the first day of the Summit – I attended two learning sessions, including getting press for your business with Kari Chapin:

17th – The second day of the Summit I decided to just make stuff allll day!  So, I chose workshops for every session (instead of the learning sessions, which would have been far too responsible), starting with encaustic painting with Bridget Benton – ohmygod it was so much fun!!

18th – This was my teaching day… first, I taught how to photograph your work with your camera, then I made a cup glove with Becky Striepe to relax my brain for a bit, then I taught publishing your own patterns, which went really well!  The whole day was filled with lots of caffeine, so when it was all over and I was hanging out with a bunch of awesome people afterward, I shot my coffee:

19th + 20th – Then during the weekend days after the Summit, with people in town and the Show of Awesome happening, we kept the awesome going – on Saturday I got to hang out all over town with Kim, Diane, Teresa, Kari, and Susan (see photos on Diane’s blog)… at the amazing Twilight Rummage Sale I got some fabulous finds, but unfortunately my camera battery died, so I just took a phone picture (see the stuff shot by Diane here).  Inflatable Party Insects!  On Sunday, I went to Kari’s book signing at Powell’s, caught up on some errands, got in a wee bit of rest and house-cleaning, and then Pete and I were taken out by our loan guy to celebrate our house!  Pete never drinks, but we talked him into some fruity umbrella-adorned drinks and he got nice and silly!  And I did karaoke in public for the first time ever (Stay) – it was SO MUCH FUN!  I didn’t have my camera with me at the karaoke bar, sadly, but I snapped a shot of Pete when we got home and he flopped over on the couch:

21st – It pretty much took this entire day to recover from all the awesome… I had plans to work on my in-progress knit design all day and do other super-productive things, but no, that just didn’t happen.  My brain didn’t really let me do anything but check emails and twitter and flickr and ravelry for many hours, then I forced myself to do dishes and brainstormed a bit about my website redesign, and I got a sudden motivation to make a new site header and a vision of an idea, so I dove in and started it!  I twitpic’d a screenshot of the in-progress header today – the text and photos will be different for each different section of leethal.net… what do you think?

This week is sure to be spent catching up on everything… that pattern I was hoping to release as soon as possible will be no sooner than next week, and same with my site update, but I’m super excited about both of them!

Time has been flying by lately – I can’t believe Summit of Awesome is in just over a week already!  And my club mail-out day being a week from today means that a couple projects I hoped to release this week are not going to be finished until the week after next now, due to all this hecticness and time-speediness… oh well, keeping busy is a good thing!

27th – On this day, I taught a class, but took no photos, and whatever else I did (I think dinner at Ya Hala and a movie at the Academy) also went by photoless, so I snapped a shot of Pete’s new studio space since he spent the bulk of the day moving his stuff over (Banzo was very interested):

28th + 29th – Spent many hours swatching swatching swatching for a knit project, plus a little sketching and brainstorming… then I did the yarn wrapped branches project the next day:

30th + June 1st – Some serious coding on my future new leemeredith.com home page, which I’d hoped to get up sooner, but it’s probably going to be a couple weeks now, since I want to finish my other leethal.net updates to release all at the same time… anyway, this page is done now, and I’m pretty happy with it, clean, simple, functional…

2nd + 4th – Some food shots for you… Pete took a work trip to Seattle for a couple days, so I decided to make something for myself that I could never make for him – he doesn’t eat fish and I do (though not often) so I tried out this recipe for a gourmet-ish version of tuna noodle casserole.  I subbed a bunch of ingredients for less gourmet versions that I had in the kitchen (like Trader Joe’s frozen organic veggie mix instead of the fresh veggies, and basic TJ’s tuna in water instead of “high-quality imported tuna packed in oil”) but it was still totally good and lasted me 3 big meals, so that was awesome.  I’m trying to get into making super yummy salads throughout the summer – such a great summer meal, and so many possibilities, even though I usually end up making the same salad over and over (garbanzo beans and kidney beans, maybe chopped up tomato)… So I made us spinach salads with cold baked honey sesame tofu, shredded Tillamook colby jack cheese, mushrooms+sunflower seeds for me, and dried cranberries for Pete.  The tofu made it SO GOOD!

3rd – Designing mitts!  The design is done now, and I’ll be sending out the test pattern to some test knitters in a few hours (if you want to test knit fingerless mitts, let me know!)  They use a new kind of sideways cuff construction that I don’t think has been done before (not publicly so people know about it at least) – no picking up stitches!  And they are designed for Knit Picks City Tweed yarn (which is great!) because they are going to be my first entry into KP’s Independent Designer Program (which I am a huge fan of and fully support, as it’s a somewhat controversial program)… My camera battery died this day, so this shot was taken by my computer with Photo Booth:

5th – Took advantage of a few hours of gorgeous weather by walking to Fred Meyer for some groceries.  By cutting through our local cemetery, I can avoid walking down 82nd (which is a horrible major street) for a few blocks – much more pleasant!  (Took the photo with my phone):

6th – Yesterday was a super crafty day!  Spent a few hours knitting at a coffee shop with my buddy Kate, then decoupaged a lamp shade with Pete!  It turned out SO cool!  Deserving of its own blog post in the future, I think:

Now today I’m making club yarn and hopefully finishing up another home decor project to show you tomorrow! Yay!

Photo time!  The last week and a half was filled with a little gardening, a ton of awful weather, some good food, and some knit designing!  Sadly, I forgot to take a photo on the 16th, so starting with last Monday…

17th + 18th – I harvested a bunch of herbs that were ready, and some that were past ready, like this flowering thyme… The ones that looked good – sage, oregano, rosemary, a little thyme, and I think tarragon but I’m not sure – I hung to dry in the closet, hopefully they’ll turn out usable in another week or two!  The next day I did a little gardening work too, before the weather turned… I got a few starters (basil, rosemary, and an early girl tomato) to try out and hopefully not kill, exciting!  I’m so happy these rain boots I’ve had for years but never wear make perfect yard boots:

19th + 20th -  I made a milkshake based on the kind I used to make a lot when I was a kid – blend some milk, some vanilla ice cream, a cup of flavored yogurt of your choice (I used Tillamook orange cream, when I was a kid I would usually use peach), and 1 banana.  I also squeezed in some honey as it was blending, turned out yummy!  Built our new Ikea couch, which makes an L shape with our older couch – they discontinued the old model, so we had to find something coordinating, but I think it worked out well!  Also put together that hanging glass light, scored at Value Village for $3, yeah!

21st + 22nd – The weather was really getting to me these days… I know in Portland it rains through the Spring till June, but I don’t remember the last couple years being so freaking cold and dark still at the end of May!  The first shot was a long exposure taken late at night, with a weirdly color balanced pink sky going on:

23rd – Tested out freezer paper stenciling with fabric paint (I usually use screen printing ink) – worked surprisingly super well!  This is what I’m going to be using in all the free teen classes I’m teaching at Portland libraries throughout the summer, fun!

24th + 26th – A couple of food shots for you… asiago cheese toast with fresh sweet basil from the yard, and then last night I made an awesome dinner, delicious and super easy, too!  Wild mushroom & herb couscous with some TJ’s organic frozen veggies added along with the spice packet at the beginning, then while it was cooking I grilled sliced up fake italian sausage on the George Foreman grill, chopped it into smaller pieces, and fluffed it in with the couscous! So so so yummy!

25th – I’ve been designing a bunch!  Working on two or more projects simultaneously, focusing on one this day, another the next… not really the best way to do it, but with so much time off from designing through all the moving business, my brain keeps jumping all over the place and I need more knitting time!  Yay, so glad to be back into design-land again!

Oh that reminds me of another thing I’ve been doing the last couple of days – remember code-land?  Well, I’d been planning a couple of website updates for awhile, and then I decided I wanted my main navigation to have drop-down menus, which turned out to be super complex (for me, anyway) so I spent a big chunk of time yesterday deep in css code-land trying to get it to work… but it’s looking good and now my little shop update is turning into a bunch of new site stuff!  Fun!

Wow this week is flying by!  This post was meant to go up on Sunday when I started it, and now it’s Wednesday night, how did that happen?!  A combination of club mail-out day, yard work obsession, and the last 2 days off with Pete spent house-stuff shopping to the point of exhaustion at Home Depot (lawn mower!), Ikea (couch!), Target (ice cube tray! ok, that one’s not exciting…), and four different thrift stores throughout Beaverton and Tigard…. time flies when you’re trying to work full time and work on your new house full time, at the same time.  So here’s the blur of last week…

9th + 10th – Club work both days – lots of yarn unraveling, dyeing, spinning; then after flipping through home decor project books for theme inspiration, I spent the day trying to figure out my extra club goodies, which turned into doing some silly projects to test out ideas.  One of those silly projects was this super crazy hanging light, made from one leg of a pair of dollar store girls’ tights and 2 wire hangers, plus some red glass marble things to weigh it down at the bottom… it was pretty much a fail… it was inspired by this one from The Big Ass Book of Home Decor, but using crappy materials makes the concept not work out so well:

11th + 12th – Last week Pete and I spent much of our free time thrifting (which we’ve been doing a ridiculous amount of since the move!) – I actually forgot to take a photo on the 11th, so both of these were shot on the 12th, but those glass plates were purchased throughout both days, and are destined for something awesome!  The blanket was a pretty sweet Bins find – crocheted, thick, sure to be warm in the winter, and looks great draped over our black chair:

13th – Library day!  I walked around the corner to our super local branch and lugged 2 bags home:

14th + 15th – More on this later, but I’ll tell you at least that this switch plate is May club related!  Spent quite a bit of time in the yard on Saturday – used our new weed wacker on the overgrown craziness, taking breaks to rest my arms by picking up pine cones for when we start mowing… it would be fun for awhile, treating it like an easter egg hunt, counting the cones and spotting tips buried deep in the grass… until I was in the 100’s and wasn’t anywhere close to done.  I picked up 145 that day and I’d guess it was about a quarter (maybe a third) of the total number.  I love that we have a Doug Fir in our back yard, but damn those cones!

Ok hopefully I’ll be getting back to you in the next day or two with some crafty fun!  And I’ll probably start bothering you with gardening posts soon enough!

Now for this most recent week… settling into the new house, starting to unpack, and starting to get back into normal life routines…

1st + 2nd – We’re still excited to have our own washer+dryer, and watching the clothes in the front loader is fun!  hehe we’re silly.  Finally got back into a knitting project – that hat I was mentioning a couple posts ago:

3rd – Spent some time unpacking boxes of books and starting to get the library set up!

4th + 5th – We had a weird/stupid day, with Ikea having discontinued the items we needed, terrible weather, and other frustrating and stressful things, so we tried to end the day on a good note with our buddies, eating happy hour veggie burgers at Kennedy School and playing cards.  Fun times!  Then I found the desk I had wanted from Ikea on Craigslist, so the next day we drove out to Gresham to pick it up and stopped at a couple of thrift stores in the area while we were out there.  The insanely bright rainbow was spotted outside a Goodwill:

6th – In order to get the huge corner desk into Pete’s Prius, we had to take it almost completely apart, so the next day I had to put it all back together again – not easy!  But I did it!

7th – Had fun with a photoshoot in our front yard!  This is my favorite plant we have – our Satomi Dogwood tree:

8th – I finally tried making quinoa for the first time the night before (I’d eaten it before, but not made it myself), and had tons of leftovers, which I played with for lunch and dinner.  I’m totally in love with quinoa!  It cooks exactly like rice (my rice cooker makes it so easy and good!) and I can use it exactly how I use rice, but it’s way healthier!  This is my quinoa, 3 bean, and grilled mushroom quesadilla, photographed before piling a ton of cheese on top and a second whole wheat tortilla… who says vegetarians don’t get enough protein?!

In case you don’t know about quinoa, here is an excerpt from wikipedia:

In contemporary times, this crop has become highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%), making it a healthy choice for vegetarians, vegans and athletes. Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. Because of all these characteristics, quinoa is being considered a possible crop in NASA’s Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration manned spaceflights.

Cool!

This was the week of total insanity – fun and extreme work – with my brother visiting, getting the keys to our house early, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, and the move!

21st + 23rd – Packed all day, dropped off a ton of stuff (almost literally, hah!) at Value Village, then picked up Matt and Chelsea at the airport and brought them to check in at the Jupiter – definitely one of the coolest hotels in Portland, so I was excited to see the inside of a room there.  Tiny, but super cute for sure, with the mustard yellow mural-ish painted wall.  A bit out of order for aesthetic reasons, on the 23rd we got the keys to our house, spent some time moving a few things in and checking it all out, then that night was the most packed-with-shows night of the festival, so I shot the schedule:

22nd – The first night of the comedy festival, we spent the whole night at the Bagdad for opening night funniness – this is the ceiling:

24th + 25th – The 24th was pretty darn beer-filled, as the city of Portland encourages – we each got sampler trays at Hedge House with our dinner, to try all the deliciousness that New Old Lompoc has to offer.  Also on the 24th, we scored the elusive Voodoo $5 bucket!  We had stopped by Voodoo to grab a dozen for a small empty-house gathering we hosted on Saturday afternoon, but how could we resist paying less for a ridiculous bucket instead?!  Well, each of us ate a donut, and what you see in the photo was left over… so on the 25th, we took it with us to the festival and passed it on to the comedians:

26th + 27th – Bonus of the house closing early – time to paint!  Spread over 2 days, we did the primer coat then 3 coats of orange, to get the bright and bold final result!  Yay!

28th – Moving day!  We highly recommend Thunder Movers, by the way.  It was our first time ever hiring movers, and after countless moves, between the two of us, doing it all ourselves, it was such a relief after all the packing and house-buying stress to have the bulk of the moving done by pros.

29th – Pete was unexpectedly called into work a day early, so I spent all afternoon, till 10ish at night, at the old apartment getting everything off the walls by myself, the job we’d saved for last – I don’t think either of us realized how much we had screwed/nailed into the walls of that place!  Not a fun time, but it got done…

30th – Our final day getting the apartment cleaned out as much as possible to hopefully get our deposit back, that part of the day sucked, but then I got to finally spend the remainder of the afternoon and night resting in the new house!  Banzo had a bit of a tough time adjusting for the first couple of days, as most cats do, but I think the biggest reason she was freaked out was that after moving her over, we weren’t able to be there with her much, since we had to deal with the apartment, and Pete had to go back to work.  So, on her 3rd day in the house, once I was there with her for a few hours, she started settling in and acting more like herself:

Ok that’s all for this set… not much else to say… I went yard sale shopping today, that was kind of awesome – scored a great coffee table, painted teal with 3 levels, a couple other house items, some great vinyl, and some rad toys!  Maybe a thrifty finds post is in order!  Oh yeah, I also bought The Big Ass Book of Home Decor at Powell’s, so I’m super excited to spend some time with that!

It’s about time!  Splitting these up into sections – this section goes from just after the April club was mailed out and my focus turned to full time moving-related work, up until the day before my brother got into town…

13th + 14th – Packing/moving errands day – boxes, tape, etc were purchased and serious packing started.  I wanted to devote some focus to my car before the move, since I hardly ever drive (I fill up my 10 gallon gas tank once every 3 or 4 months) and I know I’ll have to start driving more now that we no longer live walking distance to so many places… so, I started out by washing it, then I took it in for a check up to make sure nothing major was wrong with it (nothing was! yay!) – this photo shows what happens when you pretty much ignore your car in the rainy city of Portland: plants take root!

15th + 16th – Packing packing packing!  Both in my studio:

17th – Spent some fun crafting time embroidering an octopus on some baby overalls for my friends’ son, who is due in less than a month!

18th – Caitlin and Patrick’s baby shower!  Portland celebrated with us by giving us several afternoon hours of super nice weather, yay!  Notice Susan’s amazingly delicious vegetarian pigs in a blanket (or, pigs in blankets?):

19th + 20th – These 2 days were pretty much spent packing all day again, not so photogenic – exhausted Banzo is much more picture-friendly!  And, the 20th was the day we signed the final papers on our house!

Well that’s it for now – I’ll probably do the next photo-a-day set tomorrow, then the final set, up to the present, on Sunday… then next week hopefully I’ll have time to post some higher quality content!  I’m actually working on a new hat pattern!  (At least a couple of weeks till that’s released though.)  Actually, it’s going to be a tutorial for a new knitting technique (hopefully new – I’ve never seen it in a pattern before, but I’m always afraid when I think I’ve invented something new, that it’s probably been invented several times by other designers and I just don’t know about it…) and then a set of hat patterns that use the technique.

I guess a smart thing to do would just be to ask you, my dear readers… have you ever read a knitting pattern that has a brim or a cuff that’s worked sideways, and the rest of the item worked in the round (hat, socks, mittens, etc), that uses a method other that picking up the stitches, or sewing the 2 parts together?  No spoilers yet for what my technique uses, but any feedback on this question would be oh-so-helpful!!

This has been a long and hectic week!  Lots of yarn, food, crafting….

4th – Easter was a weirdly normal Sunday… Pete’s stupid company decided it was a good idea to have stores open, so he went to work as usual, and I stayed home and worked pretty much as usual.  But I wanted to do something special, so I made cookies!  We’ve been trying to use up all the food in the kitchen before moving, so I gathered all cookie-friendly ingredients, and made coconut, oatmeal, white chocolate, and dark chocolate chip cookies.  (weird – I just found that last Easter I also made coconut chocolate chip cookies, I guess it’s an accidental tradition now!):

5th + 6th – These days were filled with yarn for the club.  First, winding a ridiculously huge skein (almost 700 yards of chunky wool), since I had to dye it in 5 yard color sections, and I chose to try doing it all together in a massive skein, divided into 3 sections.  It was messy… but it worked… Then, more unraveling, and spinning for the recycled spun club yarn, which I really love this month:

7th – We finally got over to Burgerville for the seasonal Rosemary Shoestring Potatoes – yummmmm!!  They have so many fantastic seasonal items throughout the year, and these fries are definitely one of my favorites!  (ps – if I ate meat, I’d be way into that turkey burger, yumm spinach!)

8th – I needed to buy some fruit for my club photoshoot, and to test out the produce bag (so happy with how it turned out!!) so I walked to Limbo, grabbed an assortment, carried it home in the bag (and got a compliment on it at the store) and then I had all this fruit that I wanted to use up… I also happened to have a bottle of cheap red wine in the fridge from a long time ago… So, I tried making sangria!  Total success!  I had my whole “recipe” typed up here, but then I thought, I’d rather just give it it’s own blog post… soon…  yumyumyum:

9th – Forgot to take an official photo of the day… this is the day I finished designing and knitting the other club pattern, dish scrubbies, and photographed them, so this is from that photoshoot.  (By the way, here you can see the intended purpose of these cup things that I have in my studio – they are from Ikea in the kitchen organization section.)

10th – Make-a-long day!  A post with everything I worked on is coming soon; here’s a peek at the mess of craftiness I had going on.  Linda’s book is the only one I ended up using directly, the rest of my projects were either finishing old things I’d started years ago and forgotten, or improvised projects I’d been planning for awhile…

11th + 12th – Club prep days… Of course, I was extremely sleep deprived on Sunday, but I had tons of work to get done, so the day is a blur of writing, printing, cutting, winding, sorting…… And then I did all the distributing, packaging, shipping label printing, all on the mail-out day (usually I try to get more done ahead of time!) which ended up being ultra chaotic because I ran out of packing tape halfway through the packages!  I knew I had more somewhere, but I wasted something like 40 minutes looking for it with no luck!  Anyway, I ended up messily finishing the packaging in line at the post office right at the last minute – they went out on time, but man, it wasn’t pleasant…

Now that the April club is out (and it’s a good one!), the make-a-long happened, and I have no more major deadlines or anything for awhile, my focus gets turned to the move!  Extreme packing starts today!  Woo!!

Not any really exciting photos this week… spent a lot of time working on website coding, business plan writing, and other non-photographable worky stuff, so… here it goes!

28th + 29th – We hung out with some buddies at Amnesia for a couple beers, then headed to Laurelwood for late night happy hour house-made veggie burgers – if you live in Portland and like veggie burgers, you must try them, yummm!  Nothing photogenic on the 29th, so I photographed our Trader Joe’s black bean taquitos, always yummy:

30th + 31st – More food and beer… split a New Seasons wok bowl for dinner before Radio Room trivia, yumyumyum.  The 31st was trivia-packed – Pete hosted a special Nike event in Beaverton in the afternoon (weird, yeah, but it went super well!) and then we went to Zach’s trivia that night, where I did a little stitching (embroidery at a bar = awesome!):

April 1st + 2nd – On the day Banzo’s butt became famous, she was acting kind of bratty all day, like she knew she was hot stuff, and wouldn’t stay still for a photo.  That day was crazy super nice Springy weather; the next day – hail storm:

3rd – So much stitching!  Stitched up a bunch of connect-the-dots examples (which are now viewable on the spoilers page), including an experimental try at stitching a design from paper onto a shirt, using the method Kristin describes here as “tissue paper transfer” – worked pretty well!  (See the result on the spoilers page – Sea Creatures picture two.)

(More about my stitch sets update tomorrow…) So hopefully this week will be more photogenic, unless you’re really into food/beer photos, in which case last week rocked!  hehe… oh yeah, happy Easter!  Have you been eating lots of chocolate? I have! yay!

Wow it’s been a long week for some reason!  Feels like that knitty pattern came out weeks ago, and I just realized it was one week ago today, crazy… Anyway, here are some things I did in the last week…

20th – Stitched this sample for one of my upcoming new stitch sets – can you tell what it’s becoming?  (If you follow me on twitter, you may already know, since I tweeted a picture of the final stitched image last weekend.)  My new sets are getting much more complex than the older sets, with number counts up in the hundreds:

21st – Pete took me to Hedge House for dinner (mac + cheese, oh yeah!) to celebrate the Buttonhead release; I didn’t bring my camera, but I shot this curb horse with my phone outside – I love spotting Portland curb horses!

22nd – I made roasted carrots (with rosemary, thyme, and parsley, and some mushrooms) and risotto for dinner – yum!!

23rd – Pete and I introduced Star to Gravy for breakfast – one of our favorite Portland breakfast spots (and there are oh-so-many of them!).  Tofu scramble with hashbrowns, broccoli, mushrooms, and veggie gravy = heavenly (not to mention Pete’s banana chocolate chip pancakes).  (side note – I’m going to stop linking to yelp pages when a restaurant doesn’t have their own site, after reading this article.)

24th – Pete and I took a long walk to the Waffle Window for breakfast this day (delicious and cheap!) – I didn’t bring a camera on the walk, but I did take a couple nice Spring flower photos with my phone… sadly, my stupid phone refuses to email me the full size images (not like they’re even large files, at 110kb) and shrinks them down to bitsy thumbnails, boo!  So, I enlarged them a wee bit and stuck the 2 photos together:

25th – I went through my enormous stash of recycled sweaters and other clothing to be used for crafting materials, picking out what had been sitting there for years, to get rid of before the move.  The pieces on the floor of this photo ended up going into my giveaway sale, and every piece in that box (you can’t really tell how big it is, but trust me, it’s big) is uncut and not too felted to go right back to the thrift store.  This exercise has taught me to be more discriminating in my thrifting for materials!!

26th – I bought 83 skeins of embroidery floss (from the Kitten)!  The purpose will be revealed soon enough…

27th – I got to participate is a unique crafting experience this day – along with some other Portland craft blogging friends, I got to craft with chocolate at the new Chocolate Craft Studio in North Portland.  I made a weirdo, abstract sculpture, which I ended up liking in the end, but then about 3 minutes in a warm car did this:

For more photos from the event, check out the flickr group Susan put together; and to read all about it, head over to Diane’s Craftypod post, and Pam’s Gingerbread Snowflakes post, where there are lots of photos of the chocolate crafting in action!  And tonight, I plan to take a chunk out of that crazy, melted sculpture for dessert, since every element is edible (including chocolate glue, moldable clay-like chocolate, and glittery paint and sprinkles)!

Getting back into my blogging photos-a-day on the weekends schedule… this was an eventful week!  Multiple new projects released, lots of house-buying stuff…

10th + 11th – I (finally) got my studio completely cleaned up!  It was in a mostly organized, but with a bunch of random stuff still scattered about the floor, state for the last several months.  (Before that, it was worse, since major re-organizing after Pete moved out of his half…)  On the 10th, I had a couple visitors from the media, including a photographer, so it had to be finished, and now I love it (and yes, we are moving in about a month, perfect timing, eh?)… And the next day, I finished knitting my handspun Shapeshifter, then spent the whole day building the pattern pdf, and everything else that goes with it (photos, webpage, etc), and got it released at 4am! Woo!

12th – Stitched up a couple of connect-the-dots cameras this day, and drank tons of coffee after my late-nighter the night before!

13th + 17th – Out of order because both these days I worked on the same hat (even though it’s a super quick hat to knit, I’ve just been knitting for short times here and there, between other projects)… on the 13th, I spent a bit of time knitting on this hand-dyed, striped, soon-to-be Haka hat; on the 17th I did the dyeing tutorial for the yarn, and I started the bottom part of the hat in another yarn, but didn’t finish… (Garbanzo doesn’t normally look like that, but that photo makes me laugh – a horrible combination of flopped-over position and wide-angle lens makes for a disproportionally huge kitty!):

14th – I got started on a new design idea, spending lots of time with Barbara Walker, and I spun a skein of self-striping handspun, yay!  This yarn will be for sale, once I wash and photograph it (it’s been a long time since I’ve added new handspun to the shop!):

15th – Spent pretty much the whole day on that new design idea… for an awesome dinner (while Pete was in Seattle for the night), I made some delicious bean dip, with refried black beans, leftover rice, 3-pepper salsa, and cheese, yummmm!!

18th + 19th – These 2 days we got to go hang out at our future house!  During the inspection (which went really well!!) we got to be in the house, taking photos, planning out furniture arrangements, daydreaming about living there, for 3 hours – I’m so into the nice kitchen sink with the filtration system!!  (I’m even excited about it being double bowl, after living in our apt the last few years with a single bowl – dyeing will be easier!)  And then the sewer scope (also good news) was the next day, so we stood around outside the house for awhile, and I took some photos of the outside – I kind of like this weird little mini-fence in front:

Coming up this week: I can finally blog about my studio, now that’s it’s cleaned up and show-able!  In preparation for moving, I’m planning a couple different giveaway things, which might start soon.  There might be a new (free) pattern!!  And I’ve been working on 3 new stitch sets (which are all freaking awesome, I think) – they probably won’t be available for a couple weeks, but you may be seeing some peeks soon!  (if you follow me on twitter, soon like today!)

I’m so sorry to have blogged nothing between 2 photo-of-the-day posts a week apart, I’m trying hard to give you more value, really I am!  (speaking of Value, I’m also trying to spend a bit of time in Diane’s free online class on the subject, today only, be sure to check it out!)  The last week has been totally nuts – we put an offer on a house yesterday!!  Plus, the club was mailed out yesterday, plus there’s another exciting thing happening today which I’ll probably be telling you about soon, plus I’m trying so hard to get this cowl/hood pattern out this week (it’s looking like either Friday or Monday now)… that’s a lot of plusses, sigh…

So, yeah, excuses, but things should be slowing down a wee bit starting tomorrow, and I have some fun things planned… for now, photos!  I’ve spent a lot of time with house stuff – checking out the neighborhood, etc to decide for sure if we want it – but that’s not so photographable, so here’s my last week in photos…

3rd – Knitting away on my handspun sample of the upcoming pattern, with my own self-striping single, mostly BFL wool, mostly hand-dyed by me:

4th + 5th – Dyed club recycled yarn, and spun tons of recycled club yarn, while watching a bunch of movies on netflix instant (also spent much time knitting up ideas for the club designs):

6th – This day we got serious thinking about the house, checked out the neighborhood at night, then went to Dots for tofu burritos, fries, beer, and house-talking… fitting for us because Dots is where we talked about moving to Portland in the first place 3 years ago:

7th + 8th – Finished up the March club these days, making and sorting everything, then finishing and packaging, during which I consumed lots of coffee (as always) and after which I worked on getting my studio cleaned up:

9th – And coming around full circle, last night I got back to knitting the pattern sample, at Radio Room with friends, beer, and trivia: