July 18th

July 18th was Neil and my 9th anniversary. The day started out quite rocky. We had a huge rainstorm, which left our apartment under 1-2" of rain. It was all pouring in through our back door into our living room. The amount of rain was quite amazing, because it came to at least a foot up our back door and sneaked it's way in through the cracks around the door. All we could do was to watch the flood waters rise.

Neil called our landlord to come over and deal with the mess since she just raised our rent substantially. Historically, we would deal with minor inconveniences ourselves because we had a reasonably low rent. No longer! It is now our challenge to spend every penny of the $2,400 rent hike she imposed on us with minor and major repairs. Cue the evil laughter.

Our landlord took our rug to be cleaned and in the process of helping her take it out of the apartment, Neil threw out his back. When he does this, his spine is visibly crooked. One hip is noticeably higher than the other one, and he's in excruciating pain.

After cleaning up the mess and picking Lindsay up from school, we just took it easy and all watched a movie together. Our friend Graham came over to babysit Lindsay and Neil and I went out to eat at Po. Po is a restaurant in the village that was opened by Mario Batali. He since sold it and now one has just opened in our neighborhood. The meal was absolutely delicious. We shared a shaved fennel, watercress salad with dried cherry tomatoes, and then I had a pasta with sweet corn and chorizo. We finished off with a panna cotta for dessert with some marinated cherries. It was a wonderful evening, which we extended by having drinks at the Brooklyn Social Club.

The flowers are growing

I've been knitting a few rows of the intarsia here and there. I must admit that I needed a little auto-pilot knitting, so I knit one of the sleeves. I'm getting slowly better at the intarsia. I've been replacing the plastic bobbins with handmade "butterflies" (as Shirley Paden calls them). The plastic bobbins add quite a bit of weight that makes the knitting a bit unpleasant. Basically, the butterflies are just small center-pull skeins that you make by wrapping the yarn around two fingers. They are lightweight, so they are much nicer to knit with. You can see a couple of them at the bottom of the knitting.

After the intarsia is done, there's a bit of embroidery to do on top of it. I might scale that back a little. For one thing, I'm not very skilled at embroidery and for another, it might just be gilding the lily.

Intarsiaaaaack

I am currently knitting the Wildflower sweater for Lindsay from Lucinda Guy's book Handknits for Kids. When you look at the photo above, you think how cute. The colorwork is going to be really pretty when it's finished. When you look at the photo below, you think, boy is she nuts to knit something in intarsia with all those cursed bobbins tangling up on the back of the work.


I'm having a hard time finding a photo of the project. This is the best I could find. You have to scroll down to see the Wildflower sweater. It's going to be so sweet when it's finished. I was even able to use some stash yarn for the project, and only had to buy two additional skeins. I'm pretty much sticking to the same color-scheme for the sweater because I think Lucinda's color combinations are really gorgeous. I also really like the Dougie sweater and hat/scarf set in the book as well as the Jack Frost jacket and the knitted flowers. Does anyone ever really knit these baby blankets? Seems like an insane amount of work!

I am slowly getting better at the intarsia. I was being stingy with the amount of bobbins I made and was carrying one skein of blue across the whole thing. I added a few more blue bobbins and am now only carrying one color across the back at any given time. I can't say I love this technique. I also think that I'll make the back of the sweater plain blue because I can't really stomach the idea of another side of this glacially slow progress.

On another note, I've started a knitting group in my neighborhood. We meet the first Wednesday of each month at the Tea Lounge. So far there have only been one or two people who have come, but they have been really interesting women, so it's been very enjoyable.

Blue Dress

It looks as though I'm sewing for myself and knitting for Lindsay. This is a dress that I completed in my sewing class. It's a New Look pattern (6615) which was adapted a bit. I didn't add the ties in the back and made it a bit more fitted. I'm pretty pleased with it, although I think that the tie in back would have made it a bit more fitted over my derriere. I absolutely love the fabric, which is a Japanese fabric I got from Brooklyn General store. They are expanding their stock to not only have knitting and spinning, but now sewing and embroidery. And, no, I really do not want to become an embroiderer. I really appreciate all the adorable embroidery I've been seing on people's blogs, but I CAN'T learn one more thing. Family and friends may have heard me say this about spinning and sewing in the past. But, really now. Hee hee. I'm serious this time. The project I'm currently working on for Lindsay involves some embroidery, but that will be all. I swear it.

I think I look really dorky in this photo, but I was melting from the impromptu lovin' of a 3 year old.

Yellow Dress

Photos at long last! Isn't there something about the cobbler's children.....
I'm pretty happy with this dress. It fits Lindsay well. Hopefully I will get two seasons out of it. I made the length for a 5 year old. Keep in mind this pattern is from the early 70s, so short was in!!

I decided that smocking the variegated yarn probably wouldn't look great, so I changed the yarn to a solid. I'm pretty happy with the results. Lindsay likes it and very sweetly tells people that her mommy made it. And, no I don't bribe her with lollipops to do that!