Bones X Stitch

My life is littered with random items from my time working at Pier One. I never intended on buying that much stuff when I worked there but when your job is to try and sell it to others, you end up selling it to yourself subconcsiosly. I cannot even tell you how many glasses or dishes ended up going to goodwill because I was never going to have those charming dinner parties I thought of having when I convinced myself to buy them.

Anyway, I have a ton of picture frames thanks to this compulsive shopping habit. I recently just finished this project that has been half done for roughly a year. Inspired by Day of the Dead stuff I made these cute little skeleton's for this Pier One frame.

For the free PDF of the skeleton patterns go here.

Graduation at Hogwarts, Clinton, and a Cold

This last weekend I had the opportunity to get the heck out of New York and attend my little sister's graduation from Yale. I decided I would document this with a bullet point blog entry.
-Yale looks like Hogwarts. It may be a juvenile observation, but it really does. Throw in some professors and deans wearing funny robes and hats carrying ornate, old fashioned flags and props and it really does feel like your at that new Harry Potter amusement park.
-I got to see President Bill Clinton speak which was just incredible. Wicked smart that 42nd.
-I saw Aretha Franklin get an honorary degree.
-I saw the Secretary of Energy get an honorary degree.
-I failed to use my NY honed celebrity spotting skills on any of the celebrities who attended which makes me a little sad. I'm usually really good at that but I missed both Denzel Washington and Steven Spielberg who were both apparently there.
-No matter what SPF sunblock I use it seems to be an inevitability that I will get sunburned at graduation, thankfully though it was not a repeat of the Santa Fe lobster red burn of 04.
-After having suffered from really bad allergies all year, I was finally feeling a little better up until Saturday morning when I was getting on the New Haven bound Metro North when I came down with a cold.
-I had trouble regulating my voice since I could barely hear so there is a good chance that I spent a weekend yelling at my sister's friend's families and misinterpreting everything they said. Actually this is not really new since I am partially deaf, I only ever hear half of what people say anyway. Have you ever played that kid game, telephone, with a partially deaf person? The results are way more interesting when you do.
-Every road in Wallingford CT is named either Barnes or Main, or so it seems when you have no sense of direction and are driving around trying to find the super cute downtown area.
-Despite what I hoped, people will practically sit in your lap on a crowded Metro North train despite coughing up a storm and blowing through a box of kleenex.
-Those people are also the ones desperately trying to open novelty size screw top bottles of champagne to mix with their orange juice at 8:00AM on a Tuesday.

And on a completely unrelated note... As of last Friday I have been in NY for 5 years. I remember last year when I told myself, I should really try and be getting out of hear by 5. Yeah, that didn't happen so much.

Well I think that just about sums up my weekend. Happy Graduation season everyone.


See what I mean by Hogwarts? Either that or imagining Lyra Belacqua running around from roof to roof.

Industrial Skies

Otherwise known as my foray into steampunk. I've been digging the whole steampunk think for a while, I daresay since Back to the Future 3 when Doc comes back in that time traveling train. I can't really pull off the look though, it is awfully fussy for my roll out of bed and put on a T-shirt way of life. That does not mean that I don't cruise Etsy for all it's steampunk jewelry glory and love the artwork on various dystopian books. It was a steampunk theme week at book blog, The Book Smugglers that inspired me and after spending some time reading reviews and amazon wish-listing anything with a pretty cover, I decided to take that inspiration to graph paper and try to translate it to knitting. The result is this cowl I am calling Industrial Skies.




This cowl is knit on Size 4 needles with sport weight yarn. It requires about 250 yards of each color.

Interesting story about the antique gold colored yarn. I was down in Soho two days before leaving for Christmas and the H & M was having a one day 75% off sale on their scarves. The selection was boring but the yarn was awesome so I purchased a bunch of things for about $2.00 a piece and ripped them all out. That is where the gold yarn came from. It is equivalent to most shiny rayon tape novelty yarns like Karabella Glimmer. The gray yarn I used is Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport.



After taking a few pics at home against the white wall (the only place in my apartment that gets anywhere near enough sunlight), I didn't think it was the right atmosphere. So I enlisted J at work to grab "something like a blowtorch" and some goggles and meet me on the fire escape.



To purchase the pattern, Industrial Skies, follow this link: