fill-in-the-blank friday

via the little things we do

1. Over this Labor Day weekend I will be creating things.  I'm excited to do some sewing, spinning, knitting, crocheting, watercolor, playing around with my Bamboo tablet-- it's going to be a lovely time.

2. With the political debates going on right now, my thoughts are, "Oh, for the love of pete."  That about sums it up.

3. Today I'm shipping etsy orders, taking lots of pictures, spinning, and probably taking a nap at some point because there's a super-loud garbage truck that wakes me up at 6:45 on Friday mornings.  Ouch. 

4. The best thing I've cooked recently was um... does peanut butter and jelly count as cooking?

5. The last thing I bought was some absolutely beautiful roving to spin.  It's so soft and squishy!

6. The best movie I saw this summer was Moonrise Kingdom.  It was adorable and made me want to go on adventures.

7. The best book I read this summer was I Drink for a Reason by David Cross.  I read it on the beach and I was giggling the whole time.  

Have a wonderful day!

♥

traveling bee

Good morning sunshines!

It's been a little quiet around here lately because I have been traveling!  From Friday to Sunday I was in Connecticut for a fife and drum muster, then at six on Monday morning I was on a bus to New York.  It's been a little hectic, but lots and lots of fun.

I'll be posting some photos from the fife and drum muster soon, but for some reason, I just wasn't in the mood to take pictures while I was in the city.  I think it's because I haven't been there for a few months, and I just wanted to experience it without worrying about documenting it too much.  I did a lot of my favorite New York things-- I went up to the High Line, had a pink champagne macaron, met with one of my wonderful professors from FIT, frequented my favorite café, and stayed over with my adorable cousin!

she is the cutest.  seriously.  one of my favorite people on the planet.

I also went to a yarn shop I'd never been to-- oh my goodness, you guys.  The Yarn Company is a tiny little shop near Central Park and it is full of the most gorgeous yarn and fiber in the world.  I think I actually did a happy little clap when I walked in.  

This gorgeous Jill Draper roving caught my eye immediately and I carried it around with me the whole time I was in the store. 

It's so soft, and the colors are incredible.  And the packaging is so adorable that I haven't even taken the tag off yet.

The other roving that came home with me is this beautiful, beautiful robin's egg blue merino by Lorna's Laces.

this is 5 oz., too, but it's enormous!  It's fluffy and springy and I basically ran from the bus stop to my spinning wheel when I got home just so I could get this on the bobbin.

I've been scouring etsy for roving just this color for the last few weeks, but I'm weirdly picky about robin's egg blue and haven't been in love with any of them.  But this one?  Oh my goodness, it is perfect. 

So yes, there's a lot of spinning in my future-- which inspired these handspun tags!  They're available in sets of 6 in my etsy shop, if you'd like to adorn your own handspun with them.  I love displaying handspun-- it's like soft fluffy candy.  So I really needed something more attractive than the little scraps of paper I had been using to write down the information about each skein.

I'm off to try to get my phone fixed-- that darn thing.  It just spontaneously restarts over and over until it runs out of battery, which left me phoneless/mapless/clockless in New York.  Not helpful.  Here's hoping it gets its act together when faced with the threat of replacement.

Have a wonderful day!

♥

the garden in august

Just a few photos of the garden.

♥

fibery goodness

Well, helloooo!

(in my head I said that in a high, loud voice, like a Dame Edna voice.   We're two sentences in and I'm already talking about Dame Edna.  That's how you know it's a good post.)

Yesterday I finished spinning the grey alpaca to ply the 'Odds and Ends' fiber with, and I plied them together, and this is what I ended up with.

I've got to admit... I am completely in love with this yarn.  It's soft and squooshy and the colors blended together beautifully.  And there's a ton of yardage, too-- it's 856 yards out of a combined 8 ounces of fiber.  It's going to become a Lala's Simple Shawl that I'll wear more like a scarf.  I'm really excited about it, I think it'll be just enough texture to show off the yarn, but not so much that it will become muddled.

The grey alpaca makes it incredibly soft-- I was holding a skein up to my neck earlier, because I have pretty sensitive skin and I wanted to make sure the yarn wouldn't be itchy, but it was just fluffy and cozy.

It took about three hours just to do the plying on this yarn because there's so much of it and it's quite thin.  It's definitely my favorite handspun to date.

And after what must be the most ridiculous struggle in history with the postal service, I received some super-cute Ravelry stickers in the mail!  (Readers who don't knit, crochet, or spin:  Ravelry is basically a social networking site for fiber artists, and it is awesome.  If you've been wanting to learn, check out Ravelry and I guarantee you'll be intensely motivated.)  They were delivered to the wrong house, then nobody at the post office knew who the substitute mail carrier was that day, it was such a fiasco.  But some lovely person put the envelope back in their mailbox when they realized it wasn't theirs, and ta-da!  Stickers for me.  Aren't they adorable?  I think the middle one is going to go on my laptop.  

...And here's a picture of Bucky and Cocoa for no particular reason other than that they were being adorable.  Who doesn't love an adorable cat photo?

I'm off to alternately snuggle my cats and my yarn.  Have a great night!

♥

odds and ends

Good morning sunshines!

After spinning 12 oz. of pale yellow wool for my Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica scarf (which is finished!  Photos coming soon!), and another 4 oz. of a semi-solid for some secret spinning (also done!  Photos coming...eventually), I was ready to spin something with some color changes.  But apparently I am a tiiiiiny bit commitment-phobic when it comes to choosing roving colors, and I couldn't decide whether I wanted something pastel, or something dark, or something neutral-- so I ordered a 4.4 oz. 'Odds and Ends' bag from Into The Whirled Fiber Arts and got a bit of every possible color and fiber.  I took this photo yesterday morning, but I'm actually finished with the whole 4.4 oz. now and have a beautifully full bobbin.  Now I'm working on spinning up some gorgeous grey alpaca and merino blend to ply it with, because as much as I love how vibrant and saturated the Odds and Ends are, I'd like a more subtle overall effect for the shawl I'm planning on knitting with it.

I hope you're enjoying this rainy Tuesday-- it's perfect weather for curling up with tea and yarn!

♥

much love, monday

Hi there!

Here's what I'm loving this week.

this rustic, dreamy bed

this lovely photo, perfect for late summer

I'm not a crystal-chandelier person, but if I was, this would be the one for me.

this photo 

these lovely shades of pink

this pretty fashion plate (not that I'm biased at all just because it has my name in snazzy lettering...)

Have a wonderful week!

♥

brigantine

Just a few vacation snaps.

♥

jaunty seagull out for a stroll

my auntie Fern, the beach babe

seashells-- I'm  smitten with the deep teal color on the upper left one

Hope you all had a great week!
♥

much love, monday...sort of.

Hi everyone!  Much Love, Monday is postponed this week because I'm at the beach!  I took the above photo while I was packing some of my seashore essentials.  I'm about halfway through 'I Drink For a Reason' by David Cross, and I'm really enjoying it.  I never liked Arrested Development, but Cross's absurdist essays are irreverent and fun while still remaining thought-provoking.  The other book I want to read this week is 'Consider the Lobster' by David Foster Wallace, but I'm saving that until after my family has our annual crab night.  I don't want any crustacean-induced guilt.

My other beach essentials that aren't pictured here include a cover-up dress, an oversized button-down shirt, a sheer cotton scarf, and a bottle of SPF 50.  My skin color hovers somewhere between porcelain and paper, but I refuse to get sunburned.

I hope you're having a fantastic week!
♥

fill-in-the-blank friday

via the little things we do

1. I am proud of graduating Summa Cum Laude from FIT.  I just got my diploma in the mail a few days ago and it was really exciting and a bit surreal to see my name on it, telling the world that I did it.  Yay!

2. This weekend I will be heading to the beach!  I'll be knitting in the car and stopping to see some lovely friends on the way, then spending lots of time with my family.

3. A secret dream I have is to have an apartment or house (depending on where I'm living) with a big bathtub and read books surrounded by bubbles.

4. I can't handle proud parents.  I was watching a bit of the Olympics last night and I got a little teary every time the cameras zoomed in on the face of an athlete's parent.  I'm such a sap.

5. The most annoying thing in the entire world is being interrupted.  It's just so rude!  And I don't like the underlying message-- 'Whatever you have to say couldn't possibly be as important to you as what I have to say is to me.'  ...Ok, there are two other things that also really bother me.  One:  When people change the source of something on tumblr to their own tumblr.  Stop that!  If you didn't post something originally, you're not the source.  I don't think that word means what you think it means.  Two: When bloggers don't link to a source for an image that isn't theirs.  I mean, we all do it sometimes,  because sometimes it's impossible to figure out where something came from, but at least put a little effort in.  Google Images has a reverse image search now, it's super-easy to track down most pictures.  A little disclaimer that says 'These images are not mine' is not enough.   ...Now back to our regularly scheduled sunshine and cupcakes.

6. The most relaxing thing in the entire world is curling up with my cats and a movie and falling asleep twenty minutes into it.

7. I think everyone should read more books.  It's such an underutilized form of entertainment and it develops the imagination.  I also think it encourages empathy-- something the world could use a lot more of.

♥

one pretty thing

Hi lovelies!

I'd like to share one pretty thing with you today:

My acorn necklace.

I grew up hearing acorns falling on the roof and the porch of our house, and they've always held a special spot in my heart.  They're cute (of course) and they're inspiring-- they have so much potential.  Something small enough to fit in your pocket can become something so big that you can't reach your arms around it.  

The other reason I love acorns comes from one of my very favorite childhood books.  In Peter Pan, when Wendy attaches Peter's shadow back onto him, she tells him that if he'd like, he can thank her by giving her a kiss.  He gives her an acorn cap.  She makes a necklace from it, and it later saves her life when Tinkerbell tells the Lost Boys that Peter wants them to 'shoot the Wendy-bird' with an arrow and Toodles actually does.  ...typed out like that it does seem awfully violent for a children's book.  also, catty.  So this necklace is my sneaky literary homage.

Have a wonderful day!
♥