luxe

well. saturday we hung out with jake’s highschool friend brian, and had a fun time. we ended up talking about politics, accidentally…i swear it. he is a super conservative republican (no offense republican readers, unless you are ann coulter, in which case…), and i guess i forget how some people really believe that this war has a point, and that oil is a justified reason for letting so many people lose their lives and not just leave the country already. that and his belief that most americans just want something for free…everyone. sigh.

by that point i had the migraine back anyway and jake, who had worked that morning was sleeping on the swing next to me, so i was able to end it that way. which was good. i am old enough not to bother discussing differences with people. no point. none. so i had a rough night on saturday. i woke up sunday, jake made pancakes, the first time for him, and they were awesome! and then fell back asleep, and basically slept the entire day, waking up around 9p and falling asleep for the night a few hours later. insane. i didn’t call my dad for dad’s day, because i was in a world of my own, and asleep. and i didn’t call today because i feel like a big arsehole.

so that big order is due in about 2 weeks, and i still haven’t gotten my sock yarn or fiber, which i need to dye in order to spin the yarn. not good. i made a small order from another place which will hopefully show up soon, in the meantime.

tonight, i am watching hell’s kitchen and i looooove gordon ramsay! so evil in the kitchen and then when he is outside with them, he is so charming. did you know that he was a professional footballer in scotland before he was a chef? wha? that one has the bite to back up the bark, i reckon. i wouldn’t want him to kick my arse. it would not be a good thing.

it is thundering outside and starting to rain and i love to hear the rain at night. love it. the only thing better is the sound of the ocean.

i sat down to spin some big fluffy wool/mo/sparkle/etc batts i carded up and my legs hurt so much, they are still cramping, that after about an hour, i limped out. it is driving me nuts to not have the stuff i need and then i have been feeling like i am a million years old. and i am only 1000 years old.

and here is peeps with the beginnings of a sock…her face looks so incredibly freaky…no? she looks like a gremlin or something.

oh, does anyone have a good and easy way to graft a toe on a top down socky? i got “sensational knitted socks” this weekend and it has patterns written for dpns and 2 circs and how to alter the size. it looks really good and thorough. i actually finished a sock, all the way to the toes! and used the stitched method and it is crappy. my fault, but still. so…advice?

smooooooch!
n.

well, i have hideous leg cramps and have taken the 3rd shower of the evening in an attempt to calm them, at least a bit. i had that overwhelming pain thing that makes my face start going nuts and then you realize that you are starting to cry. that ugly crying, like you do when you are a kid, and get a kickball in the face and attempt not to cry. i am such a baby. so. no spinning. plus the lack of fiber. still.

i washed and picked shannon’s fiber and it looks really gorgeous, i am a bit jealous of it, but i dyed some nylon yarn that i picked up with amy and it is really pretty. a sweet deal for a mere dollar and the same dyepot i was using anyway. i learned some lessons about dyes not being like mixing paint, that is for sure. because of the pigments, the turnout when you mix colors can be really unpredictable, so the turqoise i added obviously darkened some of the green and yellow, so i started to actually use my color theory to try to tweak the colors, but they aren’t pure pigment, so you don’t know what they mixed to get that color, until of course, you set the dye and it come out some odd color. pretty. really pretty, but not what i expected. i ended up adding fuschia to try to make it more like teal than green. go figure. the wash water was navy blue. after picking apart all the wet newly dyed locks, they covered thew hole back deck pretty much. a lot of fiber. i hadn’t actually just put fiber in a big giant pot all together with water before, and it really is easier on the fiber, i think. i may start trying bigger dye batches with single colors, or a variance of a single and then blend, instead of handpainting the fiber, which i love, but is the lazy way to do it. is that bad? it feels nice and…

not much more to report. my close close friend who i had to stop talking to called me late tonight to tell me that she missed me and loved me and i almost started to cry. i think about her every day. i hope she knows that i didn’t stop talking to her because i don’t care, but because i do care. too much.

i guess nothing else, other than another apology for my drug addled blogging. shameful! but i knew not what i was doing. in a big way. i had also turned on the airconditioning with all of the windows open, which jake wasn’t so happy about when he got up. i don’t remember it even faintly.

oh, does anyone have a cat toothpaste that they use that the cats actually like? i would be indebted to you forever. and then we don’t have to save up for cat dentures, which are very expensive, especially when they insist on having a “grill”.

i am going to do a small update on luxe this weekend, so keep an eye peeled…

oh, and a really funny photo..this is taken in UFO my favorite antiquey place, eddie put this sign by the fan…i told him how hilarious it was and he told me it wasn’t meant to be funny and that he used to have a photograph of a mangled hand but his wife made him take it down because it was too gorey. did i spell that wrong? anyway, he also has a sign up front saying that if he catches a shoplifter he will break their arms. and i think he really would try, although he says he never catches them. on that happy note…

xo,
n.

i dyed a bunch of fiber that shannon asked me to over dye for her, and i think it came out okay. hopefully she will like it. it was gray fiber, dyed green that she wanted to be kind of teal. the turqoise that i put over it brought out the green too much and i ended up adding fuschia and it looked like it worked out ok. i get nervous that someone will want to deck me if it isn’t right. i also dyed some of the brown sheep mill ends i had, it is their blend of wool and mohair, and it is all i really have, so i figured i would try to do something, at least. i also dyed some yarn i had spun, and it looks really pretty. pics when it is all dry and ready to go.

i felt crummy for the rest of the day, i have had headaches all the time lately. i finished the rest of the postcards last night, late, and i just need to address them, sand the edges (which jake said he would do for me because sanding stuff, including nailfiling makes me want to throw up. dunno why) and they are ready to go. they look good. i am glad i did it.

i was trying to sort/catch up with my bloglines and ran across this mayhem…on one of my favorite blogs…posie gets rosy that was about an article she read about anthropologie…i will let you just read her article, which exploded with comments because…well…it seemed like people didn’t want to admit that they had been marketed to. america is all about marketing, and in the end, even us indies take all of the time that we take to make our booth look gorgeous, us look cute, doing shows, websites, cards, tags, and whatever else we make to not only sell a gorgeous product, but one that speaks to people…and it tells them they must have it. it is a fact of life. people are emotional buyers. if you are buying something that you don’t absolutely NEED to live, than you are most likely emotionally buying. and shops that do it the best…what can i say? it is no different than cosmo or jane or the more hip ones, showing you how cool or pretty or smart or whatever you could be if you just had that. i assure you the antropologie/urban outfitters who are owned by the same peeps, i think , are just doing their advertisting. and advertisting is well…sort of under the radar. if you read the books, you would be amazed at what they count on you to do, and what you do. it is marketing, plain and simple. one of my best friends is really into the psychology of these things, so i hope his wife, diana, would make him sit down and post on my blog about it, i know he loves to talk about it…

let me know what you think of that article and why people have such a hard time admitting that they are not a the most unique person in the world, and who cares? just be you, feel good. do stuff.

*edit…oh man! i blogged on ambien, which i haven’t taken in a while due to the fact that i become a lunatic and don’t remember it. sorry. i adjusted the post a bit and hope no one read it…well, lisa did, but anyone else. sigh. i think the link works now.

i was up until the wee hours doing collages for the postcard swap. i did about half of them, and will probably do the other half today. the came out nicely. i will post photos. i will. i felt better after i worked on some art stuff last night. i also got some copper leafing from the art supply yesterday and used that on the pieces. i forgot to buy the adhesive for it, but i made it work. a word of advice…don’t use it with sticky fingers…ok? and anytime i have my mod podge out, i must have glue all over me, legs, feet, hands, you name it. it is so fun to peel off, too.

ok. nothing to say. nothing. why did i even just blog? no idear.

and some of my bits and pieces yarn i have been spinning:

i am having a hard time lately with feeling like i don’t do enough creatively. at all. that i need to be cranking things out in all sorts of media. and i do. i need to make a list so that i can keep on track with what i need to do.

one of those things…i signed up for a postcard swap late one night and thought until earlier today that it wasn’t due until next month. or next week. oops. so, i am off to cut up the paper for them. now. i feel really odd. and hot. so i think i am going to turn the a/c on.

i need to get my ass in gear and get things together. i am totally broke, so i can’t go to ny for renegade to help at the yarn booth, i feel bad about that. i turned down to split a booth with a great girl because i knew that the heat for two days would put me in the hospital. so that always frustrates me when there are things i want to do that i know i can’t do realistically.

i know i keep moaning about it, but i am out of fiber, and spinning up odd bits and pieces, despite the need to do actual spinning to fill bigger orders and nothing to fill them with. frustrating.

i am off to do work and stop complaining. i am a whiner.

xo
n.

jake went with me and i only had a cleaning and xrays and the hygenist was super nice. she said that the gaping hole in my mouth may not need a root canal (i hope) it may be able to be filled because it looks really clean, like it just broke. i can’t remember if i had a filling there or not. wanna see it? do ya? it is a bit hard to see, but the silver thing is a crappy filling my last dentist put in even though i wanted the white stuff, and the gaping hole…that is the…hole. so. how cool is that machine. and the pics behind it are of my teeth, as well. the lady told me my teeth are really nice, which stunned me. i thought they sucked. i guess the monthly teeth brushing is really paying off. i also asked about getting my front teeth smoothed out because they are chipped for no apparent reason and they are a bit bucky and big. i have always hated that, so it would be really cool to fix it, both things. they were super nice there…look how unafraid i look…if a bit disheveled…i am wearing spinning clothes, my hair needs to be dyed really really badly and i have almost no makeup on. other than that…gorgeous! i am still really nervous to find out if it will be a root canal or just a filling, although the nurse was very unimpressed by it, and i thought she would be shocked when she saw the giant crater. so that was really good. also, she gave me this tiny tin of dental floss that is adorable.

what else do i have to show you? well! remember the stuff i got in the mail that i wanted to photo before i told you…well! i ordered the cat from here at her adorable etsy store called moss and then she made the two sheep out of my handspun, the greeny one is made from a yarn that has big spirals in it that make it extra sheepy. i cannot believe how great they crochet up! and she made me the two headed kitty, which i love. i actually have a tattoo of a pink two headed kitty on my wrist. she put in loads of other great stuff, as well. i am hoping to work with her to do some crochet kits, including the little sheep, which she designed herself, as well as the two headed cat and she has a ninja on her etsy store…so go and check it out! she is having a baby next month, so order stuff while she still has a moment! you are an inspiration diana! she is the kind of woman that can do anything she is interested in and do it super well.

i am still organizing my bloglines, which is a formidable task and i have a hard time figuring out how to categorize things and whether to separate friends, but then i actually have become friends with so many people that it becomes an issue in and of itself. the main thing is my memory is horribly and i forget what blog is whose and get totally out of touch. so i may not do a friends category after all.

otherwise, i am working on my fourth sock and i think i have some of the things i was confused about figured out now. my biggest issue is that i am not sure how to change the numbers on patterns to do bulkier yarns or to alter a pattern from dpn’s to two circs. if anyone has advice or knows of some other book than the cat bordhi one, gimme a holler. i imagine that just like with hats, once i get comfortable with making them, i won’t need a pattern anymore unless i am making something complex. usually once i figure things out, and make a couple i am solid. i am a slow learner, i think, but once it is in the brain, it is there. it is odd because obviously the engineering part of knitting and crochet is what is difficult. the actual sculptural aspect is not hard for me. so when i look at a pattern without a schematic and have to visualize what it will look like, i can feel my brain writhing about in my head. poor short attention spanned brain.

speaking of brains, i had a hideous migraine again, although i got rid of it i feel really sleepy and out of it.

the new hell’s kitchen is on, i love gorden ramsey. he is such a badass. you know how girls like “bad boys”?(i hate even typing it) men like him are my idea of a badass, not some pot smoking, hippied out loser who is not allowed to drive. i like talent, passion…or even someone who is so passionate about the things and people that he loves that he would do anything to protect them…and that is what makes my jake a badass. my own little badass. such a sexpot, that one!

also, the new show how to get the guy, which is a really cool dating show which i wish i would have been able to watch and understand as a kid. i hope that anyone single and looking will watch it. it is not the least bit negative towards women, or men, it just shows you how important it is to give people the impression that you want them to get. simple things like being approachable, which is one of the biggest issues for me, even in dealing with people in general. what else? not telling people everything, especially not every gory detail of your miserable life. anyway, you singles, i won’t mention any names, check it out and i bet you see a bunch of stuff that you do wrong. i said to jake the other day, i wish i would have had the faintest idea how to deal with people when i was young. i was picked on so much and we moved so often that i just found it easier to appear aggressive so people wouldn’t pick on me. it didn’t matter whether i had a lot of friends because we were gone soon enough. but as a teen, and an adult, just in dealing with people, i could have skipped that parts of my life that had the terrible life-sucking people in them. and that would have been a good thing.

i spun some fairly thin silk today that i had dyed…really pretty soft purple and mossy green, sort of pale. i will post photos soon. i am not sure whether to ply them together or leave them as a single, they are about sport weight, i think. i never used the regular flyer before today and it is really nice.
i am getting sleepy sleepy.

there are some new yarn photos on my flickr, please let me know if you are interested before i list them…

so….xoxo,
n.

ok. saturday….sick as a frickin dog. i wanted to hang out with friends, which we haven’t done in a quite a while, but my migraine/vomiting was not permitting that. yesterday, we lounged about, and i slept on and off all day, and then slept last night, as well, which is insane. i woke up with….a headache.

jake made a dental appt for me today because i refused to due to my intense fear of dentists, which you know. i have a gaping hole in a molar…and i mean gaping. it bleeds fairly often which makes me feel like puking. so much about puking in one post. anyway, i fear that i wil need some expensive dental work and just dental work at all. i swore after kahlo had to go to the vet for her teef that i would be brave, as well. although it is possible that jake will have to catch me and put me in a carrier, as well. and then hold me whilst at the dentist to prevent me running away. hopefully the dentist will not stick a thermometer up my butt or squeeze pee out of me. jake said he would make sure i am ok. this is just a checkup, but then i will have to schedule whatever needs to be done to fix the tooth and i will worry until the work is done and make myself sick about it. so. that is at 3.

before then, because it is an overcast day, great for project photo-taking, i will take photos of all of the stuff i promised to photo for ya, so hopefully tonite will be new photos.

i had insane dreams about some british project dealing with people and amoebas. i cannot even explain further because it was very confusing. also, angela from material whirled.com was staying at my house which was enormous and i didn’t feel well but kept checking on her and telling her how to use things like the coffeemaker, like she can’t figure it out herself. i accidentally didn’t return an email she sent ages ago, and i think i had guilt on my mind, or something.

what else? i have been trying to organize my bloglines subscriptions because i have more than a 100 and i don’t know what is what and don’t read some of them because of that and got rid of some that i have sort of grown out of. initially, they were 100% knitting when i firts started reading blogs. i felt horribly guilty getting rid of any of them, i just have too many. also, some don’t update, or don’t work, so i ditched those.

ok, i am ready to literally pee myself, so off i go to do stuff, and pee.
peeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
n.

i know i promised to post photos, but i was up all night, jake worked this morning, so i was up when he left and didn’t fall asleep until 6 am or so. i had a headache. i woke up around 8:30a, because we were going to the ligonier market, i got ready and we left around 10a, still a bad bad headache. we went, i stopped at the yarn store to get the laceweight i needed plus some pretty and durable yarn for more socky things, maybe even legwarmers, i dunno, tired at this point. we got home, jake and i hung out and then i took some meds and fell asleep. i woke up feeling groggy and crazy. when i get migraines, i always have a euphoric period and i used to think i was fine, and then i would get hit with a mega migraine when it came back. so butta and amy were coming over because we were bbq-ing on our tiny $10 charcoal grill which is really cute and jake did an awesome job. ok, so i eat a burger, no bun and some coleslaw that i made that was really good, not my usual sweet and sour, but a traditional coleslaw. a few minutes after eating i felt sick. really really sick. i hadn’t eaten all day except for some bumbleberry pie (which wasn’t as good as i thought it would be). so i went upstairs and took some migraine stuff and then proceeded to barf my guts out for a while. by the time i felt better, at 10p, everyone was leaving. sucked. so, i got no work done today and also didn’t get to really spend time with anyone. and my head still hurts, so i worry that i will be sick later tonite, as well.

while i was in ligonier, there was a big antique street thingy, i am not sure if it is all the time, or just this weekend because there were no signs for it. anyway, i saw this gorgeous old quilt for $19 (why do i feel the need to tell everyone what i pay for stuff? i am like my jewish granny!) and jake got it for me.

also, at kathy’s, jamey, the first person that i bought fiber from works there ocassionally, she is in her 40’s and has a farm with cattle and sheep and chucks and angora bunnies, among other things, and told me that she is only going to keep a small spinner’s flock and get rid of the rest of sheep because it is too expensive. pretty crazy. the reason i needed to stop in was that i sold a skein of handpainted laceweight merino and when i went to wind it, things went awry, to put it mildly. she said that i could just soak the skein in a small glass pan and drain it and then use hot water with the dye and add the vinegar and it would set without heating it further and then the yarn won’t tangle so much. the customer has been waiting forever and i don’t know when my yarn order will come, so i decided just to pay retail and get some skacel undyed fiber. so wish me luck. i have never dyed anything just with the hot pour method and not heat set it. but i will try. worst case scenario, i need to microwave it. i just want to make sure it is colorfast. anyone who has tried this, drop me a line.

i was looking through old yarn photos (from last year or so) and was so embarrassed that i had shown them to anyone. man, they sucked. so rough and lumpy and even my actual skeining looked like poop. it is so funny how when you are into something and first learn to do it, all of your mistakes look pretty and unique. i see my yarns now and it is so remarkably different. i left a 45 yard skein for kathy, who is at the giant fiber thing in indianapolis, so i hope she enjoys them.

i hope to take photos to-morrow.
so so tired, even though i have slept off and on all day. and so behind on blogs. and unable to work on the big order i have to send out because i am out of dyed fiber, the only fiber i have is special stuff that is super expensive, silk, camel, etc.

did you guys hear about poor barbaro the racehorse? poor guy! anyway, he is doing well, it says in the article that he is flirting with the mares, so that is good news. he will now be in for a life of being a stud. literally. so not so bad. at all.

pray that my migraine is done. ok?
pass the grey poupon,
n.

hmf. i feel so out of sorts lately. i feel the need to blog and then have nothing interesting to say. i also feel like i get nothing done, even though really i do.

what have i been doing? well, not taking photos. that is for sure. i got an amazing package in the mail and i will keep it a secret until i take photos and post it to-morrow. really really amazing. oooh! can’t wait, eh?

i have been doing some more freeformy yarns due to the intense lack of fiber at the mo…i ordered a bunch but i am not sure when it will come, so i may need to take my meager earnings and buy a 10 lbs in the meantime to tide me over. i haven’t dyed in weeks. it is an odd feeling. really really odd. so i have been trying to just use all of the dyed stuff i have sitting around, and there isn’t much left, honestly. additionally, it is all a similar color, so i am getting really sick of spinning the same color everything.

we went to petsmart to get litter and kahlo’s gross soft food, the only one she is interested in eating. what is in this culinary delight, you ask? well, it is a combination of super stinky fishes, one of them is big pieces of nasty sardines. i was vegetarian and then vegan for years and whole animule parts still gross me out…and in this food, it is a sardine cut into 3, no heads that i have seen(so far…i just puked in my mouth) and the skin and everything is still on, you can see the inside of the guts, etc. i do eat meat, although if it isn’t ground up i feel sick sometimes. more and more it just grosses me out. i have a hard time not thinking about what it is. not even the cruelty issue (which i do care about)but the gross factor. i know that ground meat could be made out of bad stuff, but at least i don’t know. no eyeballs. you know? anyway, the cats all go crazy over this gross food, even pavel, who tends to only eat stuff that his papa eats…you know, cause he is a boy, not a cat. or a man. i dunno what he thinks. ok, so where was this story going? KITTENS!! they had the cutest frickin kittens. i die over them. there were two baby peepses(is that word?) that is to say, long haired mostly white with brown tabby parts on them, one of them was like a wild wild animule attacking all the other cats’ tails and just being crazy in general, despite the fact that she was tiny. there was a black one climbing up the inside of the cage. a baby pavel that was tiny and looked super sleepy and a russian blue-looking boy that would go home with anyone, i loved that guy. the others were a couple of months old and were full on baby kittens, this dude was lanky, but still little and reminded me of egon. i told jake that pavel would love to have someone to play with and beat up. we didn’t get a kitten. but i keep thinking about that boy. for all of the cats that i have had, i have never picked one. ever. they show up, or whatever drama. sort of like boyfriends, or crazy friends. can i crash at your place? i am in a fight with my mom and i haven’t eaten in a week…and i have fleas. and no money. do you happen to have a kitten-sized baby bottle and formula? could you warm it up? thanks. due to the disgusting state of our house, due to my poor, poor housekeeping abilities (my mom told my a while ago that i better watch it or jake would ditch me for it) and the smell of pee and sardine-flavoured cat puke, i don’t think he is super eager to get another kitten. they are too cute. i cannot bear it. and then, i feel out of sorts, so someone new to love, a new friend who really digs you is a pretty great idea, no? ah well.

the one upside to the gross cat food is that if you smell kahlo’s fur, she smells like the ocean. it makes me nostalgic for the ocean. mmmm. ocean.

i got a steamer a couple of weeks ago to steam the yarn to set the twist rather than washing them and sometimes losing the elaborate parts. it is amazing to see the yarn untwist under the heat. amazing. the only problem is that the steam melts the sequins a bit. and i have all of these handstrung vintage sequins (more than a 1000 for about 100-150 yards usually) as well as the chunks of sequins that i spin in, and they sort of melt a bit, not fully melt, but sort of warp. surprisingly, the superthin nylon thread seems fine, which is great, because i use it a lot because it is clear and easy to work with when i have sequins or beads. regular thread, even silk thread will snag on the sequins and the individual threads will split and break and spill my sequins that i sat and strung all over the place. and then i am not a happy gal. at all.

to-morrow we are going to the ligonier farmer’s market in the morning (argh, morning!). there is a booth that sells rootbeer on tap out of their truck(!) that jake goes crazy over, all kinds of crazy flavors, like clove rootbeer, and you can buy bottles, as well. the berry farm has a booth, so i am hoping to score some berries and a pie. and when everyone else is eating dinner, i will be eating pie. cause dinner is just a waste of time. their pies. oh. i am not even such a big pie girl. i would kill for a good rhubarb pie. i have some rhubarb from the farmer’s market in the fridge, but am too lazy to stew anything other than yarn. whilst we are in ligonier, i plan to stop at kathy’s yarn shop to get some laceweight to dye for a customer, my order is taking forever, and i don’t want her to think i am screwing with her. i am thinking of taking kathy a little skein for a pressie. she is a bit of a hard person to get a read on, and it took about a year for her to start being friendly to me, like i needed to show some knitting cred. not that i really have any. i knit toeless socks. she designs for lots of magazines, mainly insane cabled things, but still very well known in the knitting world, i reckon.

i have been bad about links lately…so how about this? my oldest friend (really! i think he is) dave alway sends me fantastic links…here is a hilarious site that makes an insane fountain show, bellagio style out of diet coke and mentos. i may be forced to try this. on a way smaller scale. enjoy…woooooohooooo!

kitten smoochies….
eeep!
n.

i spun so so much today! i mailed out packages, carded up a bunch of stuff and spun it and that was pretty much my day. i made some amazing yarns, though. i haven’t done a lot of freeform yarns…which is to say that i have had to produce a few of each yarn and they are neater yarns than these ones. i will skein them tomorrow and post em. so look out! and i probably won’t be adding much to the luxe site, so if you see something you want, email me before i put it aside for the wholesale order. ok? got it? good.

i am feeling incredibly unfocused and am super behind on my blogs, reading, researching, doing fine art things…when i spin, i can just set myself up and go, so i just put my head down and work.

i signed up for a postcard swap in the middle of the night a while ago, so i also have 20 postcards to make. i will likely just do some collage. i will keep you posted, of course.

there is a new show on called windfall, i am afraid to even mention it, because all the shows i like get taken off of the air after a few episodes. there was an amazing song in it and when i when to the website, i couldn’t figure out who did anything but the themesong. so. there is that.

i picked berries and took peeps outside with me on her harness, which she loves, and she went walking through the berries like she was in the jungle, little nerd that she is. i have been getting about a pint of strawberries a DAY. insane, huh? and that excludes the ones that the little slugs and squirrels, etc, eat.

i am really wanting to go to the local berry farm to get some berries and a little pie. they make the best pies in the world. really good. you walk in there and even if you don’t like pie, you will succumb. also, they have a big gross llama and an old horse that lets you pet it, and apple orchards and all you want to pick flowers and that is always fun. it is a few bucks. so you can’t beat that. oh, and chickens. walking around cockadoodledooing.

smoochies,
n.