Lee Does Stuff

Lace Stenciled Framed Song Lyrics! (+our wedding music)

If you’ve been following my blog, you know how I made 60 of these painted frames with song lyrics for our wedding decorations/favors…

Well, a lot of wedding guests loved them and took one home, but we had a ton left at the end of the night, which we boxed back up and took home with us…

So we now have 30 of them hanging on our big white living room wall! Yay!! There are several duplicate lyrics, some of which I already changed out to engagement photos, but once we get our wedding photos I’ll switch out some more lyrics with photos (but just a few, because we love the look of the lyrics!):

So, hey, you want to know how to make these yourself? It’s a pretty simple project, but a bit time (and space) consuming… Well, that’s if you’re making 60 like I did… If you just make a few, it shouldn’t take long. (This project was totally inspired by Mark Montano‘s Big Ass Book of Home Decor and Mark’s love of spray paint!)

I made 2 different types of painted frames: textured frames that were just plain spray painted, and smooth(ish) frames that were painted with lace used as stencils.

Your first step is to take a trip to your local thrift store (or several of them) and find frames – whatever sizes you want (mine were 3×5, 4×6, and 5×7), either textured to do the simple version, or plain untextured frames to do the lace stenciling. (Of course, you can do the simple version with plain frames too, if you want to.)

For the textured frames, simply take out the glass/backing (be sure to keep track of which goes with which frames), lay the (clean) frame down on a protected surface (like newspaper) in a ventilated space (I did it all outside, but breeze/wind makes it tough – an open garage would be ideal – either way, wear a face mask when doing lots of spray painting!), and spray (as the spray paint can instructs).

I did them in batches of 6-10 at a time – sprayed 1 coat over them all, then went back with a 2nd coat over them all. Be sure to get the sides (unless the frame has an interesting edge and you choose not to paint over it). After letting dry for 5-10 minutes on the newspaper, I transferred them to an outdoor table to dry completely (or, until bringing them inside for the night).

For the lace stenciled frames, there are a couple extra steps. You’ll need: spray adhesive, spray paint, plenty of space to work, and lots of newspaper to cover your work surface, and a face mask for safety so you don’t breathe in all those glue and paint fumes.

And then the lace itself – find vintage doilies, curtains, and other home decor items from thrift stores, with interesting patterns. I’ll show you lots of examples of different kinds of lace used as stencils, in a minute…

First, spray the lace with a thin coat of spray adhesive (with it sitting on newspaper).
Stick the lace onto the frame, as you want it placed – be sure to stick it all down the best you can.
Spray a good thick coat over the frame through the lace stencil. (At first, I was doing 2 coats, like with the plain painted frames, but sometimes the lace would become un-stuck after the first coat, so the second coat would make it blurry.)
Let dry for a minute or so, then carefully lift off the lace (you don’t want the glue to stick it on there permanently!), and lay it flat somewhere to dry (you can use the same pieces again later).
Let dry completely as the spray paint can instructs.

Here’s what my yard looked like during this project:

And some of the stenciled frames, drying:

I really like how the textured frames look too! We ended up taking home mostly stenciled frames, which I’m happy about, but I might thrift for some more frames like those crazy curvy designs below and make more of those:

Here are a couple of the textured frames we did take home – that green one is one of my absolute favorites!

Note – you can click on the pictures to go to the flickr pages and read what songs the lyrics came from, if you’re curious. A couple more simple textured frames:

And some close ups of the lace stenciling over a couple different kinds of frame surfaces (the one on the left is some kind of coated fabric surface, and shiny metal on the right):

And now to show you all different kinds of lace options…

These 3 (above and below) are stenciled with doilies – the above/left frame is the doily pictured in the above/left of the photo, and the other two are the same positions as well.

Below, these are stenciled with pieces of vintage lace curtains (I think, maybe tablecloths?) that covered the whole frames…

You can see how the lace on the left, with the fine mesh, made a more subtle, textured pattern when painted through (another example here, and one that didn’t turn out so well here), and the lace on the right, with the big holes, made the more graphic, bold design.

Another big lace curtain, cut into pieces for these…

…laid over partially for the purple one, and over the whole frames for the other 2 (green above and blue below).

And then, a messed up, weirdly shaped piece of lace, that I cut into different sized pieces, around the curved shape of the lace design…

You can see how the same lace can look different when used on a shiny painted surfaced frame (above, orange), or an unpainted wood frame (below).

And lastly, I got this big Noah’s Ark themed kid’s room decor lace thing, which I cut into all different kinds of pieces…

…since there was so much going on, I could get lots of different looks out of the same lace item. See those square parts, the top edging with the long curved rectangle shapes, and then all the curves and different hole designs in the pictures…

So, all the frames above and below here came from that same lace thing, cut and placed different ways (I obviously really like the squares).

Look at your local thrift store for lace in the home decor section, with tablecloths, with dishcloths, with curtains, on end cap sections… I find lace in weird places sometimes. If you try out this project, I’d love to see your frames!

Oh, and a side note, just a reminder that my October club ebook includes 7 of my favorites of these lyric artwork things for printing out.

If you want to make your own, it’s easy if you have a photo editing program that can do text (and some experience using it) – just download some fun fonts (some of my favorites for this project are Bleeding Cowboys, Angioma, 1942 Report, Benny Blanco, VNI-Thuphap, Schneller), type your favorite lyrics, with the text box set to justify, and mess with the text size, letter spacing, line spacing, etc until it looks good.

Because it somewhat relates… want to know about the music we played at our wedding? We spent tons of time putting together playlists – an hour of songs to play before, and about 3 and a half hours worth for after.

The ceremony was bookended by The Magnetic Fields – It’s Only Time for walking down the aisle, and The Book of Love walking back down after we were married.

I love the whole playlist, but I’ve put together kind of a best-of that’s 1 mix CD length:

The Book Of Love / The Magnetic Fields

We’ve Only Just Begun / Grant Lee Buffalo (covering The Carpenters)

Ceremony / New Order

The Best Is Yet To Come / Tony Bennett

Hazy / Rosi Golan feat. William Fitzsimmons

Lovin’ You Lots and Lots / The Norm Wooster Singers

I’ll Be Your Mirror / The Velvet Underground & Nico

Summers / Loney, Dear

I Found My Way / Dusty Springfield

Our Love Is Here To Stay / Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) / Marvin Gaye

Top Of The World / The Carpenters

Darlin’ Companion / Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash

The Greatest Sum / The Avett Brothers

Grow Old With Me / John Lennon

Fly Me To The Moon / Julie London

Pop Goes My Heart / Pop

I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) / The Proclaimers

The Very Thought Of You / Elvis Costello

On The Radio / Regina Spektor

Take Me / Karen Dalton

All I Want Is You / U2

It’s Only Time / The Magnetic Fields

I had to put some boundaries on it in order to cut 4 1/2 hours down to 80 minutes – many of the songs played at the wedding were songs that Pete or I had put on mixes to each other when we were first dating, so since those already existed on mixes, I left them off of this mix (mostly). A lot of the songs have a specific memory for us, or some reason for being on this mix beyond the song itself. And then, I just tried to make it a good quality mix, lots of variety, ups and downs, etc. A glimpse into our wedding soundtrack.

And lastly, about wedding music, my brothers played a set for us! A medley of some favorite tv theme songs (including My So-Called Life and Pete & Pete) and a fantastic rendition of I’m Gonna Be (which is why that song made the cut onto the wedding mix)! It was so good!! Yay!

September 22nd – October 9th photos

Yeah, I’m pretty behind on photo-of-the-day posts, so I’ll start catching up now – from where I left off, 2 weeks before we left on our trip, up until the day before the wedding. I still have hundreds of trip photos to sort through and edit, but I’m mostly caught up through the Grand Canyon – you can see all the trip photos in my wedding trip set on flickr here. Barely any shots of the actual wedding, since I’m waiting on those from my photographer; they should be arriving next week, and I’m super duper excited about them! So, starting way back in September…

22nd + 23rd – We celebrated our buddy Grant’s birthday at OMSI After Dark, fun! I finished the last of my Tritop sample hats, the tri-petals version:

27th – I had to go to the Apple Store downtown to pick up my laptop, so I walked over to a Thai food cart, grabbed some (super spicy!) noodles, and ate it in the park, overlooking the river and bridges! A perfect Portland lunch!!

26th + 28th – Enjoyed a buffet brunch at Sweet Tomatoes (aka Souplantation) with Star and Grant – not 100% yum, but I do love buffets! Got started on my spray painted frames massive wedding project, painting the textured frames:

29th + October 1st – Day 2 of frames project, this time painting the plain frames with lace as stencils (quicky tutorial coming soon!), and then sorting them all out by photo size:

2nd – Final day of framed lyrics project – sorting the printed song lyrics into the appropriate frames, matching up size and colors… the whole project was pretty complex and took a lot of time away from all the other stuff I had to/wanted to get done before the trip (both wedding-related and work-related, like blog posts for example), but I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out, so I’m glad I went with it!

4th – Finished the under layer of my wedding dress – it’s just a strapless t-shirt dress, made with the intention that I could wear it in the future, not just with my wedding dress over it. My first time making a circle skirt – love it, so twirly! (Better photos in the future once I take some.) Also, I went through all my camera stuff to pick out what to take on the trip, and found my old fisheye attachment that I’d forgotten about – fun!

3rd + 5th – Finished my wedding shoes and photographed them for the club ebook; later, I figured out a way of lacing them up that I liked better, which is how I wore them at the wedding, so you’ll see that once I get my wedding photos up. Finished packing to leave at 6am the next morning!

and now the trip begins (links are mostly to other photos taken along the trip)…

6th + 7th – The first day we drove from Portland just about all the way to LA, staying in Grapevine that night. This (below) is a photo of the outside of the top floor of the rad shop where I bought yarn in Red Bluff, HeartFelt Designs.

The next day, we had an exciting time in LA… we went to buy tickets to see Sarah Silverman for $5 at UCB, and walked by a mob of about 15 paparazzi photogs stalking the exit of the bookstore next door. We waited around to see who they were waiting for – couldn’t even tell who it was at the time, but later found out it was the girl from Veronica Mars (love!) and Mean Girls (also love!) and Big Love and other current things that I guess have made her more famous lately… and you can see us in the background of the celeb gossip site shots! Weird!

The UCB show was super fun (miss that place!) – Sarah Silverman was opening up for Howard Kremer and the main spotlight comic, Chelsea Peretti, and they were both hilarious! So many laughs! Anyway, then we went out with my brothers Matt and Ben afterwards, and ended up at a sports bar in Hollywood called Big Wangs… how? I don’t know. It just happened. Their mascot is a body building chicken. wtf. Oh yeah, but we did have a really good dinner with Ben earlier that night – mushroom taquitos at Cafe 101, yum! The photo is Newcastle out of a Bud Light plastic pitcher at the sports bar:

8th – The next day we spent many hours in LA Friday traffic, driving from our hotel in the valley (because we didn’t make a reservation ahead of time and all hotels close in were full) to Silverlake, then to Corona to meet up with Pete’s parents and Aunt Bobbie for dinner and game playing. We played an epic game of Zombie Fluxx which lasted about 2 hours – not a good intro to Fluxx for people who’d never played it before, oops!

9th – My old buddy Abe took us to a hip spot in downtown LA – Nickel Diner – for brunch, which included this homemade pop tart! Yum! We also squeezed in a late lunch trip to Wahoo’s, which we miss so much – blackened mushroom tacos = ohmygosh so yum!! Then we spent the rest of the day with my family at my parents’ house, where I worked on my dress (which didn’t get finished until the morning of the wedding) and my parents and Pete helped finish making flowers, and then some of Pete’s family came over for a pre-wedding pizza party meet and greet time. No photos of that, but it was fun!

So that takes you up to the night before the wedding… next photo-of-the-day post will be the wedding and honeymoon trip, with lots of links to more photos! (Spaced out with some crafty content in between!)

Bundle Up! November quick knits ebook, plus some recipes!

Hey, it’s November already! That’s crazy, huh? Well, I released my third quick knits club ebook on Tuesday – themed Bundle Up! Here it is:

Pattern number one is Oval Pockets, which can be sewn onto a sweater that’s in need of pockets, which is pretty much all sweaters, as far as I’m concerned! There’s a 20 yards of bulky version (each pocket uses just 10 yards), pictured on the cardigan, and then a larger any-gauge version, pictured on the two pullovers:

These are now instantly my three favorite sweaters – but I think the hooded fair isle yoke one is my all time favorite sweater (found at a thrift store in Salt Lake City, isn’t is fabulous?!)… The any-gauge pocket pattern is a little wonky, so I’d recommend attempting in a finer-than-worsted yarn it only if you’re comfortable with short rows and making adjustments – it’s been tested in the bulky and worsted weights, and I fear that finer weight yarns will need some extra steps (all this is discussed in the pattern).

The second pattern is a little weird, maybe… I called it a Cabled Cowl Maker – it loops and wraps around a long scarf to kind of turn it into a cowl:

Depending on how you wrap it, your “cowl” can be snug…

…or fluffy and loose:

And you can tie it behind the scarf to hide the ties, or in front for a bow design element. You can’t really see in these photos, but it’s designed so that the cables appear to come off the piece and become the i-cord on one end, and the braided ties on the other end… very similar to the way the cables come off the garter stitch based piece and become buttonhole tabs in Twisted Ankles. And because they both use bulky, you could whip up this quick knit with leftovers from that project, making those legwarmers and this cowl maker a good winter pair!

A running theme throughout the ebook is modifying stuff that’s easily found at thrift stores (all the sweaters in the examples were thrifted, as well as the blue scarf), so my extra is 2 pages of tips and info about thrifting for secondhand sweaters! Ideas for reconstructing and embellishing, and how to felt wool sweaters for crafting – and the craft tutorial this month is a recycled sweater wool felt mug sleeve:

Make it either with velcro or ties; a template is included in the pdf. Keep your coffee hot longer this winter with a wool sleeve, yay!

This month’s cozy winter set matches January’s club, themed Keeping Warm, with its Afterthought Earflaps and Pinwheel Earmuffs designs (available in Vol. 2 of the old quick knits pattern sets – ravelry link)…

…and included in that club was some hot winter drink recipe cards, fitting right in with the mug sleeves this month, so I wanted to share my favorites with you! These are leethal “recipes” which means they are just the way I make the drinks, not necessarily the best way or the right way, but they work for me! The first is non-alcoholic and the others are adult drinks…

leethal Tea!

flavored black tea of your choice (berry flavors are good, like blackberry sage)

hot water (about 2 thirds of a mug full)

milk (soy or regular, a third of a mug full)

white chocolate syrup/sauce (a generous squeeze)

hazelnut flavor syrup (a big splash)

Let tea steep in hot water for a minute or two, then add milk and syrups, and leave tea bag in to steep as long as you like.

Hot Buttered Rum!

hot water (a mug full)

butter (a small chunk, about a teaspoon)

brown sugar (a tbsp-ish or as sweet as you want)

cinnamon (a teaspoon-ish or very generous sprinkle)

cloves, nutmeg, any other spices you want (a little)

dark rum (as much as you want)

Pour water over butter, sugar, and spices, and stir until butter is melted. Add rum and enjoy.

Variation: Skip cinnamon & stir with a cinnamon stick.

Hot Toddy!

hot water (a mug full)

honey (as much as you like for sweetness)

lemon juice (a splash)

bourbon whiskey (as much as you want)

Stir honey and lemon juice into hot water, and add bourbon. Sip and enjoy.

Variations: Use hot apple cider (like Trader Joe’s spiced cider, heated) instead of water for an apple hot toddy (yum!); add a tea bag for a tea toddy.

And then there’s my Spicy Cup of Yum recipe from the blog last winter – a coffee drink with optional adult twist. So good!

As usual, you can grab this month’s ebook alone for $5, or you can subscribe for 6 months of club ebooks (starting with this one) and save $10 – either on my club page, or on ravelry. My club page has been updated, so now you can get past months’ club ebooks there on my site, and add the subscription to a patterns cart so you can continue shopping in my patterns section as well (where the old club ebooks live).

Happy winter knitting, and I’ll be announcing a super fun thing soon… ok actually I can tell you what it is right now – a mystery knit-a-long! Hopefully it’ll be announced officially, with details, early next week, and it’ll start around mid-month, as close as possible to the 15th. I’m super excited about it! It’s gonna be awesome! Yay!

Custom Tritops!

Pattern release! Wooo hoo! (This one was due out quite some time ago, so I’m super happy to be finally getting it out to you now!) This is not a normal pattern, but rather a totally customized, any-gauge hat pattern set…

…with 3 different options for top decrease patterns, 3 different options for brim/hat style types, and the brim width is your choice, as well as striping, and yarn, of course, which can be anything you want, from super fine to super bulky!

I knit up 6 different versions, to show 2 examples each of the different top designs and style options, and to show a variety of different yarn/striping looks. Because the brim is worked sideways and the body in the round, stripes (either manually made, or self-striping yarn) is a great fit for these hats.

The decrease designs all have some garter stitch element, to tie in with the garter stitch brim, and a tri- element – there’s the tri-petals design…

…the tri-swirl (below left), and the tri-star (above in the red+blue, and below right). The hats are pretty basic, as far as knit hats go, but the decrease designs spice them up a bit, and the custom fitting and any-gauge aspect are what make this pattern set special.

Plus, they are fun to knit because of the sideways edge cast-on construction and all the choices you get to make! The garter stitch brim width is completely up to the knitter, so it can be super wide if you want…

…or super narrow. And, there are three different style options, which are all based on the ratio of stitches in the hat body to rows in the sideways brim (see my sideways edge cast-on post for more about that, if you want to). So, you can use the pattern set to make a floppy beret style hat…

…or a loose fitting kind of bucket hat…

…or a more standard, fitted knit cap style, with a snug brim (below). And you can further adjust your style by choosing how long to knit before decreasing – my examples are pretty much all the standard 6 inches but the hats are easily made shorter or longer. All the yarns I used in the examples are listed in the pdf, and you can read everything you need to know about the pattern set on ravelry or on my pattern webpage – I already copied many paragraphs of info into both those spots, so it seems silly to copy it into this blog post also.

The pattern set, with its limitless customization, is $6, available on ravelry and on my website, as usual.

And hey, how about a promotion?! Since this pattern uses my sideways edge cast-on technique, the same method used for the cuffs in my Swerve fingerless mitts, if you buy those 2 patterns together, now through November 10th, and enter the coupon code sideways, you’ll get $1 off your order! It should also work if you’ve previously purchased either of the two patterns (through me, so if you bought Swerve through Knit Picks it won’t count, though I still appreciate the sale!) – just buy the other pattern, enter the code, and get $1 off! This will work both on ravelry and in my website pattern shop!

A couple last things… the pdf is 18 pages (I know, pretty crazy) because I made photo tutorials for the provisional cast-on and grafting, as well as photo help with understanding the sideways edge cast-on, and there’s tons of details about all the different custom options, how to do the custom sizing etc… so basically, yes, there’s a lot of stuff in the pdf, but it’s not meant to be printed out! It’s meant to read on a computer screen, and then print out the 3 or 4 pages that you really need to use for knitting your hat.

Also, I just want to thank my awesome test knitters for all the great feedback they gave me – I made a ton of changes from my original test pattern, so hopefully everything will be super clear and easy to follow now. (It’s not a hard pattern, really, it’s just all the custom stuff that takes some getting used to!) Love my testers!

“As always, Lee’s pattern was expertly written, easy to follow & fun as hell.” -Ady Bee in her project notes [aww, thanks, yay!]

And a quick semi-related reminder, for Portlanders only: my self-publishing class is happening at Twisted on Thursday at 5pm! You can still sign up!

Oh and then something else for everyone: Twisted (my most favorite local yarn shop!) now sells online to everyone, and the awesome owners just did an interview over at Handmade in Portland, where you can find a coupon code for a free pattern with any online order! Rad!

Back from 2 weeks on the road!

We’re back! 2 weeks away is a long time, and it’s weird to be back, so I’m slowly catching up and getting back into work routines… for now, this is just a popping-in-to-say-hi post, with some highlight photos…

I spent something like 8 hours yesterday editing photos and am not even halfway done yet, but I’ll be posting them all to flickr eventually. I won’t be clogging up the blog with too much trip stuff – just this, then the usual photo-of-the-day posts (probably with links to lots more photos) and then a wedding post once I get photos from that. There should hopefully be a new knitting pattern next week and some other fun content to get the blog up and running again!

So… that top shot is at the Grand Canyon, which was cool, but not nearly as cool as Bryce Canyon (in Utah), where these shots were taken.

I shot lots of film! Well, a few shots each on many different cameras, so now I need to take some photo excursions around Portland to use up all the unfinished rolls so I can get them processed!

I also shot some video! Fun! I was doing a video-postcard thing with talking to the camera a lot, so it might be super silly, and I also played around with stop-motion-y interval recording stuff on the road (not stop motion, but shooting 1 second at a time, 30 seconds apart)… someday when I have time I’ll go through it all and put bits up on vimeo. Notice my super hi-tech dashboard tripod system? (Yes, that’s my foot holding everything in place.)

We saw animals! I believe these are mule deer, spotted along highway 12 in Utah. We also saw elk (near the Grand Canyon), a wolf (just a glimpse!), an adorable chipmunk hanging out super close to us at Bryce Canyon, some weird and cute unknown squirrel-like guys, more different kinds of deer, lots and lots of cows and horses and sheep, and lots of cool and interesting looking birds…

We ate some amazing food once in awhile! Road tripping can be tough for food, but we only had to resort to Denny’s twice (and Taco Bell zero times!). The best Chinese food we’d ever eaten was discovered in Pocatello, Idaho, and the most delicious breakfast ever was at Chow in Bend, Oregon:

Cities we stayed in: Flagstaff (just a night), Page (near the Arizona border – passing through on the way to Utah), Salt Lake City (for a full day), Boise (for a full day), and Bend (Oregon, for the last night). (and LA for a couple nights before the wedding, and Anaheim for a few days after) Didn’t end up making it to Wyoming or Montana or New Mexico (all of which I’d hoped at some point we could get to), it just would have been too crazy, and it ended up being a perfect amount of driving in the end. These shots were taken at the Gilgal Sculpture Garden in SLC (so weird!!) and in our room at the McMenamins hotel in Bend – such as awesome place!

We tried to hit lots of good thrift stores and yarn/craft shops in each town – this (below) was probably my favorite one, called Puffy Mondaes in Nampa, Idaho, super close to Boise. Got some great local fiber to get me spinning again! Oh wait, it’s probably tied for favorite with HeartFelt Designs Gallery in Red Bluff, California, where we stopped on the way down to LA – tons of locally farmed+spun yarn (I got three skeins of local handspun wool with the names of the sheep on the labels, for way too cheap!) and an amazingly picturesque upstairs studio space with giant stacks of free old magazines!

The one low point of the trip – on the wedding day (I assume), I was bit or stung a few times by something evil and had some kind of allergic reaction (maybe?) that started making an appearance the next day at Disneyland… Probably because of all the walking, the spot near my ankle got pretty brutal (infected, so gross) by the next day, and we ended up having to spend the first day of our roadtrip sitting in waiting rooms and seeing doctors, bummer. (By the way, awesome health care story… went to a low-income urgent care since I don’t have insurance, waited a couple hours, doctor had no idea what it was, prescribed some antibiotics, and told me I needed to see a dermatologist right away… Made same-day appointment with local derm, paid to have him look at it, also have no idea what it was – just, probably yes, a bite or sting of some kind – tell me, yes I should indeed take the antibiotics that the previous doctor had prescribed, and that’s all. Luckily, he only charged about $75 for that, much less than I was expecting, and, weirdly, less than the urgent care charged me.)

Anyway… thrifting! Didn’t thrift as much as we’d sort of planned, but scored a few fabulous finds! Above is a shot of most of the non-clothes items I got (that sweater doesn’t count as clothes, since I’ll be unraveling it to recycle the bulky wool!) – I tagged everything in flickr so you can read more there. Below, you can see the best present ever that Pete found for me at a Savers in Boise – 100% wool Pendleton robe! (Like this, except vintage and colors I love! …and around $195 cheaper!) And, hanging to dry are 2 awesome wool sweater finds from Salt Lake! I’ll take some modeled shots of them and other rad clothing finds later, perhaps…

Speaking of thrifted sweaters, sort of… The weather throughout the whole trip was pretty darn summery, but finally, on the last night, Bend got chilly enough for Pete to try out his new (thrifted) shawl collar cardigan! Loving the new style!

And lastly, the wedding itself! Just a few shots for now… my table decorations ended up looking great! The framed lyrics really took over, with the fabric flowers being just an extra bit of color, so I’m really glad I ended up doing the last-minute frame project! I let people know they could take one home as a wedding favor, but we still ended up bringing over half back with us – so I have 32 framed lyrics to hang on the blank walls of our home! Yay!

I got all the flowers (around 300ish, I think) made in time (with help from Pete and my mom, thanks!) but I made my bouquet in the back seat of my dad’s car on the drive to the wedding! Gathered up a collection of favorite flowers, twisted them together with fabric-covered wire, and covered the bottom with a couple of vintage doilies. Took about 10 minutes and worked out perfectly!

By the way, I still don’t have any photos of my dress, but our wedding photographer (my old buddy Kim!) got plenty, so you’ll be seeing it in a couple weeks for sure!

That blue line is our whole trip route (not including all the driving around LA and Orange County the days up to the wedding, doing wedding business stuff and meeting up with family and friends) – a close-up with tons of tags all along the route is on flickr here!

Ok so that’s a bit of a glimpse into my last 2 weeks. Upcoming photo-of-the-day posts will show and tell some more, but I’ll be back to you will non-trip content soon, for reals!

Time to hit the road… and Celebrate!

So we’re leaving super duper early on Wednesday morning, and I’ve been working all day today on 4 hours of sleep… it’s now 1am and before my energy is drained completely I just need to get this one last post out there to you… I’ll be checking email (and comments) once in awhile, but I’ll basically be out of touch from the world until the 21st. I’ve been really super appreciating all the great roadtripping recommendations, even though I’ve been so beyond busy getting everything done that I haven’t been replying, sorry about that!!

Anyway… my brain isn’t fully functioning, so I’m going to mostly let the photos do the talking from now on… October’s club ebook is out now! (on ravelry here)

Inspired by my wedding crafting, but not wanting to do a wedding theme, I made all the projects relate in some way to celebrating – with friends over wine…

… or beer, with these drink sweaters (cabley, knit-tastic versions of wine glass charms for drink identification)…

…or celebrating out at a special event or just dressing up for fun, because it doesn’t have to be a super special occasion to wear a lapel flower!

They can also be worn as brooches, or you could turn them into hair accessories too I’m sure…

The non-knit craft project this month is frilly crocheted shoes, which are my wedding shoes. As you can see, they can have all kinds of different styles depending on how you lace them up (well, these two aren’t super different, but you get the idea). Tonight, after I’d already finished and released the ebook, I discovered another way of lacing them that I like even better, using the ribbon more as a drawstring instead of criss-crossing it; I’m sure there are tons more possibilities!

This is what they look like before weaving ribbons through:

This project is a 4-page photo tutorial of how to turn old flip flops into the new shoes – once you get to the point where the crochet starts, you can come up with your own stitches for your shoes, if you are experienced with a hook. This is the first crochet design I’ve ever written out, and I wrote the whole thing more as a tutorial rather than a pattern…

The final extra goodie in this month’s ebook is a set of 7 of my favorite song lyric cards that I made to frame for these wedding decorations/favors. I included the title and author of each font in the included lyrics, so you’ll be able to find and download any fonts that you especially like, choose your own personal favorite song lyrics, and make your own lyric art!

These picture frames will be another project for another blog post… after the trip… Have a good October, I’ll be back in 2 weeks!

oh wait, one more thing. I keep forgetting to mention this! Portlanders, I am teaching a self-publishing class at Twisted on the 28th! This is going to be very similar to the class I taught at Summit of Awesome, except I won’t be trying to relate it to sewing and other craft patterns (which I did very badly since that’s not my area of expertise!). If you are starting to design knitting or crochet patterns and want to try self-publishing pdfs, but have no idea how to start (or what that even means), then this class should get you on your way!

Ok, now, for reals, I am getting some sleep and heading out! Bye!

Double Excitement! Ocean Breezes pattern release + KnitCast Interview!

It’s here! Ocean Breezes is now available to all! On ravelry or on my website, the pdf is 9 pages (3 of which are photo-less pattern pages for printing) and it’s $5.

I originally blogged the hat design here a year ago, when it was released to Twisted‘s Single Skein Club members. Since then, I’ve knit up another Alpaca with a Twist Highlander version for myself, in the larger, beret style size (the rust one), and put these great tree buttons on it. Not so oceany, but I love it!

And then, super last-minute earlier this week, I made a smaller, cloche style size version, with contrasting color waves! I absolutely love how it turned out with the 2 colors, and in the Malabrigo Worsted merino, couldn’t be happier with it! (ravelry project page)

So that’s yay news #1. Yay news #2 is that I was interviewed on KnitCast!! I was crazy amounts of honored to be asked, and had lots of fun talking to Marie about alllll kinds of leethal knitty goodness… like… Game Knitting, any-gauge patterns, the quick knits club, other designs I’ve done, making my wedding dress during the make-a-long, and lots more!

Listen on the site, or subscribe in itunes, since it’s a great podcast! (I’m still working my way through the older episodes… the Woolly Wormhead and Lucy Neatby episodes were both excellent!) One totally random note – the recycled sweater circular needle holder that Cosy made, which I mentioned in the interview, can be seen here. Let me know if I mentioned anything else you want links to…. And enjoy!

Hittin’ the road! Now, where to go?

As I predicted, this month is flying by so quickly I am feeling more and more overwhelmed by the minute! It’s all leading up to extreme awesome fun, but, oh man, the to-do list is out of control right now! We’re leaving town on October 6th, driving down to LA, gettin’ hitched on the 10th, spending the next 2 days at Disneyland (wooo!), then driving all around the west side of the country on our way back to Portland (Pete doesn’t have to be back at work till the 21st!)…

A lot of the important stuff is taken care of… our buddy (and knit designer) Homero is cat-sitting and watching out for our house while we’re gone, so that rocks, and we just got a final tune-up on Pete’s getting-old Prius and upgraded his AAA membership, so we’re all set for lots of driving. We got every map we could possibly want/need for where we’re headed – we are traveling analog style, no iPhone or gps bologna for us! Nothing against those, of course they would surely make our trip much easier, but I have this weird love of analog map navigation, so I’m reeeeally looking forward to the road-tripping!

Getting to my point… So now is where I ask a favor of you, dear readers… We need recommendations! We’re heading to all these states, towns, and cities where we’ve never been and know nothing about! Our general trip (which might change as we’re on the road, since we’re keeping everything very loose and open to our whims):

LA area to Flagstaff, Arizona
Up around the Grand Canyon and through scenic Utah stuff to Salt Lake City
A possible quick swing into Wyoming, just to add another state into the mix
Up to Pocatello, Idaho, then over to Boise
Possibly up to Spokane, Washington, and maybe a quick swing into Montana
Around Washington and eastern Oregon with whatever time we have left, and maybe some southern-ish Oregon if there’s extra time

If you live in, have lived in, or have been to anywhere on that route, we would love love love to hear your recommendations for: vegetarian-friendly restaurants, thrift stores, and yarn stores – the main three – and also: bookstores, record shops, cool coffeeshops or bars, other stores worth checking out, sights to see, fun or weird places to take pictures, etc…

These engagement photos, by the way, were taken by the awesome photo team of Vivian+Alex, aka L’Oiseau Rose – Portlanders, they are open for business for these kinds of shoots as well as boudoir photos, ooh la la!

So, yeah, um… I’m working on tons of projects right now, wedding-related, club-related, and knitting pattern-related, so that’s fun… If you were thinking about signing up for a club subscription and liked this month’s ebook, be sure to grab that this week, as the October club gets released in a week and you’ll no longer be able to get September as part of the subscription (but you can still always get it alone, don’t worry). Just so you know.

And hey, guess what, October 1st is coming on up Friday, and you know what that means? Ocean Breezes will finally be released for sale to all! (I know there are some people who’ve been looking forward to that for awhile!)

September 1st – 21st photos

Well, my camera is still in the repair shop (it’s been gone for 4 whole weeks now!) and now my computer is being repaired as well (slightly major laptop accident, oops, but the apple store is awesome and getting Apple Care was the best computer decision I ever made!) – hopefully I’ll have it back in a few days, and for now I’m able to use Pete’s computer, but yeah I’m having a weird technology time at the moment…. anyway… photos that I got edited and uploaded before bringing computer in a couple days ago…

1st + 2nd – Spent the day shooting products for PenFelt, which I love, especially these badges, so cute! Then the next day editing product photos for Trillium all day long – so many great products!

3rd + 5th – More editing, and also a chunk of time spent writing a guest blog post for an awesome blog (which will go up in October), then I got to start my Game Knit Buttonhead hat for the knit-a-long! Yay!

4th – Designed for the September club today; brainstormed up the circular needles hanger the night before when I couldn’t sleep, sketched it out in the morning, and worked it up that day:

8th + 9th – Wedding paperwork, fun! Then I spent the whole day working on a design submission that you can’t see, but I was really happy with how my sketch turned out, hehe…

10th – Tiki karaoke bar party time!

12th – Turned in PenFelt photo job and was tipped with my choice of a badge and ring! Super awesometastic to the max!!!!

13th + 14th – Used a couple of delicious garden cherry tomatoes in my baked eggplant leftovers lunch, with mushrooms and plenty of mozzarella, yum! Worked on my final hat from my set of new pattern hats, to be released sooooon!

16th + 17th – Picked these 3 tomatoes today – a yumtastic little cherry tomato, the first ripe full size Early Girl, and then that unripe guy fell off! Oh well, the weather has been so terrible lately, I fear all the rest are going to die before ripening anyway, so sad… And then some better food action – breakfast with Pete at Jam, one of our top favorite bfast spots ever! Yes!

18th + 19th – Make-a-long!! First, a shot of my dress progress… that beginning of the top turned into this (so much pleating work, but worth it!) which is still very much in progress… and then I was starting to sew on this vintage lace during the last hours of the make-a-long, around 4-6am, so it definitely counts as the next day even though there was no sleep in between!

20th + 21st – Sliced up the only cucumber that grew into a healthy little edible and didn’t shrivel up and die by the time it reached 1 inch… however, I feared for the ongoing health of this one so much that I picked it at about 2.5 inches! But, it washed up great, sliced up into a ton of tasty wee slices (no more than an inch across), and I was able to spread them out into lunch, on toast with cream cheese, and several slices into a big pitcher of water. Cucumber water is my new favorite cold drink!! Next day, Pete and I had engagement photos taken by our buddies Vivian and Alex – I took no photos throughout the day, since millions of photos were being taken of us, but here’s a computer shot later of me wearing makeup – weird!

Thanks for your patience with me during this last month of crazy busy-ness and technological failure… I can’t wait to have my poor camera back and start taking some decent photos-of-the-day again! Our wedding trip is coming up super soon (time flies so freaking fast, damn!) so I probably won’t be blogging any tutorials or fun stuff like that for awhile, but you can expect some knitting pattern releases soon, as well as the October club, of course! And then, after our trip, I’m sure there will be many fun photos to share, stories to tell, and crafty awesomeness to catch up on!

Home Decor and Traveling quick knits patterns available now!

In order to release the switch plate cover pattern sooner (since there was much demand when I showed the club back in May!), I’ve released vol. 3 of the first generation of quick knits club patterns early! Only half the patterns are past their exclusivity periods, so right now the book just includes the first 4 patterns, and then in November an updated ebook will be released and automatically sent out to everyone who purchased the book, complete with all 8 patterns from May-August.

So, right now, the ebook includes the Garter Strip Light-switch Cover, Stuffed Ball Cord Pull, Luggage Tag Pouch, and Leaf-ish Sleep Mask; in November it will also include Blooming Flowers, Robot Monster Pouch, Custom Game Pieces, and Fitted Pocket Case – all those for only $6. (Each month’s set alone is also available for $3, as usual.) Buy it now – on my website or on ravelry – and get the update delivered to you when it’s ready in November.

To celebrate this release, but much more to celebrate the release of ravelry coupon codes (so so so exciting!!), I’m running a promotion for the next week, just for fun! Through Friday Sept 24th, if your order includes at least 2 quick knits pattern sets (including this ebook, a club subscription, Ten 10 yard Cuffs, and all the club patterns ebooks) and you enter the code quickknits, you’ll save $2 on your order! Either go to my ravelry pattern shop (everyone should be able to see and use the ravelry shop, not just rav members) and add what you want to your cart, then click where it says to add a coupon code and enter quickknits. Awesome!

In other pattern news, Swerve is now for sale on Knit Picks, so that’s cool! I think their Independent Designers Program is pretty darn great – designers keep 100% of sales, and we’re not even limited to selling for $1.99 anymore like we used to be. (My mitts pattern is $2.99.) And I really liked knitting with the City Tweed yarn – don’t love any of the color options, sadly, but the yarn is really soft and nice.

If anyone’s wondering about the status of my hat pattern set…. my camera is still in the repair shop with no word yet, and since it’s Thursday night now, I’m doubting I’ll have it back before Monday (which sucks extra because the make-a-long is Saturday!), and I can’t release the pattern without photos (duh) so it’s still on hold…. next week I hope…