Fluffbuff

  I really don't care for Halloween. Maybe it's just that I didn't grow up with it, but I don't get it. I love Christmas, I get Thanksgiving, but Halloween just doesn't do it for me. The closest thing we have in Italy is carnevale, but apart from kids getting dressed up in costumes, it's an entirely different feeling. None of that scary, spooky, horror aspect, at least when I was a kid. Carnevale was just a day to pretend you were someone else, eat homemade castagnole and sfrappe (deep fried sweets), and have a little license from seriousness.

This is me on such a day in a ladybug outfit made by my grandmother. I so wish the photo was in color. I still remember this costume.

That was the ordinary carnevale. Then there's the special events as il carnevale di Venezia or di Viareggio where whole towns celebrate and have to be partially closed off to traffic for parades of big floats — à la Rose Parade.

Ah, memory lane… I must be getting old.

Posted by Francesca at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

  I suppose I can only blame myself for buying a book sight unseen, but I couldn't find any image of inside spreads anywhere and the cover is so beautiful and inspiring.

Well, that's about the only beautiful thing in the whole book. I can't remember the last time I was so utterly disappointed in a book. As soon as I opened it, my jaw dropped. All, yes *all* the images inside the book are black & white. But that's not all: they are all terrible quality. These photos were probably taken decades ago and my guess is that either the negatives were not preserved properly or these are actually photos of old photos. I don't know; it's just awful. There wasn't much point in scanning a lot of pages. The three pages below are representative of the image quality of the rest of the book.

The Constance Howard Book of Stitches
ISBN 0-7134-8938-3

Posted by Francesca at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Ah yes, the boo-boo I've been telling you about; here it is.

I'll leaf through my books over the weekend and see if I find something that might work for a crewel ebroidery. I am thinking maybe a little flower. I am lucky that the position lends itself to embellishments more than if it had been somewhere else, so it'll look like it was actually meant to be there. :)

By the way, I'm taking suggestions. Anybody got an idea?

Posted by Francesca at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

  Renaissance Dyeing

Posted by Francesca at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

  Inspired by the beautiful crewel embroidery of Lene of Dances with Wool, I sent for color cards from Renaissance Dyeing. My package arrived from France in record time and the colors are just what I was hoping for. I'll take pictures tomorrow in daylight. Unfortunately, our mail gets delivered late in the afternoon, these days around 6PM, can you believe that? But it's a small price to pay for being out of the city.

I never thought of crewel embroidery until I discovered Lene's blog. Her work is truly inspiring and I have the perfect project for my first little attempt: my recently finished red cashmere/merino socks. Before you think that I had planned this all along, I have a confession. I've been knitting in the evenings while watching TV and in less than perfect lighting conditions, so I only discovered that I had a booboo in one of the socks when it was already completely done. I'll take pictures of that tomorrow as well. I'm going to think of a little embroidery as a way to cover up the problem and at the same time make the socks a little more special. After all, all my socks are very plain and can stand a little umph.

Posted by Francesca at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

All of today was spent trying to troubleshoot the problems with my new MacBook Pro. This morning on the phone and this afternoon at the Apple store in Glendale. I had to go there twice. Very long story… a problem no one had ever seen and they kept telling me how interesting it was. Gee, I'm thrilled to be providing entertainment and mental stimultation to Apple's technical staff. Maremma maiala! (no, I'm not translating this).

Long story short: I finally left the Apple store at 7:20pm with a new notebook and now I am back to square one, barely getting started to set things up. So far, I wasted two days on this whole thing. I expect it'll take me days to get everything configured, my files transfered from the G5 and things organized enough to actually be able to work on client stuff. But I did manage to knit a few rows of a new sock while waiting at the Genius Bar. I had vowed not to start anything until I'm done with my sweater UFOs, but what's a girl to do? If I hadn't had something to do, I would have been even more upset.

And now, back to running Software Update for the umpteenth time. Good night and sweet dreams to all of you out there. May all your fiber stashes and computers be bug-free.

Posted by Francesca at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

First of all, thank you everybody for all the lovely comments you've been leaving me lately. If you've sent me an email and I haven't responded, it's possible that I didn't get it. I've been setting up a new computer since yesterday and just when I thought I had the basics covered, I ran into a problem. Spent almost two hours on the phone with Apple and getting nowhere. It seems that my new MacBook Pro has a hardware problem and I'm trying one last thing — doing an archive and install — before taking it back to the Apple store. Boy, am I frustrated. It's already frustrating to migrate to a new computer without the technical problems. And if it hadn't been for the wireless keyboard not being able to pair up with the laptop, I may not have found out until later and who knows what that could have done. It took forever to set up my email and transfer some files from the old G5 and now, if I have to take everything back, I'll lose all that work. Rats, rats, rats! Grrrrr.

Okay, enough of that. I'd better go do something productive. Wish me luck. And yeah, I may be without email for the rest of the day, so the blog may be the only way to reach me till I'm back to normal.

Posted by Francesca at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Spent a lovely afternoon with Andrea and some of her friends I met for the first time today. I really had a good time. We were on a house on a hill, out on a large terrace overlooking Glendale, sitting around a big table covered with food and yarns. As always when I am having a good time, I only remembered to take pictures at the end. Now I could kick myself for not shooting Julia's beautiful thick-and-thin Blue Face Leicester yarn, MJ's knitting, Lori's Urban Aran cardigan, Kat's leg warmers and Mary Heather's handspun. Hopefully, I'll see them again.

Here's Andrea's Icarus shawl. Isn't it a beauty? I can't believe Andrea is leaving LA in just a week or so. :(

And the dishcloth she knit from her own handspun flax. How many people do you know who spin flax?

I took a few pictures of Shannon's toe-up socks in Lana Grossa but they came out mostly blurred. This is the best shot.

Andrea had also a top …

and an embroidery in progress.

For the first time in ages, I got a little spinning done. Really a lovely afternoon.

Posted by Francesca at 6:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I finished it two nights ago, washed it yesterday and it's still slightly damp. I had forgotten how long it takes for Aran sweaters to dry.

This stone came with the yarn as this particular colorway was inspired by beach pebbles. I thought it was a nice touch. I like the multicolored specks and it's a good yarn to knit with, but it's prone to snagging and that made for a particularly time consuming tubular bind-off since I had to be so very careful passing the yarn throough and through so many times.

In the end it all worked out well. The neck is rather loose, but Ben likes it that way. Besides, he'll be wearing this sweater when it's cold with a flannel shirt underneath and I don't want him to choke.

And now, off to finish the other Na Craga, this time for me. :)

Posted by Francesca at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Well, look who's back… I am finally, fi-nal-ly, getting to my UFOs, starting from the oldest one… I think. It's a Na Craga sweater I started for Ben 4-5 years ago and that's been languishing in various stages of completion around the house ever since. The embarassing thing is that last year I almost got to the finishing line and then… the finishing mojo left me again. So last night I went looking for it. I couldn't even remember where it was and it took me a while to find it. I had stashed it away along with two other Aran UFOs in a suitcase. Yep, that's right, in a suitcase in the closet, away from finishing temptations.

I finished to pick up the stitches around the neckline and started ribbing only to realize — an hour and a half into it — that I'd been doing it wrong. First, I was using the same size needles as the body of the sweater (what was I thinking?); second, I forgot that I needed to twist the knit stitches every other row. Sigh. Undo. Worst than undo, actually: tink. I just didn't want to risk losing any stitches so I tinked my way back to the beginning. Unless lighting strikes me, I'll finish the neck tonight or tomorrow night and wash the sweater so it should be done by the weekend. It's rather thick, so it'll take a while to dry. I could have waited to post until I actually had it done, but given my history I decided to show you now so this time I'll have to finish it or embarass myself publicly.

Posted by Francesca at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Another FO; I am surprising myself!

It was a nice, lazy weekend. I could have gone places and seen people, but I didn't have the energy. So I stayed home, relaxed, finished another pair of cashmere/merino socks, studied Japanese a bit, nested with the cats… that kind of weekend. The rain made it easy to stay in and I guess I needed it.

Posted by Francesca at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

  From the cover it looks a bit like a cookbook, but it's actually about drawing and painting picture postcards.

The first chapter covers tools and techniques. The following chapters are all about practical examples showing the sketching process, cropping images to enhance impact, painting with watercolors, and brush lettering. Entirely in Japanese.

知識ゼロからの絵手紙入門
ISBN 4-344-90083-9

my catalog entry on LibraryThing

Posted by Francesca at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

  While grocery shopping at Trader Joe's today, I found a fruit I'd never seen before: the rambutan.

So colorful and exhuberant… I had to take some home.

My rambutans came from Honduras, but the fruit is originally from the Malay archipelago, at least according to Wikipedia and a few other websites I checked. Rambutans are related to lychees, but their skin is thicker and their seeds slightly smaller, so they have a little more flesh. Inside, they look translucent and milky, just like lychees, but I like them better because they have a little bit of tartness to them.

Posted by Francesca at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

The cashmere/merino socks are finished and a new one is already on the needles. When Rachel sent me this yarn, she sent it in two colors and I like the feel of the pumpkin socks so much that I just have to make another pair with the red yarn. I am having a bit of a hard time with this yarn because it has a very loose twist and it's easy to get between the singles with the tip of the needles, but it's simply too beautiful and soft to keep it in the closet.

Posted by Francesca at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

  If you have been touched by last week's tragedy and wish to reach out to the Amish community, the Woman to Woman Memory Shawls project gives you a chance to do so. Shelley and Dianna are teaming up spinners and knitters to make shawls for the mothers, sisters and grandmothers of all the Amish victims. The widow of the shooter will also be included. The shawls will be in a color and style compatible with Amish tradition. If you can commit to a rather quick turnaround for either spinning or knitting, check out asheepinwoolsclothing.

Posted by Francesca at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

  I read on a couple of blogs that some people have been frustrated lately with the quality of Japanese craft books. Maybe I'm easy to please or maybe I've been lucky in my book hunting, but so far I'm happy with my findings. I have to admit that not all bookstores are equally well stocked. Even within the same bookstore chain — Kinokuniya — selection varies widely from store to store. The Kinokuniya in Los Angeles (Little Tokyo) hasn't turned up anything interesting in a while, but the store in Torrance has a great selection of craft books and magazines. If only I lived closer. Torrance also has a large Asahiya bookstore, but the craft selection wasn't too exciting last week.

Here's anoher book on crafting with linen that I bought a couple of weeks ago.

縫う編むリネン
ISBN 4-89396-901-3

=

Now I have to find a local source for the linen fabrics and tapes I see in all these Japanese books. So far, I've only found them in Japanese online stores.

Posted by Francesca at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I finally finished something: my second layer socks. I haven't even washed them yet so they are still looking a bit pointy in the toes, but I wanted to take a picture right away. I haven't finished anything in a while.

They are really making my feet look BIG, but they're toasty. :)

Posted by Francesca at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

  The BBC website published an article today on "Using the wool no-one wants". It's about the fallen fortunes of Cumbrian sheep farmers who can no longer sell the wool of their sheep since the combination of fallen wool prices along with the coarse wool of their sheep makes it impossible for them to make a profit. Most of them these days end up "burning or burying it". Now, some of the farmers have come up with new uses for their wool: wool compost and wool insulation. At least this way the wool won't go to waste. It was an interesting article for me, as I had no idea wool could be used this way.

Posted by Francesca at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

  Since I've heard from some of you that there can never be too many Japanese craft books, here's another one. A couple of you are under the impression that I am fluent in Japanese. Ha! Don't I wish. No, I am a beginner and the sad thing is that I've been a beginner for a very long time. Not enough time, not enough money… somehow I never managed to get past a certain stage. But I am not giving up.

Dear, Sweet Home
ISBN 4-391-62192-4

You may have to wait a while for a translation of the table of contents.

It would have never occurred to me to sew paper, but isn't this a great idea for a gift package?

Posted by Francesca at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I am slowly getting back into knitting. When I received a beautiful cashmere/merino yarn from Rachele, I decided to be decadent and make myself a pair of luxurious socks. I am almost done with the first one. Then Rosie sent me a fluffy self-striping wool yarn from the UK in a slightly thicker gauge and I tought I'd do something different: a pair of big socks to go over my regular socks. Even though LA weather isn't exactly chilly, our house does get cold in winter, especially the living room, that faces north, and my feet get cold. No more! This winter, I'll be wearing double socks in the evening when I sit on the sofa.

Speaking of which, we spent the best part of yesterday and today sofa hunting. If only we can make up our minds, we'll have a sofa soon. Given that we both loath shopping, we are very tempted to order something we like enough, even though it's not perfect. We just don't have the energy to keep looking for a better match.

But my socks look like they will be a good match, no? BTW, just going up a little in needle size (from 2.75mm to 3.15mm) has made a big difference in knitting speed. My big socks are going so much faster than my usual ones.

Posted by Francesca at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)