cheers!

this fellow is a constant companion in the garden.

doodling in watercolor

change of plans

I started knitting the pattern with the intention of making the top as designed but then as I was knitting my husband asked if it were a skirt, and voilà a different project took shape.

Yarn: Ella Rae Classic Chunky Superwash
Pattern: #1 by Rebecca Design Team
Published in Rebecca #22

Missoni

What a crazy scene when I arrived at Target this morning to shop the launch of the Missoni line!  There were teams of shoppers cleaning out the shelves and racks of all of the products as fast as they could before another shopper came along.  They were communicating by cell phone with other shoppers in a coordinated attempt to score exactly what they were looking for.  I just happened to be there at the right time to get exactly what I had wanted.  If I had left the house a bit later there would have been nothing left.  Target's website crashed from all of the shoppers.  Clerks said they had never seen anything like it before. When I shopped the launch of the Liberty of London collection I found some great stuff that I could fit into in the girls department, so I headed there today and the leggings in the photo were from the girls department.  They're so soft and cozy.  I love them. 

september's garden

 this year's dahlias

hi mr. froggie!

jelly!

it took all day to pick this year's white currant crop.

here's the white currant juice.


nothing but fruit and organic sugar....no pectin needed with currants.
they are naturally loaded with pectin.
once the warmed sugar is added to the simmering pot of juice the juice turns to a honey color. all of that fruit produced ten half pints of jelly. jelly is so much more work to make than jam. but it sure is pretty!

bracelet

crochet bracelet

yarn: Habu Textiles A-174 1/8.5 Cotton Gima
it feels like paper
pattern from: 風工房の小さなクロッシェレース

Happy Birthday Dear Husband!

Marionberry of course.

sunshine

splayed out on the sofa, watching wimbledon semi-finals
on a spectacularly sunny florabundant day,
when ordinarily I would be at work,
reflecting on a life fully lived.
my sister's torture is finally over
and she can at long last rest in peace.

wool flowers

I started this in April,
took a long break for puppy house training,
and finished today.

pattern from
ぽかぽかニットこもの > Motif Book モチーフBOOK

Shades of Grey

From Mitch Albala's Understanding Simplification and Massing for Landscape Painters workshop.

Reflection Pool

Bloedel Reserve Reflection Pool inspired by a drawing by Robin Siegl
Perfect Sunday morning walk.

Asleep in Comfort

I sewed two pillows together, featured in the previous post's video, to make a puppy bed this morning. Nellie loves it.

Puppy!

I will write about this later.
View videos of our new puppy:
Puppy First Weekend
Puppy After One Week

Finished

Here is the latest sweater that has been cast off my needles.

Pattern: Wrenna
Yarn: Lambs Pride Bulky
I lengthened the sleeves and body from the instructions.
Wow, it is a warm sweater!

Tsunami

Has anyone else had a tsunami dream lately? While growing up in a coastal town and now living in a coastal town one is keenly aware of the power of the sea. It seeps into your being, your unconscious, and never lets go of its grip. You wade in waters known to be inhabited by sharks. You hear stories through the years of people, including your own father, sucked out to sea through the undertow (fortunately for him that was not his ultimate demise). While the videos of horrific events from Japan unfold on t.v. one can't help but internalize all the emotions that they generate.

When my son was around eleven years old we were walking on Baker Beach, just west of the Golden Gate Bridge, when a rogue wave picked him up and started to drag him into the Pacific Ocean. That moment will be etched in me forever. The sheer terror of watching a helpless child, with panic on his face, drawn into the clutches of a force beyond anyone's control was beyond comprehension. We were able to save him, but he would not go anywhere near bodies of water for years afterward.

I think of that Baker Beach moment, and how lucky we all were with the outcome, when viewing the events in Japan. The worst was seeing a photograph of parents finding the drown body of their teenage daughter in her drivers ed car amongst the tsunami's detritus. How do you go on after that?

The blackness of the tsunami's water was echoed in my dream. What could be more counterintuitive than water that is black?

Ceramic artists are holding an auction called Handmade for Japan to benefit the ceramic artist communities that were damaged by the temblor between Sendai and Tokyo.

My heart goes out to the people of Japan.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

This is on the needles, with only the sleeves to go.

scarf

Jaeger Siena cotton yarn
crochet pattern from
Natural Style Clothing & Accessories (ナチュラルスタイルの服と小物）
by Yumiko Kawaji (川路 ゆみこ)

Painting in the Kitchen Sink

Sometimes extraordinary pleasure
can come from the least expected sources,
such as the kitchen sink.
After cooking up some beets
and Italian sausages
the resulting color scheme was delightful.

winter's flowers

When the winter garden is void of flowers why not crochet your own flowers into a cotton lei?
The thread is Olympus Emmy Grande Herbs (エミーグランデ　ハーブス) エミーグランデ
I love this crochet thread.
I love the sheen,
I love the density of the twist,
I love the durability,
and I love the ease with which it works up into various projects.
The pattern is from Edging & Braid Variation 106
(エジングとブレード かぎ針で編む、とびきりかわいいデザイン１０６).

snowy

This morning it is winter white everywhere. No snow, but a deep frost at twentyfive degrees. The broadleaf evergreen leaves of the rhododendrons are curled up and held tight to their stems. They look like they are shivering. So for this winter day I present to you my latest knitted creation fit for the cold. It is made from left over yarn from another sweater. I have not made a cable and popcorn stitch sweater in quite some time. The popcorn stitches are pretty tedious to create. They interrupt the flow of stitch creation.

The yarn is Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora and sheds like crazy but is ultra soft and cozy. The pattern is from Hand-knitting: Spring/Summer (てあみニット) by Nihon Vogue (日本ヴォーグ社), obviously a Japanese pattern. I love Japanese patterns. They're represented in a visual manner, with charts, rather than page after page of text. This sort of pattern description is exactly how I like to work, visually. Interestingly there is only one size in many Japanese patterns and fortunately they have all fit me so far.

Yesterday I wore the sweater and vest, of the same yarn, together to work and felt wrapped in toasty blanket for these frigid days of mid winter.

Tawashi

I made most of these tawashi from Japanese patterns.
The yarn is from Daiso
and is anti-bacterial acrylic
that is specifically made for tawashi.

This is a project in progress, from a Japanese pattern,
for a brooch.
I'm using a size C hook and cotton thread.

new

a new shop is in the works. i don't have any products in there yet but hopefully i'll be offering original paintings and more at spotted towhee

take a look around to see the initial navigation of the site and let me know what you think on the contact page.

Random Stripe Generator

This has to be one of the coolest things
that I have found on the internet,
as a tool for knitters or crocheters.
You plug in the colors of your yarn stash
and then it generates a random stripe pattern.
It is sooooo cool! I love it!
Thank you to Biscuits and Jam who created it.
I want to use it to create a blanket pattern for my leftover yarns.

the latest

This is the latest project on the needles. It's a Japanese pattern, and the yarn is Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora. The yarn is left over from another sweater that I made two years ago. It has been quite a few years since I have made a cabled sweater. The bobbles are pretty funny looking.