It has been almost one year since I unwrapped my Gocco machine for Christmas and last night was my first time putting it to use. I’d constantly think of possible designs to print, but nothing ever seemed good enough and really, I never had a good enough reason to use it. Not until now.

Joe has completed his Masters project on cryptographic hash functions and we are due for a graduation party on the 21st of this month. Usually we wouldn’t bother with invitations, most of our get-togethers are just close friends and relatives. We just call them up and say ‘hey, come over! we have food!’ and that usually does the trick. Now though, a bit classier type of people (by classier I mean, Joe knows them on a professional basis only.) will be on the invite list, so we needed something more official.

I began my search for invitations on Etsy and found some cool silkscreened IBM punch cards. They weren’t really meant to be invitations, but I showed Joe and he suggested we just make our own. I thought ‘ooh! a chance to use my Gocco!’. So 15 minutes later, we had ordered a stack of old IBM punch cards from eBay. Last night Joe finally made me pull out the Gocco and get to work, but I had no idea what I was doing. The Gocco instruction manual wasn’t the greatest help. Thanks to Joe for figuring absolutely everything out, we managed to come up with some pretty cool invitations.

We used a pretty tree design from the classic computer science manual- Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming and an old school typewriter font for the design. We only had three colors to choose from for the Gocco machine, so we stuck with black, which ended up being fine. I like it’s simplicity.

The party is drawing nearer and I’m hoping to get the living room painted, tree up and decorated (along with the rest of the house) before then. On top of that, my grandmother calls today telling me the family is driving up to visit this weekend. Not that I’m not psyched about that, but there goes some precious painting time! Maybe I can enlist my family to be my paint crew?

I know, I know, weird huh? But I just had to say that it is barely past noon and already today has been so exciting! Alicia over at Pozy Gets Cozy announced she has been making a sewing book that will be released next year.

Not only was there that bit of loveliness, but I received my “Bend the Rules Sewing” book by Amy of Angry Chicken! I actually got a bit carried away trying to open the box the book arrived in and tore a nail. Oops!

Her book is exactly what I had hoped it would be. It’s not just another on of those craft books that consists of giant full page pictures with little to no information. She actually has tons of useful info and tips. While the pictures don’t overwhelm the book, they certainly still are eye candy. The projects? beautiful! Everything about it is perfect.

I can’t wait to put this book to work!

I would have posted last night but I was wiped out. To celebrate International Knitting Day yesterday, I invited a few knitting buddies over for, of course, knitting, and some snacks. I went overboard as usual with the food and made too much. I really need to work on cutting back. I decided to try out some new recipes (although, isn’t there a rule about not doing that?) from a couple of cookbooks recently purchased. I made focaccia bread from The Bread Bible, shortbread cookies from Super Natural Cooking, and a chocolate & zucchini cake from Clotilde’s new C&Z cookbook. I had Joe cook the “nuggets of happiness” (so deemed by his coworkers) which consist of a small chunk of chicken and a slice of jalapeno wrapped in bacon, skewered and cooked on the bbq. Of course there was a much needed assortment of fruits and veggies because uh, meat and sweets can get a bit heavy on the stomach.

I was surprised that everything turned out pretty successfully. I think my favorite was the Ginger- Amaranth Shortbread from Heidi’s new cookbook, Super Natural Cooking. They were deemed after a taste test, a hybrid of shortbread and gingerbread cookies. We didn’t even get to the C&Z cake because it was just too much food. So I’m sending off a slice to Joe’s parents today (along with a few pieces of shortbread!) so it won’t all go to waste.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

Just a quick post to touch bases!

Joe and I had a good weekend. There were two nice dinners spent with friends. I finally made pancakes that I am proud of this morning! The weather is now officially summer weather and it’s only going to get hotter from here on out! Plane tickets were also purchased! We’ll be leaving for Manchester, UK on July 3 and have a week before flying home. We’ll be attending LUGradio Live during that weekend in Wolverhampton (which is a Linux geek event). I have absolutely no clue what we will be doing other than that. We tried to look up information on Manchester last night, but it seems to be pretty dull tourist-wise. We’ll be too far away from London, so we were thinking of doing a more scenic vacation through the Lake District. But really, who knows. We have a month to figure that all out.

I just watched two of the PBS Craft in America shows tonight and I highly recommend watching them. There weren’t many featured crafters that I’d call my style, but it’s still amazing to watch the creation of their pieces. I especially enjoyed the ceramic artist, Richard Notkin’s work. His artwork has strong political themes. Skulls, mushroom clouds, dice, ears, anatomical hearts and destroyed buildings are quite common throughout his work. He has amazing skill and I wish I would have heard of him sooner, now that I know he is a featured artist at the Portland Museum of Art (another site I missed!).

Aside from how interesting it was to watch the sheer amount of skill most of these artists who were featured on Craft in America had, it was nice to see all sorts of people who were doing exactly what they wanted to do with their lives. I want to be like that.

It’s late and I should be in bed. I got home from knitting group around midnight, more than a tad bit later than my usual 9:30pm. After Panera’s kicked us all out at closing time (9pm) a few of us decided that we hadn’t had enough crafting so we went to M’s place that she was house sitting (yes, she had permission and no, there was no giant party…unfortunately) and continued our knitting/stitching for a couple more hours.

I took my Wool & Hoop crewel project to work on and came so close to finishing when, just my luck, I run out of the thread! So now I have to order more off of their website and wait a bit longer before I can officially call that project completed.

Oh yeah, see those bowls in the picture? They are little condiment bowls that I bought from Costplus for a couple bucks. I don’t need them. Joe just shakes his head. I liked them, what can I say? They might come in handy one day! At the very least, they look darn cute in that picture. Four dollars is worth that alone!

Oh and to keep my motivation up for that Amy Butler apron I’ve been working on, I wanted to note that last night I cut out all the pieces needed and labeled them. Okay, I could be moving along faster, but I don’t want to overwhelm myself. Baby steps, or no steps at all!

Despite not having much to show for my weekend, I did do quite a lot. The new fabrics have been laundered and ironed, a crewel embroidery kit has been started, cupcakes have been baked and frosted, the house has been kept clean (miracle!), and I ate a lot of Joe’s cooking. We had his friend Marc over for a smoked whole chicken which was super tasty. So I can now scratch that off my list. I now know how to prep a whole chicken. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but I still had to have Joe pull out the last couple of ‘insides’ from it. That got a little gross. Other than that, a little rub of garlic and lemon juice, a dash of salt and pepper, throw the used lemon and garlic inside and toss it in the smoker. Easy! I think I’ll have him cook that more often so I have a nice supply of sandwich meat. I also put together a nice strawberry short cake with freshly baked angel food cake (okay, okay, fresh from the oven from a box) with homemade whipped cream.

This is getting embarrassing. I don’t know what it is, but for some reason I cannot bake a good cupcake to save my life. I made cupcakes last night to make yet another attempt at baking a decent cupcake. I used cream cheese in the frosting this time and it was the best I had made so far. Joy! But- I destroyed the cake part. I think I overcooked them because they were just way too dry. The instructions said bake for 20 mins in a 400 degree oven which seemed like a pretty long time for such a high temperature, so I shortened the baking time, but obviously not enough.

The struggle continues!

In non cooking news, I really am going to go ahead with making the Amy Butler apron. The fabric is now ready to be cut and labeled. Hopefully I don’t mess it up too badly! The instructions seem fairly straight forward. I think I can handle this.

I also spent the weekend planting more veggies and herbs. I had two tomatoes just begging to go in the soil. They had been neglected for a couple weeks (I’m so bad!) and definitely show signs of wear. Despite all that, one of them already has a tomato! Talk about a survivor!

I’m keeping an eye on them and giving them some much needed nutrients. Hopefully they will bounce back and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to make some yummy BLTs this summer.

Okay, so now that school is out of the way for a whole summer, I can get down to business worry free. None of that “well, I should be doing homework” guilt trip (and then I’d end up doing neither…man I’m priceless!).

I went through some of my favorite sewing books last night and decided what would be first on my list to sew. I really want to make that Amy Butler apron from her In Stitches book. I think these two fabrics on the right will make a great apron! The yellow being the main part of the design and the darker one for the trim:

I also practiced my embroidery last night. I had no idea what I was going to create. I just picked out a color and started stitching until I had a rough idea of what I wanted to make. All I knew was that I wanted to learn a french knot. And I came up with this:

As you can see, I messed up a lot. I’m not even quite sure what I did differently to warrant a correct french knot and well, not a correct french knot. It seemed that if I accidentally wiggled my needle the wrong way, the knot wouldn’t work. So I’ll just practice some more tonight until I can see where I was going wrong.

The split stitch on the other hand is absolutely no problem at all. I can do that stitch all day and it’s so relaxing to do something right!

Oh and before I forget: I have a picture of me on my about page now! I just got the pictures from our family photo shoot that were taken by Shannon Stewart of Madison Ave Photography and she was kind enough to let me put one up on my website. I’m so happy these turned out! Thanks again Shannon!

Ahh. A homemade latte and a nice skein of yarn…sounds relaxing doesn’t it?

No!!

It took me a little while to even attempt knitting because I liked crocheting so much, I felt that if I learned how to knit, I’d forget about crocheting. And I’ve kind of been right. Since I learned how to knit a few months back, I haven’t picked up a crocheting hook. I miss it. It’s instant gratification. In one sitting I can have a nice cushy scarf. Not so with knitting. I need patience.

I practice knitting often, but don’t have much to show for it. I keep knitting and purling and knitting and purling and all the proof I have is a two inch start on a scarf. Yep. You know why? Because I’m too damned stupid to figure out how to pick up a dropped stitch and I can’t go more than 4 rows without dropping one! So I have to start over from the beginning. It’s an awful system that I have worked out. I really need to make it a point to have one of the girls from the knitting group show me how or else I’m never going to get anywhere!

Just wanted to share a few things that have been inspiring me lately.

Music I’ve been Listening to (well, the calmer side of what I have been listening to at least):

Mono “Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky”
Gone, Still

Art & Photography:

Lovepad’s beautiful drawings.
Splat WorldWide’s food pictures!

I found a few more blogs this week and wanted to share them:

Wardi’s Crafty Blog
Twelve22
Julieree

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

I can’t stand how I wait until I have a million things to write about, then get too tired to write all of it at once. So much has happened and so many brillant ideas have been thought…and then all forgotten!

I went to Stitches West this weekend. For those of you who aren’t so much into fibers, Stitches West is a giant yarn convention in Santa Clara. My knitting group rode the train that had about 3 or 4 cars full of knitters and crocheters. It was pretty interesting. The whole day was spent touching and squeezing wool, hemp, cotton, you name it. By the end of the day I had to stop myself from feeling a perfect stranger’s fancy cabled sweater for worry of weirding her out. I was just so used to the “see a nice fiber, do a squeeze test” motions that I just reached out at her sweater without even noticing what I was doing! Ack!

I scored a few things, but I didn’t go nearly as crazy with the spending as I thought I would. There was just so much stuff to buy and see that I became a bit overwhelmed. The prices weren’t as low as I thought they would be either, but I was so happy to see a booth dedicated to hemp because I’d been wanting to make a hemp shopping bag for a while now, but I had never found any to use.

Other than the convention, school has been keeping most of my time. I’m hitting my midterms week and surprisingly, my drawing class is still so much more difficult than my other classes. It’s pretty frustrating knowing that I am capable of drawing but having to stick to certain guidelines makes it so hard!! My hand shakes so much when I hold my pencil in the correct way it makes it almost impossible to get smooth lines. I also can’t seem to grasp the idea of filling up my paper. I’m always being chided on having too much negative space!

We will be moving in just a couple weeks and trying to get this place cleaned up and things packed away is looking more and more difficult. How did we manage to accumulate so much crap? I think the thrift store should be expecting a big payload in the next week or so. I’m in the purging mood! The less stuff we have to drag to our new home, the better.

Oh yes, and I want to take this time to let you all know about the Christian Carlos Fundraiser auction that is going on. A bunch of kind hearted women got together and donated their time and work to be put up for auction on eBay to raise money for the little boy who lost his family in a car wreck. Please help them out and bid!

Okay, what else? What else? I know I’ve seen a bunch of stuff I want to share with everyone….

Oh yeah! I came across a d.i.y. crafty website called OhMyStars! which has loads of great tutorials and a knit sweater pattern to die for. Seriously, it’s great.

Anyways, don’t worry. I’ll be posting again soon. I still have more to say, but oh. my. god. I’m so hungry.