Red Bolero

The red bolero made its debut, as planned, at the Santa Fe Opera. I made it to go with a black and white polka-dot dress as a little cover-up, since the opera is an amphitheater open on both sides. It would have been quite effective on a cool, breezy night, but not so much in a 55-degree torrential downpour. Because that's what happened. The rain came in sideways, prompting hoards of people to run as the opera was still going on, chanting from the audience, and smuggling of alcoholic beverages. Classy crowd, it was. Anyway, here's the sweater after I did a lot of math to re-knit the sleeves. I used size 5 circulars and Elann's Endless Summer Collection Luna in I think what is called Zen Red. The pattern is at garnstudio.com, but I wouldn't suggest it unless you feel like writing your own pattern for the sleeves.

Santa Fe, Nuevo Mexico

Ahh, mountains. I spent last week in the northern half of the state, in Santa Fe and Taos. People tend to have an overarching view of New Mexico, but really the two halves are quite different. The bottom is truly desert, where there are some mountains but no trees on them, and temperatures frequently are above 100. In the north, there are abundant trees, rain, and humidity - and also a lot of rich people and art. We did all of the stuff that people do in such places, such as shop, eat green chile smothered everything, look at things Hecho en Mexico, and try to get away from bad public music. Some of the highlights included driving many hours to eat at the "Burrito Banquet," a trailer in Cimmarron selling home-made burritos, and a song that Jason wrote while floating in a pool in Taos. "Appendage man, appendage man, doin' the things that appendages can / Like walking around and grabbing stuff." Brilliant.

Questionable Art

Because I flew out to New Mexico instead of driving, I'm currently car-less. The only place within walking distance (1 mile away) is a small, junky thrift store. I spent an hour there just to be out of the house, and came away with this:

I know, you're probably asking yourself why an art historian would bring home something like this. Well, for one, it only cost a dollar. Its also not difficult to notice that two people painted this - or, more likely, one person painted it and someone with questionable artistic ability painted over it for no apparent reason. The reason I loved it so much was the original colors - the green of the leaves and the blue background are great.

The chili peppers are another story - the plan is to possibly remove some of the paint (since its very thick and totally different from the original painting style) and re-paint the chilis. Gotta love do-it-yourself art restoration.

Confident in my recently aquired French reading ability, I finally ordered some knitting patterns from France. I think Phildar rivals Interweave in the wearability of their patterns - no crazy multi-length cardigans or insane colorwork a la Rowan or Vogue. I ordered the Tendances winter 05-06 magazine, which worked out to only around $10 including international shipping. Here are the highlights:

I want to make ALL of them! Yet that may be something of a challenge:

Before Dawn

On Saturday morning, I got up at 3:45am on purpose. Why would I do such a thing?? Well, I had volunteered to work at Carlsbad Caverns 49th Annual Bat Flight Breakfast. I spent an hour and a half serving croissants to tourists, who for some reason had decided to get up insanely early on their vacations. When my shift started at 4:30am, there was a line of hungry visitors. I guess the point of this was to see 100,000 bats fly back into the cave after dining on tiny bugs all night. Since I'm generally violently opposed to waking up before dawn, I had never seen this even after 3 summers of park rangering. Wow! I was totally impressed - the bats made an audible "whooshing" sound as they dive-bombed the cave. I even got my picture in the paper! And by picture I mean "the back of my head is barely visible" and by paper I mean "the specimen of horrible writing known as the Carlsbad Current-Argus." (Bat picture by the talented photographer Luke Fields.)

Screw you, Delaware

Guess where I am?

New Mexico! When I got off the plane in El Paso (not in New Mexico, but in Texas), I thought, "wow, its pretty hot out here, but its not that bad. Maybe its low 90s?" Actually, it was 102, but as I had just left Delaware, where it was 88 degrees with 91% humidity, I'm feeling quite comfortable. Not that I've bothered to leave the couch and actually go outside or anything.

So I've been happily knitting along on my Bolero (pattern is here), and finally got enough pieces finished to pin them together and see if it might fit. Oh, it fits - everything except the sleeves. Observe:

Yeah, you see that part that the sleeve is supposed to fit into? And you see how the sleeve does NOT fit into that spot? I would call that a problem. Now, before you say anything, I followed the pattern exactly, I have perfect gauge, and even remembered to measure everything in centimeters like I was supposed to. I can only blame this pattern. Since it was translated from Norwegian, I even went back and checked the English translation against the original. The 27cm sleeve does not fit into the 36cm sleeve holes. Suggestions? Obviously I'll have to re-knit the sleeves - so they should be longer as opposed to wider, right? The ribbed bottom of the sleeve fits around my arm, so I don't really want to make that bigger. Those crazy Norwegians.

Can't stop sewing

In my continual effort to create a Santa Fe-worthy wardrobe, I found a use for one of the large scarves my roommate gave me. This one was just begging to be a skirt - I cracked one of the tiny mirrors by sewing over it, so does that mean I'll only have 7 minutes of bad luck? (Bangles courtesy of said roommate as well.)

I also dug down deep and found the motivation to finish that half a sock. The yarn is a no-name from Maryland Sheep and Wool, which I scored for a mere $3.95. I'm not sure what I think of cotton socks, but I better like them because I still have 3 more balls of this stuff.

Never Talk to Strangers

Last winter I made the mistake of opening my front door to some Jehovah's Witnesses. I should have known better, seeing as that no one I know has EVER shown up unannounced. I talked to them for a little, telling them I was in fact Catholic, and knew all about the Bible and whatever else they were selling.

Obviously I didn't learn my lesson the first time, because when someone knocked on the door this afternoon I opened it, and saw the same two ladies standing there. "Hi, Sarah?" They asked. I thought quick, "Um no, she's not here, that's my roommate." Wow, they said, "You two look a lot alike! Has anyone ever told you that?" Attempting to add credibility to my obvious lie I said, "Um, she's my sister. She went home to visit her parents." (I SHOULD have said OUR parents . . . but I'm not that good at lying.) "Oh," they said, "we'll just come back later and see how she's doing."

I've gotten in the habit of just hanging up on telemarketers, but that's a little harder to do when there's two sweet looking ladies standing at your front door. Maybe I'm doomed for lying to Jehovah's Witnesses, but I still don't understand their agenda. It's not as if I stood there and told them I didn't believe in God or had never heard of the Bible. If they keep coming to see me, do they get to steal salvation credits from the Catholic school I went to for nine years?

In crafting news, there are in fact many projects going on. But I never finish any of them.

There's one completed sock out of Lion Brand simple stripes, a lacy scarf, a sock in-progress made from my discount Maryland Sheep and Wool cotton sock yarn, and a green scarf (now frogged - I HATE big needles). That pile of red that you see is the back, one sleeve, and one front of a short sleeved bolero to go with the best dress ever. What IS this "best dress ever" that I speak of?? Well, you'll just have to wait and see.

I love summer vacation

While the sewing machine was still taking up the majority of the dining room table (if a table in a corner of my apartment actually qualifies as a "dining room"), I thought I would finish up some small projects I've been thinking about for a while. First are two headbands made from Heather Bailey's simple yet awesome pattern.

I also made another knitting needle case, this one for my double points and crochet hooks.

Then, I packed up the machine and put in back in my closet. And then my roommate did a horrible, horrible thing. She's moving back to Pakistan after living in the US for 6 years, and decided to give me all of her old clothes. And by clothes I mean extremely beautiful Pakistani scarves with impressive designs. I have 15 of these, and at about 2 yards apiece, I have just aquired nearly 100 feet of fabric. Just when I was getting my addiction under control.

More Sewing

The sewing binge continues (enabled by the 60% off sale at JoAnn's) with a skirt. The fabric is slippery and flowing and perfect for a skirt. And it was my first zipper - I don't need no stinkin' zipper foot.

New Clothes!

There comes a time in every woman's life when she starts hating all the clothes she owns. I hit this point a couple of weeks ago, and a giant shopping bag to Goodwill later, I now want more clothes! Being my crafty (and cheap) self, I'm not going to BUY new clothes, of course. I've had this fabric for a few years ($1 a yard at Wal-mart), and it was destined to become a skirt. In fact, it was sitting on the table, under the pattern, when I realized it was um, see-through. I found a pattern that featured a nifty doubled-bodice section that turned out to be perfect! I replaced the zipper in the back with some buttons, and added a ribbon to eliminate a rather scandalous gap in the front.

Also, you probably have noticed the change in my blog template - the change is still in progress, so if anyone knows how to get the banner to actually fit the area its supposed to, then let me know!