Archive for the 'Trips' Category
It’s a process.
Friday, August 21st, 2009
This has been a really strange week. We had house guests on Sunday - Tuesday, then we all went up to the Black Range Lodge for a night. It’s weird to have a break in the middle of a week!
We stopped and took a few pictures at the Lake Valley Ghost Town (which is where we took the picture I posted of our “new house”).
Then, we went up to the Lodge and did outdoorsey stuff with the babies.
Taking a midweek break is nice, but didn’t relieve too much of the stress. If anything, it was two days that I wasn’t running around like a crazy person sending faxes and making photocopies. It put me behind.
I’m still working on Daybreak. I just spent this morning on google chat, and twitter, while trying to wind more of this pink yarn into a ball. Why am I too lazy to get out the swift and ballwinder, but I’ll spend HOURS untangling the mess that I’ve made winding by hand? It’s theraputic. Winding, winding, winding, slowly making progress.
Kind of like the infitessimal daily progress we make on the faxing, copying, form-signing during this mortgage process. Just keep winding, and one day it’ll be done.
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LOOOOooOOooong road trip…but a good one.
Saturday, July 18th, 2009
This has been a pretty busy summer already, and it wasn’t planned out to be!
Nathan’s parents were just here for a week. One of the things we did was take a little road trip up to Silver City. Well, we went to City of Rocks, Silver City, and then started up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings but made it about 95% of the way when majority vote wanted to turn around. We actually cut East much farther North than I traced out here, a little farther North than Elephant Butte.
When we stopped in Silver City, I visited the cutest yarn shop! Yada Yada Yarns.
I love the color! And all the racks of yarn outside really drew me in!
Mazie loved these big scissors!
Here’s the owner, bagging up my purchase.
It is a very beautiful, creative space, and there was a real sense of community. You can just feel that the LYS vibe is alive and well here.
Here’s me and Mazie walking back from having some gelato (Marv and Mary are in the background.) She was so covered in it that we had to take her shirt off! :0
After Silver City, we went on up to the Gila National Forest, then came back. The road doesn’t look that long, but you go probably 2000 feet in elevation up and down windy mountain roads. Believe me, as the person in the “way back” seat of the van…it’s enough to make you green in the gills. All that swaying back and forth, holding on, trying not to be sick! WOAH!
But, it was fun!
The parents have gone home, and we’re by ourselves. Mazie and I are taking it kind of easy today. I took some quilt FO pictures, made some frozen yogurt, and now we’re chilln’ on the bed. RELAXING.
Quilt FO (click to see more.)
This is the largest quilt I’ve ever finished. Finishing the binding warranted me putting on a dress and doing a little pose.
I was tempted to really crop these images, because to the casual observer, it may look as though I live in a prison yard, or am interned in some sort of work camp. Nope. Our yard and those of our neighbors are just Old School NM scruffy.
About the quilt. It’s about 8′ x 7′ and fits our queen-sized bed. I hand dyed nearly all of the fabrics myself. They are part of a mid-90s Moda series by “Patek” that I bought as an approximately 3lb lot on eBay for about $23 including shipping. They started out as the typical peach, sage green, burgundy, hunter green, and crayon blue of that era.
I used Dharma dyes in shades of orchid, rust orange, turquoise, jade, and strawberry.
Most of the fabrics were already in pieces, and I pretty much used them as I found them.
I used a bamboo batting, and a Tina Givens print for the back, adding strips of dark green Kona cotton at top and bottom because I didn’t quite have enough of the print.
I quilted the whole thing myself on the machine, using a back and forth long zigzag, doing small sections at a time. The “back” button on my machine stays on, so that I can reverse forever and have both hands free.
I quilted using lilac, olive, and turquoise thread interchangeably in both bobbin and spool.
I have two more unfinished quilt tops to piece, batt, back, and bind! I’d like to, as a little side experiment before going on to more behemoth-sized quilts, do a few little wall quilts or doll quilts to practice my freehand quilting. We’ll see how the rest of the summer plays out, timewise, I guess.
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Back from Marfa, TX!
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
Last weekend was our 10th (I almost wrote 25th!) wedding anniversary.
I wanted to take Nathan on a road tip that he’d really enjoy. He’d been talking about Marfa since we first moved to the Southwest about 3 years ago, so it seemed like the perfect destination for this short little trip.
We left on Friday at 3 in the afternoon and landed at the Thunderbird Hotel in Marfa, TX at around 6:30. The drive was ok…I was knitting away on a project, so the three-point-five hours flew by for me! (I’m sure that last leg through Far West Texas felt pretty long for Nathan, though!
That first night, we ate dinner at Maiya’s Restaurant. It was Reeeeally Good. I had some sort of grapefruit / tequilla cocktail…Highly Recommend.
Saturday, we went to the Chinati Foundation for the 10am tour, ate lunch at the Pizza Foundation (excellent, NY-style pizza) and went back to Chinati for the rest of the tour at 2. For dinner, we decided to go for “bar food” at Barunda’s. Great tacos and cold Tecate!
The Chinati Foundation is a big indoor / outdoor art exhibition. Donald Judd founded it in the 1970s, and it houses permanent exhibitions of his work, that of Dan Flavin, and others. I had never seen anything like it. The property was at one time used to housee refugees from the Mexican-American War, German WWII prisoners, and eventually the buildings were re-habbed into artist residences and exhibition spaces.
I liked seeing both the reuse of old buildings (and the intentional preservation of them in their “old-looking” state.) It was also interesting to see “one man’s vision” so to speak, carried to such an extreme. There must be 100 or more of these bunker-buildings.
The town of Marfa is population 2121. Really small, and not all artists. That was interesting, too. To see how this art space has affected the little town.
(As always, If you click on any of the above pics, you can see the whole set on Flickr.)
On a less happy note, my dad’s sister died on Saturday. She passed away during a diabetic coma, like the ones my dad has been experiencing this spring. If you are close to a person with diabetes, please learn what to do if you find them in a coma, or having trouble with blood sugar levels. They may be confused and not know what to do. Here is an article on the subject.
My father hasn’t spoken to any of his three sisters in over 25 years. Needless to say, this has brought them all back into contact. He left yesterday to be with his family and make the funeral arrangements. Initially, he invited my sister and I to go along, but on thinking about it more, decided to go alone.
I’m thinking about him today!
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My sister was in town!
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Tonya was in town last week and graciously modelled a few things for me. She shows how stuff looks on skinny people, and I show how they look on … people with curves. Let’s just say that. lol. If you click on this picture, you’ll see more photos of both sweaters on each of us.
We had a good time catching up and playing with Mazie. We even hijacked my mom and went to Carlsbad Caverns on the weekend.
I don’t have many photos of that, because Mazie fell asleep on our way to the cave, and I had to carry sleeping Mazie down partway. Then, she woke up and wanted to walk. If you haven’t been there, it’s wet, steep, and has one guardrail at hip height. I was so freaked out! When she DID want to be carried, she wanted my mom to do it, so here’s my 60+ year old mom carrying 30-pounder Mazie down this wet steep incline. I about died. By the time we were done, I was frantic. I’m kind of queasy about heights, and it was just too much, worrying about those girls!
It was fun, but scary. We stayed the night at the Carlsbad KOA, in one of their Kamping Kabins. THAT was FUN. Mazie is a good camper!
One funny thing was that Mazie thought the whole cave was made out of poop. She kept pointing at the stalactites and other formations and saying, “poop. poop.”
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Back from Yarn Durango!
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
Well, Mazie, Mom, and I had an interesting drive up to Durango last weekend!
We left on Thursday and stopped in Santa Fe on the way.
Here’s me teaching. You can tell I’m really strict!
And here’s a picture of the whole class:
(If you click on either of these photos, you’ll go to the flickr set and can see more pictures.)
Durango is a wonderful little town…and if you are ever there, be sure to stop at Yarn!! Kara and her staff are wonderful, and the shop is just gorgeous. It’s one of the prettiest I’ve seen.
The workshop went really well. Everyone left class well on their way … adapting a pattern to go from flat to circular knitting, changing the fit of an existing pattern, or designing their own sweaters. Everyone seemed to come with different goals in mind, but they all seemed to enjoy the class and leave feeling better about reading and understanding the fit and shaping that go into patterns.
SUCCESS!
Mazie really enjoyed Durango, too. It’s her ideal town…lots of dogs, bicycles, kids, live music, and STAIRS.
She was so cute! She wanted to carry her own purse (I put it on crosswise!) and wear her sunglasses and bracelets. She walked right along with us, not needing to hold hands. The only time she ran off was if she saw a really cute dog, or if there were stairs to climb.
We just had a great “Girls’ Weekend!”
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Back from teaching at Loop!
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
Hi All!
I’m back from Philly and stocked up on Alchemy silken straw *AND* a ton of cute fabrics and patterns to SEW. Loop is a gorgeous space, and I can tell that the clientele really has a love for t he craft, the shop, and the owner, Craig! It was such a great weekend! Here are some pictures I took on my phone…I’m still looking for my camera so that I can post actual pictures….Please don’t laugh, Yahaira only had the weekend to teach me this fascinating new phone / Twitter combination.
The classes went really well, and I had a great time meeting everyone!
Here’s a note from one of my students that I got in my inbox just today:
I worked through the formulas and I started knitting the neck. The 1st time
through was a little overwhelming but I got over it. This first sweater
will be my template for adding elements to other sweaters. Your class was
just what I was looking for!
Marnie
YEAH! She got it!! Woo hoo!!
Did you know that Craig and Laura’s shop Spool is *THAT* Spool? The spool of the cute stuffed birdy pattern(pdf link) that everyone is making?? I totally didn’t make the connection until I was standing in the shop. Wow. A brush with fame.
Yahaira, Jo, and I are making Chinese Coins quilts together, and I picked up a copy of the pattern and a whole bunch of 2.5″ strips with which to make it. I unintentionally picked out mostly Jay McCarroll fabrics for the quirky animals and bugs (Mazie loves animals!)
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A few TNNA pictures
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
What’s a blog without a little photoessay now and then?
Here are a few TNNA photos…mostly me with people I work with or whose yarns / products I like.
I’ll start doing some reviews after CHA. (Oh yeah, I leave on Saturday for another trade show.) Mazie will probably have many new and amazing skills when I get home. I missed her getting 2 new teeth while I was at TNNA, AND being able to point to her nose, ears, where hats go, belly, etc.. Feeling a little absentee.
ANYWAY…
Here’s me with Antonio and Tobias. I used their yarn in FOUR of the patterns in Glam Knits. They are so nice and (as you know) their yarns are to die for. I brought home a skein of Silky Merino. Yes. It is as good as you’ve heard it is!
I wore one of the projects on Saturday, and they said that people were asking them about the yarn…YAY!
Here is me with Paul Nichols of Mission Falls Yarn (with 2 of my projects.)
Here I am holding my habanero Knit.1 sweater at the SoHo booth:
…and here I am at the FW booth. They made a huge sign with my name on it…quite surreal.
I know it’s kind of dorky to post all these photos of myself … but … I’m doing it anyway. So there.
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When is even a long weekend is still too short?
Monday, December 1st, 2008
When we get to take a rare little trip together just for FUN. Nobody worked. Well, I knit and we took some photos for Knitty, but other than that…it was FUN ONLY this weekend!
We went up to Albuquerque to visit our friends for Thanksgiving, and then went up to Santa Fe for a night.
Here’s Mazie walking around inside the aquarium. She started walking by herself on last Tuesday night, and it’s like she’s been walking for months. She just decided, “Hey Guys! I can walk now!”
Here the two of us are together.
And here she is with Nathan:
I’ll blog more about the weekend, but for now…TO BED!
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Make One Yarn Studio Retreat!
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
OK, here is the long overdue post about the Canada Trip!
Well, I was invited to teach sort of at the last minute…not really the LAST minute, but after they had already decided who to invite to teach, and the workshop had filled up, they added me later. I have known Amy Sewnson (co-owner of Make One) for YEARS. We were both very early Knitty contributors, and also very early knit bloggers. Amy and I have been reading each others’ blogs for like 10 years. SO…I knew that this would be a great trip.
The weekend started out at the Make One shop…which is GORGEOUS. It’s a huge space, I would guess that they have about 1500 - 1750 square feet in there. The walls are lined with those cool cubby-type shelves and everything is lit using artist lighting like they have in museums. The colors are just glowing at you when you walk in. They have lots of favorite, well-known yarns, PLUS many yarns that are hand dyed by local fiber artists (likek Sandra and Annie). So it’s a great mix of local and what-everyone’s-talking-about-online. I think that some of the most successful shops are those run by people who spend a lot of time on the internet. Researching brands and knowing what everyone’s buzzing about.
From there, we went on up to the Delta Lodge at Kanakansis. This is a BEAUTIFUL spot. It’s kind of isolated up in the mountains, with lots of pine trees and beautiful valleys all around. I was just in awe of this place. SO many deer along the road, too! Just a really neat place to get to spend some time.
The lodge itself was really interesting, too. There was a big huge fireplace in the lobby with tons of comfy chairs and couches. They had lots of little bars and restaraunts to try out. The vibe of the whole place was COZY. Cozy and Mountain. Like, antlers, stuffed game, that kind of thing.
The food was just outrageously good. Everything was very well-prepared and definitely upscale.
I also thought that the workshop itself was incredibly well-run. There was coffee and snacks at the halfway point of each class, with time to actually mingle. Classes ran on time, and everyone was where they were supposed to be. The classrooms were stocked with the right AV equipment…it was just really really well done.
I was really impressed / flattered/ blown away by the fact that all of my classes were full. I had no less than 21 students the entire weekend! Woah!
It was so worth it to make the trip. I loved being there and meeting the Make One staff and students.
Thank you Make One! I obviously didn’t take enough pictures, so would love to have links to your flickr sets!!
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Are you sure it’s July already NEXT WEEK?!
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
I just (with Cathi’s help) finished up the last of my DK weight garments for the pattern book I’m working on. If you know me, you know that I don’t often reach for the DK and US5s. I’m more of an Aran/Worsted girl. SO this has been fun-but-hard knitting. Well, not *hard* so much as just time consuming. The patterns are really easy to knit, as per my usual.
It’s nice to have them finished up. A few people have wondered aloud where those will be published, and I’ll tell you more about them when they’re out. You know how it goes. A hint, though, is that they’re knit with Mission Falls’s new DK weight superwash wool.
It’s SO nice to have them finished that even though Mazie’s asleep (my usual knitting time) I’m taking time to do some computing. You know what’s so weird…I spent so much more time on the computer when I worked full time than I do now. Now that I’m working from home, I spend most of my time with Mazie, the rest of it knitting or doing housey stuff like laundry and dusting. (I’m not a neat freak dusting machine, but it’s so windy lately that everything gets covered in sand, inside the house and out…so I occasionally have to clear surfaces.)
Maybe it’s not so much that I’m not working outside the house as it is just that I have a baby!
Next on the needles is a project for Kristi Porter’s new book, “Knitting in the Sun.” This will be knit in Berroco “Love-it,” an aran weight cotton blend.
In other news, We just got back from a week in South Dakota with the Japels. Nate’s dad Marv hasn’t been feeling the greatest lately. He had to go to the hospital a few days before the trip because his blood sugar crashed and his body went into shock that mimicked a stroke. We have all been concerned about his health. This trip was a reunion of sorts…all of Nate’s brothers and their families met up in Rapid City, SD in a cabin in the woods for a week.
I’ve been through SD before, and stayed a night at the Badlands, but had never spent much time there.
We did a lot of the tourist stuff, Rushmore, 1880s train, Deadwood, Moriah Cemetary, it was a really traditional “family vacation.” One of the good things about the cabin was that even though it had all the amenities, including a game room, it didn’t have internet. So we all spent time actually talking and playing games, taking walks together…just enjoying being together. Mazie got to meet all of her cousins for the first time. It’s so fun to see how they all get along and how sweet her older cousins are with her. There are some serious family resemblances. (Especially her little chin! The mini-cleft/dimple is a Japel thing.)
