Shrinkydinkdankdunk

Holla for simple pleasures. 

I recently stumbled upon a forgotten cache of Shrinky Dinks in my craft closet while looking for a rogue crochet hook (the silver "J" that has such a good weight to it when working that it feels like I'm crocheting the underpanties of Jesus Christ himself) and audibly let out this huge "Yippee!" that rattled my windows.

See the thing about Shrinky Dinks, they could be considered kids crafts, but why limit shrinkable plastic joy to pictures of puppies and Lightning McQueen? Plus, you get to play with an oven!

So kind of fun can you have with Shrinky Dinks?

You could trace the silhouette of your favorite baseball player, poke a hole in it and throw it on your neck for instant team spirit.  I liked this one because of the inherently dirty element of having Tim Lincecum on my neck.  (Please note that it is, after all, a pearl necklace.)

You can trace a picture of Ke$ha, shrink it and look like a genius when you glue it to a glittery piece of cardstock for a friend's birthday card. 

You can trace your bestie's podcast logo and make a fancy button for a scarf you've just made for him, once again looking like a genius.

\

And if that's not genius enough, you can always make friendship bracelets for your Best BandMate Forever. (not gonna lie, same as the bestie who got the scarf...)

Basically, buying Shrinky Dinks and losing them for a few years was a super awesome surprise.  Getsome!

Blah Blah Blah 2011 Blah Blah Blah 2012

2011 was a major year for me when it comes to crafting.  Because my life was frogged in January when my husband and I filed for divorce I've been working hard all year long at creating a new one.

A major part of that was the opportunity to spend part of the year with Anzula, and getting to experience a yarn pilgrimage to Ohio for the TNNA Marketplace, stopping at LYS's along the way. I also go to travel to Portland for Sock Summit.  This shifted my whole yarn perspective and, well, lets just say I won't be buying Vanna's Choice anymore.  I also finally learned to knit thanks to Sabrina, owner of Anzula, teaching me while it was my turn to rest from driving duties on the road.  That's right.  She taught me while SHE was driving.  Mad skills!

Another piece was having to recreate my living space into one that reflected my style without leaning too heavily on the themes that my ex and I had already established.  I was back in my house for 7 months before I really started making it my own and infusing my own style into the things I hated about it before.

I figured I'd share a list of my favorite things I discovered this year and then give a quick run down of things I'm stoked to the point of falling apart over for next year!

1. Fancy Tiger Crafts in Devner CO.

When the ladies of Fancy Tiger walked into the Anzula booth at TNNA I suspected it would be love.  They looked so... cool.  Then when we stopped by their store on our way home (we planned our trek through Denver just to accommodate visiting their shop!) I knew it was love.  It's cute, but edgy.  You're surrounded by bright colors, delicious textures and it's just so... cool.  And if you look at their Facebook, their pictures look straight out of the liner notes or tour diary of a riot grrrl band.  But they're still knitters and crafters and loveable as heck.  I follow their blog because it always keeps my creativity on it's toes.  I'm still trying to think up excuses to go to Denver just so I can visit again.

2. Spray Painting Ugly Shit.

 There have been several things in my house (most notably, my Christmas tree) that have been attacked by spray paint this year.   My theory is that my home should be as fabulous and fun as I am. I am taking this very seriously.

3. Twinkie Chan

Okay, I've been long-obsessed with her, but her book Crochet Goodies for Fashion Foodies didn't get into my hot little hands until this Summer.  And it made my Summer, and then the stuff I made this Summer made my winter warmer.

I plan on making every one of these items.

4. Anzula's Cricket

A girl can only handle pretty yarn every day so much before she has to do something about it.  I made a pumpkin hat using Cricket-a sport weight yarn... get it!  Cricket is (sort of) a sport! The pun alone is worth is, but HOLY CRAP, that touch of cashmere in there with the superwash merino and nylon makes this irresistible.  Sproingy, soft and gorgeously colored. 

5. Knitcircus Magazine

I'm not gonna lie, one of the highlights of both the TNNA trip and Sock Summit was getting to know Knitcircus editor Jaala Spiro.  She's fun, quirky and her magazine, blog and podcast totally rock.  Something I didn't know before this summer was just how tight knit (heh) the knitting community was.  I kind of fell in love with that side of the industry, and that community feel is totally apparent in Knitcircus.  Plus, the blog has tons of giveaways and there are always great non-knitting things too like... oh you know... cookie recipes (!) and it's just fun.  Like knitting should be!

In 2012 I'm looking forward to...

My first Knit Along making the Beekeeper's Quilt at The Knit Addiction.

Making something in Anzula's Coco colorway.  It's the most gorgeous brown I've ever seen in my life.  I don't usually care for brown, but Coco makes a good case for neutrals!

Finally finishing my Kusha Kusha scarf, my first project!  I have about 110 rows to go!

Here's to all of the discoveries I'll make next year!

Dead in 60 Stitches, a scarf

In early October, feeling pretty self assured thanks to a bitchin' new hairstyle, I sent what I thought was a clever plea for a t-shirt to a local gent who has a pretty rad podcast called Dead in 60 Years.

Really, I just thought he was cute.

Anyway, I got my Di60Y shirt, which I pimped out with some badass embroidery, and now Greg is my awesome bandmate and we have a freakin fabulous youtube show Kim&Greg and I'm pretty sure I have a friend for life in him. He's always so good at easing my insecurities and encouraging my best bad behavior- hey we're in a band, that's what bandmates do! When everyone else is telling me to tone down the silliness Greg is usually egging me on to take my antics to new levels of absurdity. So I wanted to make him something special.  It's been a long time since I've had a good, like, really good creative outlet. 


The Pattern:
None.  Well, I made it up.  So I guess it's not none.  I printed out Di60Y, their little skull guy logo, and a bunch of other crap, made patterns for everything on graph paper, started and frogged the motheruffcker about 4 times and then settled on large block letters because I just couldn't get the level of detail I wanted in the skull in a grid as small as a scarf.  Their logo would look awesome on an afghan.  Too bad I just don't like him enough for that.
Anyway, Tapestry Crochet is really fun and it's super easy to convert logos and basic images into a crochet pattern.  It's how I taught myself to crochet- Check out my Pirate Afghan that I made as my first project. All it took was print outs of historical pirate flags and some graph paper.  Point is, this is easy and fun and looks pretty cool.  It just sometimes takes a few tries to get just right.

The Yarn:
Because Greg is kind of a big deal in Fresno (Just, you know, never as big a deal as me.  Duh.) I wanted to crochet as locally as possible.  I shopped at Knit Addiction in Clovis and picked up some Geek Chic Minion Sock in the colorway Neville Longbottom, a yarn that is hand dyed locally in Sanger.  This 80% superwash wool, 20% nylon yarn is absolutely gorgeous, super soft and has the added bonus of being perfect in a scarf for a Harry Potter enthusiast.  This was the main color for the scarf, and it developed this amazing almost velvety texture as it crocheted up with the way the variegated  browns and teals played together.  Everytime I was out and about crocheting I had people approaching me telling me how beautiful the yarn was.  Uh, duh.

For the contrast in the lettering I went with Anzula's Sebastian in Au Natural.  Anzula is another local hand dyed yarn company, and I've been in love with this lovely 70% Merino, 30% sea cell fingering weight yarn since the first time my fingers brushed against it.  Soft, silky and a wonderful twist,  Sebastian was everything I'd dreamed it would be! 

Since I hadn't been able to use the skull in the crochet pattern I decided to do one final embellishment, a shrinky-dink button.  I traced the reveresed image and colored it in with a blue colored pencil, punched holes in it and popped that sucker in the oven.  Done and done!

 

Thanks Greg for being an awesome friend! Hope now you're a cozier and warmer awesome friend!

http://www.deadin60years.com
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/KimBurly/dead-in-60-stitches

I'll Have Blue Christmas

Before you read anything, make sure this song is playing.  Thanks.

Okay, now that we have the business of soundtrack out of the way, I present to you my OMGWTF Christmas Tree Experiment Extravaganza!

This is my first Christmas as a single lady in a long time.  I've never lived alone for the holidays.  I mean, sure I have my kids, but they don't really make a lot of the decorating decisions.  (But if they did oh man I'd be all over that!  Kids have vision!)  I wanted to find a way to make my Burly's First Christmas special.  I've been working my ass off to personalize my home and suit it to my tastes, declaring independence from beige and all that jazz.  I figured why not do the same with my Christmas tree?

So I lugged it out of the rafters...

What an abomination.

I wanted it turquoise or teal or something like that.

Unfortch, I underestimated the spray paint needed and ran out halfway through.

But I was enamored with the "Robin's Egg Blue" of it, so off to the craft store for the second time on Black Friday I went.  

5 cans of paint later, this proved to be a less than economical way of making Christmas less boring and more Burly- I probably could have bought a blue fucking tree at Target or something.  But it's the transformation that counts.  Plus, the can of silver glitter that I coated the bastard with when it was done was pretty badass.

But then tragedy struck!  The base broke!  It was on it's side for a few weeks because I'm as lazy as I am crafty so it had dead leaves all in it and it was a real piece of work.  And I had no clue how to keep it upright. 

But my dad fixed it with some heavy metal *Bill and Ted air guitar with me* and a post that went though the base of the tree.  Except it was then too tall for my house:

 While all of this confusion was happening about my tree's stand I came upon a box of keys in my garage.

Um, hello, can you say ornaments?!  Some jewelry wire was all i needed for a fun garland that'll probably make its way into my office after the season's over.

So here it is in all it's glory.  It's not perfect, I should have gone a shade bluer on it, but I like it just the same.  It's Christmas on my own terms.  Christmas without compromise.  And so on.

I couldn't be happier with my blue, blue Christmas.

Sweet as Pumpkin Pie

My beautiful ladyfriend Aurora Lady has this thing about pumpkins.  She loves them.  Lots.  So when she asked me to make a pumpkin hat for her to wear this fall I was all over it.

The Pattern:
Textured Slouchy Beanie by Rachel Choi

The Yarn:
Anzula Cricket in Arizona
Anzula Sebastian in Clay 
Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo DK in Green


I love patterns where I learn a new stitch.  I'm admittedly more of a freestyle crocheter and only recently have been making myself follow patterns, so the Fpdc was a real treat to learn. Front Post Double Crochet is what made the ribbing possible, giving the pumpkin it's pumpkiny look.

As always, Anzula did not disappoint.  So amazingly soft with it's superwash merino/cashmere/nylon blend (80/10/10) Cricket is the deliciously plumper sister of Squishy, and has a really delightfully springy twist.  I'm pretty sure it's my favorite of the Anzula yarns.  Plus, Arizona is a perfect colorway for autumn crochet.

For the stem I used both Sebastian in Clay and Baby Bamboo in Green to give it a more natural pumpkin stem look and of course made some cute sproingy tendrils!

I think it's safe to say that Aurora is the cutest little Punkinhead ever! 

Art by Aurora Lady. Duh. You should buy some. Of her art. Duh.
These photos on here are totally yoinked from her blog, too.

My first Knitastrophy

Okay, so it's not an actual knitastrophe. 

But dang, I have about 10 inches left on my 8's with my Kusha Kusha scarf and I want to start on the Madelinetosh Honey Cowl because I found some of the most deliciously autumnal yarn while I was at Knit Culture in LA last week.  And I wanna use my 8's. 

So the dilemma of slipping the needles off with my way the heck basic skills and ruining my Kusha Kusha and my life or knitting like crazy to finish and move on.  Oh my God, I might just have to finish a project before moving onto the next for once. 

I guess we all know what I'll be doing after the kids are in bed tonight. 

The Radiant Radish

I'm a pretty big Beach Boys fan so when I saw this adorable pattern for a baby radish scarf I jumped on the opportunity to create a Radiant Radish for myself.


For those of you who had social lives in high school and didn't sit listening to your dad's Endless Summer on vinyl and certainly didn't read Brian Wilson biographies, the Radiant Radish was the name of Brian Wilson's health food store endeavor. 


This is gonna go great with my pajamas!

And I'll probably be the coolest girl at the farmer's market too!

Actually, do me a favor and listen to this song as you finish reading this.











The pattern: Baby Radish Lariat Scarf by Twinkie Chan
Can be found in:
Twinkie Chan's Crochet Goodies for Fashion Foodies


The Yarn: Ms Gusset Sock Yarn

This was a blast to make.  It was super easy, I did it in an evening. The Ms. Gusset was very nice to work with.  Sproingy.  I am in love with the colors.

You can make multiple radishes and have a big bunch of them hanging around your neck.  I like the silly elegance of the single radish though.