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Spill Guts Here. It's gotta go somewhere, know what I mean? Can you stand it?
purls before swine
Geek Knitting
West Indian Parade
West Indian Parade
Dog/Cat Wrestling
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10.31.2005
I found when I got my email this am, that RedLipstick has made the Manhattan User's Guide New York 400! A huge honor, as I think Charlie Suisman, the editor, has consistently impeccable taste. :-> Thank You, Charlie! Getting inspired to fire up the webshop shortly.
Another one. The center motif is embroidered crochet. hehe. These are "Double Label", a brand shirt that I've modified.  10.30.2005
Spent my extra hour this am making embroidered applique lace and chiffon on Houloubek Studio tissue weight tees. They're screen printed on the inside so the diamond pattern is more subtle on the outside. The lace one is cutout on the jersey side, there is pink paper where your skin will be. Green chiffon is 6.5" wide, white lace motif is 4.5" wide. Here are two of them:
  10.28.2005
GAP made something very, very disturbing. The dance that the self-made creature does after you dress her will be appearing in me nightmares. Thinking about it, I remember that this is teh kind of thing we'd spend hours passing around the office, when I worked in one, wasting time. So mindless.
10.27.2005
Actually did the wholesale thing today. A beautiful Park Slope shop called "Cog & Pearl" is now the first shop other than my own to carry my knitting work. It was really an eye opener to see my stuff in another context.
Cog & Pearl 190 Fifth Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11217 718.623.8200 Exciting. I got a necklace made with a taxidermist's bobcat eyeball there, I couldn't resist. It's the same color as my own brown eyes, but the center is a slit, not a circle. Creepy in a very good way, my new "third eye". I'll be wearing it for a long time.  My project to document all knitting has already bitten the dust. I let 10 things go today without shooting them. No time! Also, no place to spread out, anyway. Gotta work on this. Penny ate my watch today.  10.25.2005
Please add yourself to the RedLipstick Readers map. Come on, don't be shy!
10.24.2005
Doesn't photograph well, but this oversewn kid mohair and cashmere fabric has a great drape. The thread adds some well distributed weight. Knit loosely so it's sort of a net.
  I'm going to try to photo-document everything I make this season, even tests. It would be interesting to me to get an overview like that. That'll be a different section than the blog, or it'll clog this up. Really going to try to keep records. Slows me down, though. {Update: I decided to try to do this, but password protect it. If I know {of} you or can verify who you are, you can see it} I made Penny her first sweater last night. She looks like piglet from Winnie the Pooh. Pixs later. Dirty White Underbelly Yeow. The archives, too. 10.23.2005
Jess Hutch Knitted Toys. I love these.
10.22.2005
Electrical Drama at the shop today: Decapus is dead. My beautiful 500W halogen chandelier. It blew {a little scary} it's custom transformer when I turned it on this morning opening up the shop. It's a rainy, overcast day, and suddenly I had no ceiling light. Mild panic ensued. One electrician on an emergency saturday call, a trip to Home Depot and a few phone calls later, the bottom line was that I would have to try to get a replacement transformer online from the California warehouse that the chandelier came from. It took 3 months to get here in the first place, the repair cost was quickly approaching the same amount as buying it again, and I needed light NOW so:
I killed it. We pulled it down, but left the mounting hardware for decorative effect. I have 8 ceiling fixtures sitting in my studio across the street from the apartment I didn't move into this summer, so I chose this one, the brightest one. The Blobular 6. Not sure if it's sixties or seventies, but it is original. It would have been in my living room. After all that, I like it. Unexpected redecoration. Took about three hours. I rode an emotional rollercoaster today, but ended up in a sweet spot. Somewhere in the middle there I wanted to put Decapus in a garbage bag, take it to the curb and beat the bag with a baseball bat borrowed from the bike shop next door. But that passed. Maybe it was only meant to last 10 months. It was really delicate. I loved it's light while I had it. I got zen about it. I was glad to get home. More sewn knitting experimentation in the am. Getting many ideas.  
This experiment really worked! It's a good combination of knit and sew. My computerized machine does hundreds of different types of stitches, and you have to use one without too much "back and forth". Some of them are really borderline embroideries, and move around too much while sewing, and could catch the yarn. The resulting fabric is like a thin quilt, this also allows me to use two color knit patterns with large floats, I'll just sew them down {the original impetus behind this experiment}. It adds another color and a texture that's off the {knitted} grid. I can also add other layers, of say silk chiffon, etc. There's going to be alot of development of this technique this year. Tons of it. I love this freaking machine!
 BTW: Basic Sock Monkey Instructions! 10.21.2005
I love Michelle's beautiful work.
Working on a series of woodgrain scarves with side fringe. These are going to get oversewn with thread on my machine. I'l post a picture of the finished fabric when it's done, probably a day oe so. It's raining, so I'm going in a little late today.  Second of this shop ad series:  It's a 30 second delay. I tried to time it so that the person looking at a page of short bites of information would only see it animate once or twice , less distracting, but notice-able. These knots are so much prettier in full color, but of course I had to cut it down to 8 colors for this context. 48k. Still pretty fat. 10.20.2005
Oh! Maira Kalman has illustrated Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" {NYT, reg req}. Awesome. My brother Richard {an automotive jounalist} turned me on to this book many years ago. "Be obscure clearly". That's exactly what I try to do every day. I really took it to heart. Not just for writers.
I found video footage of Frieda! {shot by Nelson Sullivan R.I.P.} It makes me tear up a little, those days were so much fun. Does anyone do stupid shit like that anymore without trying to sell something? We were all just trying to amuse each other. 10.19.2005
Just in time for Halloween:
 On no, I can't help myself, now I'm hungry for some Pillsbury penis-in-a-blanket. {via Stay Free, a local Brooklyn mag} And diametrically opposed to the post just below, Miranda Brown felt. Considerably more wearable, perhaps more my style. {via Anon. in the comments, thanks for the link} 10.18.2005
Horst Felted Fashions. While I can deeply appreciate the skill and imagination here, I think they're a bit hidious. That's alot of itchy , heavy wool on your body. Man, I'm in a bad mood these days. Mostly when I run across things online that bug me, I don't bother to spread it, but obviously lately, I've been sharing the wealth. :->
10.17.2005
Running errands today, I passed this sign in front of a 5th ave restaurant:
 "Handmade" and "one-of-a-kind" are finally rendered absolutely meaningless due to moronic, anyplace, anytime usage. How not special. I wondered if this was a joke, and decided no. The little thought bubble above the drinks says: "Awww, We're UNIQUE!" Oh zeus, I could go on for pages, but I'll spare you, innocent readers.
ColorCalm has started their ambient animation design contest. Of course I entered. Wish me luck. This is such a perfect venue for my abstract animations, it makes my toes curl.
10.16.2005
A little tape, a cat, this is really fucked up, but weirdly funny. Harmless, I guess, until it has to come off.
Sighting of a crazy yarn junkie on the subway, by daveb {oct. 12 entry}. Moderation, people, Moderation! Try to wear at least one thing that's *not* knitted every day! ---------------------- Personal crap that most likely will get removed before too long: Man I'm telling you, I don't know how to handle this famous woman who comes into my shop every few weeks. It's getting to the point where I cringe a little when I see her. I've really trained myself to not alienate anyone in there, unless I'm really pushed, it's usually not worth it, and I've remained as neutral as possible so far, but I'm starting to get very annoyed. She is really rough with the goods. Today, she had on an exquisite fur jacket, one of the most beautiful and expensive I've ever seen in person. Money is obviously no object. So, she tried on a knit hat, and said she would wear it out, ok, fine, I cut the tag off so she wouldn't pull a Minnie Pearl {go look it up}. I tallied up her purchases, and she asked me what cost so much. I explained the hat was $62, among other things. Handknit, merino wool, one of a kind. I've been making and selling them for mostly more than that for 6 years, I don't think it's excessive. This is the low end of my knitwear cost scale. Well, she snatched it off her head, and tossed it onto a table, and stomped out. Pathetic. Unfortunately, she's a little deaf, so you really can't say anything unless she's looking right at your mouth, or she won't hear you. I've tried. I mean, I appreciate the business, but at what point do I just get visibly mad, and do something? I don't know why she keeps coming back. Usually, if someone is weird like that, it's a one time thing, and I never see them again. But she keeps coming in. Last time I very politely declined to custom make her a sweater. Life's just too fucking short. *sigh* Maybe today was payback. For the record, I don't take custom orders from anyone, it wasn't even personal. 10.15.2005
Dany, my old bandmate, has reposted the "Girls of the '80's East Village Sound Gallery" page. This is the only place on earth to get the info on these bands and hear their exceedingly rare mp3's. First is the original 12 girl Pulsallama line-up, which dropped down to seven for the second half of it's existence. I'm all the way on the right standing up and obviously trying to hold my head up with all my hair on one side of it weighing it down.
I deeply loved Frieda, the dancing dollhead. You had to see her perform in person to really appreciate it. It was a simple thing that made you realize how great life was. I saw her act many, many times. To look back on this, it seems very, I don't know, theatrical, but at the time, this all was normal and I questioned nothing. 10.14.2005
Ok, my little breakdown is over. It's been raining here for days, non-stop. I stayed home yesterday and knit/researched. Poured all day. It was nice. Never got dressed. Love days like that, and they're very rare. Will take some pics later at the shop. Have some exciting things on the horizon, will post about them if/when they come to pass.
10.12.2005
This was a really rough day. Not only do I have some extreme changes of my own coming down the pike, but I found out one of my closest friends is moving to another town in January, somewhat unexpectedly due to her husband's work. That's hard to take, because she's one of the extreme few people I can always count on. I've not been lucky in having trustworthy people in my life, so it's very hard to lose one. I was hoping to be able to watch her children grow up. A bad, bad day. Going to go have a good cry now. God damn it. I'm pretty good at rolling with the punches, but this was the straw that...yaddayadda.
10.11.2005
Making soft, fluffy V-neck sweaters on the 5g today using a mix of very fine strands of alpaca, lambswool and kid mohair. Pix later. Getting treated to a French dinner as a belated B-day present by Ranjit tonight. MMMM!
The charming queries that bring people to my blog: Bulldog appliques and crochet titty tops indeed! hehe  10.10.2005
Cranking out wholesale knits this am, then taking breaks by making animated web ads for the shop: Faux hypnotism is the theme, how obnoxious is this? :->
 10.09.2005
Michael Kaprelian really knows how to knit lace. Wow.
10.08.2005
YARN, New .pdf knitting mag from Australia. Seems like we've seen these simple patterns a few years ago here though, right?
10.07.2005
Spent all this am updating my embroidery machines design software, a huge pain in the ass since it's on a pc laptop that's not connected to the web {no viruses that way}. I hate windows, let's just get that out. Had to burn the updates on a cd, then transfer them to the pc, had problems with the drivers for the card reader, so had to do it twice. What a waste of a morning.
Making kids tops with embroidered heart/Mother tattoo patterns on them. Sort of funny. First version:  Had some tee shirts shoplifted yesterday, it's rare when that happens, and the thief was good, because I'm very aware of the shop and who comes into it, and I saw nothing. It was a pile of men's English Laundry tees that had a huge head and the word "Hooligan" on it. They took nothing else. Weird. Soon will be cool enough to use the buzzer system again, and not leave the shop's door open. 10.04.2005
Cable service restored this am, the guy was even here early. Line was chewed straight through by squirrels, we think. Bunch of pictures, as promised:
New crop of hats. Each one has a different top shaping, working on a project concerning that. These are all experiments.  Bear Shirt, men.  7G cashmere rib knit body, velvet ribbon and silk noil fabric sleeves. Necklaces are from the "Exploded" series.  Silk Linen 5g wrap, crocheted edges.  Red pink hat.  Crappy picture of the top shaping.  Red orange hat.  Hello Yarn helmet. Let me say at this point that I bought this yarn last week from Adrian at Hello Yarn, because thick and thin is my favorite texture of all time, and her colors were irresistable. The yarn is handspun and hand dyed. It's soft and vibrant. I haven't knit with yarn this alive and beautiful in a very loong time/ The ratio of thicks and thins is elastic yet consistent, I had no breaks, no overspun sections, just pure knitting joy. The rate of color change is completely in scale with knitted objects the size of a person, if that makes any sense. Hello Yarn yarn is primo. {no affiliation whatsoever} One huge skein made 2 hats, with 10 or so yards left over.  Helmet ties  HY Cap  Penny's watched me knit every hat. I know she looks huge here, it's a weird angle, she's only 8 pounds.  10.03.2005
Cable {and cable modem} has been down since Saturday am. Posting from laptop in the shop, on dialup, so I haven't much patience for this. Have lots of pictures to post when it gets fixed.
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