Artsy Fartsy, Part 1: BMA

I'm staying with some friends in Maryland this summer, and since I'm an art student, the free museums in the Baltimore and DC areas are a huge draw. I plan to visit several, and will be posting about each one.

Today I visited The Baltimore Museum of Art. I enjoyed the short walk over there, and spent a few hours on the grounds, checking out the art inside as well as the sculpture garden. I even spent a little while knitting in front of an Alexander Calder piece.

Two of my favorite pieces in the collection are these by Claude Monet, one depicting Waterloo Bridge, the other showing Charing Cross Bridge.

There were a lot of other ones that I enjoyed for various reasons (and surprisingly, some of them were modern American pieces, which I'm not typically fond of) but it's hard to beat a Monet.

When I saw this next piece, I had to stop and do a double-take, because we studied it in my Craft History class last semester.

It's a glass vase by Lalique, called 'Tourbillons.' The popular study method for Craft History classes ensures that some pieces of art I can simply look at and immediately know when, where, or by whom they were made, and I looked at this and instantly thought "1925." I guess my brain's doing something right.

Some of the pieces I found most inspiring, though, were from the Antioch Mosaics. Their use of color and shape was wonderful, and I found myself wanting to incorporate something similar into my knitting or weaving.

I guess it's off to the drawing board with me!

Baby Crazy

It seems like these days, everyone I know is procreating. Therefore, I have been subjected to the interesting (and often torturous) chore of gift knitting. Or gift crocheting, as the case may be. You never know whether the parents will appreciate the gift as much as they do store-bought presents, and there's always that chance that they won't let the baby use whatever the handmade item is, even if you tell them that it's machine washable.

This month, I had two different baby showers to attend, so my time was filled with making tiny FOs for homo sapiens WIPs (I guess that should technically be WsIP, but that just looks weird).

For my friend Jacque, who is expecting a girl and has decorated the nursery in black, pink, and white, I made a star-shaped blanket, knowing she'd appreciate the sort of punk girl vibe it gave off.

It wasn't the nicest handmade gift there by any means, but it was made and given with love, and that's what matters, right?

Then, for my cousin's impending boy-child, I made two smaller items. I sort of wanted to keep them both for myself.

I'd had this tiny lion in my queue for a while, but I'm terrible at not wanting to seam things, so I knew if I had a deadline I'd actually do it. He was super simple to make, and I modified the tail slightly to have that little orange poof at the end instead of the yellow loops called for in the pattern.

The other thing I made for my cousin was not as cute, but slightly more interesting.

(pen included for scale)

This was fun to see come together. Knit in strips of varying colors and then seamed together, it achieves its ball-like shape through the interlacing of the pieces. I wasn't too excited about it while knitting it, thinking that surely mine wouldn't come out as well as the ones pictured on Ravelry, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was so easy, and the finished item looks so interesting, that it may just become one of my go-to baby knits.

Now, please, everyone I know: stop having babies so I can knit the things I want to.

Here, kitty, kitty, kitty

I've done lace. Cables. Colorwork. Toe-up and top-down socks. But I've never tried double knitting. I've never had a strong desire to learn it, as most one-sided knits are warm enough for me. I live in Tennessee and I tend to run hot anyway. There's no reason for me to want two layers of anything wrapped around me. But now? Now I have a reason to learn double knitting.

For this. My friend Neil designed a kitty blanket, and I have a desperate need to make one for this monster:



If your feline friends need a new nap spot, go download the chart.

MDSW 2012

I, like a lot of knitters and crocheters, am a dedicated user of Ravelry. I post in the forums quite frequently, and the group I spend the most time in is a tight knit - no pun intended - bunch of fiber lovers. So when one of us decided that we should have a get-together around Cinco de Mayo, and that said meetup should be in Maryland, it was sort of like fate. It just so happens that Cinco de Mayo is the same weekend as Maryland Sheep and Wool, and my birthday fell on the same weekend as well.

I drove from Nashville to Baltimore, making a pit stop in Virginia to spend the night at the house of another fantastic member of the group. While not the first time I'd met friends from Ravelry (I attend DragonCon every year and room with a few wonderful Ravelers who I love dearly), this time, it kind of felt like coming home. The people who came to the Cinco de Mayo festivities aren't the people I interact with the most frequently of my Ravelry friends, so it was slightly awkward on my part at first, but I'd gotten into a tiny fender bender (no damage) within 50 yards of my destination, and they greeted me with comforting hugs.

We had dinner that night, and explored Baltimore the next day, and by the end of Friday, it felt like they had always been my friends, more than just faceless usernames on some knitting website. But Saturday? Saturday was where the fun was. We headed out to the fairgrounds, and while I'd been to Stitches South and SAFF, a couple of the others had never been to a fiber festival, and MDSW is in a league of its own.
 
I petted some of the critters.

We saw the fluffiest bunny in existence.

And I both bought yarn and had yarn and fiber (and a bag!) given to me as unexpected birthday presents. I already have plans for some of it.

It was amazing. I got to spend days with these people who have seen me at my best and at my worst, and we were immersed in the thing that had brought us together to begin with. We dined, we drank or abstained, we knitted, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more. I never wanted to leave. But of course, all good things must come to an end.

So we packed up our things at the end of the weekend, and everyone went back to their daily lives. Except me. I journeyed further north, to New Jersey, to visit with another bunch of friends from the same group. It wasn't a weekend, so we didn't get to spend as much time together as I'd have liked, but we did hang out a bit and go out to dinner. I found out that they are just as wonderful in real life as they are on the internet, and I definitely want to go back when I can stay longer and everyone can get together for a longer period of time. Two of us who are nail polish addicted even finally - months after we'd first talked about it - got to combine our powers and do manicures to match (my hand is on the right, hers is on the left).

And a week after I left home, I got the chance to go to New York City for the first time, with a non-knitter friend acting as tour guide.

After my whirlwind tour of NYC, where I saw most of the major Manhattan sights in 8 hours, I headed back south the next day, with stops in Baltimore and Virginia for rest, and got home Saturday so that I could spend Mothers Day with my mother and grandmother.

I met so many amazing people during this trip, and I love them all. There are others I've already met, and many more who I want to meet, and each one of them is dear to me. Never let it be said that "internet friends" are not real friends, because they most certainly are.

Sewanee

I have what might be considered an addiction to shawls.  I love them - love planning them, love knitting them, love wearing them.  I wanted to make one to sell at our events at the Craft Center, so I set about designing my own.  Sewanee is the product of that labor, and now I'm not sure I can bear to part with the original.

Hey, Assbutt!

I've been watching a lot of Supernatural lately.  It's got a lot of things I love: clever dialogue, sci-fi creepiness, and amazing actors who pull you in.  So I decided that I needed to write up a dishcloth pattern in honor of this fantastic show, and I now give you my second dishcloth pattern: Hey, Assbutt!