not dead! but still not king.

Lest you were worried about my untimely demise, fear not! I am alive and well, although severely slacking in the blogging department. Real Life has been interfering way more than I find acceptable. Ideally, I would prefer that Real Life interfere not at all, but sadly, this is not always possible. But while I've been shamefully neglecting the blog, I have not been neglecting the knitting, or the Lizard Ridge. Behold! Seaming!


I've sewed up all the squares into pairs, and now I'm going to sew the pairs into groups of four, etc. I like this method. Visible progress = good.

Completely unsubtle segue:
Here's a close-up of the tulip painting on our living-room wall.


More spoils from craft fairs pillaged from Scott Antique Market, where I also found these.


Why yes, that is a vintage set of knitting needles in a very snazzy case, which I got for TEN DOLLARS. Oh, muggles. Bless you and your ignorance of the value of vintage knitting needle sets.

(Thanks to the Mad Crocheter for the "still not king" reference.)

fun with craft fairs, part 3

In which our heroine finds herself at the East Atlanta Strut.

I am so glad I got conned into going to this craft fair. The only reason I went is because the lovely girl behind Gub was at the Grant Park festival. I admired her seriously cool bags, but she didn't have any in my favorite fabric that was also a style that would work for me. (I'm a knitter. I have needs.) She was so very sweet and offered to make one for me (with a zipper!) and I could pick it up at the East Atlanta Strut. So off I go, skipping merrily, to one of the neatest neighborhood festivals I've ever been to. It was so friendly, with such a neighborhood-y atmosphere. Plus, every single person there brought their dog, so I got to meet plenty of cute puppies. And I got my special custom-made bag (I feel so classy and haute-couture saying that: custom made just for me.)


I absolutely love it. It's pretty much a year-round kind of pattern, and it holds so much stuff. (I used to travel so light. Oh, sock knitting, how you have changed things.)

And then I ran into a very cool guy who remembered me from the Grant Park festival. (Probably because I was wearing my super-cool work uniform with the giant logo over the left boob.) He has a truck entirely covered in bottle caps (with a sign posted in the window that says something like: 1) 10 months 2) caulk 3) about 10,000 4) it was cheaper than therapy. It cracked me up.) He paints these beautiful watercolor-esque paintings on old boards. I had admired them at the Grant Park festival, but all I saw were the large ones, which were beyond my I-work-for-a-nonprofit budget. That day, these little ones caught my eye and somehow found their way home with me.


The one on the left says "and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more difficult than the risk it took to blossom." I'm going to get that tattooed on my forehead. The one on the right says "anything is possible." They look so nice flanking my computer.


Note the helpful cat. He had to be moved to make typing possible. His life is so hard.
Tomorrow: more knitting! Or, when one has just finished a blanket, how many socks is it possible to cast on in a 48 hour period?

Fun with Craft Fairs, Part 2

In which we find our heroine at the Yellow Daisy Festival. My family and I have been going to the Yellow Daisy Festival for, good lord, almost 20 years now, since I was a wee little sprout. It's huge and so very cool, filled with crafters and cool stuff and cool people and yummy food. The first item to catch my eye was this:


An amazing purse made out of ties by a step-mother/step-daughter team. Here's the back.


It was really the zebra that caught my eye first. It's such pretty colors and it's the perfect size for a sock bag. (Yes, I base my bag selection on my knitting needs. What? Doesn't everyone do that?) I can't help thinking what butt-ugly ties these must have been, but as a bag it's beautiful. Go check out their their other stuff at their Etsy site (funkyquail.etsy.com). They have cool bags and a bunch of shirts for knitters. Truly cool people.

Item #2 came in the form of a cool free-form melted glass wall hanging thingie. I am a HUGE sucker for art glass of any kind, really, and this is right up my alley.


It was hand-made by a woman in Florida who arranges the glass and then fires it in a kiln, melting the pieces together. She also had more structured pieces, like bowls make of squares of glass, that were seriously cool.


It's so fluid and sparkly. It looks fantastic hanging in my bathroom.

In other news, Lizard Ridge squares #28 and 29 are done done done.


Square 29 (on the right) was made from my ball of Franken-Kureyon (see yesterday's post). I cast on for Square #30 last night and announced, "This is my very last cast-on." The Best Roommate Ever eyed me warily, perhaps expecting tears of nostalgia or something. I said, "And THANK GOD." I'm so close I can taste it.

Fun with Craft Fairs, Part 1

The long-awaited tale of "hey, where did my money go?"

My first craft fair in this little spree was in Grant Park. A friend of mine makes this fabulous soap (go check it out. Buy her soap!) and she was going to be selling it there. It was August in Georgia which means it was hotter than the SURFACE OF THE SUN, so being the nice person I am, I went to take her some popsicles. I didn't want to spend any money, so I tried to go in and not make any eye contact with cool crafty items. (I'm a sucker for anything handmade by some poor person just trying to make some money by doing something they love. It's so easy to justify, like with Lantern Moon. Oooo! I'm helping a Vietnamese woman send her child to school. I need this!) So I walk through the craft fair lugging my huge bag of popsicles and ice, searching the booths for my friend while simultaneiously trying to avoid seeing cute things that needed to come home with me. As you might imagine, this did not work very well. "Not looking, not looking, where is she, not looking, oh, that's cute, NOT LOOKING . . . " I found her, delivered the popsicles (she was profoundly grateful. I think she may have offered me her first-born.), and fled the premises, quickly, before the cute crafts could tempt me any further. Some sneaky items that had managed to catch my eye lingered in my brain, tormenting me, until . . .

The Next Day, when I decided to go back and buy those things I couldn't stop thinking about. (Shut up. I'm weak.) As I crossed the parking lot under a beautiful sunny sky, large fat drops of rain started falling. By the time I had actually entered the fair, the rain was pelting down, soaking everything. People were running to their cars and rushing to secure their booths. I figured, hey, I'm not sweet enough to melt, and now I've got the whole place to myself. So my little drowned-rat self wandered around the whole craft fair, and came away with two fun prizes.

1) A lovely handmade bag (big enough for lugging my knitting supplies. You know, I never used to carry a purse, and then cargo pants went out of style, so I carried small purses. I hated large bags. Until I started knitting. Now I never carry my little bags anymore because they can't hold my knitting.) Check out the girl who makes them here.

2) An amazingly cool spiderweb sculpture thingie. Check this guy out. I love this for so many reasons. 1) It's cool. 2) All the beads and stuff strung on the wire are pretty. I love sparkly things. 3) The little spider in the corner is neat. Probably not something that would ever happen in the natural world, but in sculpture, it's neat. 4) The big spider has the accurate number of little bead eyes. I'm a nature dork. I like things like that. 5) This will be perfect to put on my wall after I take all those squares down. I'm gonna need something. It's going to look naked up there.

Stay tuned for the next installment, which takes place at the Yellow Daisy Festival, one of the largest craft fairs in the country. (Is that foreboding music I hear?)