I’ve mentioned that I’m doing a knitting pinup calendar, but there hasn’t been a ton to say on the subject until now. I’m co-producing with my friend Erin, of the Gray Lady Artists Collective, and up until now it’s been a lot of emailing and calendar checking and a bit of frantic knitting.

But last night, we had our very first photoshoot! It was super excited, and Erin got some fantastic photos. In the meantime, I took a few behind-the-scenes snapshots to give you a taste of what it was like on set. There’s no nudity, but photos are somewhat NSFW, so they’re behind the jump.

To order your own copy of Off the Needles, head over to our Kickstarter page–if you pledge $20, you get your own copy of the calendar, and you won’t be charged until we meet our funding goal. Get yours today!

Meet the Mses. March!

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Yesterday I decided to do something novel and amazing–exercise.

Yes, I know. Me. Exercise.

After much pondering, I decided to try swimming. I have a few reasons for this–the first and foremost being that I really, really love the water. Once of the most maddening things about living in San Francisco, at least for me, is that I’m so very close to the ocean but I can’t go into it. At least, not without a wetsuit and/or a case of hypothermia.

The other reason being that I wanted to do something that was a little less punishing. I have a habit with exercise–I’ll try for a while, to lift weights or run/walk, but then I start to have a lot of pain and I stop. For a long time. My knees, in particular, give me a lot of trouble. My kneecaps shift to the side when I bend my knees, and while it’s not an unusual problem, it’s pretty frustrating. I’ve done varying forms of physical therapy with no luck; the goal is always to strengthen my muscles without hurting my knees, but I haven’t found any way to do that.

I’d thought about swimming before, but the Y here was so expensive I’d given up hope. Then I discovered the Temescal pool. It’s outdoors, but heated so you don’t freeze (although come winter, I may find that I’m eying the burkini with a new sense of appreciation–it looks warm, at least) and it’s pretty cheap.

So, I dragged a friend with me and off we went. Well. It’s been about ten years since I last went swimming, and it shows. I managed about 3 laps (I’m counting up and back as a lap) before I was done. I’ll definitely chalk this up as one of the more humiliating experiences in life–anything that involves me being out of shape, in a swimsuit, and doing physical activity is the type of thing I avoid, on account of I like people to respect me and not laugh at me–but at least I didn’t drown. My technique is horrible and sloppy, and I’m definitely struggling.

But, it’s still progress. It’s a 100 foot pool, so that’s 600 feet of swimming and while that may not be great, it’s 600 feet more than I have swum in a long time. Plus, amazingly enough, I’m not sore today. So perhaps worth keeping at it, at least until I erase the memory of me being slow and getting passed by old ladies in their ruffly swimsuits.

Maybe I’ll even buy a better swimsuit. (Or at least one dig out the bikini bottoms that aren’t in danger of falling off. That would be good.)

I got these buttons at Stone Mountian and Daughter. Aren’t they great? I was a bit torn between these and some cameo buttons–can’t get more opposite than that, I know–but the cameos were plastic and just didn’t feel as nice. These are a nice, solid metal and I can’t wait to see how they look on the finished project they’re destined for!

Or the victim of any other tragic demise. I’ve just been a bad, bad blogger.

This week has swooped down upon me in a rush of busy. Aside from work being busier than usual, and thus leaving me more exhuasted, I’ve been working on frantically finishing up knitting projects, doing lots of behind the scenes organization for the Off the Needles pinup calendar that I’m producing with the Gray Lady Artists Collective–you’ve still got time to reserve your copy on the Kickstarter site!–and planning what I hope will be the first in a series of Cupcake and Conversation gatherings featuring a tasting menu of mini cupcakes and my fascinating and witty friends.

(You all have to be fascinating and witty now. I’ve told the internet you are, so that makes it true.)

Aside from that, I’ve also been cleaning! For those of you that may not know me well, this is best classified as a minor miracle. I have a really difficult time motivating myself to clean; aside from aforementioned exhuastion, I’m easily distracted and have a high mess tolerance. I’ll never have a home that looks like the centerfold in Organized Living–too much neatness and organization makes me twitchy–but I know I could be doing a lot better than I am.

I think I may have found the secret weapon, though–Chore Wars. It’s super nerdy, but it basically turns cleaning into a game, where your earn experience points and fake gold for your cleaning adventures, and compete. It’s designed for use by a household or office, but I got some friends who were also looking for motivation and are nerdy enough to appreciate this and a bunch of us have signed up. It’s actually really working! Competing to see who is ahead in points is actually making me look for things to clean–and getting the points makes me go ahead and do those little daily tasks that I put off until they become overwhelming. I’m going to write more on this later, I’m sure, but it’s definitely given me a bit of a push.

It’s confusing the cats, though. I think they think it means we’re moving again, poor things. (And, yes, that should tell you something about my housekeeping skills.)

This video hs been making the rounds, and it so beautifully expresses many of the feelings I, and others have about the value and nature of handwork and the connection to the Universe and the divine.

Recently, I read the Yarn Harlot‘s recent post on blocking the pieces before she finishes making up a sweater, and I have to admit, it gave me pause.

I started out knitting as somewhat of  a lazy knitter. I originally learned to knit from my Nanna, who didn’t spend time on things such as gauge swatches. I imagine that was because she mainly made the same things and had been making them long enough that she didn’t need one anymore, but she never taught me to do one. When I picked up knitting again on my own, I mostly wanted to play around and make things. I’m a bit impatient, and I tend to want to get to the finished product as quickly as possible.

But as I keep knitting, and begin to see the things I’ve made as crucial elements of my wardrobe, I find that I’m slowly beginning to take more of the steps in proper knitting seriously. Which explains this:

Yes, that’s a sweater body blocking away in my living room, pre-making up. As I pinned this out, a couple of things occurred to me.

1. I need more blocking mats. I have a set from Knitpicks, and they’re fantastic, but there isn’t quite enough space for a full sweater. I can block out a small shawl okay, but a large  one would be right out. It tends to take things a few days to dry here, so I can’t really block on my bed, either.

2. Cats are seriously compelled towards blocking knits. I don’t know why, but it’s ridiculous. I shoo them off, so they’ve learned to only go sleep there when I can’t see. I find the telltale fur and paw-wrinkles later. Someday, I’m gonna find one of the cats with a pin stuck in them from getting too cozy with a blocking sweater.

3. This had better be as miraculous and awesome as people make it seem. I want to be able to sew this up!

Although we don’t really have seasons here–at least not consistenly, though we may experience all four in one week, such as they are–I still can’t let go of changing my wardrobe around the seasons. As we creep closer to fall, I find myself drawn towards autumn palates with warm browns, golds, reds, and cozy sweaters and interesting textures.

As I’m in the process of re-vamping my wardrobe, I’ve started to think about the colors I wear. The thing is, I love all colors, and on any given day I may go into raptures over any particular hue. That makes it difficult to narrow things down. But as I look for gaps, in the hopes of knitting and eventually sewing with some sort of goal in mind, I do keep running across some trends.

Neutrals: I like white and ivory (for sweaters only, sometimes dress–NOT pants), brown, tan, black, and gray. I do NOT like navy blue, and pretty much refuse to wear it unless I’m deliberately going for a sailor outfit look.

Colors: Purple, pink, red, green, and yellow. Occassionally I’ll venture into some orange-y hues or blue, but rarely. Within those colors, it tends to cover the entire spectrum.

It’s a bit overwhelming, but eventually I would like to have several sweaters in each of these colors. They are consistenly the things I wear, and one of my goals is to not have any storebought sweaters.

So far, I have a bit of progress. I have one long-sleeve, pale purple cardigan, one long-sleeve, dark green cardigan, and one short-sleeved, pink cardigan that I wear regularly, plus one tan pullover in need of repair. I also have a couple of other pullovers that I wear less frequently, for various reasons.

At least it’s a direction, I suppose….

Happy belated 4th of July! I love the 4th of July–nothing says celebrating your country’s independence like too much food, booze, and explosions. It’s the American Way.

All kidding aside, I really do love the 4th. My friend Rabbit holds a potluck, then we all walk down to the Berkeley Marina to watch the fireworks. This is the 2nd year in a row I’ve been, and I always remember on the walk down how horribly painful the walk back will be. I really should contemplate that sooner in the future. But I probably won’t.

For my contribution, I baked a southern coconut cake. The theme was bringing a traditional dish from your family/heritage. I was horribly tempted to really go what would be traditional for my family and do the cheating version, made with boxed cake mix and cool whip. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I used this recipe from Tender Crumb.

It turned out really well. We also had real NC BBQ (pulled pork, vinegar sauce), fried pickles and potato salad. I was very, very happy. I could eat like that all the time and be perfectly content. Gives me some ideas for planning what to cook next week, that’s for sure.