the great ESCAPE!

1. If you could escape to anywhere in the world where would it be? --Kenai Lake, Alaska (anyone who says otherwise doesn't know about kenai lake!)
2. What song do you play when you are by yourself in the car? paul simon-Graceland
3. If you had a night to yourself, and money was no object, what would you do? put on a long movie like pride & prejudice or bleak house and curl up on the couch with my knitting and then i would order take out and tip all the delivery people exorbitant amounts!
4. What is your guilty pleasure? greasy cheeseburgers
5. What is the farthest place you have traveled away from your home? Russia
6. Last book that you couldn't put down? the brothers karamazov (i've only got about 100 pages left) and the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society that i just finished tonight
7. When you want to escape into another time, what movie do you watch? anne of green gables
8. What is your favorite local escape? the goodwill or michaels, you never know what you might find
9. How do you escape on a budget? i buy sweaters and unravel them and then dream up stuff to make with all my new yarn
10. Best food you've ever had while on vacation- good sushi!

(my sister katie tagged me for this escape... thanks, kates!)

and i know the monkey photo has nothing to do with this post, but he looks like he's thinking about an "escape" and he's one of my favorites... i don't know if i ever showed him to any of you, he belongs to my nephew morgan now.

the deconstruction of a sweater!

this was actually a pretty nice sweater, but about 10 sizes too big. it was $2.99 at the goodwill and made of 100% beautiful chocolate brown lambswool. thrift stores can be an excellent source of great wools and cottons if you are willing to look for them. so i decided to take it apart! i washed it first to get the thrift store smell out. the next step is taking apart all the seams. usually a sweater will have side seams and sleeve seams and if there is collar or button band then those are the first ones that need to come undone.

depending on how the sweater was knit, there is usually a bind off row at the top of each piece that you have to undo before you can complete the fun task of just pulling on the string and watching it unravel. (for this sweater there was no bind off row, so it just fell apart after i pulled the seams out).
and in the end i got about 1200 yards of beautiful wool to recreate into something else!!!
i do have plans for this wool, but i haven't started on them yet, i will keep you all posted!

recycled elephant!

so, i've been working on this little guy for awhile. the pattern i was attempting to follow was full of many, many poor ideas and mistakes, so i had to spend some extra time making him look like a cuddly elephant and not an alien life-form. he spent a weekend with nate and i as a fully-finished elephant (even accompanying us to a Reds baseball game in Cincinnati) before being handed over to one of my coworkers who is expecting a little boy next month.

i forgot to take a picture of the unsightly sweater that this yarn once belonged to, maybe next time i will remember. but the good news is that a $3.00 sweater made this whole animal and left me with plenty for another, nothing like a good washable cotton recycled sweater!he is sure happy that nate let him sit on his lap and help drive! woohoo! go reds!

my striped cardigan

i bought this yarn on clearance last year for my birthday (thanks mom for the gift certificate). they didn't have enough of any one color so i mixed it up a bit with the stripes! the pattern is the "sienna cardigan" from interweave knits and it is truly one of the warmest, coziest sweaters, perfect for people that don't turn their heat on much in the wintertime. not so perfect for hot and humid indiana summer days... sorry i didn't post this when i first finished a few months ago. but better late than never.

and yeah, the pictures aren't really that great, i'd like to blame it on the camera but it's really probably just me and my inability to get simple settings correct!

After 1 1/2 years...

the Christmas-present canvas that my husband gave me finally became a painting. I am ashamed to admit how long it took me to commit an idea to paint form... but i won't say that i don't enjoy the empty canvas and seeing endless possibilities everyday leading up to the actual painting. there is something so promising about a blank canvas. but, i love to paint and have really enjoyed working on this one for the last few weeks. i think it turned out kind of cute. hope you enjoy.
So far it seems i can't paint anything but Russian folk women, but that's not the worst thing right? I still think of Russian babushki with a fondness and can't help it.

happy mother's day!

i just want to say thank you to all the great mothers and mother-figures in my life. happy mother's day everyone, what a blessing it is to have a mother that loves you...like my little kangaroo here, taking care of her little roo! she's now happily hopping around with my darling little niece mckinley jane!

thanks to my sister kate i felt the desire to go and do some window shopping of my own...the clothes i would wear if i had the cash, here's my look.it's funny how even though i don't own any of the things above, i feel like i do in some weird "cyber-reality" way. on another note, i am finished with the sweater i was knitting but have yet to take a decent picture of it, be patient with me... my photo skills are not world-class.