Leslie Hall you are a goddess

Today's Boston Globe featured a story and photo series about Leslie Hall, the woman who will single-handedly bring back all that glitters. Leslie is an art student in Boston and she is a huge collector of bedazzled sweaters. Not only does she collect these sweaters, she poses in them and the results are amazing. Her sweater collections have been featured in several papers and magazines including Vice Magazine.

Leslie is multi-talented, in addition to her massive sweater collection and her art she also has a band, Leslie and the Lys. You can check out their songs on Leslie's MySpace site and you can buy the album as well as a Leslie Hall t-shirts on Leslie's site.

THANK YOU MAMA FOR MAKIN ME GOLD PANTS
ONES I CAN DANCE IN MAKE ROMANCE IN

My weekend

I wasted most of my weekend watching movies and playing video games so I don't have much to report. We did see the new Star Wars and I am happy to say that it didn't suck. I also frogged the itsybitsy bag and started over since I made a small mistake in the herringbone pattern that I couldn't deal with. I took pictures, but forgot to get them off the camera before I loaned it to a friend so they'll have to wait for another day.

Dirt under my nails

Every spring during the Stockley Gardens Art Festival the Norfolk Master Gardeners have their annual plant sale. I see it every year, but by the time May rolls around my garden is already planted. This year I waited for the festival so that I could buy some of their plants which are usually pretty cheap.

My first score was this aloe plant that had 5 baby plants. I replanted her and the kids in this vintage brass planter that used to be home to a rubber tree plant that died after too many moves. Aloe plants are fairly easy to care for, I just need to be careful when I am moving. She set up shop next to the tiki bar in a sunny part off the dining room. I should also note that there were more babies this morning, I am going to have to separate them so that the mama plant has plenty of room to grow. Hopefully I will be able to trade one of the little guys for some grass seeds to plant in the hanging basket on my balcony. I think that it would be pretty cool to have a little lawn that I can periodically mow with a pair of scissors. I might even get some lawn art to really make it authentic.

Next is the herb garden that I set up. It's nothing special, stevia on the left, cilantro and sweet basil sprouts in the middle and lemon basil on the right. The lemon basil already smells fantastic.


Finally, in the garden boxes on the balcony I have some portulacas in a few colors. I love these plants, they really compliment the boxes by climbing over the edges. I can't wait to see them in full bloom.


Here's one of the flowers on the portulaca plant. They range in color from white to bright pink.

This is dedicated to the creamiest girl I know

The other day my friend Meg told me about a new drink she discovered and ordered at Elliot's Fair Grounds. She left the recipe on her card so when I went in last night for snb I finally got to try it out. The drink is a vegan raspberry egg cream (or 'Meg Cream') and tastes like a fizzy yoo-hoo drink. I went home and figured out how it was made and what modifications might work with it. Next time I am going to try it with coconut or almond syrup.

Vegan Egg Cream

2-3 tablespoons chocolate syrup
1/3 cup soymilk
seltzer water to fill the cup
flavoring syrup of your choice (optional)

Mix all ingredients together over ice and enjoy. For an alcoholic version try adding some Kahlua.

In other news, my new Todd Oldham book came today and it is fabulous. Now I am getting really excited about moving and redecorating. I also got You Grow Girl and I am looking forward to planting my little garden this weekend, especially with all of the terra cotta planters on sale this week at AC Moore.

Another night of bitchin and stitchin

Not a lot of knitting today. I went to the Va. Beach SnB and finished sewing in all of the loose ends on my accidentally on purpose so it is officially a FO! I put back $30 a few weeks ago for the Loop-d-Loop book and I finally found it at Borders last night, but as I looked through it I decided that I have way too many projects going on right now and so I put off buying the book until the end of the summer. Another book that I am interested, but have yet to see in person is Pluckyfluff's Handspun Revolution. If you have seen this book live in person please email me your thoughts and opinions; I am a little scared to spend $40 sight unseen.

Best day ever!!!

Today was one of those days that just gets better and better as it goes. I woke up pretty early and so did Philip so we were at Fair Grounds enjoying our Sunday coffee by 9am. The sun was out, the sky was blue, it was a great way to start the day. Then I went to the laundry mat, usually I try to avoid going on Sundays because it is so busy, but today everyone was too busy with Mother's day to do their laundry so I was in and out in a flash.
I finished the accidentally on purpose sweater early in the afternoon (I still have some tails to weave in, but I am saving those for the SnB tomorrow) which left me tons of time to take a stroll through Ghent. I finally visited Broad Street Books and discovered that they rent audio books, goodbye Audible! If they extend their Tuesday night hours I might try to change the Norfolk SnB location, I really like that store. On my way home I stopped by 7-11 for the first slurpee of the summer (cherry of course) and discovered that they have IBC root beer on tap. Could this day possible get any better? Yup, we had potato and pea curry for dinner while watching two, not one, new episodes of the Simpsons and the animation domination.

It's fun-due time!

My friend Chelsea was cleaning out her grandma's house and she came across a fondue pot. She decided that she would never used it so she gave it to Philip and I to enjoy. Unfortunately, the set was missing fondue forks and since Philip and I are too sophisticated to eat fondue without the proper forks we set out on a fork-finding adventure. After a few failed attempts we finally found the forks at Williams-Sonoma and immediately set out for the other needed supplies.

We decided to go with the pub fondue recipe from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook so we needed some lager to give it some kick. We chose Yuengling because that's one of the only lagers that Philip drinks.


Next we needed some dipping ingredients so we got tempeh, plum tomatoes, cauliflower, and of course, some crusty bread (not so crusty in the picture, but a few minutes in the oven fixed that).



We went home and put all of the fondue ingredients in the blender to make a smooth sauce. As we looked at the premixed ingredients we started to have doubts, but once the mixture was blended we were totally at ease.


This is Philip's very first fondue experience so he was very excited.


And here is his first bite.


What does he think? He likes it, he likes it!

Memories and freeform hats

My friend Angela wants crocheted headphone covers that can be changed out depending on her mood. I have seen patterns for knitted versions of these, but they are pretty boring and aren't constructed in a way that would allow them to be changed to match an outfit or a mood. I started thinking of ideas for the closure and I ended up with some really cool covering ideas. The whole thing made me realize how much I miss crocheting and that I am gong to have to work it back into my crafting schedule.

For years I chose crochet over knitting because it was faster and I felt like I had more creative control over my work. I could make almost anything I saw or imagined without needing a pattern- in fact I've never even read a crochet pattern, only the pictures. For the most part I do what is called freeform crochet where I make it up as I go. To me crochet was a sculpting method that used yarn as the medium, I could change the shape of something just by moving the stitches.

This morning I came across Ana Voog's website were she features the coolest freeform hats I have ever seen, definately check it out.

No knitting today

I woke up (not by choice) at 6am this morning so I decided to make scones to bring to work. I got the Teany Book yesterday and thought this would be the perfect chance to try out the scone recipe inside. Since I have never made scones before I followed the recipe exactly and ended up with a mixture that had the consistency of pancake batter. I knew this wasn't right so I rechecked all of the measurements and I did everything as listed. Conclusion- the recipe was wrong, you need to either double the dry ingredients or cut the wet ones in half.

In other news, I ordered The Urban/Suburban Composter (again!) this morning. It is out of print so I used Fetch Book to find the best used price, things can get tricky with out-of print-books, and Amazon had the best prices and the most copies so I bought through them.

I am starting another container garden- this year no tomatoes! I am going to grow beets for dying, cilantro (since I still have seeds), basil, thyme, and rosemary. It is mostly an herb garden since the birds and squirrels go after my veggies, especially tomatoes. I want to make little boxes to house the ugly plastic planters I have, but that might be a project for next year. We are planning on moving in the fall and I really want an apartment that is part of a house so that we can have a yard. It would be so lovely to have a little garden in addition to the million planters I have.

New yarn and a huge challenge

On Monday my banana silk yarn arrived from Town & Country Llamas and it is beautiful, althought a little bulky for Clapotis. I think that I am going to make a more open, lacey wrap with it to accentuate the texture of the yarn. I knitted up a swatch last night and it is so soft and easy to work with , I can't wait to start knitting my wrap.

On Monday I also recieved my Master Knitter Level 1 folder. Wow is that thing intimidating. I think the key is to take it slowly and get it right. I can tell that I am going to have to knit a ton of swatches and do quite a bit of research for the questions; I have already pinpointed things that I need to work on before swatching (i.e, my tension, edges, and cast ons) I am going to start the first increase practice swatch tonight trying all of the increases and deciding what I need to work on with each one. The nice thing about the program is that there is no deadline so I can really take my time and get things right. More on this tonight.

Meet Ruby

This is Ruby, my new yarn baller. I bought her yesterday from AC Moore using a Michael's 40% off coupon (how I love big business competition!!!) I have been thinking about getting a yarn baller for awhile, but the price has been the main reason I didn't get one. Now, I have no idea how I lived without one. This baby can frog and ball an entire sweater in about 5 minutes and the center-pull balls are way nicer than anything I could ever create. I spent a large part of my afternoon balling half-used balls of yarn, now my stash is nice and neat. This is love.