more rainbows

even more crochet a rainbow granny blanket squares!
i am being alot more bold with colour than i usually am and loving the results. usually i'm working to a set scheme so don't play around as much as i am with these squares. i love the randomness - something i usually have a hard time with...so strange and so not punk, but hey that's me!

look at me, posting more than once a week - but i am about to burst with happiness as i got to meet up with the cutest hooker ever yesterday - the talented twinkie chan!!

it was a wonderful afternoon, hosted by the crochet girlie at atfotf - with cupcakes and crochet and making new friends. i have even wrangled the girls from her publisher to start coming along to our sitchups in the clock house on leather lane.

then i came home, and spent some time cruising on the internet - watching the aftermath of the march yesterday unfold on twitter, and looking at more ways to get involved with the relief efforts for japan. so far i have done/plan/thought about the following ways to help:

1. set up a donation link to shelter box for anyone wishing to buy me a birthday present. i'd love 100 of my internet friends and family to donate at least $10 (£6) to this charity that supplies emergency shelter - because if we did that would be $1k...

2. charting an afghan square to create a whole crocheted blanket to auction off for donation to the japanese red cross.

3. start making squares for the 'crochet a rainbow' effort to distribute blankets across the tsunami area of japan. am going to get a date in the diary soon to get my usual stitchers together to make squares one night (with beer of course kids do not worry!!!)

i'm not sure why this disaster has upset me so. maybe it is the memory of katrina and how helpless i felt while my dad's family were back south taking in tons of strangers and maxing out there credit cards to help others. yes, i do come from good stock...my family wouldn't take any help paying off their cards and instead asked people to donate to the salvation army "because they are the charity that stayed when the tv crews left".

yes, i do come from good stock. guess i better do some shit to prove it!

just back and just married

yup.

sorry went off radar a bit again.

still a bit jetlagged as got in from LAX last night and straight to work today and have my usual tribal fusion bellydance class with the awesome kim tonight. yikes!

while back home i crocheted alot - finished the heart baby blanket for amaya, a cozy for my new vaio netbook, and a shrug for my sis in law. attended my parents' 50th wedding anniversary and had my own halloween wedding. plus walked around on the beach and went to knott's scary farm!

will regale you with many photos once they are uploaded/available!

but i will warn ya'll that i drained a whole battery on just documenting all the handmade items around my parents' house - some as old as a three generations, from my great grandma, and still being used...

world aids day 2009

i took the time tonight, after working late and while waiting for my tesco man to bring 12bottles of my favourite dry cava (it was on special - 3 for £10) for xmas.nye...anyway, i took the time tonight to crochet a red ribbon. i sat there and really thought about it and wished i'd done more to support world aids day this year. i'd like to start planning a project now to culminate next december 1st, but not sure exactly what just yet. i'm thinking that maybe i could get my stitch and bitch groups to all come together for the night - each do a square, then auction off a blanket?

but would anyone want a blanket of red ribbons squares...
maybe a better idea would be to all make afghans and only use one red ribbon square per project and auction them all off. or just take on the project meself and create something all on my own.
hmmm...

i've been moved and i don't want to lose this desire to do something and create something, and earn some £££ for a good cause.

any ideas?

ufo's of the heart

i got home from a hospital appointment this evening to find my lovely daughter here which is nice...but i also came home to the realisation that i now have ufo's all over my house! how did this happen? well, i know how it happened - i ran out of toy stuffing and my engagement has been called off. so my coffee table is strewn with celestian stars that are all 99% done and need to be stuffed and a bag of mario piranha plants and daleks behind the sofa that also need padding out.

then there is the big box of skull and crossbone afghan squares that all need evening up...
but this project somehow turned into a moving in present for the fiance because i was basing the colours on him bringing his oxblood chesterfield (yes posh schoolboy) along with him. now i don't know if i just continue to finish it for me, or break it up into bits to make a blanket for my niece rosie, or what. the yarn is much to good to make into a dog blanket for the ibiza tattoo shop or to yarnbomb as jolly roger flags.

sigh.

i hate that things have gotten so messed up.
how did it all spiral so far out of control?
i speak to him and he says he is as miserable as i am...
SO WHY CAN WE NOT JUST FUCKING FIX IT

sorry - i'm upset and frustrated and no amount of young sexy tattooed swedish rock gods is going to shake me out of it. even if they did crochet it just would not be the same!

sorry i left so early tonight...

and thanks to those that were so sweet to me and understanding and told me to get it all out...but there was alot to get out - i'd beeen holding it in for days. it was my first real hard cry since the fiance and i have been having problems.

he got made redundant. things were wierd. then i overreacted to something he said and it's sooo much worse now. more worse than i could ever imagine...and it's strange because i really feel like i've let myself down. and him.

he's taken such good care of me and now i'm not doing a very good job. i just keep working on the skully blanket and hope that it's still a living together gift.

so...i'll be back out when i can.

shoes boos and tattoos

last night so far has been my best most favourite stitch and bitch ever!

well...besides the iknit sunday knitroast at the pub in soho but it only loses marks as its freezing in there...but i finally went along to prague bar and it was so nice to be around alot of women that i just immediately felt comfortable with! that's not say i don't cherish the others i've met up with elsewhere - especially my lovely celia in anaheim.

so i was sitting there with everyone in the window of prague bar in shoreditch crocheting another skully square (more below) and my lovely friend fanny minka saw me and popped in!  fanny is the one i'm going to leave alll my shoes to when i die as we are exactly the same size and she looks so good in them...i just wish i was as thin as her and with the same sense of style!

squares:

i must have enough to finish off the blanket now for rafrasiles!

but whatever will i take along for my pub crocheting when this is done?

all i can think of is to maybe make a lovely sampler afghan of crochet stitches as there are sooo many lovely stitches out there that i want to try and may never incorporate into a project otherwise.  i also want to experiment more with texture and doing embossed type alpahabets (thanks to ppl on ravelry for patterns!) to do some crocheted thank you cards.

and reminder to self:

collect plastic carrier bags from everyone at work for recycled crochet projects!

i think i want to make some bowls for the office/x

plans plans plans

this week has been quite mad!

finally got my vacation time signed off so i can go ahead and go home to california for xmas. so been busy busy planning that! want to go up the coast to sfo with the fiance as he's never been there so have been looking into nice sightseeing train rides as hard to chill out when driving, so any california craftsers around then i may drop in on you lol, x

then my daughter decides she is comin back to london for a quick tour and will be here friday! which is great except her room has been gutted and we are trying to get all the wood stripped so we can stain it all - but instead now looks like we'll be staining what we can and the rest will be a quik paint and just get whatever black carpet we can find in there by the end of the week, phew...will be nice though to have it sorted and then move into that room and do mine up when im back in january.

thinking black and white with accents of bright bright green in for mine now and the fiance is starting to warm to the idea - anything too plain tends to remind me of suburban swinger bedrooms so i want it to be very very over the top! lots of shine and mirrors and funky 70s accoutrements so it is fun! right now its very boudoir so k for me but maybe not to share once we are married!

o dear how are we going to fit a wedding in this year!
latest idea is to do it in istanbul where we got engaged, but who knows!
and i still want to take him to venice for valentines day (reminder to self - look at calendar now!)
as even though he is italian, he's from naples so never been there and i love venice - its such a fairy tale city...

so lots of planning and thinking and re-planning.
like the sitting room decor - i'd been making the skully blanket to go with a black and burgundy room but i think now avocado green may take over the colour scheme, which means the jolly todger blanket is no longer going to go with the room i am afeared!

i mentioned that i should just sew together what i've done and give to my niece manni-rosie maria donna alvarex holt (or something like that) but the fiance said NO he definitely wants it and i think he's worried if i stop now he'll never get an afghan out of me. but try stopping me! i looove making blankets - just wish the ones i like making took less than a year to do. ugh. really i should try chunky yarn and a loose stitch one day...

but its so not me to do it the easy way!