yarn on the brain

this is a sea urchin that sits on a shelf in our sunroom. yesterday i happened to glance at it and suddently a mental picture of this marc jacobs beret popped into my head.


mind you, i thought this beret was kind of ugly when i first saw it in the fashion mags. but after making the connection with the sea urchin, it suddenly has me intrigued.


is this what he was thinking all along? or have i just spent too much time with my head up my skein?

silk sleeves & goldie's kid

i love these silk sleeves from leigh radford's one skein. the perfect project for that big ol' bag o' KSH and kid seta that's burning a hole in my stash. they're also the perfect accessory for cool summer nights. i love them scrunched down like jane fonda legwarmers on my arms.


here is kate. in THAT sweater. and here is more kate in the balenciaga cable sweater to die for. p.s. you gotta love the part where she talks about loving to knit and sew. hmmmm...i wonder where she learned that.

hucci cucci gucci

finally catching up on my backlog of bazaars and came across this adorable cropped cardigan. it's hard to see in this pic, but the yarn seems to be a heavyweight cotton or silk...something with a bit of sheen. i love the shape of this piece with the little pouf in the sleeves. prim and foxxy at the same time!

nobody rocks a sweater like little edie

i saw grey gardens on the big screen at the dryden last night. despite the non-stop, hyena-like laughter of a man seated in front of me, big edie, little edie, and the marble faun were all the more fabulous and poignant when blown up beyond the confines of my 19-inch sony. i never know whether to laugh or cry when i watch this doc. nevertheless, i'm left with the staunch belief that the maysles treated their subjects with respect and dignity.

here's my homage to l. edie, though my brooch is probably worth about $1.5 mill less than hers. anybody up for a head-sweater-along?

oh my guilty pleasures

with summer, comes plenty of guilty pleasures. like this adorable free pattern that knitchick jenna turned me on to. available from the super-nice ohmystars, it's the knitting equivalent of your fave trashy novel: fast, cheap and impossible to put down. it's knit on circs, so no big ol' needles bumping up against your legs while you're lounging poolside. i'm not always great at memorizing patterns, but this one was easy. just a two-row rep and the effect is stunning. i'm making mine with some easy mods, including a peacock blue bust and tie straps. i plan to work the bust in ST st, with just two vertical strips of the razor stitch continuing up the bustline for a bit of princess-seam shaping. i was also thinking about casting off in a bit of metallic gold for just a tiny glimmer at the neckline (though more than one person has strongly advised against this, i love the idea of a little sparkle.) i would have been further along on this, but things came to a standstill on saturday. that's when i stopped in my LYS for the peacock suss fishnet and proceeded to get all hoopled up in leigh radford's "one skein." so just to add to my list of summertime diversions, i cast on for a pair of silk sleeves in tomato red kid seta. another great knit-by-the-pool project. now all i need is a cabana boy and a strawberry margherita. what's on your needles for summer?

waterproof knitting?

ahhh, i love the smell of latex in the morning. apparently, they couldn't find a human who would model this number. but why not, i ask? what better way to shield your blowout? and more than that, the pink floral bathing cap is taking me straight back to the edge of the pool, eating a nutty buddy as i'm waiting for adult swim to be over.

in those days, bathing caps were mandatory. ya know, to save the delicate pool filter from becoming hopelessly clogged by the enormous hairballs that would invariably form whenever an uncovered head touched the water. but i'm also loving the sculptural form of this. the soft pink petals. and, i'm wondering, what knit creations could this inspire? is there such a thing as waterproof yarn?

sal pal

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Originally uploaded by hitbyabus.

finally got to see the real salvatore ferragamo bag while visiting a friend in chicago this weekend. my friend knew the whole story and she was the one who spotted it from across the store, shouting, "hey, is that it!?" i was like, what are you talking about...and then i whirled my head around and there It was, perched atop the highest shelf in the bloomie's handbag department. i nearly knocked over the entire display in my frenzy to get at the bag. a clerk appeared out of nowhere, nervously eyeing the maniacal woman fondling and photographing the store's sole specimen of the bag.

to be honest, it was a bit of a let-down to see the ferragamo in person. it just seemed, well, smaller somehow...and definitely not worth plunking down $1,650 USD of my hard-earned cashola.

still, the details are pretty amazing...the wicker top is beautifully constructed. and the inside is lined with this very cool yellow-green taffeta. the curliecues are much tighter than the ones i made for my bag. and i was very surprised to see how soft the yarn was. i always imagined that it was sort of jute-like. in reality it is very close to classic elite provence i used for my fake-o.

mobius scarfus

sometime last fall, yahaira posted a bit about the scarf made famous by the queen of dumpster chic, m.k. now, i know i am hopelessly behind the times AND season with this FO, but behold the mobius:

my knitting buddy laurie was here for the weekend from maine and we decided to learn a new technique. she had some british knitting mag that had a great pictorial about the mobius cast-on, so we were off and running. a great, portable project that allowed me to test-drive a skein of suss ultrasoft in these ultra-cool koolaid colors and lay to waste a skein of frog tree alpaca that was languising in my stash. the ruffles were a happy accident brought about by gauge differences between the suss and the frog tree.