Spinalcat's Crafty Adventures

Lizard Ridge Strip , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . Here's my Lizard Ridge progress so far. I'm using the entire ball so my "squares" are more like rectangles. Plus I'm working the strips in one piece to reduce the amount of seaming. This is Noro Kureyon colorway 116 and 153. Colorway 116 (on top) is my favorite colors, but it was a huge pain to get it to look good in this pattern. About half the skein is solid or mostly black. It seems that most Noro skeins are one long changing color sequence, but 116 seemed to go from black to red to white and back again to red and black. It looked like a big mess the first time I worked up the strip. Then I ripped it all out, cut the yarn at the middle, and reversed the orientation of half the skein. The result was a lot better, but still lacking definition toward the end. The 3rd and last time, I balled up the skein into chunks of color and deliberately used contrasting portions. Yes, it was worth it....

Toots Hibbert In San Francisco , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . We went up to the city again last night to catch Toots & The Maytals at The Independent. It was awesome!! Toots Hibbert has been on the reggae scene since the 1960's, and is generally considered the originator of the term "reggay."

Friday I drove up to the city to join in a demonstration at the Chinese consulate organized by the Burmese American Democratic Alliance and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (don't miss the amazing mural by Mona Caron). There's some video of local news coverage here . I urge you to find out more about the plight of Burma's people. If you are interested in taking action, here are some resources- Youth Solidarity of Burma, organized by two young Burmese women in Thailand, accepts donations at givetoburma.org. BADA accepts donations here . Buddhist Peace Fellowship has info on donations, volunteering, membership here. The Avaaz.org petition is here . And you can always write your congresspeople. This is not just a Burmese issue, or a Buddhist issue. Anyone who values human rights, nonviolence, democracy, and/or freedom of speech should be completely appalled by the current situation. For your crafty folks, there's a stencil template of marching monks on the Saffron Revol...

Slackers Mosaic , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . Friday night we sent to see one of our favorite bands, The Slackers , at Slim's in San Francisco. You can see the large versions of the individual photos above if you click through to my flickr page. I've always had quite a few "favorite bands", but I've come up with a new criterion- any band I've seen play more than 3 or 4 times gets favorite status. The Slackers put on a great show as usual, but this time I had a camera (Bryan's old digital point & shoot). Right now, my photos are still on the main page of the Slackers website (through a flickr group ). Another awesome change from the ordinary was that both of us climbed up on stage (along with as many other people could fit) during the last song and danced as best we could without knocking over band members or equipment. I've done this before at a Dropkick Murphys show (it's traditional to invite girls up on stage during the Spicy ...

Dress, Yarn, and Beads , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . I attended the Santa Clara County Meetup Group's get-together at Knitting Arts in Saratoga. I love Saratoga. For you Texas folk, it's sort of like Salado times 1,000, I guess. I found out that Knitting Arts was having a week-long anniversary sale- 20% off. I had intended to make a Cap Shawl to match this dress I bought in Hawaii, but I saw a sample of a "Heavy Mesh Scarf" made with Colinette Tao Silk and Colinette Parisianne held together. It's a free pattern with purchase of those yarns from the shop. It was really lovely and silky, and only used one skein of each yarn! One of the colorways almost exactly matched my dress. Then just before checking out, I found a package of beads that almost exactly matched the beads on the front of the dress! I might get to cast on tomorrow once my size 13 needles arrive with the rest of my stuff. :) I also stocked up on white Kidsilk Haze (hooray for ...

Curved Shawl from VLT , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . I've restarted the Curved Shawl from VLT (about 10 times, haha) with size 1.5 needles. After 11 or so repeats (out of 40-something total) I blocked to check the fabric and gauge. I like the fabric a lot better, but I think I'm going to need to do more repeats to get the right size shawl. That's ok cause I have about twice the original yardage.

Kitty in Temp Apartment , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . Yum Yum did so well on our move day! All the TSA people thought she was so cute going through security with me. (You have to take pets out of their carrier and hand-carry them through the checkpoint as the carrier gets x-rayed.) She did talk a little on the flight, but was much quieter than the surrounding small children. Most of the time I couldn't even hear her until the husband pointed her out, so I'm sure she didn't bother anyone else. Moving the cat was one of my biggest concerns, but it turned out to be the easiest part! Getting in to the temp apartment was MUCH more difficult. We had outrageously detailed instructions for getting the keys from a lockbox, but NO info on how to get into the parking garage. Finally we discovered that the garage key card was IN the apartment. This place has so many keys they come with a color-coded identification guide. Seriously! On a more exciting note, we...