:: fluff & hustle

Oct

2015

some ranting, and a grand release

24 Oct 2015

yes, i’ve been MIA most of this year.

this year. this goddamn fucking year.

this year has been by far the hardest year of my life. after each magnitude 11 size blow i thought things surely couldn’t get any worse, and yet miraculously, as if through god’s own vengeful hand, they always did.

but i’m still here, alive, standing on my own feet, incidentally with a freshly bought earthquake insurance in my hand, because for whatever the fuck is still to come, I’M READY.

AAAAAAHM READY.

resentful ranting aside, i do have some really exciting news to share with you.

early last year i wrote three knitting patterns for sweetgeorgia to use in their pattern kits. now that the rights to these patterns have recently returned back to me, it’s high time to put these babies out under my very own name!

please join me in frantically applauding the re-release of the nineteen twenty shrug and the matilda set!

the nineteen twenty now comes with a much-requested large size in addition to the two smaller ones, and the pattern PDF has been fully revamped with more construction info and revised measurements. hopefully putting this beauty together is more straightforward now!

i’ve reworked the matilda mitts and cowl in madelinetosh twist light, in their spectacularly deep red colourway, tart. the colour is practically made for these crisp autumn days and serves as the perfect background for the cable details. and i believe it’s 100% hipster approved too!

because most people (incomprehensibly) hate purling, i’ve made changes to the cowl construction to tone down the amount of purling required. i’ve also tweaked the sizing to make sure you can make both the mitts and cowl with a single skein of yarn.

all three patterns are available now through my ravelry pattern store, and as a special re-release surprise all three are 50% off until the end of november! no coupon code needed so hurry up and grab ’em all – all the monies are for my direct benefit! plenty of more photos there too of ashley and jing being disgustingly pretty! barf!

there are more exciting things coming up later this year so check back here or on instagram for the latest news! imma have me some cake now. I’VE EARNED IT.

Jun

2015

sew sew sew your boat

liisa

finished 2015, sewing

29 Jun 2015

earlier this year, while i was still very much engulfed in much pain and stress and emotion, my boy decided that it was time for me to stop blabbering and fetal-positioning and watching jurassic park twice a day every day and three times on weekends, and do something moderately more productive instead.

so he did what a good, caring human being ideally does, apart from allowing others to watch jurassic park AS MANY TIMES AS THEY FUCKING WANT, and signed me up for a sewing class.

don’t get me wrong now, buddy (see i’m canadian now). i know how to sew. i just never got into it enough to learn to make something i could, or more accurately, would, actually wear. also, “learning to make something” just inherently doesn’t fit that well with me.

but in this class hosted by spool of thread we were going to be making the omnipresent wiksten tank, which seemed like the loveliest, perfectest, summeriest thing to make. (also easiest. apart from tote bags. fuck tote bags. i buy mine from save-on-foods.)

so i made mine in this lovely, perfect, summery cotton by lisa congdon from cloud9 collective.

it was indeed marvellously fast and easy to make (EXCEPT TURNING THE HEM I HATE YOU HEM) and fits in a rather flattering way despite the non-drapey woven fabric. you also can’t see the puckers and the booboos, so as far as you’re concerned, they’re not there, even though they are.

the fact that i managed to make something so utterly wearable made me so giddy that i even attempted to climb a tree.

then i found breadcrumbs in my boobs and got distracted.

but something about this mystical, occultistic form of crafting appeals to me. like seriously, you guys. if anyone needs me, i’ll be back at spool of thread lick-claiming EVERYTHING. that’s still a thing, right?

Jun

2015

buttons, and how not to

liisa

cardigans, finished 2015, knitting

21 Jun 2015

contrary to popular belief, i am still a knitter.

granted, i was a non-knitter for a scary amount of time after i suffered some massive hand injuries early this year – hence no poignant wool-related posts here in the past several months. but thanks to a magnificently talented network of various health professionals, i’m almost entirely back.

anyway – i’m still a knitter, and i made a cardigan. it’s called effervescence by the multi-talented olgajazzy and it’s super lovely and i just want to be engulfed in it until the end of time. (i feel like i say this every time i finish something. but i do not subscribe to inflation, so it’s okay.)

also, in case you’re wondering, i like to call that face my 30-year-old-virgin face.

the yarn is quince & co chickadee, which is not hand-dyed, which means the colour appears very solid, which means that things made with it tend to look less artsy/craftsy than some other things.

WHOASHEJUSTSAIDSOMETHINGMODERATELYINSULTINGABOUTARTSANDCRAFTS

you may commence flogging the heathen now. go on. it’s fun!

after the cardigan was finished and blocked i realized how marvellously neat it looked – so neat, in fact, that i had the idea of doing the finishing touches to make it look as store-bought as possible. the colour was already there, so it would only take a couple of small things, i deduced.*

hence i took to etsy to find some lovely grosgrain ribbon to sew under the button facings. the funky yellow chevron shapes seemed to create a splendid contrast for the deep purple ~~smoke on the water~~ wool.

so i took my thread and my nano-inch needle and hand-sewed the ribbon on. look how even the little stitches are! LOOK AT THEM!

and i only had to re-sew everything two or three times, which would surely be a personal record if i’d ever tried this before. let’s just say stretchy knitted fabric doesn’t like conforming to incredibly non-stretchy woven tape.

anyway, all of the ribbon came out so nice! oh boy oh boy oh boy!

then i started thinking about buttons, and very quickly decided on simple metal ring snaps, as i thought they would work nicely with the unusual, graphic stitch pattern on the front.

so i began placing the snaps, measuring the spaces in between only somewhat accurately, because i was getting so devilishly close to HAMMERTIME that i kept losing my concentration. UH UH YEAH HAMMERTIME. so there are some that are less perfectly placed than others. also, do NOT tell me i’m the only one who gets a hard-on about hammering things, because that’s just not true.

i did the first front, and then i started on the second front. i was so enthralled by HAMMERTIME that i didn’t organize the various metal parts into separate piles… and so, immediately upon hammering in the fifth button on the second front i realized i had hammered in the wrong top piece.

which is why my left front now looks like this.

BUT THIS WAS NOT MY FAULT. THE PACKAGE HAD THE WRONG AMOUNT OF PARTS. I WAS DOOMED TO FAIL. I COULD NOT HAVE KNOWN.

i’ve been told this is not a complete disaster. i’ve been told that a tool exists that can pry the pieces out without destroying the ribbon or the wool. but so far no one has produced this tool to me.

but that’s okay. i’ve come to terms with what happened, and have simply chosen to rock this fucker like i just don’t care. and doesn’t it rock too? whoop whoop?

click here for more project details

*i am aware of the heated controversy of being flattered versus offended in the event of muggles mistaking hand-knitted items for store-bought items. there are several schools of thought, and i subscribe to none. but i can easily be bribed with cookies.

Jun

2015

home

liisa

life, misc

01 Jun 2015

and so it happened, that the magnificent, syrupy waffle god* came down from heavens, placed her accepting palm on my head and said,

“yay, you be canadian now.”

and i was like, “okay”.

after around 20 months of debilitating uncertainty, thousands of dollars of money, and several piled-up aneurysm-inducing incidents that would shock even the most seasoned horror tale listener, the government of canada has finally granted me the coveted title of a permanent resident.

it sounds so much less cool than the american green card, but that’s essentially what it is. i’ve convinced canada that i’m a keeper, so i can now stay here as long as i want and do whatever i want. i don’t need to explain my comings and goings and doings to anyone anymore. how fucking spectacularly awesome is that?

and with the magical ID card that it comes with, at the airport i now get to jive walk straight past the tourist lines and go through the line marked “canadian passports” and deal with the machines that go BEEP instead of the CBSA officers that go FUCK YOU NON-CANADIAN I KILL YOU.

so that’s the sort of short version of it. the terror-inducing levels of cortisol in my system are slowly coming down. the nightmares are getting to be less alarming. life is going from panic mode to cool cat mode.

what now?

*my friend ginny and i have come to agree that this might well be the only god worth worshipping.

Apr

2015

thirties shmirties

liisa

misc

06 Apr 2015

should i be having some sort of crisis? or is it cool to just be, you know, fine?

somehow this is supposed to be a very precarious time, with past choices starting to weigh me down and future choices being made by virtue of frantic pounding of the O MAH GAHD THERE’S JUST NOT ENOUGH TIME apocalypse panic button.

and yet i feel almost completely unaffected.

almost, because i did recently shave my head and buy around 30 bottles of nailpolish. so that might be a sign of something.

also, does it mean something that i painted the boy’s nails and not my own?

but life just doesn’t feel as fleeting as it should. it doesn’t feel like it’s the absolute last chance for me to sit down RIGHT NOW and evaluate EVERYTHING and change EVERYTHING because in a year or two IT WILL BE TOO LATE.

what a load of bullshit that is, anyway.

if i’m perfectly content with sitting here and watching looney tunes in my underwear and having week-old cupcakes for breakfast, why should i feel like i should change anything? is god going to strike me down if i don’t start taking life seriously right now? or is he more likely to sit down with me and eat tacos and go KILL THE WABBIT KILL THE WABBIT like any bearded dude wearing sandals and a bathrobe on a monday morning?

the only revelation, nay, epiphany here is that i feel like i’m on the verge of finally growing enough balls to be my own person. someone who is quite capable of determining whether or not turning 30 is something to get said balls tangled into a twist over. someone who is quite fine with not starting to churn out babies and irreversable life choices just because a certain arbitrary milestone has been reached.

all i want to do right now is eat those goddamn tacos and celebrate the fact that i’ve gotten this far – and eventually, see how much further i’ll get.

pretty pompous, huh?