44.

I'm back from Miami, to say the absolute least it was an amazing time! I generally hate florida (except Orlando) but, I figured I had never been down for an event of sorts, I've always been there on tour. I hoped to change it. Upon arrival (after getting up at 6am to rush to JFK) we picked up the rental car and checked into our cozy little hotel by the airport. They had a "general store" on the ground floor that was on an honor system. You drop exact money in a little box for whatever item it is that you want or fill in a little slip with your room number. After first glance, we decided our hotel looked like a loonie bin.

After settling in we hopped in our cute little silver box and headed to south beach. We kicked if off at the Tokion magazine party. Met up with the lovely miss Heather and drank some free wine. It was a bit chilly, wind blowing and of course 2 girls from New York going to Miami neglected to bring sweaters or things that may help in a windy or cold situation. We were somewhat screwed but we fought through and pushed on. We later checked out the Aqua Art and called it a night around midnight.

Thursday was full of fun... Io was to speak on a panel about outsiders coming in at 2pm so we woke up, searched for starbucks for about 2 hours then barely got to the Gen Art fair in time.


Post Gen Art/Vanguard we rolled on over to the Theme Magazine party in Wynwood where we met up withLogan & Jeremiah. This was the beginning of us "rolling 13 deep". Its like a snow ball, you keep pushing and pushing and going and going and all of a sudden you're in Miami (where 12 hours before you only knew maybe 2 people) driving around like you grew up there with your 11 new friends.

We rode on over to South Beach where we hit up the Ricky Powell party. An impromptu fashion show with half naked women strutting in bikinis may or may not have happened, a couple drinks... some painting. But the bikini's I think was the highlight of the party. Or maybe the hispanic guy that asked me what my sign was and told me that he needed be to buy him a drink becaue the police stole his bag.

Next stop, Beautiful Decay party - our group got bigger. We went to the Pharell party at Le Baron - an underground club lit up by only red lighting (to make people look beautiful) where we got seated at a table, 3 tubs of assorted beer and a bottle of 10 cane rum. For free.


stollen photo from logan.

After that, there was nothing more than sleep.

Friday I forced Io to take me to the beach. I knew that if we didn't go, we would never make it. It was so beautiful.


Friday night was the Scion party at the Raleigh hotel in the Penthouse. Pretty fancy stuff though they only had one bathroom which if you ask me was pretty silly considering they had an open bar party. None the less, I met a ton of new people and hung out with my crew of 12 until we rolled onto the next stop which was the Obey party. I took a few pictures there but got the memo that Russel Simmons was there and didn't like cameras so I had to put it away.

Next stop was the GenArt party in Wynwood where we stayed for aprox 10 minutes before walking the (way longer than we should have walked) "6" blocks to the next party. Living in New York and thinking about blocks is like a facade. I think 'oh, 6 blocks is not that far at all - thats like walking from the train stop to my work which takes me 5 minutes'. In other cities - blocks have the ability to be almost a mile long. Ugh - it was a stupid choice to walk. I was in heels. It was annoying and kind of chilly. But, we got there - we had to go back to the car to get our ID but - we did finally get to the Nike/ANP party.

At first the music was so loud that we had to all go to the bathroom to get toilet paper for our ears. We had to pay 13.01 for 1 single drink that had 15% gratuity included, at a bar where they didn't serve tap water - only bottle for 6$. It was shit. Terrible... too loud, too expensive I almost thought about suggesting leaving untiiiiiiiiil - Heather saved us and showed us there was free wine & beer in the garden out back where we then accumulated a cabana!


stollen again from logan.

The boys finally at one point decided to leave us and head back to South Beach for bed when they shut down the garden and we shortly followed but didnt go to bed. We closed the diviest of bars on 14th & Collins called Mac's Duece club. Made it home around 530am. I haven't done that in what feels like forever.

Saturday we dedicated to being art day. So, I'm just going to picture through saturday :





I found these two at the NADA art fair. This is a performance piece they have been working on together since 2006. It is one giant pink crocheted tube. I of course stopped, took photos, took video and asked them a bajillion questions. A link to more info about the super super long pink tube.

Anyway, that basically sums up the weekend, our flight left very early on sunday morning so after one more meal in south beach, we went home to our little insane asylum hotel.

I didn't get much knitting done (obviously). I did start a hat and realized after all the ribbing that it was big enough to fit 2 heads so I had to start over / back on track now.

I have no christmas presents yet other than the 2 dishcloths... I better get on it.

Thats all for now.
Thank god for a day off.
x
-e.

43. FO - wooman socks.

So, here I am with the socks that took me nearly 2 months to knit. Knitting while on the train, at work when it was slow, sometimes out at bars with friends or at friends houses - basically the "i have spare time and I need to entertain myself somehow". Now, this isn't to say that I love them any less than anything else I spend real time working on because I have been endlessly excited about finishing them and getting them on my feet. I mean its my 2nd pair of socks ever, first pair for myself... They are a big deal.

So, I am going to start with all the basics :

Yarn : Koigu - Bought at The Yarn Tree in Brooklyn on sale!!
Pattern : A combination of 2 patterns - knitting from the toe up, knitting the heel last.
Size : Woo-Man size. A tiny bit too big for my feet (size 8) but, not enough to make it annoying.

Needles : Size 2 US
Notes : I love the yarn, Its so lovely to knit with. It hardly ever splits, it slides around on my bamboo DPNS perfectly... I am for sure going to be using it again, in fact I have 2 more balls wound ready to be turned into more socks! (these might be jaywalkers - ignore the boob)



Now - tragedy insues (sp?) ... They look fine from here right? Totally cute, little, colorful socks?

Well, have a closer LOOK !!!
So, I have this nasty habit of smoking cigarettes, which I don't do in my house and had I left this project at home this may have never happened but, I took them out to the "big game" last night (because i hate sports and figured I'd try to finish my socks while the minnesotans watched sports) and somehow a cherry from my cigarette decided to jump off the tip of my cigarette and into my purse where my poor veunerable sock was harmlessly hanging out. My sock was hurt and upset, mostly that I didn't notice it being attacked by the burning cherry in time enough to save it from the little hole. I am pretty upset about it... I did the best I could sewing it in hopes of it not coming apart again. Every stitch I tried to sew to would break in half - they were all creating the "facade" of being real stitches but, infact - they were already damaged.

I'm wearing them anyway.


In other news, I knitting these for my boyfriends mother for christmas - dishcloths from this pattern, I improvised a little on one of them but, I figured it would be a cute gift for a mid-western mother. Mojo is super excited and she doesn't even know it.

I have also decided both my grandmothers will also be receiving these for christmas. Mom, don't tell them.

I have to go to work now. I really don't want to. I am going to Miami on wed so I would really like a little rest before my vacation but, I suppose I do need drinking money in south beach? Im delerious and need to wash my face.

xx.
e. & g.

p.s - new post on chopstickbusinesscard.
p.p.s - i broke my phone again. patiently awaiting a new one.
p.p.p.s - where is team knit?. I miss them.

37.

Well! Its been a long weekend. My parents were here from the great white north visiting for the weekend. We did the tourist-ey kind of thing in the mildest way possible (which is great - i avoided times square like the plague thank god) did a few dinners, introduced the travis, canal street, central park, wiliamsburg, east village. Showed them my various places of work over the past 2 years, bought frank a jacket, watched some eddie murphy - raw on my apartment wall (my roomate got a projector YAY!). All in all, the weekend was a success. The weather was pretty alright until of course toady when they decided to take the train to JFK and it was raining bullets all morning. its still kind of crummy outside but, i'm still in my pijama's so i am completely okay with that.



In some knitting news, my roomate naomi has decided to take up knitting. This is her second attempt which is FAR better than the first...



She has somehow developed this tiny little donut that lives around the working yarn. i was so perplexed by it that i had to take pictures... How does this happen?! I have never developed a tiny donut! How do I get to do that? What if I like the tiny donut? I have since taking these photos learned that it is because of the way she holds her yarn, it is wrapped around the inside of her pinky finger (which makes her pinky finger hurt after a while) which then because being stuck in there and using the baby alpaca - makes the donut! She is now on her 3rd donut of her first hank. I lover her donuts.

Onto the next knitting thing - I have this weekend completed another anthropologie inspired caplet for my mother, another little shell cowl for an etsy order and i am now working on a third little shell cowl for miss Gala. I predict to be finished with it by tomorrow sometime, possibly the end of tomorrow. Its kind of an awesome color I'm using for hers... I bought some hand dyed Araucania Chilean yarn. Its 100% pima cotton and knits up beautifully. Among all of those things I finished, I also got the yarn to finish Rudy short for Rudolph.



It came out pretty great! Funny thing about it, the second I finished sewing up the ends, I sold it to my roomates friend (as seen in photos) who was running out the door to get a car to the airport. I was snapping these photos as his car service was downstairs honking away waiting for him to come out.

I think Rudy will be much easier to write the pattern out for. Flossy can be done but I think it will have to be for slightly more advanced knitters because of the lace pattern, how exacitally do I say "now fix the stitch so it doesn't look lopsided

ie.
rnd 1: yo, sl1, k2, psso
rnd 2: k
rnd 3: yo, sl1, k2, psso
rnd 4: k and go forever then -
decrease!
rnd 1: yo, sl1, k2, psso (but if you need to to make the pattern look okay) - yo, sl1, k1, psso

confusing... even to me. SO! I think rudy will be written up sometime in the next day or two. :)

Another new and exciting thing that I've decided to do with my best friend (as shown below) is this fun little photo-blog. We will be posting our first assignment sometime this week... I am very excited about my new camera if you couldn't tell already. Lastly, I leave you with frank. Looking as dapper as ever. The cutest puppy in the entire world.



x
granny.

21.

I have a dilema...

I've finished lauren, its SO pretty and i'm VERY excited about it but this is where the dilema comes in... My 3 year old kodak point and shoot camera has finally kaputz, she says i have no memory for pictures when I actually have nothing left on my camera. She has rolled around the bottom of my purse with chocolate rum balls, lint, tobacco and coins so I'd say its safe to say that I'm not surprised and/or incredibly heart broken about this.

SO, now i'm left with my 3 film cameras. There is no such thing as instant gratification as far as film goes so I've been thinking about investing in one of these :



but theeeeen, I thought to myself... The last time I used me sewing machine, it blew up my apartments electricity so maybe investing in a decent sewing machine is a better idea?

Help.


Dear Orangina,

I love the look of you, I love the yarn I chose for you, I love the idea I have of wearing you one day with such joy, adoratoin and love but STOP INCREASING STITCHES. PLEASE.

love,
erin.

This is all for today. I promise I will post the FO for lauren as soon as I get the man's camera out of his apartment.

x
-granny

p.s Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.