Knit Addictions

New Look, New Day!

Life
Wow! It's been a month. Lame! Okay.....Let's see.....I've been "Stumbling" a whole helluva lot. You have to have Firefox as your web browser and then prepare to waste a LOT of time. This extension is the best for discovering GREAT sites on the net. My new fave thing to do when I'm bored and tired of everything!

Hmm......still raw. Almost always kick off the day with a 'green smoothie'. Yum! Feeling good from it all but am not being anal about it. I mean, if we get a craving for chicken or something, we're gonna have it. Life is too short!

Winner!
OMG! The weirdest thing.........a week ago, we were driving along and the radio was on. They were babbling about Blondie and the New Cars and caller number blah blah....so I called....and I WON TICKETS! Yep. We went and saw Blondie and the New Cars at the Universal Amphitheater. (now gibson). Anyway.......it was fun and free is always a good price in my book!

In the family dept....
My mom's piano is on a truck out here to us. I am excited and somehow nervous as well. I know I will cry when it gets here ....both with joy of having such a beautiful Sohmer upright piano and also ....well, because it will bring up all those memories of my mom playing it and me and her playing duets on it and laughing and laughing. Wow. It's gonna be weird.

In the band dept....
Nothing much. Our bassist is out of town all the time. So Bam and I are playing around with other ideas musically. Who knows!

In the yarn dept...
Still knitting when I can. Haven't finished anything I've started in the last few months! I'm so scattered!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Must finish. Must finish.

Super fun.........
Wanna know who you were? This is fun!

RNR TV dept...
Things are heating up. We may have some cool changes coming up. In the meantime, we're shooting up to San Fran for the Vloggercon in early June. Bam and I are even scheduled to help out in a seminar as 'speakers'! What a kick!

Alright. New Look new day........over and out.

Oh To Be Idle For a Day!

Sheesh! Where have I been?

Well, I spent one week in Minnesota packing and helping sort stuff for the bank to sell my family's house. Sigh. It was not a fun week. But I survived and I'm glad it's over. The only two positive things I can say are that my niece, Kathryn is planning to move to Los Angeles in the fall. Hooray! And that I have inherited my mother's Sohmer upright piano. Hooray!

Bam and I are still 'raw'! He has come up with loads of amazing gourmet raw vegan entrees now. OMG! Mind blowing recipes. I try to keep up, but let's face it, that is a talent. I have a talent for eating what he creates! Ha! We go to this farmer's market every Sunday and let me tell ya, it is fantastic and chockful of local organic farmers! yummmmmmm!

Now let's move on to the knit stuff............

EXTREME
Has everyone and their dog seen Theresa Honeywell's Knit Motorcycle??? Holy bat wheels, batman!

Go to Flickr to see her whole set of 'Extreme Craft' which includes embroidered tattoos. Wow. She deserves the Punk Craftster of the Year award. Which I think I shall invent!

On my sticks
I am making Bam a much deserved and long sought after big wooly jumper. Now that I work in a yarn shop, I get a discount and can afford that Rowan stuff! ha! So Fergus with an altered collar and some Big Tuft probably added in the cuffs,.....is on the way!

THE BAG O' BONES
The Stitch Cafe and I paired up and cooked up a crazy bag idea with stripes and a heart, skull, and star charms dangling off it....all in a kit with our skull needles. You can view the commercial and watch my imitation of pirate-ese.
quicktime: http://blip.tv/file/get/Shazza007-StitchCafePunkKnitsBagOBone599.mov
windows: http://blip.tv/file/get/Shazza007-StitchCafePunkKnitsBagOBoneWindows652.wmv

KILLING TIME
Sometimes, it all gets to be too much and I just need some mindless entertainment. As a big fan of the Da Vinci Code (cuz I LOVE LOVE LOVE games and puzzles).....I stumbled across this quest which you can put right on your google homepage (please tell me you have one, right? cuz they rock!)....Once you get caught up ...you only get one puzzle a day and they get progressively harder. Talk about brilliant marketing for the film?!?!?! WOWSA! I am blown away! And....I love the quest! I feel so.....utterly bamboozled by the great marketing team at Sony. And I don't care.

Well.........I think we are going to the beach today. First time in months! Crazy to live in So Cal and not go to the beach right? It's the only place I truly stop working!

Over and out fellow knitters.........fellow crazy people, fellow game addicts, fellow mellow yellows, fellow schmellows.....marshmellows......hmmmmmmmmm..............I'm losin' it.

Quad and Raw

QUAD
What a mad mad weekend! On Friday night, my friend, Kastle invited me to Quadrophenia (look up THE WHO if you don't know what I"m talking about!) with her. It's a staged production and I braved the hail storm (yes, hail storm in LA!) to go and check it out. Together we braved the insanity known as 'which color wristband do you have' inside the Avalon Theater to figure out where we were allowed to sit. Wow! After all that craziness, it was definitely worth it. The lead character is played by Stephen Shareaux who was the lead singer for Kik Tracee and he is reeeeeeeally well suited as a singer in a big production play. Overall, it had its high moments and I don't get out much to plays so for me, it was a gas.

Saturday, we had a client in our recording studio. So that was fun!

RAW
But during this whole time........we have been reading and absorbing this book about living a raw food lifestyle. Since this particular book is written by two chefs, we found it particularly interesting as the recipes are verrrrrry delicious. At the same time, my friend told me she had a juicer she no longer wanted so we graciously received her juicer for free. We are going for the raw life. So far, I feel terrific. No cooked foods is agreeing with me. It's weird to eat like this at first, but I'm liking it, I'm liking it. Plus, I get to eat pretty much as much as I want! God knows, I love to eat! I've been reading alot over on this forum and finding lots of sites dedicated to the raw food lifestyle. We will eventually get an ice cream maker and make our own dairy free/soy free ice cream!!!!!!!! Imagine eating a gallon of home made coconut ice cream?! I can!!!!!

Notice how I go straight for the sweets part of it all? Actually, I'm craving sugar waaaaaaay less now that we've been doing this for a few days. We're still not what they call 100% raw.........we are transitioning. But we're both into it. I feel soooooooooooo damn Californian. Bloody hell. First the feng shui and clutter clearing and now this! What's next? Hypnoretrospacetravel-therapy???????????

Knit knit knit!

I've been knitting a lot lately! Whew. It feels gooooooooood! The book is coming along and the skull needles are scheduled to arrive in early February! Woohoo!!!!!!!!

Here's some pics of various thingys.........
But first.......my brand new turquoise velour converse!

Ain't they rockin'?

I had an order to make a scarf for someone and I think it turned out camouflage cool:

Debbie Bliss Soho yarn and size 13 needles. It looks really cool on a guy.

I recently got in to cabling......here's a nifty beanie I did from the free pattern at Stitch Cafe and the yarn is from their hand-dyed collection:

It's like........80 degrees here in LA! Sorry to rub it in to any of you folks out there in the freeeeezing cold...but just for laughs, Bam put on everything he could grab quickly...3 hats, 2 scarves and of course, his Koigu fingerless gloves:

Well.............I hope everyone will check out our vlog cuz we're just havin' a blast with it. We are still asking for paypal donations of a dollar to help towards the repair of our camera. We've been borrowing a friend's camera for now but he will want it back soon. argh! If you didn't already see episode #10, that's the one where I'm wearing the cabled beanie. (we went to the Bazaar Bizarre in LA)

Alriiiiiiiiiiiiight!
rock on........and knit on!

 

Melanie Falick and Tracey Ullman in ONE DAY!

Woohoo!
Okay,.........so I went to Wild Fiber and had a blast .......met Melanie Falick, knitter extraordinaire, author and I'm proud to say........my editor!

Isn't she purdy? And yes, I have a signed copy of Handknit Holidays now! hooray!
But that wasn't all..........oh no. I met fabbo ultra hip, amazingly stunning Tracey Ullman!

Tracey has a book coming out next Fall with Mel from Wild Fiber "Knitwise" and Melanie is her editor, too! Ms. Ullman was soooooooo gracious and her and Bam had a 'right ole chat' about London and places they both knew in Hampton Court and Kingston.

Along with meeting Mel and loads of fellow fiber fiends.......wow!
.......that was a great day and I was so happy to be a knitter and felt privileged to meet such fantastic people.

Alright! In the 'vlogging world', .........we are planning episode 9 now. he he! But we've got loads of bands/artists in our recording studio so time is tight again. Of course, we will be filming some of that for the show now, too! Ha! Nothing is safe from our cameras! mwuh ha ha!!!!! (evil laughter!)

It's definitely 'knit time' now with December, cooler weather and that knitting spirit!
OH!!!!!!!!! Any day now......our SKULL NEEDLES will arrive! They will be a PUNK KNITS exclusive made with the skull that we had made and they are sooooooooooooooo cool! Photos as soon as they arrive and of course, you can get them from us or hopefully, from your LYS.
xoxo

Ink!

So we are doing this mad show right? the Rock n Roll TV thing....and we're doing several pieces on 'rock star stuff' like getting tattooed, getting your hair done...cool clothes etc etc.  ...so I ended up getting tattooed...on camera! Talk about not being able to flinch! ha ha! Here it is the day after:

Like the tat on my other arm, it's a Bam design. (I love his art!)
The shop in case you're interested is Vintage Tattoo and I was ink'd by the owner, Baba who is appointment only. He did a fantastic fast painless job. Well, relatively painless. I mean, as painless as it can be. Of course, now Knitty Gritty will never have me back because the DIY Network are soooooo anal about anyone having any tattoos on their network. I guess I could wear a long sleeve shirt....but really, what's the point? DIY needs to wake up!

Check out our vlog for the 'Friday Night Tattoo' episode!

In other news, I've had to change to 'comment approval' as I was being horribly comment-spammed. Argh! So sorry about any inconvenience there.

I am meeting my editor, the most fabulous author.... Melanie Falick for the first time in person this week! Crazy after we have talked on the phone so darn much. She will be at Wildfiber on Wednesday night starting at 5 pm. Can't wait!

I'm Back and I'm Baaaaaaaaad!

Yeah!  I'm back!  But first off......THANK YOU fellow bloggers, knitters, cyber pals.....for the incredible support you've shown me about losing my mom.  I felt hugged by many of you and it really did help.

The Punk Knits Photo Shoot
I still mourn my mom on many days and in many unexpected moments....but ....we had the photo shoot for the book and it was sheer, utter madness!  25 models wearing 29 pieces for Punk Knits!  Ya gotta love it.  All of them crazed Hollywood peoples.  It was a gas!  Focusing on the book has been a helpful distraction in dealing with the whole grief process.  How cool is that?   I am hoping to show you all some piccie previews soooooooon.

Yah!

Another Knitter Gets Hooked
Bam's daughter, Charlotte is visiting from the UK and guess who's learned to knit?  Yes, another joins the addiction.  She's got two scarves on the go!  I'm so proud of her. 

LA Life
In other madness, we've got two bands coming in the studio in the next week and then I'm off to tape an episode of Knitty Gritty to promote the book!  Sadly, it won't air until next year in the fall.  But that makes sense cuz it's when the book comes out. 

In the interest of getting my blogging head back in place, I'm keepin' this short.....and here's a pic Bam snapped of me in a Crystal Palace tshirt........ya gotta love that graffiti font! 

Stealth Bombers and Alfie...

LIFE IN LA
........so there's bam n me sitting out in our backyard enjoying some lunch today and overhead we hear this noise.  Looking up in the sky, there is a stealth bomber going overhead.  We both looked at each other and thought........how creepy.  Off to kill people.  Then, about 5 minutes later, another stealth bomber flew over.  Combine THAT with the sound of our neighbors roosters which crow all damn day long......combined with the yummy taste of smog.......combined with the lovely summery afternoon......and you've got life in LA.

Bizarro no?

On to ALFIE.........
We nicknamed the little guy a long time ago....Bam just built this DVD shelf for us out of reclaimed wood found along the street........and we gave Alfie an honorary throne in it.  I had to dress him in a stripy wristband of course!  Do you think I should be obsessed enough to actually make him clothing?  hmmm....I don't think I can handle the weirdness of dressing a tiny mannequin.  That's just out there!

Well-dressed mannequin about town.......n'est ce pas?

LULU
Thank you sooooo much for the lovely comments about my step grandgirl.  Lulu is so gorgeous!  We haven't seen her since she was a tiny baby.  We so desperately need a trip to England!  Argh. 

PARENTAL NOTES
Many of you know my father is not well and living in a 'home' in Minnesota.  It's horrible for my mother but she simply cannot take care of him anymore as she herself has battled lung cancer.  Anyway,....I will planning another trip out there soon.  He is speaking less and less and oh so thin....weighing in at around 135 pounds....6 foot tall!  yikes.  So ..........that's the update with the folks.

Back to the mounds of knitting I must do!  knit, purl, skp...K2tog......no...wait....oh no....FROG!  ha!!!