Ef! Oh!

But not a knitting one. :) Nonetheless, I am so excited about this one that I may use up my yearly allotment of exclamation points!!!!!

My husband, the cabinet and fine furniture maker, who loves kids (probably because he is a big kid himself) started building The Totally Most Coolest Wooden Toys this past Christmas when the Chinese toy scare was raging full blast. They are all wood with absolutely no metal or plastic parts and are painted with milk paint, which is completely non-toxic. Kids (and grown-ups) cannot keep their hands off. So I convinced him to sell them, and after two weeks of taking them around the area, he is in a bunch of upscale local shops (plus a very upscale tractor dealership :g:)! And get this: he is already booked for two toy signings in local shops around Christmas time! Can you believe it?!?! Eeeeee! And they are already putting in Christmas orders! Here is his train:

and his barrel truck:

and his pick-up truck:

and his tractor:

They are all hand made and they look like folk art! I lurve them! Okay. I could go on and on, so I'll stop now. :)

So, what's my FO? I finished his logo, packaging and most of his website! And I am so happy to have it up!!!!!! (See, I told you I would use up my allotment!) Go! Check it out!

Friday Eye Candy

I don't have any lovely tulips growing in my yard like these at Yarnstorm, but in appreciation of those gorgeous photos, here is a painting of mine. It was originally done for a calendar: the month of April.



Can you tell I love orange? ;)

Happy Friday!

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaack!

Life. (cue violins) It sometimes gets in the way of blogging. I don't even know where to start with everything that's been going on, so let's just say that my family and I have been living in "interesting times." You know what I mean? Like the old curse. Bleah. Nonetheless, we're still here! :) We have each other, we're in fairly good health, we have the most wonderful friends in the world, and my business has been doing well. But my husband could use all the good juju and happy thoughts you can muster!

I also wanted to thank everyone who's been leaving nice comments. I love it! :)

So here's what I've been working on:


It's an update of a wine label I did. It's great wine made by a little family winery on Howell Mountain in Napa County (I didn't do the website). And they are the nicest people.

I do have to mention that a very dear knitterly friend of mine gave me a kit for the A Line jacket from More Sweaters that I have wanted to make for quite a long time. She is totally da best. I can't wait to have enough brain to start this gorgeous thing. And I have to say that the fact that a lamp fell on my head today is *not* helping!

Anyway, the above link goes to a picture of Sandrine in her finished jacket, and those of you who have not seen her absolutely amazing gallery should take a few moments. Her knitting is *incredible*!

Well, off to make some more pins. :) I missed y'all!

The latest...

I know I said cast-on tutorial today, but I just wanna show everyone something else. Forgive me? Pretty please? It'll be next time, honest. :)

So...my husband the furniture maker/cabinetry guru has been bugging asking me to do drawings of his new line of furniture, and I've been putting it off, because I thought it was silly. Not his furniture, mind you: the idea that his furniture would look cool drawn by me. But you know what? He was totally right! Isn't this cute?



















His new line is called SA Fusion (Shaker Asian Fusion) (tm) and has a really clean line to it. I think the illustrations suit it perfectly. He's a genius! And here's my new logo for the line:









Now back to the "drawing board" for all the other pieces!

Tune in next time for *drumroll* the no graft toe-up sock cast-on (used on a soap sack). :)

Almost forgot! Check out this very cool video. Vanessa told me about it.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Perfect Picots

First things first. Thank you all for the incredibly kind welcome I received! I tried to respond to everyone, but some people's email addresses are not on their comments, so here I am waving hello and thank you! Hi Carol in Napa! It's very cool "meeting" more knitters in the area. :)

Hope asked about the picot cast-off, so here we go! Using the knitted cast-on, cast on two stitches. You have now made three stitches from the first stitch. Knit the first stitch through the front:







Knit the next stitch through the back of the loop (twist the stitch) and cast off the first stitch. Knit the third stitch through the back of the loop (twisted) and cast off the second stitch. One stitch is left on your right needle.







Cast off two stitches and place the stitch back on left hand needle:







Repeat for perfect little picots!

In other news, I've been working on my lys's website. I just {heart} Laura, the owner, and Dana, her friend who works there. They are really wonderful, and I feel incredibly lucky to have them locally!

When we talked about her design, Laura wanted her logo to be prominent on the home page and I wanted to make it look very "wine country" to fit in with the fancy digs they have now in Windsor. So this is what I came up with:

Of course, this is just the mock-up. It needs to be coded and the links made to work, but she loved it! Yay! When I went to talk to Laura yesterday, I also picked up a map of downtown Windsor in the local real estate sales office. Laura is in the middle of this amazing little European shopping village that was recently created: sort of a Disneyland for shoppers. But since it is so new, Mapquest doesn't have the streets listed yet. So of course I suggested a map, she agreed, and I will be creating one in my favorite program of all time, Adobe Illustrator.

Nancy J asked about a sheep pin in her comment, so one is in the works! I have the fish and cat up on my website now, and they are also available in sterling.

And Lisa's comment about Ram Wools reminded me of my great news! I'm in the new Ram Wools catalog. Woo! They have some of my other pins (Elements), as well, so hopefully they will make it into the next one!

Next episode, tune in for the no graft toe-up sock (or soap sack in this case) cast-on!