Meathead Winners

Thanks to all who participated in the Meathead Contest, or who simply went over to Larissa's site to donate to the cause by purchasing a pattern. (If you haven't gone over the pattern is still available until noon PST, so run over fast!) I purchased patterns for the following five contest winners this morning:

Michele mi.yuck (AT) gmail (DOT) com
Alli allirosen (AT) hotmail (DOT) com
Lori jezebel99 (AT) earthlink (DOT) net
Charity stuart434 (AT) shaw (DOT) ca
Sarah sarah.shoemaker1 (AT) marist (DOT) edu

Larissa should be sending you the pattern shortly by e-mail. Please be patient - I'm sure she has many patterns to send out. If you don't hear from her in a few days, however, please let me know and I'll be sure to follow up. Thanks also to the generous folks who agreed to help me knit meatheads for the family. I will contact you to coordinate details as soon as I have more information on sizes and genders.

You guys are the best!!! Love, J

Last Day of the Meathead Contest

If you missed my meathead contest post, you can still purchase the pattern from Larissa today, and I will be taking entries until tomorrow morning when I randomly draw winners to donate for. I will not know whether the winners purchased the pattern independently, and I do want to earnestly encourage you to participate regardless of whether you are able to donate yourself. I'm going to pay for the five patterns using the winners' e-mail addresses, so each winner will be sent a copy of the pattern whether they need it or not. Please don't be shy - just enter! At last count, Larissa had managed to raise over $600 for Cassie, which is really, really impressive. Thanks to everyone for their efforts, purchases and donations.

Click the photo for a close-up.
Apologies for the photo quality - the sun is not yet up!*

Since I really wanted to put my money where my mouth was, I went ahead and whipped out my own meathead on Monday night. It took about an hour and it's adorable. I originally intended to make this one for myself, but I was lazy about gauge and ended up with a child-sized hat. And then it occurred to me that Cassie and her children should each have one of these hats. I know it may seem like a trivial thing to make hats for a family in the face of such tragedy, but I think that although it is a small thing, it is important to have little reminders in our lives that other people care more than we know, and that help can come from unexpected places.

I do not know how many children Cassie has, or their ages or genders, but I am sure that Larissa will get me that information. I've knit a hat that is suitable for a little girl. Since many of you have the pattern, is there anyone who would like to volunteer to make one of the other hats? If you can help out with a hat, please leave me a note in the comments and we'll coordinate to make this happen.

*Worked in one strand of Lamb's Pride Bulky and one strand of Manos on US 13 needles; the leaf was worked using only the Manos doubled, on US 10's, but I think I'm going to re-knit it - perhaps in brown? thoughts anyone?- to make it stand out better visually.

Contest: Be a Meathead! (For a Good Cause, Too.)

Over years of blogging there are certain knitters that I feel I have formed a tacit friendship with. We may not correspond by e-mail regularly, but we keep up with each other through the blogs, and over time develop a fondness for each other. Larissa Brown of Stitch Marker is one of those bloggers. I've followed her blog for almost three years now since I first saw her version of my honeymoon cami. We've corresponded here and there about trips to Belize and cycling, she knit along in my Charlotte's Web KAL and I knit along in her scrap along. This year, Larissa and her husband have been working on a book about knitalongs, and have run a few really fun KALs for that project. One of them involved a knitalong for Larissa's meathead hats, which she initially created for an art installation. I signed up for the KAL, but the deadline was tight and I had a pattern due for publication at the same time, so I never finished - the pattern and yarn have been sitting in my stash waiting for me to return to them. The KAL was wildly successful and included some really beautiful and unique meatheads, some of which are featured below.

Click on the photo to see more meatheads.

The pattern was not supposed to be available again until the book release, but then a friend of Larissa's experienced a terrible tragedy - she lost her husband and the father of her children when he was hit by a car while running. When something like this happens to you, there is very little that anyone can do to assuage the pain and loss. Having lost my beloved younger brother Sam a little over five years ago, I understand this. But little gestures help more than anyone can know, and Larissa is offering her friend one such gesture by making the meathead patttern available to us before she publishes it in her book for a mere $4.50, with all proceeds to go to her friend and her children. Because I already have the pattern, I simply made a $4.50 contribution, and if you have $4.50 to spare, I would encourage you to do the same. You will gain a great pattern and the wonderful feeling that you have helped a family who desperately needs love and support right now.

As an additional incentive, I am going to sponsor five meatheads myself. All you have to do to participate in my meathead contest is leave me a comment with your real e-mail address below. (Feel free to put the words "NO SPAM" in it to deter spammers - I can take those out.) A week from today I will randomly choose five people from the comments to donate on behalf of and send a meathead pattern to. If you buy one independently as well, that's great, and I will instead make a $4.50 contribution to the fund in your name. But it isn't necessary. If you don't have the $4.50 to spare and want a shot at the pattern, I really truly want you to participate as well. The goal is to gather up as much support for this family as we can and then knit and wear our meatheads with pride.

The Stuff of Amy Butler's Nightmares

Although I would have loved to wow you all with my chic taste and amazing sewing prowess for the first journey out on the sewing machine, it was simply not to be. Instead, my sometimes odd sense of humor and extremely rudimentary sewing skills got in the way:

Whahahahahawha!

Here's a detail I love -
the towel loop.Soon after I inherited Marnie's machine and got it up and running, Larissa announced that she was putting together a fundraising auction for Cafe Au Play, a wonderful family-oriented cafe project in Portland, which is slated to take place tomorrow night. In the past, I have done some minimal sewing on the borrowed machines of friends, culminating in much of the piecing work on this quilt. The last time I did any substantive sewing was over three years ago, and it was fairly rudimentary then. Still, I got pretty excited about this apron drive and decided that I really wanted to participate, so I signed up, thinking that I would make an apron or two for myself as a test run and then complete one to mail off to Larissa. Oh, the hubris!

The bow in back.Life, as usual, got in the way. I spent much of the last month either working or spending family time with Caia and M, and really didn't allow myself any time to play with the sewing machine. Then this week came and I attempted to cut fabric. Apparently I need to go back to kindergarten, because I cannot use scissors to save my life. Happily, I have a Michael's nearby, so I was able to pick up a rotary and self-healing mat and avoid the cutting issue. But then the issues with the machine itself began. I should probably say the issues with me. I am sure that if I had threaded it properly the machine would have been just fine. Instead, I spent all of Wednesday night meticulously taking the machine's guts out, removing thread, and cursing steadily. I was only set right by a desperate trip to the repair shop during lunch yesterday, wherein the repairman took mercy on me and reminded me of the most basic of sewing steps. Last night, with the deadline looming (thank god for fedex), I was determined to make the apron work. By early this morning it was finished. (Don't worry, I did not sew all night. I took a "Survivor" break and had a nice healthy sleep before returning to stitching.)

Another view of the pocket.The resulting apron definitely has its flaws. My esteemed photographer is capable of making it look quite nice in these photos, but if you look closely, you can see the way the stitching at the waist undulates like a series of gently rolling Iowa hills. The fabric is not cut in a straight line (as you can tell by the way that the skulls fail to line up), and there are likely thread ends hanging about, but for all that I still love it. I think that this apron would be a ton of fun for the mother of a little boy, or even for the occasional hip, secure dad (though I suppose even a hip dad would prefer to lose the pleating). It's not vintage, lacy, or delicate, like some of the other lovely pieces that I've seen donated, but I hope that it will fill the niche for fun. Although many of the seams are not straight, they should be strong. I'm hoping that the homemade nature of the auction will draw the kind of edgy Portland types who will like its rustic charm. If not, I am happy to bid myself!

For those who are interested, the pattern is the Pleated Apron from Amy Butler's recent book, In Stitches. It is extremely well-written, as evidenced by the fact that I, who cannot thread a sewing machine or cut with scissors, was able to follow it and produce an actual apron. (Yay!!!). The skull fabric is Talking Heads from the Alexander Hamilton Collection. Personally, I would make an entire quilt for a little boy out of this fabric, but as you know, my fabric taste has been questioned before.

And now, for a sewing interlude

Right after law school, I moved to Arizona and started work at a small firm with three wonderful women. We were all crafters - Jack, Jessica and I were knitters and Ellen was a quilter. When I got engaged in the early fall of that year, Ellen decided that as a wedding gift, she, Jack and Jessica would spring for fabric at The Quilted Apple, and she would teach all three of us to make a quilt for my wedding. In between margaritas, episodes of the Gilmore Girls, and some rather intense floor refinishing at Ellen's, we got a fair amount done on the quilt before I left Arizona to join Moxie in LA. Then the quilt languished as our lives went on and we married, bought houses, and changed jobs, but eventually, three and a half years after we started it, the quilt somehow got completed and made its way to me:

The Wedding Quilt

Many hands helped to build this beautiful and cozy blanket. Ellen's mother tied and bound it (and reported that it had to be tied rather than quilted due to the margarita episode). It is one of my most prized possessions, and I will treasure it forever. But here's the real kicker: Moxie, who eschews all things with color, and many things handmade, affirmatively likes it. Shocking, no? But so very, very nice.

I really enjoyed sewing, and made several floor pillows and the occasional curtain. I would even borrow a sewing machine to do some finishing on my knits, but I never had a machine of my own, until Marnie decided to move to Portand and didn't have room to take her machine, or her grandmother's sewing table, along:

The sewing machine and other wonderful goodies.

So now I have two more really special possessions. Marnie is definitely my LA Ellen, and to me, it is much more special to have a sewing machine that was hers than it could ever be to go out and purchase one for myself. And, I have accessories made by friends, too. Notice the wonderful little pin cushion above? It was made by Mary Heather. (As were the cute little shrinky dink pins.) Armed with such great equipment and knowledge from friends, I think I'm ready to go forth into the world of sewing.

And since friends have made this possible, I've decided to pay it forward, and make one of my first projects for an auction that one of our virtual friends is helping to pull together to benefit a really neat Portland project, called Cafe au Play. Who knows, maybe someday I'll end up there and have a chance to take advantage of this wonderful cooperative venture. I clearly have plenty of reasons to visit.

If you haven't yet, please go visit Larissa's site. She is collecting aprons to auction, and I just know that many of you guys can whip out an apron in no time flat. While you're there, grab a button:

Finally, I have some wonderfully fashionable fabric to show you:

Cowboys and Kittens and Koi, Oh My!

Marnie was so impressed with my impeccable taste when I chose the kitten fabric at the Santa Monica Fiber Fest, that I felt she deserved something equally special for her Christmas present. She has gone so far as to coin the phrase "It's so kittens and koi" to refer to instances when people that she otherwise considers tasteful deviate so far in their choices that she just isn't quite as sure about them anymore. I believe the cowboys suit her recent bent toward the manly men. I'm thinking a Brokeback pillowcase may be in order.

P.S. Fear not, Larissa. I promise not to make you a cowboy apron. I understand that Cafe au Play is a family establishment.