tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44341257146709043582024-02-18T23:32:17.746-05:00FISHSKNITTYMy blog is an outlet for my hobbies and interests, including fiber arts, food, and exploring NYC. My activities/projects aim to be ecologically and fiscally friendly, to make life less complicated and more simple, healthy and fulfilling.fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.comBlogger78125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-14763971209896682062009-09-22T20:07:00.008-04:002009-09-22T21:19:29.039-04:00Colombia, the BEAUTIFUL!I mentioned in my previous post that I was going to Colombia - I left August 29th, and came back September 7th. It was a quick 9 days and I'm broke now, but the experience was worth it! Below are some of my favorite shots - all pictures were taken with my newest obsession, the Nikon D40. I was a purist before, reserving film for special occasions, but this has made me into a digital camera fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-69728314391174568742009-08-28T16:15:00.006-04:002009-08-28T16:49:44.425-04:00Not So Lazy Days of SummerYikes, time has blown by so quickly... my knitting has hit the back burner - maybe some cool weather in the upcoming months will be a motivator to start up. Actually, the real problem is that I have about 4 projects with patterns that needed some major altering - I had written up vague outlines for what I was going to do, but the passage of time makes my notes look like gibberish - I can't make fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-25814028692069989932009-07-13T13:39:00.003-04:002009-07-13T14:26:29.176-04:00Nerd Alert! Will be seeing Harry Potter TONIGHT!I never gave much thought to the Harry Potter series when the books came out - I love children's books (Wrinkle in Time and The Giver are what immediately come to mind) but books about wizards didn't really appeal to me. I remember reading the first book and thinking it was okay, and somehow I managed to keep reading the other books as they came out. The next thing I knew, I became completely fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-28288722015928723662009-07-10T11:17:00.004-04:002009-07-10T12:14:53.563-04:00UpdateHappy belated fourth~! Such crazy, unorganized-ness. Most everything I love has been abandoned for immediate needs:1) Finding another job. Ick - what an energy suck. I've been on 7 interviews during the past year, 4 of which had gotten me past the first round. These 4 were especially hard to take, as it was between me and another candidate, and always the other candidate won out. The jobs range fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-53909698783483953532009-06-22T11:17:00.013-04:002009-06-22T15:29:06.226-04:00Food, and Fabric!Summer is all about walking around and eating everything in sight. That, and window shopping! Some new food obsessions, as of late...Picket Fence. Want some good old fashioned, American comfort food? Look no further! Off of the Cortelyou station on the Q train, only a 20 minute walk from my apartment. They have a lovely outdoor garden in the back, which is great for summer. Service is slow, but fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-31013521948448985112009-06-17T11:37:00.007-04:002009-06-17T13:28:50.938-04:00Hurrah for Spring? Where is Summer? Usually New York springs are non-existent - one day you come out of the house with wet hair and find your hair frozen by the time you get to the train station, the next day you are wearing shorts and a tank top. Not so, this year - we've had an extended rainy season, accompanied by sporadic changes in temperature in a single day. I don't know what's going on, and I don't know how to dress fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-19415961654990905662009-04-21T11:51:00.006-04:002009-04-21T12:40:06.783-04:00Elizabeth Hat, With Some Extra Love I am very much a sweater knitting kind of girl, but I needed a hat for very practical reasons. Prior to this hat, I was wearing a raggedy crocheted hat made by Burton. How could a knitter wear something that looks handmade but isn't handmade? I guess the biggest reason was that none of the hats I made in the past were warm enough - yes, they were very cute looking, but it couldn't withstand my fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-71017672467792733762009-04-16T15:12:00.004-04:002009-04-16T16:00:20.878-04:00Your Thoughts on Kombucha? I was first introduced to this weirdness a couple of weeks ago by my boyfriend's sister. It is a fermented beverage that touts a laundry list of health properties including a boosted immune system and better circulation, among other virtues. And like most things, I will give anything a go at least once, so I tried it. For having zero expectations on what it was going to taste like, I was taken fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-10667629692821731112009-04-13T16:02:00.008-04:002009-04-13T16:47:31.785-04:00Spring Has Arrived!The good weather is always a motivator - some stuff that I have been doing as of late:Make vanilla extract... I will tell you the results in 6 months. I found out how to do it here.Been eating way too much - my days of running 6 miles a day and doing sports year-round are long gone! I have been trying to do much more manageable, low impact exercises using The Ball. It's harder than it looks. Thenfishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-5873248856697078002009-04-10T11:01:00.005-04:002009-04-10T11:34:51.476-04:00Modified Elaine's BlouseExcuse the mess in the background! I finished this sweater last Saturday, but with all of the guests we've had, there has been no time to take pictures of my most recent completed project (or clean the apartment, for that matter)... The basic pattern for this came out of the Winter 2008 Interweave Knits, called the Elaine Blouse. I didn't alter the basic pattern very much - the biggest fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-26438853947354277412009-04-07T13:48:00.003-04:002009-04-07T14:41:32.523-04:00Climbing Vines Pullover Why is it that you want things you can't have, but if you think about them long enough, it somehow happens? The stars were in alignment when I came across this pattern in the Winter 2008 Interweave Knits - for the longest time, I had wanted a similar version of this sweater I saw by Phildar. Their version is in French, and I tried to buy it through the link they posted without much luck. Plus, fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-49048033905671026562009-03-31T12:22:00.003-04:002009-03-31T13:13:53.658-04:00SALE!Oh, neglected blog. More posts to come, soon - completed but unposted projects include the climbing vines pullover and a fully-lined Elizabeth (which sadly, I can't find now). Some works in progress include: a modified Elaine's Blouse, Shalom Cardigan, and the impossibly intricate, gorgeous, but pain in the butt Eva Raglan Pull. Side note and a quick FYI to all people who love discount yarns: fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-7206131965387483642009-03-19T12:39:00.004-04:002009-03-19T13:16:39.661-04:00Busy As a BeeFor some reason, it's been feeling like Holiday Season - a lot of running around, many project started and stopped, minus the good food! Part of the ADHD has to do with my recent foray into social networking - while I do dabble in the smaller, more specialized networking sites like linkedin or ravelry, I avoided myspace and facebook like the plague... that is, until about a month ago, when fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-69261105853188227392009-03-04T09:37:00.008-05:002009-03-04T12:22:18.351-05:00The Yarn TreeI never liked going to yarn stores in NYC much - they tend to be overcrowded, and the regulars who dominate the knitting tables are a little intimidating. Perhaps that's why I've been drawn to stores not centrally located, and therefore harder to access; my yarn store of choice this past year has been Brooklyn General, but I didn't get to go as often as I would have liked, given my job in the fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-22831109629495427162009-02-25T16:02:00.007-05:002009-02-25T16:42:22.697-05:00Skiing in MaineWhile I love winter for its sweaters, I love winter for another reason: skiing! Unfortunately, I don't get to go as often as I want to - skiing is a very expensive hobby to have (I guess my other hobbies of knitting and eating is too, depending on how often and how much you indulge)! This year, my first ski trip was a belated x-mas gift from a friend to Butternut, which is a little-known mountainfishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-88622641015154077722009-02-17T13:47:00.004-05:002009-02-17T14:14:53.823-05:00Asymmetrical Cabled CardiganA very short knitting project - this was was done quickly, using frogged yarn from a failed project using KnitPicks worsted weight yarn. The frogged yarn resembled ramen noodles, and it was twisted around while I was knitting; I didn't bother straightening it out very much after I unraveled, and so the texture of my finished product was not as smooth as I would have liked, even after a harsh fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-85999826658136522202009-02-10T09:39:00.013-05:002009-02-10T10:26:18.116-05:00Having Fun with my Diana F+ and Epson Scanner...... the only thing I haven't gotten a hang of is keeping the pesky dust particles off of my negatives as they are being scanned. Also, while my Epson Perfection 4490 has adapters for both 35 mm negatives and medium format film, I haven't figured out a good way to scan the entire 35 mm negative, sprockets included. Any advice on that would be much appreciated, as the inclusion of the sprockets arefishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-445065323552338142009-02-09T12:47:00.010-05:002009-02-09T15:12:50.973-05:00Pad ThaiMy love of Thai food started during my sophomore year in college, when I would eschew cafeteria food in favor of take-out pad thai. Little did I realize then that the dish I dearly loved was not an entirely authentic experience. When I went to Thailand a couple of years later, the first thing I did after checking into my hostel was stop at a street food vendor. Since then, I've been to a lot of fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-75137728562801580542009-01-29T15:06:00.007-05:002009-01-29T15:50:54.542-05:00Rotating Images of HappinessWe have had the same coffee table for a number of years, a vestige of the college days where decor didn't really matter - while it was lovingly handmade by my boyfriend, it was decorated with strategically placed beer caps so that it looked like an Irish flag. While I don't doubt his artistic abilities or his hard work, the table was simply not very charming. I didn't have the heart to tell him fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-37613670295324702322009-01-27T12:13:00.006-05:002009-01-27T12:54:05.789-05:00Cable Sweater Inspired by Rebecca Hurray, my first completed sweater for 2009! This sweater was a labor of love, a project inspired from the cables in this Rebecca pattern. The yarn is double stranded so that it would knit to gauge - I used Cascade 220 in cream with an alpaca tweed that I bought at the Sheep and Wool festival in Rhinebeck back in October. I knitted the body in the round, making 3 decreases for the waist, and fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-88512537026159132292009-01-21T10:09:00.004-05:002009-01-21T13:50:48.021-05:00Beaverslide Dry GoodsI realized that I haven't posted much about knitting recently... Although I am not as frantic as I was during the holidays, I am trying not to slack off too much - currently I have two projects in the works, one of which is making a sweater out of this beautiful yarn from Beaverslide Dry Goods. All of the yarn comes from their farm in Montana. The prices are reasonable, given the amount of fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-34393592238309699072009-01-14T16:41:00.006-05:002009-01-14T20:03:56.870-05:00Del.icio.usWhy did it take so long for me to discover delicious? At work, I am known as the most "tech-savvy" one in the office. Although I seriously beg to differ (I figure out most things by playing around with a program until it magically starts working), I do enjoy the more artistic and tech-y projects I get randomly assigned to, including designing the layout of our annual report, creating form fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-5439427204593043992009-01-06T15:29:00.004-05:002009-01-07T13:12:39.231-05:00Handmade Pinhole CameraAfter buying my fish eye camera, I have been getting more and more into film these days. Although I love the convenience of digital cameras, one can't help but be drawn to the old-school days of film. I have been dabbling into the world of manual SLRs (my parent's old Minolta at right) and plastic "toy" cameras which I will post at a later date (I am shopping around for a good quality but fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-11265119040952525212009-01-01T12:00:00.001-05:002009-01-01T12:08:51.369-05:00Happy New Year! ('Tis the year of the Cow) Akemashite omedetougozaimasu~May this year be filled with health and prosperity for all!fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4434125714670904358.post-72681050472106254462008-12-29T21:52:00.011-05:002008-12-29T23:10:00.376-05:00Laundry WoesCity dwellers can relate to my most recent dilemma - doing laundry in the miserable depths of winter. Although laundry is not a very pleasant chore, it seems ten times harder to do in the city. Not only does our apartment building not have a laundry facility on site, but because our neighborhood is surrounded by real houses, the nearest laundromat is about a 10 minute walk away from our building.fishsknittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15988972940354854873noreply@blogger.com0