Steps for finishing a frog

1. Stuff his sad, limp legs.

2. Stuff his adorable, stubby little arms.
3. And sew in place.

4. Make him some organs. The pattern calls for needlefelting various colors of roving, so I raided a friend's fiber stash, since I have a pretty limited selection of colors on hand.

5. When needlefelting proves tedious and ugly, spin the fiber and knit wee organ-ish shapes.

6. Lay them out to figure out some sort of order.

7. Start sewing in place.

8. Layer the organs on top of each other, making sure to pile the intestines up in a somewhat realistic fashion.
And you're done! This really might be my favorite thing I've ever knit. It was fiddly and annoying to be sure, but I so love it.

Pattern here. The main frog body was in Frog Tree sportweight alpaca, not sure of color number, but the most vivid green melange. I still need to get a frame for him and give him a name.

Where I spent the weekend

Random Thursday: 7 awesome things edition

1. This dress in a Brooklyn shop window. It's the first quilt-y garment I've seen that looks fresh and fun and kind of wholesomely hot instead of tired and sad and forced.

2. If you laugh under the tracks of the 7 train near 40th St. in Queens, the echo is FANTASTIC.

3. A couple of highlights from the fantastic Robyn Hitchcock/Decemberists show at Radio City last night:



4. I've finally gotten most of my stuff up on the walls in my room. I just need to finish and frame the dissected frog.

4. My aloe plant has spawned! You can just see the tips of the wee aloe babies poking up through the soil. This makes me absurdly happy.

5. Bacon-wrapped hot dog with cheese. Oh yes.

6. Seeing a friend's band playing in a bar basement. One of my very favorite things is punk covers of non-punk songs and these guys did a slammin' "Be My Little Baby."

7. Ceramic cats in an antiques store in Narrowsburg.

Jazz Age Lawn Party

Yesterday, I went out to Governor's Island for the Jazz Age Lawn Party, which was a delight. Great music, fabulous outfits, dancing, picnicking. Good times.
This dapper gent was carding people at the hooch tent.

There was a zombie invasion at one point. It could have been funny, but the execution was pretty lame.


Other highlights of the weekend:
Lunch with one of my best friends from high school and her husband. We hadn't seen in each other in probably close to three years.
A traditional Hawaiian feast prepared by my roommate's visiting family. Lomi-lomi, poi, ahi, chicken long rice and kalua pig. So freaking good.Hanging out with different configurations of roommates and each other's friends and marveling at how well everyone meshes and how much I like all these people.
Walking around Queens with Zoe, the entire borough mysteriously empty of ice cream trucks (even near parks and playgrounds! on a hot summer night!) when we both just really wanted a rocket pop. Caramel and cheese empanada from Mama's. Blew my freaking mind.

Green-Wood! Again!

I really love bringing people to Green-Wood for the first time. I see something new everytime I'm there. The friend who came with me this past weekend commented on how well the graves were integrated into the landscape, which is something I suppose I had noticed but never articulated.

There's always some interesting flora and fauna.
The geese were taunting that egret like you wouldn't believe. It remained undaunted.

This gravestone was being eaten by a tree.

The deceased must have been a Seeker:

As much as I was tickled by this...
...I really liked this juxtaposition even better.

That is quite a middle name you've got there, Sir Basil.
And an interesting choice for an epitaph.

Speaking of interesting choices,

While we were walking around the perimeter, I saw this sweet lady in the window of one of the streets that bordered the cemetery.
And I didn't really know what to make of this:

And then, since we'd be hiking around for a couple of hours by that point, we retired to Eurotip for goulash and spaetzle and beer.

On the needles

I've been doing a little knitting these days, in between unpacking and work and writing and yoga and going to BEA and being terrible about responding to emails and feeding friends' cats and buying a 7' plant with my roommates for our living room and whatever else it is that's been occupying my time lately. A cake! I also baked a cake! And went on a date!

(The date was fine, but the cake is what I'm still thinking about...)

The top-down alpaca sweater is going pretty quickly. Since I took this picture, I finished the yoke and divided for the sleeves and body. I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of yarn well before I'm done, but I'll use something else at the lower edges, preferably unevenly, and it'll all be very wabi-sabi and happy-making.

The opening is the neck.

At some point last week, I had to do the math for the body/sleeve division for the sweater and just didn't have it in me right then but wanted something to knit while I watched a movie. Most of my in-progress projects hadn't been unpacked yet, but I had access to a bag of yarn and my straight needles. So I started a scarf. It's a simple thing, but still interesting to knit and to look at and it shows off some pretty special yarn very nicely. In keeping with my mad love for asymmetry, it's stockinette with garter edges and an off-center garter rib.
This gorgeous yarn is handspun wool/angora from Claudia that I won as a prize when I donated to her MS Ride a couple of years ago. (She's currently accepting donations for this year's ride, should you feel moved in that direction.)