Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy love day, everyone. Kevin and I are just winging it today, but I was happily surprised this morning with my favorite salted caramel candies from Fran's Chocolates.

Plus Japanese food for dinner. I love you, Kevin!

Circa 2004
Present 2012!

Crafts: Fair Isle Knit

I've always loved knitted items done in fair isle knit. Fair isle knit typically uses about two to five different colors to create its patterns. Here are some examples of some typical fair isle sweaters:

This is a knitting technique I would love to get really good at, so I've started practicing with a much simpler two color pattern. It's more time consuming, but it definitely gives your knit a special quality that solids and stripes don't have.

This scarf I'm working on is on a size 8/16 inch circular needle done in stockinette stitch. One thing that makes fair isle knitting so much more complicated is that you are working with multiple colors of yarn simultaneously, constantly changing colors every few stitches.

It's challenging, but that's part of the fun!

Crafts: I've been knitting...a lot.

The chilly fall and winter weather we've been in lately has inspired me to knit a ton of circle scarves. I just love knitting and it's a much more functional hobby now that I'm in Seattle. Thinking of patterns and matching different colors has been fun. As you can see I've been trying to perfect my striped skills.

All of these were knitted in stockinette stitch on circular needles, which I've just learned to use recently. Seriously, circular needles are one of the best things to ever happen to me! They allow you to knit in a round, forming a tube shaped piece.

knitty.com

I'm planning to get a lot of practice in and hopefully master some really awesome (and more complicated) knitting techniques.

Something Creepy...

Kevin has been helping me work on some projects lately and one of them was a great logo design for some of my upcoming works. Using a piece of embroidery I made a while back and his amazing design skills, we came up with an official Creepy Girl logo. As most of you know, Creepy Jen is one of my nicknames and I really wanted to honor it.

When Christmas came around, one of Kevin's gifts to me was a custom made stamp with my logo.

He had it made through Impress Rubber Stamps. They did a wonderful job and it came out nicer than I could have ever hoped.

Now what's it for? Hopefully for something new and great.

Check in for more updates!

Outside My Window

First snow of 2012.

West Side Story - Seattle

Hi all! It's a new year with new posts. Happy 2012 everyone! I'm back and hopefully it will stay that way for a while.

I'd like to start off the new year with a post about my favorite musical/movie of all time: West Side Story (winner of the 1961 Oscar for Best Picture). It's been my favorite since I was in intermediate school and my love for it has just grown over the years. So imagine my excitement when Paramount Theater here in Seattle announced that they would be showing the original Broadway play this month. I jumped on it and bought the best tickets I could get on the day tickets went on sale.

It was a completely different experience seeing it performed live. The dancing was incredible and the songs were sung beautifully. I was on the edge of my seat the entire performance.

Here's me in front of the marquee all ready to get my musical on:

Crafts/Music: Weezer Memories Tour

Hi everyone! Man, there have been so many concerts the past couple of months. I've been to more shows in the past two months than I have in the past few years back home in Hawaii.

Last week we had the once in a lifetime opportunity to see Weezer's Memories Tour and it was amazing. In this tour, the band played both the Blue Album and Pinkerton in their entirety. Those two albums are pretty much their best and the only ones I really listen to, so it was a treat.

In commemoration of this event I made a cross-stitched sampler of a lyric from "Undone (The Sweater Song)":I think I'm going to start making a whole bunch of these featuring lyrics, movie quotes and book quotes that I love. What do you think?

And of course, here's a video of Weezer playing this very song at the show. Sorry for the shakiness and quality, we were really far away and kevin and i took turns holding the camera. :)

Better videos to come!

Music: I'm Back And With A Video

Hello all! It's been almost a month since I've seen you all. Kevin and I have been up to a few things, but one of the most recent awesome events was the Rx Bandits show we went to at El Corazon.

They are one of the bands I wanted to see in my lifetime and I finally got to. Too bad it was their Farewell tour; first and last time I'll ever see them, but at least I had the chance. I remember when I worked at Vans back in Hawaii, my friend Ashley and I would play their albums in the store over and over again and talk about how amazing it would be to see them.

Needless to say, it was better than I ever imagined it would be.

Matt Embree from Rx Bandits:

Steve Choi from Rx:

I've seen so many pictures and videos of these guys that it was so surreal to see them in person.

I even got a short video of them. I had a few more, but you can hear me singing in the background of those and it's super embarrassing. Here's a snippet of their song Decrescendo:

Sorry if it's a little shaky, I was getting pushed around a bit by the crowd.
So great!