Flint Knits

I’m playing at rockstar this summer, and the band might be coming to your town! If we are, let me know — most shows will have guest lists, plus I hope to make time for crafty meet-ups in between all the chaos of touring.

July’s schedule below. We’ll also be out for 3 weeks in August — I’ll post those dates in a few weeks.

Jul 13 2007 Paulies, Bloomington, IL
Jul 14 2007 The Whatever, Kankakee, IL
Jul 16 2007 Dayton, OH?
Jul 18 2007 The Camel, Richmond, VA
Jul 19 2007 Grog and Tankard, Washington DC
Jul 20 2007 The Fire, Philadelphia, PA
Jul 21 2007 The Knitting Factory, New York, NY

Jul 23-30 I’m at a conference in Honolulu

Long days in the recording studio with the band, some super duper sock knitting, and a bit of Chicago yarn shopping.

Plus, I had a lovely lunchtime meet-up with Carolyn yesterday — we were so chatty I forgot to take pictures!

I’m almost sad to go home tomorrow.

Almost.

Just got a $1700 car repair bill (despair!), but I also just finished grading (euphoria) and am sitting in a cafe in San Francisco (bliss), where I’m visiting to celebrate my oldest and dearest BFF’s 30th birthday (perfect). So things are balancing out. Kind of.

The birthday girl, whom I’ve known since we were wee first-graders, is a fan of smocks. So I made her a birthday smock:

I’ve realized that I really enjoy sewing. In June when I get back to Michigan and have more space for it, I’m going to indulge the quilting bug more thoroughly. How could I not, with inspiration like this and this haunting my Bloglines?

Yesterday afternoon, I had a fabulous meet up with Angela/YaiAnn at Imagiknit where, after much debate, she bought some perfect buttons for her Malabrigo cardigan. Also after much debate, I bought some green Louet Gems for the i-cord edging on the Baby Surprise Jacket.

We then had a few lazy hours of coffee and nonstop chatty conversation — turns out she’s smart and funny and wicked cute besides being a super talented all-around crafter. Thanks for the awesome afternoon, Ange!

Unfortunately, tight schedules and my short visit meant that I couldn’t get to Berkeley to meet up with Desiknitter like we’d planned. Do you know Desiknitter? You should. Besides making gorgeous knitted items and creative patterns, and being a superstar academic to boot, she’s currently rocking my world with her clever, clever chevron eye shade.

Enjoy your weekends!

Back from New York, and I am t.i.r.e.d. It was a great trip — the conference went well, and I spent time catching up with long-lost friends and walking around the chilly city by myself. And I got some excellent fabric goodies at Purl, along with a skein of 40% off Koigu (show and tell tomorrow, because I’m too pooped to take pictures right now).

But the highlight of the trip was definitely my meet-up with Minty.

She’s already said this, but it was just one of those happy ‘click’ moments with a new friend. It appears that I did not freak her out by holding every bolt of fabric at Purl in front of my torso and asking if she could imagine it as a dress (”What about This Print? Really? On my Whole Body?”).

And when we sat down to lunch, three hours flew by as we talked — about food, work, relationships, books, self-portraiture, TV, movies, babies (and no babies), knitting and blogging (of course), and life in general. We laughed so much that the SoHo hipsters next to us moved to a different table.

[a photo of Minty taking a photo of escargots]

Many crepes later, we took pictures in front of The Point (it was too packed to sit inside), and I took home the other highlight of my trip: one perfect Beard Papa vanilla cream puff. Heaven.