Big League...

I start school tomorrow. And it's nothing simple like Highschool or Community College. This is the big league baby. The Art Institute of Seattle. Ack! I know I'll be okay, and I'll get the hang of things, I just wish I knew which books I need to take and if anyone will be nice to me?

Goodness. I may be an adult but I still have the same worries I did when I was in grade school. I suppose some things never change, then eh?

Autumn Child

I don't know why, but for some reason I am most pensive in the Fall. Perhaps it's because I was born then, and I've come full circle for another year. I can't say exactly, but I don't mind it. I'm in love with the lush colours, the smells, the crispness of the air. It's all so much that I feel like I want to explode with happiness.
Perhaps it is simply the turning of a season, because I feel in love with the new, upcoming season in the Summer and especially in the Spring. Of all four my two favourite are Fall and Spring. They are the most turbulent, the most alive, full of colour and life and wonder. And rain. I love rain.
In the meantime, I knit away, working on gifts for family and friends, product to sell on my Etsy ( Hibougirl Crafts ) and marvel at the wonders around me.

~ What seasons do you like best, and can you say why?

So this is where I work...

...if you want to argue about the virtues and evils of Starbucks, take it elsewhere. I don't care. I mean that respectfully because I'm not here to debate how wonderful or awful my employer is. I love coffee. Plain and simple. I don't really care where I actually get it as long as it's good. Anyway. I digress.
I was searching for a picture that captures Starbucks/it's logo and I stumbled upon the below blog. I was so delighted and amused I've put the link here for whomever stumbles into my wee corner of the blogisphere.

Linkey Linkey, here it be!

As I was walking home today, it struck me that, in Seattle, Summer is ending. No one really wants it to end, even I, a firm Autumn, am mourning the end of summer. It's inevitable. Seasons change when we don't want them to and refuse to change when we do want them to. But when we just move from one day to the next the change seems so sudden because you haven't been paying attention. I think an awareness of the word and it's weather around me are a result of being homeschooled and raised in a family where life is taken a little slower. We take time to dig in the good dark earth, to feel the gritty grains under our fingers and let the brown stain our skin till we can see the ridges of our fingerprints. We play with the earthworms and tenderly transfer new bulbs to safer growing places. I think with an upbringing such as this one may never loose sight of what is happening in the changing of the seasons.
So I walk home feeling the sun on my face, almost too warm but I didn't want to care because it felt so good, and the wind telling me that colder weather is coming. I can smell a barbecue somewhere and the scent reminds me of the beginning of summer when you could smell some of the first barbecues. I can smell the heat evaporating the water on a lawn as I pass it, a lawn mower in the distance putters for some of the last times until the spring. Thinking ahead I realize I'm starting school in a month, I've got a paid theatre gig coming up, and I can't wait for it all to get here. However such emotion is tempered with savoring the last few moments of summer. Soak up the last bits of good sun (but please don't get burnt! :), drink some of the last lemonades, lick your popsicles, and play in running water until it's too cold. Then snuggle up in a warm sweater and grab a cup of something hot and enjoy the cooler months knowing it will all come again. Soon.

Memories...

..no, not the ones in the street light. But ones I treasure now that the force behind creating them is gone. I would give my right arm to spend my sleepy saturday mornings in rehearsal, half awake, taking blocking notation for future reference. To move on to the set, to graduate, as it were, into performance. I feel as though I have lost a part of me, vital to my happiness as a person. I feel incomplete without some faint promise of rehearsal, of the performance stress that I hated then, but miss now. So, for all the complaints, for all the tears, sweat, and curses beneath the breath, I would have it all back again. And that's a good thing to know about oneself, if it's frustrating right now. So please enjoy the memories if they are meaningful to you, and if not, please enjoy the look into my treasured past.

No fruit for you!

I feel ungrateful. Why's that? Well, I've got a good job, I'm working on becoming enrolled in a good school that has an astounding post-school employment rate (for the field in which you studied), I've got a good life, but I'm still unsatisfied somewhere amidst it all. There's some part of me that is totally neglected and it's crying for attention, only I don't know which part. Or at least, I can't decide if it's my theatre crying or my crafting, both of which have been sorely neglected of late.

Maybe I just don't like the transition period. The place where you can see everything lining up for you, only you can't touch it yet. It's there, slowly becoming tangible, you can practically taste it, but you can't take a bite. Maybe I don't like that. I can taste the show, I can see the school, but I can't bite into it and give it my all just yet.

Knit Meme

Knit Meme
Originally uploaded by hibougirl

So, Icve finally caved and jopined the wide world of memes I guess they're called. Here's one for knitters. Head over to my Flickr page to view the answers. :)

The questions are:

What is your first name?
What is your favorite yarn?
What was the first thing you made with yarn?
What is your favorite color?
Which crochet or knitting designer do you have a crush on?
Favorite handmade gift you have received?
Dream project?
Favorite notion?
What will you crochet/ knit next?
What do you love most about yarn?
One word to describe your craft.
Main inspiration to craft.

Goodness, but it's been too long since I posted! There hasn't been phenomenal anything lately until I cleaned out my studio and got a "new" sewing machine. Just wanted to poke my nose in. More later, as I'm not able to type very well tonight. Too much good dinner and Riesling.

A novelty and reflections on a life misplaced

First off, my new gnome lights. Yes, I bought novelty lights in the shape of little gnomes. Now my family is saying I love and collect gnomes. Let me set you straight, not really, but it's slowly turning into a minor fetish.




Yesterday I spent most of the day at my grandparents house in West Seattle. My mother's childhood home and the place of many of my childhood memories. I love my mum's room with it's french doors leading out on a little closed balcony. I love the lion's head down in the garden below. His name is Aslan, naturally.





Now it's just my grandpa living in this big house, and it feels kinda lonely without my grandma there. She's still living, but she's at an Adult Family Home where they can take good care of her with her dementia. There's bits and pieces of her still around my grandpa's home. Her perfume, make-up, clothing, jewellery and I often find myself looking through them wondering what she was like as a young girl, mother. She wasn't a milk and cookies grandma, she was strict and hard on my brothers and me. For all that, we respected her as she was and still is our grandma. I just don't know much about her, from her in her own words. On the flip-side of this is my own family who has raised me with tales of my family history. I know what my parents were like a kids, and teen-agers, adults. All the parts I wasn't present for, I've experienced through their words and stories. So I wonder, looking at my grandma's things, what was her life like before I met her? I wish I could know, I wish she could have told me. Taught me how to sew without a pattern, cook by instinct. With each thing I discover about her, I want to learn more only now she barely remembers herself. It's a sad thing, and I pray that some day I might learn more about her so I can tell her story for her, to my children, and they can tell their children in turn.

D'oey!

*a big resounding smack* <- this is the sound of my palm firmly hitting my forehead, perhaps a couple more times. I FINALLY figured out how to make a blog list, and lists of my favourite things for people to peruse! OH MY GOODNESS!
I just had to let you know I've hit the "I get it!" bit, and admire my dorkiness.

And now back to your regularly scheduled knitting blather...

You know you're a geek when...

...you write a letter using mostly the first lines of all the songs (in chronological movie) order from Across the Universe. Feel free to link back to this, but treat the below as an original work (cause it is) with the exception that the lyrics belong to The Beatles, so I'm not claiming them as mine. There, I think I've covered myself. Anyway, enjoy!



[Dear] Girl,
Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup they slither while they pass they slip away. It feels so right now, close your eyes and I'll kiss you! I wanna hold your hand, it won't be long till I belong to you. What you would you do if I sang out of key? Would you stand up and walk out on me? Had it been another day I might have looked the other way, and I'd of never been aware, but as it is I'll dream of [you] tonight. When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, Let It Be. Come together, right now, over me. Why don't we do it in the road? No one will be watching us. If I fell in love with you, would you promise to be true? I want you!
Dear Prudence, please don't be long cause I might be asleep. I am he as you are me as we are all together. For the benefit of Mr. Kite, there will be a show tonight because something. Oh darling let me take you down cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields. You say you want a revolution, well we all want to change the world. I look at [it] all, see the love there that's sleeping while my guitar gently weeps. Across the universe, when I get the bottom I go back to the top of the slide where I turn and I go for a ride till I get to the bottom and I see you again. [You're] not a girl who misses much.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly. Hey, Jude [took] a sad song and [made] it better. Don't let me down. There's nothing you can do that can't be done, picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. All you need is love across the universe!

Lord of the Flies

Not too long ago I made a decision to try and work through all the classical literature you're supposed to read in high school and college, which I never have. It's not that I've been un-exposed to classical literature, just found reading it quite a bore. I've watched a lot of film adaptations of stories; Frankenstein, All Quiet On the Western Front, various Shakespeare and some Dickens. Reading these works is another matter entirely.

On a whim I made my decision and have made it through some of the first chapters of Lord of the Flies. Also on my nightstand is Animal Farm, but I've not had the courage to being that just yet. Oddly enough both of these books are creepy. Simply reading the first few paragraphs of LOTF I was overwhelmed by the underlying sense of something sinister coming to get me. I was afraid of any new things introduced in the book, of the finger-like shadows of palms, of the birdcalls. I believed I was there with the boys, feeling the heat of the jungle island drip off my skin, the temporary relief of the breezes that blew in off the water. Ralph positively terrifies me. He's sinister, and I feel, slowly going crazy. Piggy will die first or be the last to die. I'm not exactly looking forward to delving back into the book but I want to know why they are all there on the island, how they will find food (and kill their food), and if Ralph is going to murder everyone or something equally as strange. So I plod on, suspicious of the crackling of branches beneath my literary feet, and wonder if I'm going to make it till the end.

Crafty Haul and a New Project

JoAnn's is having a sale all this week and it's a lucky thing for my bank account not to be there any more. It was horribly difficult to walk to the cash register with six skeins of yarn and eight fat quarters. I'm not greedy by nature, but when yarn or fabric is on sale...I WANT IT ALL!!!



However I was very, very good and left some for other people. The store on the other hand should have given me something for my promotion on their behalf. I was in line and a young lady in front of me glanced back at my basket full of this cacophony of colour and made the fateful turn. I knew she was looking at my haul, so I caught her eye. "They're lovely colours," she said. "Aren't they?" I replied, all innocence. Then, dropping my voice to a conspiratorial whisper I told her they were half off. $5.99 yarn ($6 I know) for $3! Her eyes grew wide and after a moment of "step forward, step back" she jumped in place and ran off to buy yarn. "I don't need any more yarn," she had said. I didn't remind her that no knitter ever doesn't need more yarn. We do, more importantly, we want it. I speaks to us and it's colour, texture, and usually price seduces us into taking it home, placing it on a mantel, shelf and simply admiring it with blissful sighs from time to time.




Now this lovely lady is my first attempt at a top down sweater-ish something. I'm on my second skein of yarn and almost kicking myself for not purchasing a third, but we'll see. I'm thinking of some lacey sleeve because I, personally, loathe cap sleeves. They do nothing for my arms (nor many female arms for that matter) and I end up looking fat. So far I love it, I love the technique and plan on knitting most, if not all the sweaters I design from now on this way. It's so simple! It's called the Azrael Bolero (or maybe Jacket?) I dunno yet.
But I'm in love with it's yummy sparkly goodness.

Fabric of Life and Times

She was awake, that much was certain, but when it came to actually thinking in an orderly fashion all was lost. Perhaps it was too early? Reaching through the curtains that surrounded her bed her questing fingers finally groped their way to her cellphone. 10am. Not too early, too late. With a groan and several unspoken curses she flings back her covers, twisted and tangled with a listless sleep, and lies there for several moments, eyes closed, smelling her baby blanket. Finally after a moment too many she rises a little unsteady on her feet, to fumble her way to coffee. Her eyes search for the nearest sweater, vest, jacket...and slips one on. Grey with a ship on the back. She makes coffee automatically now, hesitating only to wonder if she has performed the steps correctly.
The phone rings, her cousin on the line, and she lets her brother answer it. Turn out to be for her and through a haze she speaks to her aunt, not her cousin at all. Thus her morning leads into her day determining in it's unofficial way how her day will turn out. Most of her day is spent staring off into space and wondering why. More coffee in consumed, her bedroom is tidied. This changes her previously cynical perspective on the day, altering it to passably pleasant. She still stares off into space and continues to wonder why. Why is her brain so slack? So torpid, sluggish, swollen and lethargic? Where has the wonderment it once possessed gone? Why does it not yearn for learning, plan moments to steal for reading something new, day dream about stories in her head? Has she grown up so much that the child she promised to remain has been orphaned? All of these queries and more ramble through the river of thought in the space of several hours of one day. Now the sun has set, dipping into s northern slumber while the pale sliver of moon casts it's pallid, mysteriously enchanting glow on the uninterested cities. She considers her day and it's not quite so bad after all, there's a new one tomorrow to make up for any deficiencies of today. Her consolation found, she is content to spend her evening reading and listening to raucous music.

Some Knitting, sadly nothing witty.

While this blog is called the Knitting Stagehand, there's not been a whole lot of knitting or stagehanding. Well, let's just say that I took care of a bit of that today, just for kicks.

These are for my Grandpa to keep his hands warm as he writes.



Pirate Mitts I made not too long ago now, only just blogged. My darling Pirate-In-Stripes hasn't seen these yet, and it's the only reason I've still got them.


And last but not least, my version of a slouchy hat. I love the idea of making a hat that is, ultimately, the perfect bad hair day hat. It slouches down the back of you head covering most of you hair while lending you an aura of bohemian, "I just got up and look gorgeous." I think it's still too short to actually slouch down in the back, so it's back to the knitting needles for these!

Ramble, ramble...

It's a slow quiet day here in Seattle. For the first time in what seems like a long time, we have sun again! There was snow all this last week, up and down the state accompanied by hail, and sporadic rain, it felt like the winter was trying to make up for a lack of snow. There's not a whole lot to write about as things are still really the same, but I'm inspired by sunlight and flower scented breezes-even if they are still quite cold.
There's a lot of sewing that is coming, knitting as always, and a couple of costumes have made an appearance. I'm working up a batch of project bags for a sidewalk sale in May, and designing a slouchy hat for some local, brick and mortar shops that are willing to carry my work! Yay! I'm wriggling like a small puppy with excitement at the prospect of seeing something I made in a shop window. Not that my etsy shop is any disappointment, it's just intangible and I'm a very tangible person- no pun intended. I need to touch things, see them in person. Perhaps that's why I love knitting and sewing, they are tangible, tactile, hands-on processes that produce something that will last for decades.
I'm just rambling for now, soon there will be pictures and more organized "rambling", for now, cheers! Enjoy the sun if you can!

Experiment : My Wardrobe

I've always dressed fairly creatively, I've just never recognized what I love to wear and how I want to wear it. As an artist, I like to think of your appearance as a bit of a calling card. It reflects the art you make, your style, your favourites. So this year, (and until it works itself out) I'm altering found pieces, making new pieces and sprucing up what I have until I'm satisfied with my wardrobe. I keep a folder I like to call Dress Ideas. Not ideas for dresses, but for how I dress myself. A lot of it drawn from Etsy, an image may have a certain feeling that I want to project, or part of a garment is exactly what I want to create. Now, don't misunderstand me, I under stand that the works are those of the artists, and I'm not out to mass copy them for my personal gain. I'm just drawing inspiration from their ideas. It doesn't hurt to look does it?
I draw heavily from gypsy-bohemian, steampunk, medieval, piratical, and fantasy. A little old combined with some new so it's on an edge, and you can't quite decide if it's antique or brand new.

Grey and Dismal

Today was grey and dismal in the Great Northwest. Rather difficult to stay happy all day, but somehow I managed until just now when I glanced at my ledger. Funny how money holds no meaning when you're young but when you get older it suddenly governs your entire existence. The day was grey and dismal, but for a splash of colour. This fascinator is from my former theatre company, and I'm wearing my orange sweater which wraps me in it's wooly goodness. Here's to staying warm and happy, friends.

It feels like I'm never going to college

It seems to me that I will never get to college before I'm 30? 25? Something like that. It's this, un-attainable dream that is quickly becoming shredded into limp, pale, wan tatters that tremble lifelessly in the cold wind of my mind. They were once vibrant- Maybe they've never been vibrant?
I've always known my parents wouldn't give me any assistance for my college education. They just can't. There's no fund saved up, there's no tiny thousand dollars stashed away for me and my college. It's just me. And my penny jar-which is empty, by the way-to forge the path to higher education.
I want it, however badly, it seems I don't want it badly enough to get a crappy job that pays jack-squat, save it all up, pursue a million scholarships and grants and put myself through. On my own. It just seems to, stupid? I must be too old? There's something there that hinders me. Something that binds me back into my cell-which I built myself- and locks me securely in.
I am twenty two. I feel too old to go to college. I feel to old to do anything teenagers are supposed to do after high school. Namely, go to college. You start at eighteen, finish at, twenty-one or twenty two. I should be done with college. I should be doing some crappy job that has nothing to do with what I studied and have a fucking college education. Yet, would I be happy then? Would the fact that I have a piece of paper that attests to my gain of a higher education make me happy?
I would be considered normal. I've never been considered normal. Perhaps that is what, beneath layers of human emotion and past, I truly want. To fit into the vast expanse of humanity and be another human. Not forever, but just for a little while. To be normal.
What is normal? The norm? It's going to school, to get a good education to get a job that will, in the end, kill you. That's normal. It's being tall and skinny with no glasses, perfect teeth, superficial friends, parents that have college savings for you, give you your first car, and straight blonde or brown hair. That's normal.
And it goes against everything that I am.
I am not normal, and for some strange reason, I cannot fully live with that. There's something-a lack of recognition-that leaves me uneasy in my day to day life. I have curly hair, glasses, I'm not particularly tall, in fact, I might be called short. I'm strong, a little stocky, and I have a passion for art. I'm not model gorgeous, but I'm not, by any means ugly. I'm pretty. A certain kind of pretty for a certain kind of guy that I will meet someday before I'm old and decrepit.
And because of this ab-normality. This lack of normality, normal-ness, I'm torn, destroyed, shredded, and believe I will never go to college.
My one priority now is to, (in these steps) get a job, to pay for car insurance, to get my driver's license, to get an apartment away from my house. To live on my own. Doing what? I don't know yet. This is another fantasy that is being slaughtered by reality. In the fantasy there's a cosy urban apartment (think Across The Universe) where I can paint the walls and have a cat. I work in the morning at a coffee shop. I have a fabulous rapport with the regulars, perhaps a couple of tattoos, purple hair, and a funky wardrobe. Then I go home for late lunch, maybe do a little crafting to support my Etsy business, and then it's off to the theatre for rehearsal, performance, artsy ness. That's my fantasy. Oh yeah, and I have a black ( or gunmetal grey) Volkswagen Golf that I drive around in. Maybe with the cat, whose name is Bunky. The black cat. That' giant one who looks a little fearsome as he soaks up the afternoon sunlight on the windowsill? That's Cicero. Or Lord Byron. Or maybe even Chaucer, but he'd have to be quite remarkable.
That's my dream. And here I shall leave it, for I can't bear to dip back into reality right now, the dream is too lovely, too sunny where reality is not. I'm going to soak up the sun. Just for little while.

Portrait of an Artist - I

Some of my costumes. I've built a few, altered many, and collected more.

Art and Crafting...

Yesterday my brothers and I went out looking for inspiration. It was found at Pacific Iron. Big Guy is working to get a forge together in the basement, so we are constantly on the lookout for small metal pieces, findings, and wire for jewelry for his makings. I'm dying to buy a couple of these Oxyacetylene Torches for lightsaber handles. It will probably be inspiration for something Steampunk from Big Guy.


I love being around homeschoolers. I've graduated, but my two younger brothers are still in school. While I'm graduated, I've never lost the love of learning that is at the basis of all good homeschooling. You learn something new and amazing every day through being homeschooled. I love it.

Now this lovely piece of crap...this is driving me crazy.

This is the product of my love/hate affair with sewing machines. Rather, just this one in particular. First the tension was off, my brother fixed that. Then the bobbin thread wouldn't pick up, so it's been languishing until the weekend when I hope to persuade my mother to give it what for so I can sew again! It's amazing how much you miss something when you actually can't use it. I keep thinking about all these sewing projects I could be doing, yet I can't do anything about them until the machine gets fixed!
Now, don't get me wrong, I am a very independent girl who has no problem getting her hands messy and fixing something herself. I just don't have a manual to tell me how to put the darned thing back together once I've taken it apart.



So I sit at my little writing desk, blogging to the void about my broken sewing machine while the feeble January sunlight sparkles through the glasses of odds and ends on my windowsill. *sigh* I think I'll go troll the internet for a manual for the sewing machine.

Etsy Update!

I've been photographing my stock and updating my little Etsy shop all day. Quite fun when you look back upon the progress that you've made(9 items to 19).

The Shop is here

Some previews to tantalize your senses, right here!


A Bolero for Tonks









Lots of jewelry, but also some things I've had for a bit but been unsure as to if I really want to sell them or not. Fun being crafty with my jewelry shoots and learning how to get decent close up photos with a point and shoot digital camera. Ah for lack of a SLR! Someday.

Cheers All! And a Happy New Year!