my mother, the secret knitting ninja

so i've been knitting (or purling, rather) sporadically for the past few months, since i learned back in november. tonight (in lieu of stitch & bitch, which i skipped again) i decided to bust out my total idiot's guide to knitting & crocheting and see if i could teach myself to knit (as opposed to purl), which really just resulted in me realizing that i've been purling in a really awkward/wrongish way that makes knitting seem like a whole other art form. so, i need to work on that. i also need some more needles, because at the moment i have too-small and too-big needles but none that are just right, a la goldilocks.

but, right, the really remarkable part of this is how, after i ripped my half a dozen rows of tight-fisted lumpy knitting and wound the yarn back up, my mom asked if she could try to see if she remembered how to do it. apparently she knit twenty five years ago? first i've heard of it!

so i handed over the supplies and lo and behlod, after not doing it for twenty five years, my mom can knit / purl better than i can. huh.

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completely unrelated, but here are some pictures of the store i work at, as promised in a previous post.



the store from the back (i love our big front window). our floors are the building's original ones-- it used to be a hardware store (the original mural advertising the store and gilman paints are still on the back of the building) and you can see where the big cases used to be from where there are worn marks on the hardwood.



we do complimentary gift wrapping on any purchase (and sometimes on items purchased elsewhere). gift wrapping is probably my favorite job to do at work. sometimes i get teased about it. sometimes i get a little too excited about it and offer to wrap very tiny things that don't need to be wrapped and then i wind up having to make insanely tiny little packages that probably cost more to wrap than the actual item. my love of gift wrapping at work has got me thinking that maybe i should offer giftwrapping for purchases from the site, but i haven't figured out how to orchestrate that exactly.



one of our displays, though we sold the flamingos a few days after i took this picture. i adore the glass vases-- i got a dark green squarish one for my apartment next year. behind you can see some of our jewelery cases, which i spend a lot of time unlocking and showing to people.

we don't carry any madeye stuff yet, but i mean to remedy that. last fall i got so busy with school that it all but slipped my mind entirely, but this year i will definitely get on it.

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is there anybody out there?! hello?! if i stop asking, will someone start responding?!

indirect awesomeness

rare device, a brooklyn boutique that featured a few madeye hats last winter/fall, is mentioned in lucky magazine this month. rena, the shop's owner (who seems very nice from my limited interactions with her!) scanned the page and posted it to the rare device blog, but you can also see it here.

i was reading the magazine on my lunch break at work and got so exited that i... well, i made a post-it note that said "she bought some hats from madeye!" and stuck it to the page for whoever picked it up next.

anyway, i think that's pretty exciting, and a nice indirect compliment. i'd never read much of lucky before, except for this issue, but i like a lot of what i saw (if only i was like, a supermillionaire that didn't care about paying hundreds of dollars for sundresses... and if only i could walk in heels, right?) and so if i like lucky and lucky likes rare device and rare device likes madeye... i take that as a good sign.

that reminds me that i took a lot of pictures of the store where i work to share here, but haven't gotten around to uploading them yet. i'll do that soon. it's an amazing little place and i really want to show it off.

also: um, hello, is anyone out there? i feel like i'm blogging to a brick wall. speak, people! speak!

oui oui! chapeau de piaf

another in what is becoming a considerably sized series of scrappy bird hats. this one goes international.



same black yarn as the first scrappy bird hat, same crazy black & white checked / houndstooth skirt scrap, plus tan corduroy (also appeared in the scrappy bird hat-- see the swirlies!). birds are black craft store felt, eiffel tower is cut out of a hot pink toile print fabric from hobby lobby.



close up... my camera is NOT liking to focus these days. no good. but here you can see the heart a little better, though i may end up re-stitching that part because it's kind of lumpy.

usually i find the eiffel tower motif to be a little overdone and cliche, but i feel somewhat qualified to use it now that i've actually BEEN to the tower myself. and not just the big cardboard one they had at prom senior year... i mean the REAL thing.



honestly, i never expected or really desired to see the eiffel tower, especially, until i was actually there, at which point i kind of freaked out because it's pretty much undeniably cool. mostly because it's huge, but then the lights that sparkle all over it at the top of every hour just make it more irresistable. especially to me, because i am apparently a sucker for sparkly things... that's what the eiffel tower taught me.

okay, now the lumpy heart is really starting to bug me, so i'm going to go fix that and watch even more obnoxious soul-draining television (today's count so far: "the hills" and "cheyenne" on mtv, and the hilary duff episode of "celebrity home" on style. hilary duff has a sewing room that is AMAZING and designed to house this $5,000 sewing machine that she's not even entirely sure how to use. wtf, duff?)

PS: if you drop by, comment! please! i want to know who's out there snooping around!

and some more

i actually started this one before the one i posted yesterday, but then got "crafters block" or what have you after stitching on the flowers and some of the buttons. so i stuck it on the mannequin head and let it sit for a few days... we had quite a few late-night staredowns, let me tell you. meanwhile, got the idea for the bird as seen on yesterday's, so i drew up a smaller stencil in a different size and here we have it.



i really like the black yarn i used for the hat, though i can't remember the name of it at the moment. i got two skeins from the a.c. moore clearance bin last week on my First Yarn Shopping Trip In Months, since it was down to $3 and had been sitting there since december. it's acrylic/something/something, kind of the same feel as lamb's pride worsted but a lot lighter.



two different kinds of houndstooth material make up the base of the applique (from two different thrifted skirts, both of which i would have saved to wear had they fit me). buttons are from my mom's preschool craft stash. the red flower is just a regular old flower, but the green one is one i attempted to felt last week. it basically just got fuzzy and KIND of drew up but not much. i'll give it another try sometime, but i do like how it turned out... for this project, at least. oh, and the bird is craft store black felt, just like the one from yesterday's. hat.

katy has requested one with an owl, so that among other things will be coming up soon.

time to go to my "real" job now. ha!

(ps: seriously, say hello if you read!)

pictures, as promised...

...just a little sooner than i thought.



i basically sat here all day, sewing + ripping music to iTunes. i either need a real workroom so i don't have to work on my bed, or a real bed so maybe i wouldn't be tempted to treat it like the floor. i'm afraid of losing a needle somewhere and finding it in the middle of the night...



fruit of the labor. I LOVE IT. i'm going to make more, now that i've perfected my bird silhouette drawing skillz. (the bird = sketched on paper, traced onto felt, cut out & sewn on.)



detail: blue yarn = scraps from the stash basket, cordurory = from a skirt thrifted last week for this very purpose.



so freaking cute. mom, if you see this... you're probably creeped out. but thanks for letting me pilfer your living room accessories for the photo shoot.

so, now you can kind of see where madeye is going, for now. this is definitely the vein i'm going to be working in, at least for the next little while. i thrifted a ton of skirts last week to cut up and use for appliques, which work like the crocheted disc appliques that are on a lot of hats on the site. i really like that look, but i was getting tired of crocheting every little bit of every little thing and wanted a bit more variety in the patterns and textures. so here we have it.

thoughts? share them! please / thank you!

numero dos

what made me make the move from livejournal? as with many things these days, i'm not entirely sure, but it felt right. i really just woke up one morning and said to myself, "hey self, let's move that madeye thing over to blogger." and then i said, "sounds like a good idea, self." i guess it was something about telling people to "check out the madeye livejournal!" that seemed a little too cumbersome for my liking. having a really real for real blog just makes me feel so freaking hip and with it. operative word, there: feel. whether i am or not... well, that's just the mystery of my life.

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so until the other day, i hadn't crocheted in almost two months. i hadn't gone yarn shopping in... i don't even want to think about how long. suffice it to say that it was a long damn time. the hiatus was largely due to school and school-related things, but really i do think the fact that my yarn basket was full of ugly scraps didn't help much either. i started throwing stuff on top of it in my closet so i wouldn't have to see it. damp bath towels, dirty socks, books, anything that needed to be tossed. seriously, there's this one ball of bright neon green red heart kids yarn that i got for some custom project that never came through that is so putridly hideous that i still experience an acute adverse physical reaction to it every time i see it... nay, think about it.

and let me tell you, i am usually a fan of ugly green things. (see: the avocado naugahide couch i recently salvaged for my apartment next year. ugliest thing EVER.) so the fact that i was physically repulsed by this says a lot, and none of it is very encouraging or inspirational. so instead of blaming my lack of crocheting (nocheting?) on Life, i'm going to blame it on that fuglyass ball of yarn which singlehandedly (single-balledly? oh man) managed to drain me of all recognizable desire to craft.

DAMN YOU, UGLY GREEN YARN. DAMN YOU.

fortunately, i've come out on the other side relatively unscathed. i've got two sacks of new yarn and i've made two and three-quarters hats in the last week. i'm also working on some new styles to sell, and i'm really excited. REALLY excited. and really vague, apparently.

less vagueness + photos coming soon.

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in other news, this morning i finally bought the boygirlparty shirt i'd been wanting foreeevvvverrrr: starry owl! i love me some boygirlparty. not that i needed another shirt with a bird on it, but... eh... well, who am i kidding? i can ALWAYS use another shirt with a bird on it.

eyeblog update numero uno

moving over here from livejournal... more to come soon!