Thrift Store Crawl

I got my thrift store shopping on Saturday. Despite the light snow it was a great day, not too cold, but crisp enough to keep me moving. The subway was doing it's usual weekend shenanigans so it went local the whole way to W23 st.

After getting my morning shot of caffeine laced goodness at Starbucks, I met up with the Thriftaholics and we hit the stores.

I set a $40 budget for the day and we planned to hit seven thrift stores with an option for another handful uptown.

I ended up going to Housing Works, Angel Street, The Salvation Army, Good Will, and  The Opera Thrift, the rest of the group continued on. My budget was all used up by the time we got to the the Opera thrift store.

I ended up with 4 tee shirts, 9 headbands, 4 scarves, 1 necklace, 6 fancy hair pins, (can you tell I like hair accessories) and a cool Chanel inspired brief bag.

I ended up with 4 tee shirts, 9 headbands, 4 scarves, 1 necklace, 6 fancy hair pins, (can you tell I like hair accessories) and a cool Chanel inspired brief bag. My grand total for the day: $39.46.

The tee shirts are for a top secret crafting project that I'll reveal when I've collected enough of them to realize the vision. Stay tuned!

If there's a New York City thrift store you like I'd love to hear about it. I am a convert and I will be thrifting on the regular. Leave me some thrift store links in the comments. Thanks.

The Great Blog Move to lisatoppin.com Land

I'm getting ready to move my blog to my own domain, lisatoppin.com. I'm not super techie, but doing a Wordpress website and blog seemed simple enough. That is until I decided to change my web host. I initially parked my domain name on Network Solutions, but I went with BlueHost for, well, hosting of the website.

This is a case of everything taking longer than you'd expect. I had to call Network Solutions to get an authorization code for Bluehost to move my domain over. I was trapped in voicemail hell for a while then when I finally got a person on the phone, I had to verbally wrestle her into submission, before she would stop trying to persuade me not to switch and just email me the code I needed. Grrr!

I started the process of making the switch on January 22. I hoping that my domain will have been switched to the new host without incident by January 29. Network Solutions said that it could be up to seven, count them, seven days before the switch actually occurs.

Sometime in February I'll have a new website that includes my blog. I'll let you know the launch date in another post. I'd love to hear any ideas that you have about other features you'd like to see on my author website. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Fair Isle Mitten Progress Update

I’m still working on the Fair Isle mittens. I started the swatching Wednesday. The yarn knits up fairly densely I don’t think I’ll be lining these mittens. I’m using Knit Picks Palette, 100% Peruvian Highland Wool in a range of grays and black. 

The mitten pattern is from Magnificent Mittens and Socks by Anna Zilboorg. Ms. Zilboorg’s writing style reminds me of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s take-no-nonsense from the knitting style. I found her instructions and tips both clear and empowering. 

My first stab at following the chart was a bust. I pulled it out before I thought to take a picture of it. I saw that I wasn’t developing the ridge across the top of the mitten and the pattern was looking really wonky. 

My second try went wrong in a slightly different way. The pattern was still not developing properly and I really hated my color combination. Managing the floats wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. I ended up using a two-handed method for managing the yarns. I knitted the background yarn continental style and knitted the contrast color yarn English style. The two-handed method kept the yarns separate. No more stopping every round or two to untangle them. This is what it looked like:

The toughest thing for me was deciding the color balance. I ordered 4 colors of Palette: Silver, Mist, Black and Ash. When I do another Fair Isle project, I’m going to give myself more options within my color pallet. When I knitted Silver and Mist into my first mitten, they were so similar I couldn’t see the pattern and the black was way too strong.The other thing I didn't like was that next to the black, the silver yarn read as white, very stark.

It took a few tries, but I finally found a color combination that I liked: the background color is Mist and the contrast colors are Black and Ash. The pallet’s very wintry and, being a subway rat, I appreciate that the colors will hide the dirt. 

I eventually started the mittens over a total of 9 times, but each time the cast on became easier. I didn’t realize the mittens in the book were knit from tip to cuff until I started my mitten. The upside is that now I’m totally ready to knit a pair of toe up socks its the same technique.

Tribal Inspiration

The marks on this woman's body, form a pattern that tells her story, or maybe is just her society's vision of female beauty. I like the look on her face, she's confident. She knows she looks good and that she has the marks of belonging.

Society's mark their members in all kinds of ways. Tribal marks are an unacknowledged code that we all learn to read in order to survive. I notice it most when I'm on the subway commuting to work. There are people my eye just passes over because they bear the marks of my tribe: "The Daughters and Sons of the Daily Grind."

Then, every now and then, there are folks whose tribal marks make me so uncomfortable that consider giving up my seat and moving to another subway car, and that's saying something for a New Yorker.

I think tribal marks, both literal and figurative are going to be important in Ravening. I like the way the marks themselves tell the story of the person's life.

Nelly Odessa and I have set up a Facebook Fan Page for  our book, 101 Acting Questions, Answered! It’s called 101 Acing Questions of course. We are featuring articles about the business of acting from around the web and from our blog 101 Acting Questions.

In February, Nelly will be hosting a series of interviews with guests from all segments of the entertainment industry who'll share their experience of breaking in and forging a career.

Nelly and I are creating a place where beginning actors can get together, share information, and get support. Come on over and check out our page and get in on the conversation.

The main character in my short story Spirit Wolf is a Mage. I don’t know why she’s a Mage as opposed to a witch or some other kind of magic user. I’m still working out what a Mage actually is.

Magic User
The clearest notion I had was that Melissa is some kind of magic user. She’s not a witch if you use the definition of witch as a magic user who approaches magic from a religious point of view. My Mages are more like physicists they work by manipulating the physical world on the molecular level. They play with energy and matter as though they were one and the same.

Secret Society
The other thing I know about Mages is that they maintain a separate society that exists within the ordinary human world. They have internet connections and ipods, but they also use magic as a tool for everyday living. They don’t have a democratic “government” the most powerful have formed a loose confederation that keeps the rest in line. There main task is to keep the existence of Mages secret. The penalty for “piercing the veil,” as they call it, is pretty drastic.

That is the kernel of what I know about the Mages. I can’t help but wonder what it must be like to have astonishing abilities, yet be forced to keep them a secret? I'd love to hear from people in the comments who are part of a "secret" segment of society.  How do you keep the secret?

Vogue Knitting Live 2012

Wow, there was so much energy at the Hilton. Knitters, Crocheters, Spinners and Weavers all out to play with the yarn. I got completely over stimulated in the market place. Anything you could use for fiber crafts was available in abundance. My only criticism was that there was no marketplace on Monday.

I took a sweater design class with Leslye Solomon, owner of Woolstock Yarn Shop , during the class, another student was making a hat out of the most fabulous blue art yarn that had peacock feathers spun in to it. We were all so enchanted by the yarn  that every student in the class wanted to run to the market place and buy some. Then we remember that there was no market place. What a bummer!

The high point for me was the Vogue Knitting fashion show. The people at Vogue had a surprise for us. Instead of showing the garments from the Winter issue they previewed the clothes from the Spring 2012 issue. The audience let out a collective squeeee! when we heard the announcement. There are some really fun trends for spring click here to see the pictures.