some favorite music

I’m sure I’ve said before, but my love affair with music is mutual and never ending. My music taste is also all over the board, with an interesting mixture of alternative, anime openings, endings, and soundtracks, folk, country, a smattering of pop, some rock, and classical music.

I have some music I gravitate toward that relaxes me immediately and puts me in a happy place. The Invitation by Klaus Kuhen tops that list as ‘my favorite cd of all time and I can never ever get tired of hearing it’. Anything by the Paper Kites is gloriously pretty but the prize goes to Bloom as the best of their songs. Seriously, just hearing the opening bars to the song immediately relaxes my body and makes me sigh with happiness. I don’t know what it is about the song. The banjo? The soft quality of the music? The vocals? The lyrics? All of the above? I don’t know. All I do know is that I love the song to the moon and back.

When it comes to country music, after digging hard to find the real gems, songs like Colder Weather by Zac Brown Band, Mary’s Song, Love Story, Enchanted, Haunted (acoustic), Eyes Open, Safe and Sound, and White Horse by Taylor Swift, If I Die Young, Independence, and Walk Me Down the Middle by The Band Perry, a bit of Rascal Flatts, and almost anything by Keith Urban (Put You In a Song is my favorite) are what I like to listen to the most.

I cannot mention music without mentioning Owl City and his various other musicalness under the names Sky Sailing (which is like a softer, acoustic Owl City), Port Blue, and Windsor Airlift. I adore Owl City and Sky Sailing. His lyrics are so quirky and off the wall it’s glorious.

And now we come to my newest musical favorite: anime openings and endings. I have an extensive list of which ones are my favorites. I’m obsessed in love. There are some covers of the original Japanese I love as well. Anything by Amanda Lee, (she has an amazing voice), Papermoon, Reluctant Heroes, Glassy Sky, and Wings of Freedom being my favorites. Natewantstobattle also has great covers. Resonance, Black Paper Moon, Again, and Snow Fairy are the best in my opinion. The English cover of Hikaru Nara is amazing as well.

Non-covers (aka the original Japanese songs from the actual shows), well, there’s a long list. I like a lot of different ones! It’s hard to choose. But if I have to, Sakura Kiss, Flyers, Snow Fairy, Splash Free, Hanayamata, Guren no Yumiya, Hikaru Nara, Hare Hare Yukai, I Can Hear, Be As One, and Resonance are my favorites. I know they’re in a different language and I really have no clue what they’re saying, but can you blame me? The songs are so stinking catchy! I’ve really fallen in love with anime music. It’s just so different than American music, language barrier aside. It’s catchy, upbeat, but can still have some softer, sweeter moments. I love. So much. 🙂

So yeah. Music. I love it all.

All the links! So many! Much craziness!

thrifted TIE-fighter

I’ve had to take a bit of a break from knitting due to aching hands. It’s incredibly frustrating since I’m used to knitting while I do pretty much everything. I’m still knitting a row here and there when my hands aren’t hurting too badly but not near on the scale I normally do. Also, Christmas knitting. Wahhhhh… I was bemoaning the fact I probably won’t be able to knit the rest of the gifts I have planned when I went, wait a second. You can sew, you dummy. Duh.

So, in lieu of knitting, I did a bit of stitching today. I’m sure you know by now that I love Star Wars. This pretty little thing is a TIE fighter and I’m totally in love with it.

I found a silhouette image on the interwebs, traced it onto a piece of paper, and after a few fits and starts, got stitching. At first I was going to sew over some tissue paper but the fabric is so thick, it was shredding the paper. I found some dressmaker’s chalk and used that, which worked nicely.

Materials wise, I used an old, black felted wool sweater I picked up from the thrift store and white embroidery thread I thrifted as well. It’s nothing fancy, just a backstitched outline and some French knot stars but for being semi-freehand and stitched up in an afternoon, it turned out really well. I’m going to look for a 8×10 frame next time I pop into the thrift store. That way, it’s 100% thrifted!

sock washing day

Last week, I washed all my socks. I had been down to one pair. One. Pair. Since I live in my handknit socks, this was unacceptable. Socks needed to be washed. Normally I just throw them in the wash with the rest of my clothes, since most of them are knit out of Regia or another hard wearing yarn, but I decided to just use Euclan this time around.

I normally wash my socks when they’ve gotten all stretched out at the top and they don’t stay up as well anymore. I think throwing them in the wash helps shrink them back down, but Euclan seems easier on them. It was pretty amusing having a bathtub full of socks.

To dry them, I laid them out on my blocking boards and turned the fan on high. I think I need a new method, since it took two days for all of them to dry. Two days of stepping over the boards in the middle of the floor. Maybe a drying rack would work better?

{Look at all the socks! I do need some new colors, like purple and yellow. And lighter blues. And orange. Good thing I have lots of sock yarn!}

I think the green heavier socks with the pink toes are some of my favorites. After 2015 is over, I’ll try to do a post of all the 15 in 2015 socks I tried to knit. 7 of them have been for me and I think the rest are presents? I don’t know for sure, there might be a few unaccounted for. Plus I have like three unfinished pairs that are missing a sole mate. Christmas knitting comes first though. Then the selfish knitting. Ha.

Now my socks are all clean and back where they should be; on my feet. 😀

in my notions bag

I was digging through my notions bag in an effort to find my darning needle and failing since it wasn’t attached to the bit of yarn I normally attach it to. As a result, I ended up dumping my bag out and realized I have a lot of stuff in my bag! It’s nothing special, just a makeup bag given to me years ago that I repurposed. I’d like to make a new one eventually, maybe out of some Star Wars fabric or something cute like that.

I have three sets of DPNs (size 8, 1 1/2, and 5), my darning needle, a size 8 hat needle, blocking pins, a seam ripper, my sewing gauge/measure thingy, a stitch holder, and a tin from Paris holding safety pins.

On this side, two pair scissors, including the BEST foldup pair EVER, two cable needles, five crochet hooks, stitch markers, three row counters that I didn’t even realize I had, some stray safety pins, a button, and stitch markers. There’s also a latch hook that I use for an orfice hook on my spinning wheel and a little bag I made to hold leftover ends.

That’s a lot of knitting stuff in a little bag! I keep it all in there otherwise I’d NEVER be able to find my scissors, darning needle, stitch markers, etc.

---