Category: Awesome Things

Ghostbusters Car

This car is frequently parked on my street and gets lots of attention from passersby.

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As the Xed out rodents symbol indicates, it’s owned by someone with a business trapping animals. I have to assume this is a pretty effective marketing campaign, if only for the surrounding neighborhood.

Every time my mother-in-law Bonney visits us, she insists that this car should make an appearance on my blog. Since it’s her birthday today, she gets her wish!

New Favorite Necklace

I am in love with this necklace that my friend Audrey custom made for me.

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I just said “make me a necklace,” and she came back with about seven sketches for me to choose from. She is awesome! The finished piece is way cooler than I even expected, and I’ve been wearing it constantly for the past month or so.

Audrey has a few other pieces in her Etsy shop, Shock and Awe Metalwerx. My favorite of her current listings are these carved wood earrings, which I would probably be wearing right now if I my ears were pierced.

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A Morning in Bampton

June was such a whirlwind month, what with returning from the UK the day before the release of my book, and so I’m only now sorting through all the photos from my trip with my mom. It was a wonderful trip! I won’t bore you with all my photos of cathedrals in England and the beautiful Welsh coastline, but I do have one amusing story to share from our stay in Bampton, a charming little town near Oxford.

Bampton was neat—we didn’t know anything about it when we decided to stay there, but it turned out to have an incredibly old church, several friendly pubs, and many footpaths that cut through fields.

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My mom and I stayed in a very comfortable bed & breakfast called Wheelgate House.

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The morning after our first night’s stay there, I was woken up by a scratching noise coming from under my bed. At first I thought it was coming from the living room on the floor below (maybe someone was doing some work on the ceiling), but it persisted and it didn’t take long for me to be fully awake and standing on the opposite side of the room. Something was under the bed!

The scratching got louder, and after a few seconds, the bed skirt started to move. I freaked and jumped on the other bed with my mom. The scratching was loud enough that it would have had to be a very large mouse or other bigger-sized animal, like some kind of English version of an opossum.

Finally something emerged from under the bed, and it was… the cutest fluffy orange cat! It bolted for the door, which I had by this time opened. Mom and I breathed a sigh of relief, but then the bed skirt started to move again! And this time out came… an identical fluffy orange cat! It ran right out the door after its friend.

That was when we remembered hearing that the owner of the B&B had two cats that were supposed to stay outside in the garden. The poor things must have snuck into the house at some point and hid under the bed. Then we had had the door closed all night, without them making a peep. They were obviously not used to being inside with people.

It was a very memorable start to the day! The rest of our trip was great too, but not quite as hilarious.

Liberty

I just wanted to write up a quick post about Liberty. It’s likely that you’ve heard of the famous department store in London, but I didn’t really know much about it before visiting the other day. I can now confirm that it’s an incredible store, both in architecture and stock!

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For one thing, I knew they had printed fabrics, but I didn’t know that they had an entire floor of craft supplies, including yarn.

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I could say a lot more about the store, but I’ll just point out one fun find: plates and cups with designs by Donna Wilson, an artist and toy knitter.

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I blogged about Donna Wilson’s pattern book The Knitted Odd-bod Bunch last year. I love her style!

Rainbow Bookshelf

My sweet husband did some serious spring cleaning while I was out of town last week. I returned to not only a clean apartment, but also a bookshelf organized by color!

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I had seen this on design blogs before, but never in person, and certainly never done by John. Way better than alphabetical order.

Brandi Simons is the Best!

I’ve just had an amazing week working with Brandi Simons, my good friend and can-do photographer! We were working on photos for a super-exciting project, which I’ll have more to say about soon. But she also did all the beautiful photography for Knitting Mochimochi, and I couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out.

It was just about a year ago that she was hard at work taking the fun photos for the book. While she was working, I snapped a few quick shots, and I thought it would be fun to share a few of those pics here.

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Brandi was often lying flat on the ground to get the perfect shot. Here her husband Mike holds the reflector while their neighbor Loren pushes an lawn mower dangerously close to knitted mushrooms!
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Brandi shooting in her daughters’ playroom. It gets great light!

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Brandi is also a mom to two beautiful girls, Sonnie and Sarah, both of whom are great helpers. Sonnie has been a fabulous model for us, and Sarah is an inspiring muse.

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I just can’t say enough about how great Brandi is and how amazing her photography skills are. Her main focus has been photojournalism, but she also does fabulous portrait, wedding, and sports photography. If you’re looking for a photographer in Oklahoma, she is just the best!