Second Knit Crop Top: Black and White Stripes

I am so behind on blog updates, I swear, I'm still creating! As we plan for our dressy punk wedding I keep thinking of things I can make to wear to concerts coming up like Rammstein, ska shows and Riot Fest (our honeymoon) so I decided to try a black and white stripe crop-top.  I got it done just in time for the Kill Lincoln, JER, Dissidente concert in Grand Rapids at the beginning of this month.  

Bryan and I both happened to have Friday off before his birthday and it just happened that there was a ska concert in Grand Rapids.  It's almost like it was my birthday, I promise that I gave him other options of things we could do and left it wide open, he picked the ska show. <3  We switched up our usual dinner spot and I introduced him to The Electric Cheetah which I had apparently forgot existed as it's not as close to the music venue as our usual spot, Luna. Bryan rolled a Yahtzee on the second roll and got his Yahtzee dinner for free, plus a birthday cookie. Ultimately things kept turning up Bryan around his birthday so it was a good week for us.

Back to the newly knit crop top; it held up great through skanking, jumping, dancing, sweating. I knit up My Secret Little Crop last year in a more vintage look and wore it all last summer. Being a crop top it still has air flow so it doesn't feel too heavy even though it kind-of is for warm-weather application. I usually don't think of wearing knits like this in the summer, but I'm learning it's all about the shape and styling at the end of the day. I've thrown a lot of "do's" and "don't" of fashion out the window over the years but nowadays I think I'm just dumping all the rules out and setting them on fire.

I really love this crop top pattern by Jessie Maed Designs.  She has a ton of cute patterns and you should check them out if you're a knitter. I kind-of want to start another summer top but I have way too many projects going right now. Also, thank you to Sally for passing along her late mother's stash to me, I'm finding ways to use it while I practice and improve my knitting.  This stripe top is 100% her mother's stash yarn.

Currently most of my free time has been outside working on our gardens (weeding lots!) and picking away at the very time-consuming paint-job that I'm doing on the garage. I'm just realizing that the garden along the door-privacy-fence is filling in in the way I always dreamed of being able to have a decorative garden. So I guess I'm pretty ok at gardening. The garage paint job is satisfying my need to play with colors in the same way that the door fence and my beadwork does. At the end of the day it's really neat to see how the way I design translates into each other. 

Joy: Earth

I was listening to an AA speaker on YouTube a while back, I can't remember who it was, I was on an AA speaker-loop in my studio but the key thing I took from her talk was that we are all connected to the Earth and when we're feeling like things are off we need to feel the Earth. Physically touch it. Dig into it, bare hands or feet walking over grass or sinking your fingers into dirt. For me this usually consists of weeding or working in the back yard but this week I was thinking about the joy of our compost pile.

Whenever I need really good dirt I get into the bottom of my compost pile. The smell of nutrient-rich dirt, the deep warmth and movement of worms over the falling pile give me such a deep sense of gratification. Simply making "good" dirt feels good, it feels like connection. I ever knew such a simple thing, throwing my compostable waste on to a pile and flipping it on occasion would be a good simple feeling. I have a lot of gratitude for the simple pleasure these days.

I filled the tops of my big planters with the compost pile dirt this week and planted my favorite annual this morning before the rain: pansies.

I need to split my allium this year after they bloom; they're really starting to spread.  I started splitting up and moving some of my irises and hostas this morning also.  I love working in the dirt when it's warm, wet and a little overcast. 

The crocus are doing better than I recall them doing in the past. Last year I started just doing a little bit of moving and weeding every day and it's really showing this year. I'm getting some of the vining weeds under control and everything is really happy under the mulching leaves.

It's the time of the spring when the green is this brilliant hopeful color. Everything smells fresh and new and ready to burst with energy. I'm feeling the same way.