Apple has this new feature on iTunes, iPhone, iEtc called Genius. The Apple website says

Say you’re listening to a song you really like and want to hear other tracks that go great with it. With a few clicks, the new Genius feature finds the songs in your library that go great together and makes a Genius playlist for you. You can listen to the playlist right away, save it for later, or even refresh it and give it another go. Count on Genius to create a mix you wouldn’t have thought of yourself.

Turns out it is perfect for my sadsack, generally suck-filled life. This is the playlist I just got after selecting Divorce Song by Liz Phair.

• Liz Phair - Divorce Song
• Yo La Tengo - Autumn Sweater
• Neko Case - Deep Red Bells
• The Pixies - La La Love You
• Pavement - Gold Soundz
• The New Pornographers - Letter From an Occupant
• The Afghan Whigs - My Curse
• Sleater-Kinney - Oh!
• Cyndi Lauper - When You Were Mine (Prince Cover)
• The Mountain Goats - This Year
• Neko Case - The Needle Has Landed
• Pavement - Spit on a Stranger
• Yo La Tengo - You Can Have It All
• Sleater-Kinney - Modern Girl
• Ryan Adams - Burning Photographs
• Lemonheads - Confetti
• Pavement - Cut Your Hair
• Neko Case - If You Knew
• Liz Phair - Never Said
• The Mountain Goats - Love Love Love

An hour+ of tunes for me to sulk by! Thank goodness for whatever miserable motherfucker algorithm the smarties at Apple came up with. Thanks Genius!

I’ll be teaching an Amigurumi Workshop at Boston’s new (and awesomely cute) handmade clothing & gift store, Oak, on Sunday, June 8th from 1:00 to 3:00 PM. Cost of the class is $50 and includes materials. Contact Oak proprietor, Keara, to sign up at bostonartisans (at) gmail (dot) com or 857-362-7311.

A few weeks ago, I took a hand dyeing class at Mind’s Eye Yarns in Porter Square. Hand dyeing yarn, besides completely awesome, is… involved. At least with washfast acid dyes it is. I’m not really familiar with kool-aid dyeing or jacquered dyes.

They’re dyes so you have to wear gloves, cover every surface that you don’t want Pollocked in newsprint and plastic wrap. They’re toxic so you need to wear a dust mask and have a whole set of different dyeing accoutrement (pots, kettle, tongs, steaming trays) that can’t get mixed up with regular kitchen stuff that you want to eat out of without killing major brain cells.

This hasn’t stopped me from thinking about it obsessively and setting up my own hand dyeing studio in my mind. I took the first step last week by placing an order with Pro Chem & Dye. In addition to the Winter Holiday 6 Dye Sampler (which comes with citric acid crystals and small bottle of Synthrapol), I also ordered a swatch of all the Washfast acid dyes they carry to help get me thinking about color stories for yarn once I get all of the necessary dye stuff together.

I’m a crafty working broad on the move which, unfortunately, results in a purse that looks like this. I reach in for a pen and pull out a DPN instead. I try to pay for a coffee and get tangled up in excess yarn. I pull out my datebook and forty crumpled print-outs of project instructions flutter out along with it.

So when I asked Jen, of the sewing team Piddleloop, to whip up a project bag for the birthday of one of my besties, I also ended up getting one for myself. I can’t wait for them to show up in the mail. The first is for my friend and the second is for myself.

Amy over at PURPLEPINKANDORANGE is giving me the motivation I need to organize my disaster area of a craft space with her space organization challenge. Check out that mess! It’s ridiculous.

To Do List:

• Go through multiple giant bags of bedding and clothing. Throw out the nasty. Donate the nice.
• Sort through old photography stuff. Throw it out if I can’t figure out anything to do with it.
• List manual camera on eBay.
• File magazines.
• Make labels for magazine boxes and craft boxes.
• Fold and put away fabric.
• Buy iron/ironing board organizer to hang on side of shelf.
• Bring extra boxes to basement.
• Mount bike hanger in hall, so I can move it out of the office (not shown).
• Bring all paperwork/documents into bedroom to sort and file.
• Bring old guitar to Bill’s house.
• Transfer paper craft items from artbins to clear craft boxes. Sell artbins.
• Post acrylic paints and painting supplies on craigslist to sell.
• Organize notions drawers.
• Find a better storage option for hides.