WIP update

I've been having a fantastic time working on a silk shell design for Gryphon - knitted up in her most luscious 100% heavy-ish weight 'Klee' yarn. (NB - she just dyed up a ton of this stuff - keep an eye out for when she updates her shop, and grab it before someone else does!!!)

Klee in the back - the heavier & darker shaded skeins -
while the pale blue-green bundle in front is Gaia
(55% silk/45% cashmere)

Working with this yarn is just lovely - I find myself stopping while knitting to say something or look up to see what the Munch is doing, and find myself petting the shell or stroking the skeins while doing so.

Neckline shaping.

The stuff is absolutely faboo. It does get a little.....furry at times, but a careful petting and/or stroke here or there quickly gets rid of that. And working with this yarn has *totally* blown my previous notions of silk being delicate and fragile.

Strong. Strong, strong, strong, strong. Like, "I-can't-break-this-with-my-bare-hands" strong. Don't try it - it hurts a LOT if you even attempt it. Take my word for it, learn from my mistake, and let me be the only one with stinging fingers. Use scissors.

Plus, there's the colour. How can you not see this and not want to just dive right in? When I've worked on this in public, folks have walked across a room to take a closer look at it - the colour hooks 'em, and then the luxury of the pure silk reels them all the rest of the way in.

{sigh}

The only bummer about this shell? It's totally not mine - standard design protocol, but heartbreaking nonetheless. It's also knitted a size smaller than I normally wear. Now, I'm designing it with some positive ease, as I don't want it at all to be too-tight and tartish, but positive ease withstanding, I still don't know if I could squeeze my 36C sized chest into it. I might be able to get away with it, as it's a split-neck top, but it might be a bit too tight for me to modestly wear out in public.

......but I sure as shit am going to try it on in the privacy of my own house before I send it off to Gryphon, you can bet your whole stash on that one!

:)

48 Hours: Sunday

A little mosaic to cover what happened on Sunday.

1. Heading to March Spin-In - - traffic jam!, 2. Heading to March Spin-In, 3. March Spin-In at Gryphon's - Adrianne, 4. March Spin-In, 5. March Spin-in at Gryphon's - Field Artillery, 6. March Spin-In at Gryphon's - Lauren & Jen, 7. March Spin-In. , 8. Gryphon's Massive Attack Coat, 9. Silk tank top materials, 10. Kate's silk/cashmere & Gryphon's silk, 11. My tank top design - after 1 night, 12. Silk tank top under construction

First a 45-minute traffic jam while I drove up Gryphon's way (thank goodness I had some Harry Potter CD's and a sock-in-progress to work on!) then loads of fun spinning and laughing at Gryphon's. I got to watch some extremely talented spinners make it look way easier than it actually can be (at least, easier than newbies like me think it is!) and got an eyeful of some beautiful fiber in Gryphon's shop. [Ahem] In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that a skein of one-off sock yarn might have fallen into my basket.

Deep blues and dark browns go so well together, don't they?

While at Gryphon's we also got to see her coat. Her (this is my name for it) Massive Attack coat. That thing weighs roughly a million pounds. It's truly a feat of knitting.

The last row of pictures is the luscious, gorgeous, and absolutely amazing Icelandic silk that Gryphon has given me to knit up a new design with. She supplemented her silk with a hand-dyed skein of Kate's cashmere/silk. I came home and jumped right on the knitting. I can hardly wait to see how these two fibers knit up together!

I'm home with the Munchkin for the rest of the week. Today our fun activity is to make some home-made baked doughnuts. Tomorrow our fun choice is home-made bagels. Jessie reminded me of how good fresh bagels are, and I'm going to bust out the recipe that my brother and I used to make when we lived in Botswana - with our non-traditional peanut butter addition and all!

Hey, like - WOW

I'm published!

And it only took my turtle-slow backside - what - 8 + months to do it?

Susan's Screwy Sock pattern - now available via The Sanguine Gryphon Fiber Arts.

(Heck - why am I insulting turtles by comparing myself to them???????)

Funny to think that today - the day the pattern is up - I'm here at work with a handwritten, newly-designed sock pattern to type up. I guess they're like potato chips - once you start with just one..............

Last Weekend Discussed This Weekend

Last Saturday Kim and I kicked off our pre-holiday weekend starting with a Little Gingerbread Endeavor.

(And for those of you who are wondering, the answer is yes, red wine does in fact make gingerbread-house construction that much easier & more enjoyable.)

The gingerbread house (complete with a string of mini Christmas lights stuffed in the back to make the butterscotch-candy-pane windows glow becomingly) will reside in the library for the next few weeks.

Sunday we went to Gryphon's house for a spin-in. It was - in a word - glorious. Not only did we walk away with a lovely amount of fiberish booty from Gryphon's in-house shop, but I also walked away with a borrowed wheel for the next few weeks.


Booty.

Wheel.

(An Ashford Traveller double-treadle, for anyone who is wondering.)

Using this lovely little beauty I finished spinning both the dark purple & pale purple superwash bundles that I bought from Jessie a few weeks back. I was so excited by my progress that I went ahead and plied them together last night with amateurish yet exciting results for yours truly - and the resultant lovely huge skein is currently lightly weighted and drying in the kitchen. I will show you probably far far too many pictures of it when it is dry.


Dark purple superwash singles in all their wee loveliness.

It might not sound it, but I have in fact been knitting in addition to all of this spinning and gingerbreading - - and once I get the camera back in action and pictures taken, all of my recent FO's and two newly-cast-on WIP's will be shamelessly paraded in front of everyone.

Shamelessly. :)

A little regrouping down time

I love my job. Sometimes though, I love even more the fact that I get to take vacation from my job.

Like next week.

I looked at the calendar and realized that I am already 'given ' Wednesday - Friday off as paid vacation - and that by spending a mere two of my vacation days (which I have several of saved up so far this year) I could get a whole week off of work.......two days of which would be just me, the DVD player, and my knitting/spinning.

So send in my vacation notice I did, and take the time off I will.

Even better, this vacation time will be following what promises to be a FANTASTIC weekend - tomorrow Kim and I will spend the day making a wonderfully ornate gingerbread house, and Sunday Kim and I are driving up to Gryphon's house for a 4+ hour Spin-In. (Our first.) We're not only excited by the opportunity to get in some more spinning, but also by the opportunity to get some tips and tricks from the other spinners there while also trying out some different wheels than the Ashford Traditional that we currently practice with. (Gryphon owns a grand total of 7? 8? wheels, dontcha' know. Including a great wheel that I most certainly will NOT be brave enough to test out!!!!)



And then, to think that the day after such a wonderful weekend I'll get to spend two full days home alone with only myself and the pets for company, with all sorts of knitting and swatching and spinning and plying to occupy myself...........not to mention just a wee bit of hand-carding.


Remember this bundle of grubby fleece?

Fun fun fun fun fun.

Thank goodness I gave in and did a wee bit of retail fiber therapy yesterday during the middle of a Very Very Very Bad Day At Work - as the following beautiful bundle of superwash merino/tencel is now making it's way towards my house:

FatCatKnits handpainted merino/tencel superwash - 4.3 oz. In her 'Mars' colourway.

A girl has got to keep herself properly occupied, you know.

Gaff

As anyone who has recently peeked in my general direction lately has undoubtedly noticed, I have started trying my hand at spinning.

I'm absolutely thrilled to pieces with my new obsession but am not terribly good at it. However happily for me this seems to be a very common deal amongst new & intermediate spinners, so I have lots of cheerful company & lots and lots of blog posts to read on the topic.

So today, being almost physically unable to do any real work (this week has been a bit of a train wreck between crazy students in the library & a crazy waking-at-6-AM, temper-tantrum-throwing-toddler) I decided to catch way way up on my blog reading. And so I started reading some of my new favorites (Enchanting Juno) and some of my old favorites (Claudia's Blog) that I haven't read in several weeks with an eye towards any mention of spinning. {N.b. - as far as blogs go, I have favorites and then I have favorites. You know - the ones that you like to read yet let go unread for weeks, and then the ones that you like to read and somehow make/find time to read anytime/everytime you see that there is a new post....}

And I did some back reading in Claudia's blog and first came across this post where she shows her "fiber room" which totally made me drool like a Saint Bernard with a can of Alpo waved under his nose. Just LOOK at that bookcase stuffed with yarn and fiber and knitterly books and mags. Doesn't it make you drool too? Then I looked back even further and came across this post which talks all about plying. Something that I had just tried, in fact, and was pretty disappointed with my results.

I thought I had shown just the tiniest bit of improvement in the whole spinning thing, and so was very sad when I saw the over-spun, over-plied, hard, tight mess of yarn (and I use that term loosely - it's so hard and dense that there is no soft springy goodness left in it - it feels more like cheap rope that you need a hacksaw to cut through) that I was left with after I had tried to ply it.


Handspun singles that are still totally identifiable as a new spinner's work. But still, not as glaringly horrible as the very very first bobbin of work that I produced. Progress was made - however slight - and I was happy.

Overspun, overplied 2-ply yarn. Horrible. Uneven. Plied way too tight. Plied way too loose. Horrible.

And after I read Claudia's lovely advice/direction on how to ply, it hit me. I had plied the above yarn incorrectly. WAY incorrectly. Apparently you are suppose to spin the yarn in one direction (a non-spinner would consider this to be, say, counterclockwise, while a spinner would say that it had been given 'S' twist) and then you ply it in the opposite (i.e. clockwise or 'Z' ) direction.

I spun in the same direction as eventually I plied. Overspinning adding to overplying all in the same overly-tight direction. Hence why I could barely fit the horrid mangled mess through the orifice of the wheel, why it sprung into what looked like a skein'd Koosh ball when I was done tying off the skein, and why it looks so appalling in the above picture.

So what to do now?

I think I might bite the bullet and un-ply the yarn and either re-spin the singles again if they seem to need it or else just ply in the correct direction with the singles as they are. I hot-water soaked the yarn to set the twist after I plied it the first time, so I don't know if this is actually a total loss or not and if I'd be much better just chalking this up to inexperience and exhaustion (I was so excited to be done spinning my first true bobbin-full of fiber that even though it was 11 PM and I could barely see anything due to absolute exhaustion, I went ahead and plied the entire thing anyway.) or can actually salvage this pretty cotton-candy coloured stuff with a re-spin, re-ply attempt.

Any advice, from absolutely anyone who knows about this sort of thing, would be greatly greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, I've got new bumps of Piece of Vermont fiber to be eyeballed and fondled, and as soon as Gryphon's package arrives with my new hand-carders and baskets (today? today? let it be today!) I've got a full pound of washed fleece to start carding out. I also have 1/8th of a shrug back and a full sleeve to finish on Belle (not to mention the super-cool edging around the neck) plus the leg of a sock to finish designing, plus a 2nd embossed leaves sock to finish up for the daughter of a friend plus a shawl for a co-worker's retirement (thank GOD she retires in August of '08!)


In case anyone was curious, above is a picture of one of the (3? 4?) baskets that I have ordered from Gryphon. Locally handmade and collapses almost completely flat. Isn't that just too amazing for words???


Plus about a million pairs of Fetching that I have either agreed to or planned to knit in the past 24 hours. I knit myself a pair (FO pics coming soon) in 2 sweet evenings worth of knitting and so decided that they are my Christmas gift to hand out to many this year. I also have a finished EZ BSJ to post about - now that I have finally (!) sewn on the required buttons. However taking proper pictures requires not only sunlight (and my free time these days has lately only appeared after 9:15 PM) but also the ability to focus my eyes - something that I"m lately also lacking.

Which reminds me, I need to pick up my boxes of replacement disposable contacts this weekend. Must away to call the eye doc and make sure they're in before driving dangerously close to the fabric store to pick them up. No need to risk temptation if the desired object isn't yet on the shelf!

Eat. Wash. Spin!

(Just not necessarily in that order.)


Porcini-mushroom roast chicken

Parker house (wheat) rolls & mushroom gravy

Fresh green bean & shiitake mushroom casserole. Not to be missed.
Taken from the Nov. 2007 issue of Saveur Magazine. Page 42.

After all the work I did this weekend, I was very very hungry.

But OH, I had such a good time working up that appetite!!!!

First on Saturday I re-read the relevant section in Alden Amos' Big Book of Handspinning (despite the fact that I keep messing up poor A.A.'s name - I keep calling him Amos Alden - this book is still SO on my Christmas/birthday list!!!!) and then I pulled out one of the two (TWO!) fleece that Oma sent me a few weeks ago and decided that I was going to wash it.

To try this the first time, I went with what looked like the more amusing fleece - the crazily-curly 1st place winner - which was a Lincoln/Shropshire mix - from the Northwestern Pennsylvania Sheep and Wool Association Field Day.

Here my pound of curly locks sit, in their plastic bag with Mr. Frog happily watching over them.

Following Alden's directions, I filled the tub with HOT water, added a large capful of appropriate detergent, and then carefully let the fleece sink down and slowly slowly slowly patted it along in the water from one end of the tub to the other. Back and forth. Back and forth. He said to do this as if you were herding a bunch of kindergarten younglings down a very narrow museum hallway. This is what the tub & fleece looked like after a few trips were made up & down.




UCK. See that kind of scummy film on the water? Double-uck! This is just about where I stopped thinking that magically Oma had gotten me a fleece that was naturally part white and part brown, and realized that the "part brown" locks on the fleece were in fact part green, and were most likely green from sheep feces.

Triple uck.

I drained the tub, and shuddered.

Then I filled the tub again with hot water (with the fleece resting & draining safely above), added in only half the amount of soap this time, and repeated my sinking, patting, and herding. This time around the water was much cleaner, and the tub refuse was much less disgusting.

Then the third time I filled the tub only with hot water as a last-step rinse.

And while I have no doubt that the slightly yellowish cast of some of the curlier tips on the fleece means that I have not gotten out all of the grit and muck, I think I have gotten as much out as I currently feel safe removing. (Being new at this, and having NO idea of what I'm doing, I'm quite worried that I'm going to felt this entire thing in my enthusiasm to get it really, super clean. I will - however - wash it at least once more after it is spun and plied just to be on the safe side.) I laid the fleece out to try on the guest bed, turned on multiple fans, and walked away.



I had expected it to take a full three days to dry - as A.A. says it should in his tome, but apparently A.A. never reckoned on the drying power that a 93-pound dog has on a pound of spread-out damp fleece. If said dog spends the night on the drying bed, your fleece will be bone dry the very next morning, and won't seem even the slightest worse for wear. AMAZING. Please note that I would only recommend this for dog owners. Certain insane-cat owners {coughcoughjessiecoughcough} should probably avoid such things at all possible costs.

I think that some carding will bring this curly mass of white loveliness around lickety-split. I have borrowed a drum carder from the art department of campus, and spent a good hour or so this past weekend cleaning it as best as I could, but the thing is just SO disgusting and dirty (I wore gloves to clean the drum carder, but not to wash out all that green sheep shit - what does that tell you about how filthy & nasty the drum carder was?) that despite it being cleaned I still don't feel safe using it. Isn't it lucky for me, then, that Gryphon is an Ashford dealer (I chuckled when I said that to Kim feeling like someone who was doing something illegal - "Woooo hooooo!!!! We've got a dealer in the neighborhood!") and can easily send me a pair of basic but oh-so-useful-and-necessary Ashford hand carders! Plus - you know - a few locally-made yarn storage baskets that she now has for sale. Just two. Or three.

I also was lucky enough this past Friday to find my missing spinning-wheel piece when I went and re-poked around the storage building where it had spent the past year or so. With some help from Peggers I found a necessary (and totally missing) correctly-sized nut lying around our workbench that was needed to keep the treadle leg in place, grabbed some light machine oil, and got the piece in good working order. I then promptly dropped everything and tried to spin, and butchered some of the deep red fiber that Gryphon sent my way over the summer along with a loaner drop spindle. I loathed the drop spindle (so much so that I simply put it down & felt no compunction to keep trying with it whatsoever!) but loved the fiber. The result is the overly-spun little unbalanced skein below. {SIGH} My first ever baby handspun!

After messing around with the red, I tried my hand at some hand-dyed roving that I purchased at a county fair over the summer. Despite the butchering that happened while I played around with it, I had the most WONDERFUL time with both it and the red roving, and after watching a few video clips on the Joy of Handspinning website have picked up a few tips about what I am doing wrong (drafting over too short a distance, mainly, I'm also going to try and pull 'up' on the fiber to draft it instead of pulling 'down' as I have been doing. I'm also going to try to pre-draft my commercially prepared bump and see if that helps) and am going to take another crack at the rest of the fiber I have left either tonight or tomorrow night.

This is what I produced after sitting down a few times Saturday & Sunday with the county-fair roving that I purchased. Reminds me of cotton-candy colours! Still exponentially overspun, but at least a bit more even in thickness (at least in lengthier spots!) and a bit better overall. Once I'm finished with this bump of fiber, I'm going to 2-ply it and see what fun end result I get.

I only have a single drive at the moment, and so am wondering if maybe a double-drive would help some. I am consciously trying to treadle v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y - - so much so that my wheel will sometimes stop, I'm going so slow. This is why I'm wondering if the double-drive will help........or will that just speed me up and increase my horrid overspinning? Ah well - 'tis so much fun that I don't at all mind that I'm making wool versions of DNA every time I let the tension go on the yarn & it doubles back on itself!

In fact, I'm having SO much fun that I went right out and ordered several bundles of dyed fleece from Jessie - one in the most amazing chartreuse/purple/midnight blue blend - I can hardly wait to see what that turns into when I get my hands on it!

I also, after reading her two part posts on plying experiments, bought a double-bump set of hers in a super-bright/deep purple and a nicely-pale lavender complimentary colourway.

See why I couldn't resist the temptation to try some plying experiments of my own?


Fun fun fun fun fun!

My Christmas/birthday wish list is just growing by leaps and bounds every day now!

Still raining

It's still raining here (woe that I could send some of this steady, soaking rain over California's way!), I'm still missing crucial pieces from the loaner spinning wheel, and I'm still adrift in a sea of stockinette.

Blah.

My shrug is getting closer and closer to being finished in that the huge swath that spans my back is probably only 2 inches away from completion. I'd show you the picture that I bribed my husband to take showing this miraculous progress, but it unfortunately makes me look like a chunky linebacker after a huge pasta dinner, so I'll refrain from showing such amazingly unflattering pictures of myself in public.

The worst part of getting this close to finishing the shrug is that once I actually make the back section long enough I'll have to truly acknowledge the fact that the pattern is almost certainly and truly LOST back in the Outer Banks. I have searched for it high and low, but alas - still for naught. I don't know what to do. Wing it, based on the other half I've already knitted? Plead with the designer to send me the basics for the ruffle along the front (the only info I really & truly need) - plead with a fellow Belle Shrug knitter that I met via Ravelry to take pity on me and send me the missing specs and instructions?

My hemp paper bag is coming along well - my previous attempt at a increase/decrease - slipped stitch - decrease/increase technique was successful but simply too messy with this stiff hemp twine, so I have changed techniques entirely and am now working in single sections in a slightly nontraditional way - with much happier results. Hopefully an almost-finished shot to come soon.

I am also back to working on my design-a-sock project for Gryphon and Knitty with so far happy results - but alas in my enthusiasm to get started on it the unthinkable happened:

Can't see what happened? Look down at the bottom of the bag - just below where the bamboo needle crosses the "M" in PREMIUM. Keep going down. Keep going..........keep going.................

............see how there's NOTHING ATTACHED at the bottom of that bamboo needle?

*snap*! It made such a sad little sound when it just broke right off in my hand. I kind of caught my breath in a little sob, and then looked up in bewilderment like a small child does when the unthinkable happens to them.

I still have the original packaging, and I seem to remember somewhere that Addis come with a lifetime guarantee if you have the original packaging. Does anyone else seem to remember this hope-inspiring bit of information as well?

I was able to switch over to dpns with nary a problem - and it turned out to be a blessing in the end as the pattern stitch I'm using has a "traveling" sort of tendency where every so many rows you have to move a stitch from one needle to the previous or vice-versa - - very annoying to do when using two circular needles but easy as anything to do with dpns. So if I can get the circular needle replaced with a minimum of fuss then all will be well in the end, I feel fairly safe in saying.


Tonight Kim is coming over for dinner (and then bath & story with the Munchkin) and then after he's safely in bed she and I get to sit and knit and chat - and I get to wrap my head around a little challenge that Laura (of Fiber Dreams) sent my way! She's currently knitting a beautiful blue pair of socks that have a slightly little tricky two-cable-needle cable in there - and she and I got talking about cable needles and cabling without cable needles. So she sent me the cable specs and I'm going to mess around tonight and see if I can't figure out how to do this particular 5-stitch cable, 2-cable-needle cable without even one cable needle - and post appropriate pictures here for anyone who is interested to see.

If nothing else, the pictures that Kim will be able to take of me struggling along making a huge tangled mess should be good for at least a laugh or two!

Running Around

Today is a Running Around kind of day. This morning after dropping off my son at daycare I picked up our cleaning woman & we went back home to clean the house for an hour & a half. Sounds very la-di-da, doesn't it? What if I tell you that our official Cleaning Woman is 15 years old, the oldest daughter of our home-daycare provider & that she did the vaccuuming and dusting while I did the bathroom cleaning, the floor washing, the sweeping & the taking-out-the-garbage -ing?

Yeah, not so glamorous. But damn, my ducks, if my house isn't CLEAN - and as we've arranged to try this out every Friday for a month or two it's going to stay that way for at least a little bit. What a lovely thing to wake up to on a Saturday morning after a hard week's work!

Once at work I worked for 2 hours on the desk, then went for a 45 minute walk in 81 degree heat (ah, thank you back-up deodorant stashed in my desk!) , then drove home to get the dog, then to the vet's, then back home to drop off the dog, then back to work. (It takes 1 hour do do this, unfortunately.) And now I'm here at work for all of 45 minutes before I go to meet Kim for our twice-weekly knitting meeting.

Yes, indeed, you all SHOULD feel sorry for me! LOL.

Happily my weekend will be much calmer - tomorrow AM I'm springing for breakfast at our favorite place - Panera Bread Company - after which we are going to load up our trailer with two loads of compost (one for friends who are trailer-less and one for me) and then I head off to work (ahem, to KNIT) for 4 hours in a peaceful, air-conditioned library. After that, who knows? Fun and revelry with The Munchkin and Peggers. Sunday - on Momma's Day - I'm going to ask for yet another Panera breakfast (hey, a girl has her preferences!) and then we spread out the compost on the garden & cut some oak plywood for the built-in bookshelves we're going to install the weekend after next. All Glamor All The Time - that's the motto here at Chez Pointy Sticks!!!

I have been having some absolutely FANTASTIC e-mail exchanges lately that I just have to clue you in on. First, from my To:Sockpal (i.e. the one that I am mailing socks TO) - she is a sassy & hysterical thing, and I adore reading her blog and we've had these e-mails exchanges that just crack me up. I can't say too much about her for fear that I'll totally give it away, but she's also in the field of education which is fun, and has the mouth of a sailor, which I totally adore as well. She loves the colour pink and does NOT like any shades of yellow, which totally threw me for a bit, as I'm definitely NOT a pink sort of girl, but I did some scouting and looking and have come up with some majorly beautiful options for her socks (and again, I'm knitting these in a slightly shorter version, in case you don't remember...).....................which leads me to my second set of e-mails that I've been loving lately.

Jessie (as in Jessie from 'What Housework?') was a top choice of mine all along to do the hand-dying for this yarn, as I've already scored - what - about 5 or 6 skeins of Gryphon's sockyarn and while I just LOVE it I figured I really should branch out & not be a greedy pig and take all of her stash. (Altho' reading her most recent post it appears that as she has a whopping 25 pounds of un-dyed sock yarn there might actually be more than enough for everyone to get some at the moment!) So I shot Jessie a heads-up e-mail some time back to see if this prospect would be okay with her, and sure enough - she was up for the challenge. Of course, with such an amazingly beautiful yarn studio just opening up for her to work in, I don't blame her at being interested in an excuse to play around in there!!!! So yesterday Jessie and I had this huge e-mail exchange about colour and fiber and suchlike - and the upshot of it was that I finally settled on this luxurious sounding merino/bamboo/nylon blend that she just got in (sooo soft and perfect for spoiling my sock pal!) in a host of subtle pinks. These are the pictures that I e-mailed Jessie to give her the gist of what I was talking about/thinking of:

(The beaded Tilli Thomas skein is probably my favorite, but the coiled Pink Posies is also lovely, and the Handmaiden Rose is beautiful too, and I also love the shocking silkiness of the hot pink T. Thomas as well.....all beautiful shades!)

Despite the fact that I'm not a pink girl I'm seriously getting wired-ly excited about these. There's something about the ultra-feminine shades that I think we're going to end up with here, with just that tiny wee bit of sassy sexiness mixed in (not to mention the fishnet-stocking-seam invoking lace windows that go right up the back of the leg!) plus the soft and silky yarn that is - hopefully - going to make these socks true winners. I figure heck, anyone who works in the educational field (and people, let me tell you without going into surprise-revealing-detail that this woman isn't just an educator, she's an Educator!) needs some pure luxury every now and then......

Even better is the fact that I've started Chart #2 on my Icarus, which means that the end is officially Within Sight, so despite the fact that the rows just keep getting looooonger and loooonger every time, I'm excited and having a lot of fun with that particular knit. Plus knowing that some huge bundles (I asked Jessie to make about 700 yards of this for me, as my Pal has muscular calves & I'm making these almost-knee high & lord knows I don't want to run out!!!) of pink and silky goodness are making their way towards me in the next few weeks gives me extra incentive to finish the shawl ASAP!

And now - finally - my final e-mail happiness lately. Have you seen in the comments section the messages from my From:Sockpal? (I.e. the one who is making me [!!!] a pair of socks?) I had guessed this at an earlier comment of hers, but with her last post she cinched it - she's Foreign!

Do you guys know how much I **adore** foreign??? I have briefly lived in New Zealand, and I lived for a longer time in Botswana, Africa, and I used to live very close to the US/Canadian border and as such have a total love of All Things Canadian - so my suspicion that my From:Sockpal is from Canada (she mentions crossing the border with studied casualness - ooh! aahhh!!!) is just absolutely making my day. Nay - making my week! Not only is she foreign (ah - another person who sticks a "U" in the word 'colour'!) but she's also working really hard to produce a pair of sock that I'll like - how could she not be my new Bestest Pal as a result? Plus she's also in the educational field - what are the odds that both of my pals and myself all do the same thing, huh??????

That's it for me for now - off to meet with Kim to knit Icarus myself and to peek at her Gryphon Traveler sock (it's a thing of beauty!!!) and drink coffee. I will leave you with one last picture - I'm not nearly good enough to do an Eye Candy Friday every week, but this picture was taken 2 weeks ago with that end in mind, so here it finally is - a tree peony blossom from my back yard. Tree peonies typically take 5 years to bloom once they're planted, and the blooms are very ephemeral, but oh! Aren't they worth the wait and their limited delight??????

Wool. Sheep. Sheep. Wool.

And alpacas!

Their frizzy little haircuts just kill me, they're **that** cute.

I'm still here - just trying to catch up with life & work after last week kicked me square in the butt. You know how it is - as soon as the weather warms up & all sorts of fun extracurricular activites start to rear their enticing heads life comes around & swats you one!

To recap:

Monday - grade roughly 75 research projects, providing individual feedback for 5 full steps per project. NOT FUN.

Tuesday - arrive at work at noon to be asked by Dean to call & check 5 references for our #1 job candidate. NOT FUN.

Wednesday - watch your 2-year old son go in for minor (outpatient) surgery that nonetheless requires general anesthesia, and which because of the "no food or drink after midnight" thing meant that when he woke up around 1 AM that night and couldn't nurse (he's a late weaning child) he REFUSED TO GO BACK TO SLEEP. NOT FUN.

Thursday - work 4 hours of reference desk. Straight. NOT FUN.

Friday - Conference 30 minutes away that starts at 8:30 AM - realize that you have only 20 minutes to get back to demo that begins at 1 PM - miss demo - make it back just in time to attend Honors Convocation dressed in stiflingly hot faculty regalia. NOT FUN.



Thank goodness Saturday was Sheep & Wool! Kim and I both went, and were lucky enough to score a seat on a bus arranged by a (somewhat) LYS, which made the trip that much more enjoyable for us. Particularly the fact that because we were on a bus we had kick-ass parking options and got to avoid the insane field that was a parking lot for the rest of the folks.
I was relatively restrained in my purchases - there is just SO MUCH to look at. It's not overwhelming (at least it wasn't to me) as much as it was just a blur that I had to keep walking past so that I wasn't mown down by the rabid fiber fans all around me. If I had about 5 days I probably could have fought my way into each & every booth that was there and fondled and cooed and coveted and purchased properly. At least five. Maybe six.

I did learn something about myself at Sheep & Wool though - I'm a major, and I mean a major fiber sniffer. Not necessarily fleece, but anything that was already spun I took a mighty sniff of. And me? I do love the smell of wool.

Happily enough, despite the fact that Blue Moon wasn't listed on the vendor list (and Kim was majorly crestfallen as her one & only hope for S&W was to buy a skein of Socks That Rock) we quickly stumbled upon the most insanely long line - and as I brazenly asked a woman standing there what the line was for, realized that while the Blue Moon folks might not be there themselves, a vendor selling STR was indeed present & majorly accounted for! So Kim and I valiantly fought our way up to the booth, fondled, chose, put back, chose again, put back, picked again, etc. until we each had what we wanted. And then we stood in line for 45 minutes to pay.

This was my view in line for a veerrryyyy long time.

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. Ducks, that is a very long time to wait in line for sock yarn - particularly sock yarn that you can buy online. (....as I heard one woman scornfully say as she shoved past me......) The wait did have an upside, though, as it gave me ample time to reprogram my digital camera to stop beeping so annoyingly and to stay set on the settings that I prefer - so time well spent, all in all, I'd say. Plus hey - it's all part of the festival experience, right? I purchased one skein of STR in .....uh, something Canyon. Red Rocks Canyon? I honestly didn't care what the name was, I was so so so so in love with the way the terracotta went to red to brown, and the way the red went into that amazing dusty sage-y green. These are going to be a blissfully basic pair of socks for ME. I think I'll divide the skein & do toe-up to use up every single fluff of fiber in them. I don't even care if that means that one will be a few rounds longer than the other. Nope, I don't care at all.

After that was finished, happiness reigned among our little group, as we had Nothing Else Official on our list of things to purchase - which meant that we could roam at will. Here is a little photo montage of what I saw that I thought was interesting enough to photograph...

I have no idea if these wheels are any good, but they're just so SMALL and cute I had to take a picture.

Many of the vendors are very very good at arranging their stuff in such a way that it really catches your eye. I thought this booth did a particularly good job of it.

(left) Yoiks! Big Horns!

(Right) Spinning a Rabbit. (Gryphon apparently does this, if anyone wants details)

Speaking of Gryphon, this is a picture of Gryphon being silly. ;) Here she is, looking totally like an Anguished Mommy because Lia, who had been sitting in her lap not 5 minutes before the picture was taken did a characteristic baby 'wiggle and lean' and by the time Gryphon was able to reach down and stop Lia's lean towards the ground (I'm guessing 1.5 seconds at the most) Lia had grazed her head against the ground. Lia loudly protested the fact that gravity worked and that she had landed on her cute little baby noggin, and Gryphon promptly decided that she was the Worst Mother On The Face of the Earth. See? This is a picture of Gryphon being silly.

And here is a picture of Lia who, once her cries were soothed by Her Absolute Mostest Favorite Mommy, promptly forgot all about it.

See? Not a care in the world!

The Anguished Gryphon and the Happy Lia pictures were taken at Gryphon's Knitblogger meetup, which was loads of fun. I got to meet several nice people including Stephanie, Mary, Mel (who I shall talk about in more detail in just a second) and Theresa whose pigtail'd hairstyle I immediately wanted to copy. I was particularly thrilled that Mel came over and sat down next to me, as I had seen her wandering around earlier in the day and had TOTALLY fallen in love with the sweater she was wearing. In fact as she started to walk past our little knitblogger group I shamelessly said (mind you, to a large group of women who I had never ever met before!) "THERE! The redhead in the cream sweater! Does anyone know what sweater that is????" and so imagine my amazement and delight when Mel walked right over to us and sat down next to me so that I could ask her myself! Happily enough Mel offered to lend me the sweater pattern when she gets it back from the person she's currently lent it to - it's in a magazine called Sandra - one that's totally new to me & that I must obviously immediately look into!

15 minutes before I climbed onto my bus for the ride home I bought 2 huge skeins of alpaca for a steal - 665 yds for $20 each. I haven't photographed them yet, but I will soon. They're destined to become shrugs for me - nice little light yet WARM cozy pieces that are much needed in my frigid workspace!

I will leave you with what was potentially one of my favorite sights at the whole festival - never say that we fiber folks don't really LOVE our animals..............right?

(Somehow, this seemed almost wrong, given the setting. I'm a carnivore and all, but somehow, I dunno' this seemed almost wrong..........)