I'm Smitten

I've caught the spinning bug!

I bought a lovely top whorl spindle from Spinsanity at the Norther Michigan Lamb and Wool Festival this weekend, and I've spun yarn! It's not even the worst yarn. It's not the best, but not the worst! I'll post a picture of it tomorrow. I wish I had bought more fluff while I was there.

I was there to help sew up the Hopps for Hope Blanket with Holly (did I mention she's famous? Seriously, people were all like "Hey it's Holly!" "Hi KnitwithSnot" it was awesome! I know a celebrity!) and another Zombie Prom Date Knitter, Jax, who it just happens, is a student at my Alma Mater, Kalamazoo College. Go Hornets! Here they are after their freakin' four hour plus trip from the west side!And here's some of my haul! Besides my spindle, I got some awesome Briar Rose Fibers. This is a picture of Robusta, which I didn't buy, but won! For the sewing up prize from Holly! She's awesome. I'm making the Big Cable Seed Stitch scarf. The pattern is on Ravelry.I also bought some Briar Rose Grace which is like 1200+ yards of the skinniest lace weight yarn, it's gorgeous. And some, well some sort of DK weight Briar Rose for a knit a long with Holly. I'll get the deets when I take more pictures.

And look at the bunny! Spinsanity bought it! This is how she introduced the bunny to us. "Hello, I'd like you to meet my divorce" Why? Because she bought this bunny unbeknowst to her DH! I would not have been let in the house. But Spinsanity can write it off as a business expense because she will spin it's fur!I loved the fiber fest and the Zombie Prom Date Knitters. I feel like I found my people. Yarn and fiber everywhere, people who understand my obsession and don't look at me like I'm weird, they speak my language (gauge, fiber content, superwash, angora, drafting, whorls, shafts . . . )
It was like going home!

Off to knit some more scarf!

I Can't Wait for Snow

Yes, you heard me right. Snow. Nice clean white stuff, that coats the muddy backyard. So when the dogs come back in the house after a nice marathon chase session, the white one won't be black! I've washed the damn dog once this morning, let him out to poop, and he's filthy again! I'd take a picture but of course the batteries are dead in the camera.

Otherwise, fall is beautiful in Northern Michigan. So far it's not cold, sunny, blue skies and pretty leaves falling from trees. Oh, and the kick ass Lake Huron which I got to admire up close yesterday when we went to the shin dig at the Yacht Club thrown by some people from Joe's work. It was totally my kind of shin dig. Let's put it in perspective, I wore black khaki pants and a cute shirt and I was overdressed! There was steak and baked potatoes and about six different desserts and I didn't have to do a thing but eat and look out the window at the waves!

Still waiting to hear about the library job I interviewed for. Really, I don't see how they can't hire me, they use the same computer system I did and I've done that job for seven years, and I know if they called my references they would get awesome reports because they loved me back at the Blair Memorial Library! :) We'll see.

Getting ready for the Northern Michigan Lamb and Wool Festival. Going to meet Knit With Snot there and sew up the Hopps for Hope Blanket. If anyone who made squares for the blanket reads this, thank you for making them. I know my sister (she of the Hopps) would have loved it. And on the subject, October is Breast Cancer Month, actually I think they might have changed it to Women's Cancer Month, which is good. So go get your pap smears and mammograms.

Gotta go clean puppies.

Stash Reduction

I've been knitting . . . and crocheting. I've been bitten by the bug. Although the knitting bug is calling me back. Maybe because I'm crocheting with -gasp- acrylic yarn! Have you noticed though, that it is much cheaper to knit with good yarn than it is to crochet? Crochet takes up much more yarn, so say you want to make a baby afghan, really if you make it out of acrylic (which this one is actually kind of pretty with a shiny thread twisted in) it costs about $12. If I were going to use superwash wool or even Plymouth Encore it would be more than twice that. Which I would totally do, if the baby were related to me, but it's not, so I went cheap.

It's another wubbie, for someone else at Joe's work. I'm getting tired of it. I. Must. Finish.

In an effort to make it look like the stash is depleting itself (false, I've just hidden away the old stuff in places I know hubby won't look) in time for the Northern Michigan Lamb and Wool Festival, I am multi-projecting! Look at my four squares for NYOBE.


Admittedly, only two of them are perfectly 12 by 12. Now the other knitted one is just a smidge wide, I think I will still send it off because I know I could work it in. The other is crocheted! It was supposed to be 12 by 12 and if you can manage to flatten it out it is, but it's sorta wonky. I think there might be extraneous stitches in it. I'm going to block it myself and see what happens.

And because I needed a change, a pretty blue sock, Undulating Rib from Favorite Socks. I definitely have to make my sock yarn stash look used, because I want more sock yarn! So excited about the Festival. It's my first one! I'm a Festival Virgin! There is not much I can say that about anymore. :) Hey - blogger won't let me post anymore pictures in this post. Is that right or am I doing something wrong? I'll post the blue sock later.

Ah Youth

Remember Shaun Cassidy? Da Doo Ron Ron Ron, Da Doo Ron, Ron! Andy Gibb? Love is . . . Thicker than Water! Remember Michael Jackson before he turned into a total freak? I've probably totally dated myself. Who did you worship as a tween?

These, my friends who don't have tweens, are the latest obsession at my house and in the tween world. The Jonas Brothers, also known as the Jo' Bros. Kevin, Joe and Nick. Sophie has developed a little shrine for them in her room, this being the centerpiece, on the wall behind her bed. Nick is her favorite with Joe being a close second. Joe has very thick eyebrows, thus demoting him in her book. And she thinks Kevin is gross. He's old after all. 18! Anyone remember Hanson? Think Hanson for the 2000's.

Just thought I'd share. On to knitting . . .

I present . . . the Parade of Socks!

Starting with Paraphernalia
Followed by Mochatini
and finishing it off, Spring Forward!
The mochatinis I started ages ago, I got tired of the cables. The Spring Forwards I finished in like three days! So fun and easy. And the Parphernalia's are my favorites! They took a couple of weeks, but I love the way the cables twist up the sides!

And here we have the sum total of my productivity yesterday, an 2/3 complete back side of the Celtic tote. It looks cooler in person and I'm sure when I sew the dark yarn around the cables and felt it, it will look even cooler. I'm a little worried about gauge. It seems a little small. But I have a front loading washer so I'm sure it won't felt as much as if I threw it in a regular washing machine, right?
Whoa, I thought I had made that picture up there disappear. I hit backspace too many times and it was gone! Thank heavens for undo!

Ode to A Square

Oh, humble square
You speak to me of symmetry

Many other shapes can you make
Rectangles,
Bigger squares . . . .

Yep sucked in again! I am doing Round Two of NYOBE along with FatCat, we are even in the same group! Fall. Think leaves, not mud. Reds, oranges, yellows, some browns. But not neutrals, no more neutrals. And no green.


And look! It's a legit 12 inch square! Yeah me! It's the first, let's hope it's not the last.

Look at my lovely bag! It is definitely an Eyeore day today, gloomy and rainy. But I love Eyeore. He rocks.

I'm having a heck of a hard time taking pictures of late. Maybe because I can't finish anything. I'm down to the toe on the second Paraphernalia sock and instead of finishing it, what did I do? Why what any good knitter worth her salt would do, I started another sock. But I had to, really.

See, I think I mentioned before that I have wicked panic attacks and the one I had last night was a doozy. It started around 10pm and didn't really go away until .75 xanax later, which took about 2 hours to get a good hold. I couldn't deal with decreases so I cast on a plain stockinette sock with some pretty Trekking yarn and it did the trick. It and a marathon of Jon and Kate plus 8. You would think screaming three year olds would send me over the edge, but the trick is, they are not my screaming three year olds, making it vastly entertaining.

Now, I try not to spread my political leanings in this blog because I don't know how everyone who reads it feels, but this one is too big to be ignored. It's downright unconstitutional and everyone should know about it and it's related to libraries, my passion, so here goes nothing.

In an article in the Detroit Free Press this weekend about Sarah "crashing through the glass ceiling with my 2nd ammendment guaranteed shotgun" Palin, I learned that she tried to get books banned from the library! Now some may be asking what books? Some may even be thinking "Well, there are certain books I don't want my kids reading (although I really don't understand that one myself)" but banning books is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Librarians actually take some kind of oath saying something like "we will do our best to insure that the widest available range of materials are made available to the public". And the kicker? This article stated that when the librarian refused to ban the books, Ms. Palin tried to get her fired! This was one of many crazy (in my humble opinion) things I learned about her in my paper. Some people call the Detroit Free Press a liberal rag, but I don't think they are allowed to print shit that isn't true, so google it and take a look for yourselves.

Just a little politics. I know blogs are like relatives, you shouldn't discuss politics or religion, but I couldn't resist, and I'll do my best to keep my mouth shut from now on.

So I'm almost done with my socks, have frogged and restarted my bag in a more attractive shade and am contemplating lace for my former boss's wedding present. Oh, and I might get a job at the library in Alpena! Keep your fingers crossed for me. I've actually been telling people about what I do now that I don't work and it's really sad. I watch Netflix and knit. And while that is vastly amusing for about six months, now I want to see and converse with human kind once more. Actually my virtual friends here in the knitosphere have done a very fine job of saving my sanity and for that I tip my hat to you all!

Pictures for Yesterday's Post

Here's my pretty pink sock, the second sock in progress . . . .

and the first sock done!
New project started today to ward of the ugliness of the baby afghan. It's the Celtic Tote from Interweave Knits Winter 2007, in what color other than green! It's for a gift, if it turns out pretty I'll make one for myself in Brown!

And the wet dogs. Aren't they hilarious?

Dilemma

My camera is incognito. I remember taking a picture of the dogs right after their baths (they look like skinny little wet rats) and I must have put it down by the sink, but I can't find it. Oh well, I know it will show up soon.

Maybe I can't find it because I subconsciously don't want to take a picture of the ugliness that is my current WIP. It's a crocheted baby blanket and it's hideous. The worst part is that it's something that someone from my husbands work asked me to make for her and offered to pay me! I'm going to have to frog it. On the plus side, I did manage to crochet something in the shape of a sqaure! On the negative side, I crocheted about 20 squares which will soon be useless to me. Ahhhhh!

Another WIP is one I love though. It's a sock, Parephernalia, found on rav and made from some pretty pink Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn. I love the cable, twisting pretty down one side of the sock. I'm worried though, that I won't have enough yarn for the second sock. I shouldn't have even said it, I probably just cursed myself. That would totally suck.

I have a dilemma. We are going downstate this weekend and the local lys down there is having an anniversary sale! They have new yarns, like Alpaca With a Twist Sock Yarn and Noro Silk Garden sock yarn - I've never seen them before! And if you spend $25.00 you get a cool bag. But then, at the end of September, I'm going to go to the Norhtern Michigan Lamb and Wool Festival in West Branch and of course I know I'll see stuff there that I've never seen and want to buy! My dilemma is this. I have no money. Now, my husband has money, which technically is also mine, but in the past (read when I had a job!) I used my own money for yarn and no one cared. Now, as I've mentioned before my husband gets a little testy when he sees the quantity of yarn in our house, and still is witnessing new yarn coming in. Understandable from a non-knitter. I figure I can get away with one spree. I know I should wait for the Wool Festival, but I love going to the LYS down state. Help!

Well, I guess I'll go search for the camera.