One Crazy Fiber Lady

Happy Halloween!  Today was a seriously busy day.  I worked from home today and got a great deal done:

1.  Finished up the bugs on the coding project for work and answered a number of questions from the testers

2.  Cleaned out all the stuff from the inside of my Durango in preparation of returning it.  Took it to the carwash for a serious cleaning.  Made an appointment to have it inspected on Friday with goal of dropping it at Dodge dealer on Saturday.

3.  Added the new car to the insurance policy.

4.  Took the monkeys Trick or Treating.  They got it this year even if doorbells were a bit out of their reach.  I swear I bought a costume for Kat but she refused to wear it.  It was one of the Disney Princess dresses in a pretty pink that she loved until I tried to put it on her.  If she gets even a tiny bit tied up in a shirt, that sucker is history.  I think that’s what happened with this dress.  Mom managed to get her dressed into her Dora shirt and pants set and that’s how she went T&T.   Alex just loved his Buzz costume.  I figured he would as he’s become enamoured with the movie and will watch it on a continuous loop if we let him.

5.  Got a flu shot (site hurts a tad and I ain’t feeling all that great now) and got some Imitrex from my doctor.

6.  Picked up the new car.  Sweet.  Put the carseats and the train station parking permit in the new baby.  Meet my new wheels, a 2006 Toyota Sienna LE in Blue Mirage Metallic.  I so loved test driving this car that I can’t wait to get to know her.   

And now, not having knit a single stitch all day, I’m going to call it a night.

Craft on!

Aside from all the acquisitions at the mega fiber festival last weekend, there has been actual crafting going in these here parts. 

There’s finished objects that need to be shown off!

Pattern:  childHood
Yarn:  Cascade 220 & Quatro
Size: 3-4 YO
Started: 10/7/2006
Finished: 10/20/2006

This was a cute little knit.  If I did it again, I would definitely modify that whole knit the button band and sew it on to the side.  Homey don’t like that sewing on business.  I would probably just pick up the stitches along the side and knit it up, OR knit it at the same time as the front pieces.  They could have also been knit BEFORE doing the shoulder seams, not after as the pattern called for.  I guess that is why there is that suggestion to read the whole pattern before starting

There’s been more knitting here too.  As I mentioned before, the Shetland Tea Shawl has made another appearance in the active pile.  Sunday I finished the Diamond Madiera section and began the edging.  I’m forgoing the use of a DPN and needle cap for this and just using the circular needle as is.  After 10 (of the total 115 repeats), I finally memorized the edging lace pattern.  Should fly now   According to the spreadsheet, I’m 72% complete on this thing.

There has also been spinning…  Monday (last week), I took the day off to recover from the whirlwind that was Rhinebeck.  I finally skeined up those super fine singles of the Polwarth/Angora I had spun and measured/weighed the end result.  I have 264 yards / 30grams.  Good yardage in my book.  No pictures as the grey refuses to be photographed well.  I also spun the batt I bought from Grafton Fibers at the festival.  Saturday night I Navajo plied to maintain the color progression.  As I never wound it on the niddy noddy but went straight to the ball winder, I haven’t a clue of the yardage, but there’s definitely enough for a scarf.  Pretty one too…

And even more spinning, including this skein. This is 4oz of Blue Faced Leicester that I picked up from Hello Yarn this spring, back when I wasn’t blogging much.  It was an absolute dream to spin and I so loved the colors.  It came out to be 442 yards and would make some yummy socks.  I spun this up on my Suzie Pro which has moved into the kids’ playroom/den.  Evenings and mostly weekends, I would sit with them while they played or watched movies (mostly the Pixar ones) and spin.  The monkeys would periodically assist me in treadling.  Budding fiber artists indeed!  The colors in this picture are reading a bit darker, especially the green, but it is close.

Last Wednesday was picture day at school.  I got the kids coordinating outfits at Children’s Place, well, because I still can and get away with it.  Right before we sat for a family shot, I tried to get them to pose for a nice picture.  This is what I got instead..

I have to admit, there were far more shots of Alex tackling his sister than of the standing and smiling variety.  At least Kat was giggling under there and well, they were cute if I do say so myself.

This weekend, during the deluge on Saturday, I was busy test driving cars.  I need to thank everyone for their feedback on minivans.  After much research, followed by taking one out in seriously crappy weather that included high winds and heavy heavy rains, I made a decision.  I signed a contract, put a deposit on one and headed home waiting for a very important phone call today.  I got it around 4 that the financing had been approved.  I go tomorrow night to pick it up.  I’ll post the details of what I wound up with tomorrow.  Suffice it to say, I’m totally excited!

Craft on!

I promise, this is my last Rhinebeck related post.  Tomorrow we shall return to the regularly scheduled postings that actually involve using stuff rather than just acquiring it!  I do have a finished object to show, though it was spotted on the girl at Rhinebeck, but formalities must be met.

I present the fiber acquisitions in no particular order:

First, the fiber preparer.  A 12 gram Canarywood Featherweight from the Bosworths.

This is one ounce of bison roving.  It is soooo soft.  I seriously fondled the skeins of spun yarn they had and when I spotted this roving, I knew I had to have some.  The most expensive of my purchases at $25 an ounce.  I hear it wants to be spun very fine.  My kind of fiber!

4.5 ounces of the most delicious Icelandic Lamb / Bombyx Silk roving from Frelsi Farm.  I bought the Featherweight from the Bosworths after picking this up.  This is going to be laceweight for another of those wonderful shawls.

Two batts of LincolnX from Barneswallow Farms.  I’m planning on plying together one of each color for some Kat approved yarn.  Not sure of an end product, but that is nothing new for me. 

I picked up these two rovings from Cloverleaf Farms.  The green is 80/20 Wool/Silk in the Dragon colorway.  The other is 100% Wensleydale in the Autumn F06 colorway.  The wensleydale is destined to be sock yarn.  Your guess is as good as mine as to what the other will become.  Both are 4oz.

One pound of delicious cormo from Alice Fields as Foxhill Farm.  I love cormo.  I love cormo from Alice Fields even more.  Each trip to Maryland, against my better judgment and the no new fleece moratorium, has involved my buying a new cormo fleece from her.  She actually pulled this bag for Karen, who I went up with on Sunday.  Except Karen didn’t want it so I jumped!  Lucky me!!!!  Mine, mine, all mine.

Last, but certainly not least, the spoils of two trips into the tent of Little Barn. From left to right:

8oz of Natural Tussah Silk (was a show special)
1lb of Bleached Irish Linen (it was buy one, get one special – yeah, lost my mind)
1lb of BFL combed top in Black
4oz of 60/40 High Grade Cashmere / A-1 Mulberry Bombyx (had to have it!)
8oz Gotland roving
8oz 100’s merino roving

This brings us to the end of the feeding frenzy.  As Rachel H. so aptly put it, "You may have been confused by the lack of stroller on Sunday, but by the looks
of things it didn’t impair your shopping abilities one bit. Very Impressive."   Thanks Rachel!  Now to begin to use some of this stuff before Maryland!

Craft on!

While Saturday at Rhinebeck was primarily for socializing, Sunday was for shopping.  It has been a while since I bought any fiber of substance at a festival.  Last year’s NYS&W yielded only a pound of shetland rovings.  I made up for it.

Paige at Modern Yarn organized a group trip from the store to the fairgrounds.  I volunteered to drive, arranging to borrow the folks’ 7 seater GMC Envoy so as to get more folk to the fair in fewer cars.  It was a great group of women, most of whom I know pretty well from the weekly SnB, including the very talented Ina, as well as the blogless Katie, Nancy, Christine, Karen and Donna.  We met at the store at 7:30AM, which meant leaving by 7AM for me to get there on time.  I might have trouble getting my arse out of bed to get to work, but a festival?  That’s a horse of a different color.  I sprung out of bed, got dressed, made breakfast and even had time to stop at Dunkin Donuts for a large coffee before having to hit the road.  It was nice driving up with the ladies as they held conversations in a far different way than the twins did the day before, well when the twins were awake that is. 

Before I knew it, we were at the fairgrounds.  9:15AM.  Unbelievable.  After a trip to the ladies room and we were all ready to shop.  First stop was building A.  At that time of the morning, it was blessedly empty and I made a beeline for Brooks Farm and the Four Play that I’ve coveted for another Clapotis.  (Only one of the 3 skeins is photographed.  As always, click the pics to make them bigger.)

Next purchasing stop was the Skaska Designs booth.  I picked up a skein of 80/20 Silk/Cashmere laceweight and the pattern for the Orenburg Lace Triangle.  This is high in the queue for after finishing some of the other existing lace projects (of which I managed 2 rounds on Shetland Tea Shawl today on the train, but I digress again).  I don’t look forward to pulling out the ballwinder for this skein as it is 1600 yards!  This isn’t going to be my first attempt at an Orenburg shawl.  (Someone remind me to show the handspun gossamer merino and beginning of the Pine Tree Shawl from the Designs book.)

After that the purchases all seem rather random and I can’t tell what happened next, but there was much rejoicing.  Might was well continue with the trend and show the yarn acquisitions..

I picked up this dark brown Border Leceister yarn to knit myself a gansey.. oh and a pattern for one too!  Though I could always use the Beth Brown-Reinsel book that is sitting on the shelf.

There’s this skein of 816 yards of Denim colorway merino yarn.  I sooooo loved the color that I just had to get it.  Not sure what it will grow up to be, but it will be something.  Suggestions would be most welcome.  At the very least, it would make a good Clapotis Trois.

Then there is the 8.5oz of 3550 ypp Icelandic Laceweight from Tongue River Farm.  I’m set now to make a couple of shawls from the fabulous book.  Again, not looking forward to the ballwinder/swift experience with this bad boy either.  But it is purty.

What kind of crazy sock knitter would I be without a sock yarn purchase?  Rest assured that I ain’t that crazy.  While the Socks That Rock was sold out before I even got to the festival on Saturday, there was still some yarn to be had elsewhere.  I got a skein of the 50/50 Merino/Tensel from Ellen’s Half-Pint Farm. 

While Saturday had really been about the socializing, I did quite a bit of it on Sunday as well.  Thanks to the more relaxed feel to the festival, I was able to spend some time with old friends, and made some new ones.  I pulled into the field at the same time as Shari and her family arrived.  Shari is from the other end of NJ from me and I do so wish they were closer.  She’s got amazing kids and is just a wonderful person.  I only wish we could see them more often.  I saw Nancy and Maribel a few more times as we wandered and spent money.  My MY group split up and came back together a number of times over the course of the day as well, each taking the grounds at their own pace.

I met and spent a good deal of time wandering the fair with the wonderful Brooke.  We had met briefly on Saturday at the blogger meetup.  I found we were taking the barns at about the same pace, as she knit a sock.  Go girl.  Made sense to chat while we walked.  I had a great time and really enjoyed her company.  She helped me decide on the Icelandic laceweight and the BL for the gansey.  We also hit the Little Barn tent together.  The spinning fiber spoils are for tomorrow’s post, don’t want to overwhelm you all at once!  All too soon, she had to head out.  I then spent the next hour or two fiber hopping with Jessica!  Another Jersey spinner!  Woot.

Tune in tomorrow for the remainder of the haul…

Craft on!

The borg have nothing on the wonder that is Rhinebeck.  While I’m still recovering from the two day extravaganza, I thought I’d quickly post some photos of both the event. 

But first, Thursday night I saw Stitchy at Stix-n-Stitches in Montclair.  Here she is showing us items from the travelling trunk of fuglies.  She’s as funny in person as she is on her blog.

So, the festival.  Saturday morning, after breakfast, I piled the monkeys into the car and headed north for the Dutchess County Fairgrounds.  After a drive of some 90 miles we arrived.  The pushing of the stroller got old somewhat fast.  We met up with Nancy and Maribel shortly after arriving at 11am.  The barns were too crowded for me to do much shopping, but as I was going back on Sunday sans stroller, I didn’t feel too badly about it. 

I do have to add as an aside that I was so totally ticked off by the attitude that so many fellow fairgoers showed towards the stroller.  I got so many looks that shouted that I had alot of nerve showing up with it.  People were rude, obnoxious and inconsiderate, not to mention oblivious wandering right in front of the beheamouth that doesn’t exactly stop on a dime.  I said "excuse me" until my voice was gone and even had one woman tell me "there are other people here, you could say excuse me".  I laid into her and was nicely backed up by her wandering companion that I had indeed said excuse me.  Bitch.  The attitude that one shouldn’t go to an event like this if one has to push a stroller is downright wrong.  How about the old slow people, huh?  Are they more welcome than the strollers?  Or the people with canes?  They are as much "in the way" as the strollers.  Should they stay home too?  The intolerance is really ticking me off. 

There, that’s out of my system.

When the little ones, who were so unexpectedly wonderful for the day, got impatient, we parted company with Nancy and Maribel.  Passing Juno and Stephanie, we made our way around the big barn quickly and then back outside.  We met up with commenter extraordinaire:  Rachel H!  She was so sweet, bringing the twins each a teddy bear wearing a Doodlebops t-shirt!   Thank you again Rachel!  The kids love the bears and sleep with them every night.

The blogger meetup was definitely the highlight of the day, and the reason I went up on Saturday, even though I’d have to bring the kids for it.  The sea of bloggers just totally weirded out the grups and I heard several query as to what we being sold in the middle of the crowd!  While the meetup last year was fab, the addition of the Blogger Bingo made it even cooler.  Not only license to, but compulsion to go introduce and meet as many people as one could meet.  I finally was able to put real faces to a lot of names (not only during the meetup but over the course of the two days) and that has made for a much richer experience.

This is only a small representation of the vast number of bloggers who attended this thing.  With my stroller situated in the middle of this crowd, I was able to get BINGO on the I column of my card!  WOOT.  Anyway, it was a great event and worth the trip.

I made exactly on purchase (besides the entrance fee and food) on Saturday.  Predominantly because the crowds wouldn’t let me get near a majority of the booths with the stroller.  I did pick up a batt from Grafton Fibers in a purple to pink range (that I spun today, but that is for another posting ).

Exhausted from all the walking and pushing of the blasted stroller up and down the hills, I loaded the monkeys into the car at around 4 and sat in some 20 minutes of traffic waiting to get off the fairgrounds.  The monkeys and I went to bed early that night!

I’ll leave Sunday’s trip and resulting stash expansion for tomorrow’s posting!

Craft on!

Since I’m a square, I figured I’d post to make it easier to be found. 

First off, I’m pretty short, topping out at 5′0".  This makes me a tad apprehensive in big crowds.  My hair is a smidge longer than shoulder length and can either be very straight

… or curly

… it all depends on whether I feel like playing with the ceramic iron tonight.  Right now, I’m in a bit of a straight hair mode, but it is somewhat time consuming and well, I have snaps to sew onto Miss K’s sweater (which is done except for one side seam.  Woot!)..

I’m going to be at Rhinebeck on both days.  Double woot.  Saturday, I’ll have these with me:

.. in their infamous Graco Duoglider stroller which looked like this at another festival…

What with the weather and the way it changes during the day in Rhinebeck, I can’t even begin to predict what I’ll be wearing, but more than likely, I will have this..

Hope to see you there!

Craft on!

As some might have  heard, it is true.  I have stepped in to take over the Knitting Blogs webring effective January 1.  Now as Julie mentioned, I am not taking this task on alone.  I might be crazy, but I ain’t totally nuts!  Nancy has agreed to be my co-host in this endeavour.  I’m really looking forward to working with her on this.  We all need to thank Julie for all the hard work she has put into this ring to make it the wonderful thing that it is now.

More tomorrow including much progresson Kat’s sweater!

Craft on!

Short post tonight, I’m pretty tired.  Not entirely sure why as I did go to sleep rather early last night and got an accidental extra hour this morning.  Was pretty darn late to work as a result too.  Oh well.

Digging through some photos I realized I never posted a photo of the completed Calla Lily socks, so here goes:

These are the first of the Sundara Petals club.  Took me so darn long that I don’t really remember when I started.  I did finish them during the long Labor Day weekend.  And before anyone asks, I have yet to begin the August installment.  Doubt I will before the October shows up

I have made progress on the childHood sweater for Miss Kat.  I took to bed with a new book and the first of the cardigan fronts last night.  After a half hour of reading and knitting, I was at the armpit.  As of the commute in this morning I had it finished.  I started the second during lunch.  Love these quicker projects.  I just joined a second skein of the solid 220 and have only used a smidge of the Quattro so far. 

Oh my goodness, I nearly missed it, today is my 2 year blogiversary!  Woo hoo!  I truly can’t believe it.  Just as a reminder, all comments during the month of October will get an entry for a prize drawing of anniversary goodies.  Good luck.

Craft on!

First off, I want to thank everyone for their wonderful birthday wishes for the twins!

Now I didn’t join Socktoberfest, not entirely sure why not as I usually always have a sock on the needles.  Maybe it was my spectacular failure to actually complete the Trekking Along sock this summer, though it wasn’t for a lack of trying.  I did attempt one or two.  I’m also pretty notorious for flunking when doing things as a group.  Please ignore the number of KALs that I’m actively enrolled in at present.  Oh and the one that I actually finished, the button never made it to the sidebar… but it might as I have the yarn to make another swallowtail shawl (a scrumptious handpainted cashmere that Kristen teased me with last week at the SnB)… but I digress…

For a variety of reasons, I didn’t, but probably should have for a change, joined Socktoberfest as I actually finished a pair of socks!  And heck, I just joined it!

Project Details

Yarn:  Koigu PPPM P530
Started:  Ummm (browsing blog for date…)..8/23/2006
Finished: 10/10
Pattern:  My basic sock over 60 st, PGR short row heels using US1 Knitpicks for Magic Loop.

Remember this was the yarn I bought at the store that shall remain nameless and as such, I was never totally enamoured with this project.  Taking the remaining gloss off is that they don’t really fit me.  The foot is a little too big around and well, a little long.  They should be counted as my first completed holiday gifts. 

Craft on!

I asked them to quit it, but they refuse.  My monkeys insist on growing up.  They are now {gasp} three years old.  I don’t know how or when it happened, but really, three years flew by in a blink of an eye. 

Last year on this day, I posted the very beginnings and showed their very first pictures.  I won’t post the same photos again.  I spent some time last night digging through the pictures archive and walked down memory lane.  I saw pictures from the seemingly endless week in the NICU wondering when my precious magic monkeys would come home…

(tiny little Kat is on the left and Alex is the one with the cool shades…I tried to find the pictures with the fewest tubes and wires as they were a bit unnerving)

.. but they finally did, one week later.  Back then they were so small that they would both fith neatly on my lap, like in this photo.

How very much they have changed.

Today was their first school field trip.  They took the whole school (minus the babies and toddlers as the school goes from 6 weeks to 6 years) on two big yellow school buses up to a local farm.  This marked their first trip on a school bus and was almost as exciting as the farm for them. 

At the farm, we went on a hay ride…

…followed by some pumpkin picking (left the camera on the tractor so no shots of that – sorry and the remaining pictures aren’t just of my kids.  I can’t make the decision for others to show or not show their kids.  Discretion is the better part of valor and all that.), a hay maze, homemade donuts and cider and then another bus ride back to the school.  There were some pretty tired kids when we all got back. 

We took two of those tired kids out to a Power Squadron Pasta dinner meeting this evening.  The monkeys are the unofficial mascots of this squadron and go to a number of their functions.  Tonight was no exception.  We had birthday cake and 45 people sang happy birthday to my sweeties.

Happy birthday my babies.  I love you dearly and hope you had a very special day.