Birthday Hill Climbing

On Thursday, July 10th, I took another step on the birthday hill and I can see the top so clearly, that I’m ready to start walking backwards. No really, I must admit I’m a bit sad to hit 39 years old, but that’s only because my 30’s have been my best years ever!

Since my father’s retirement party was in southern Idaho the day after my birthday, we left on July 8th for our drive from Southern California to Southern Idaho. The drive through southern Utah is so beautiful and I just love this red rock that is everywhere.

Originally I was very worried about the 14 hour drive to my parents home and since fuel costs are so high, we really couldn’t afford to stop and stay at a hotel. I was especially concerned because with my fibromyalgia, you just never know how a lengthy car ride is going to be. Thankfully, my most amazing friend Laura came to the rescue and allowed us use of her timeshare points to stay at the Cedar Breaks Lodge in Brian Head, Utah.

Miraculously the lodge was exactly the midpoint in our trip, so we stayed there the night of the 8th and woke the following day to this beautiful view.

The lodge sits at the base of the Brian Head Ski Resort and I can just picture this all covered in snow. It must be beautiful.

The following day, July 10th, had an auspicious start (that’s a whole other story), but at noon I was surprised by getting to visit the local fiber farm, Hartwell’s Lazy PJ Ranch.

Hubby gave me a card with a bunch of money in it to spend at the fiber farm, and so I got some superwash merino and soysilk fiber, a latern moon spinning basket, some back issues of Spin-Off magazine and a beautiful Gita Marie orifice hook.

Of course the batteries on my camera died. So, I was at the mercy of my mother’s picture taking skills. I won’t humiliate myself with showing the photos of my eyes closed and my tongue sticking out, but I do have this photo of me with a suri alpaca.

After the fiber farm, we had lunch at the local Mexican restaurant and later that day I received a few gifts. My favorite one was this “cake” my sister made me.

It’s a pile of the most delicious chocolate frosting ever with 3 balls of marzipan yarn in the center. I know she was disappointed that she didn’t have time to make me a “real” cake, but she was so busy making the retirement cake for my dad, that I asked her not to make one for me. After that candle was blown out, I asked for a package of graham crackers and scooped up piles of frosting on them. Mmmm …. my favorite.

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Stitches West 2008: Sunday Surprise

I was sad to wake up on Sunday morning knowing that this afternoon I had to leave Stitches and all my new friends to return to normal life. I was anxious to hit the market floor one last time and got impatient waiting for my husband, so I went to the market a few minutes ahead of him. I wandered the aisles and picked up a few little things for some friends. I can’t show you what they are, but if you want to check out Debra’s Garden and Gita Maria, you’ll have an idea of what I bought.

My husband met up with me before my purchase at Debra’s Garden, and gave me yet another knitting bag. He knows I have a love for bags, and I had commented earlier in the week that it would be wonderful to have a bag like that one to take to my knit nights so that my bag stayed upright. Obviously he was paying attention.

And if that weren’t enough (and it was) as I wandered with him by several beloved vendors such as Blue Moon Fiber Arts and Brooks Farm Yarn, I noticed the Carolina Homespun booth and their spinning wheels that had been taunting me all weekend.

Several of my blogging friends are spinners (you know who you are) and since they flash their beautiful handspun on their blogs, it had me fantasizing about spinning my own yarn also. On Friday afternoon after milling around the spinning wheels for awhile, I was asked if I had any questions. I let them know I was just looking and that I was going to save my money this year to purchase a wheel. I inquired about the best wheel for a beginner, and after 30 minutes or so, I decided that the wheel that would probably work best for me is the folding Lendrum Double Treadle wheel.

As hubby and I passed their booth Saturday morning, I’d realized that I didn’t remember the name of the wheel, nor had I written it down. I showed Morgaine the spinning wheel with the forgotten name, and she said that one is the folding Lendrum Double Treadle wheel and its a wonderful. I inquired about her shipping policy and she quickly let me know that she could either ship this wheel to me, or I could take it with me today. I laughed and explained that I was still saving my money and that I wouldn’t be purchasing until much later this year (if not next). My husband interrupted and said “no, we’ll be buying the wheel today and we’d like to take it home with us today.”

I held onto his arm to steady myself and said “No, I will wait until my birthday or Christmas because I’m going to save my own money to buy it”. He gave me his “don’t argue with me” look so I stopped talking.

Then there was the option of taking just the wheel, or purchasing the complete kit. Hmm… guess which option we chose?

Margaine then asked if I wanted a bag to put the wheel in. I politely declined and my husband said in his gently stern voice “pick one”. I told him again it wasn’t necessary and I could look online for bags when we got home and then he interrupted me. “You need your wheel to be protected. We’re not leaving here until you pick one.” Sir, yes sir.

Margaine left the booth to get my wheel and bag from her trailer and I stood there in complete shock. I’ve never sat at a wheel and I’ve never attempted spinning, not even with a drop spindle. I told hubby to pinch me because I still must be in our hotel room asleep and dreaming. Then it hit me and I asked my husband “when did you know you were going to buy this for me?” “Thursday night” he replied. “Then why did you let me buy all that yarn when I should have been purchasing fiber for the wheel?” He didn’t hesitate for a moment and told me “You’ll need yarn to knit while you’re learning to spin, won’t you?” He was correct. Besides, if he thinks I’m going to stop buying yarn just because I’m going to spin now, he’s crazy.

One last thing about my wonderful husband. A night or so ago when he came home from work I told him I wanted to show him what I’d received in the mail. He sat down on the sofa next to me and I handed him a skein of fingering weight sock yarn. He looked at it for a moment and then just as I looked away I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he was sniffing the yarn. My head spun around to catch him in the act, and he gave me that “oh damn she caught me” look. I giggled and he smiled. I guess spending a few days at Stitches West truly rubbed off on him. In a good way though.

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Stitches West 2008: Saturday

Luckily on Saturday morning I woke feeling fairly good. I can only attribute it to the 2 doses of Flexeril and the Melatonin combination. Hubby decided that shopping in the market didn’t sound so bad, so he joined me on our walk to the market floor. I have no idea how to express to you in words the amount of people already in the market. I knew it was going to be busy, but I suppose I’m never quite prepared for large crowds.

I knew that my Ravelry passport had very few stamps/stickers in it, so today I planned on collecting them all, as well as making sure I picked up some yarn from WEBS for a sweater or two. Since I’d walked around all the booths the day before to see my options for purchases, I took my market floor booth layout sheet, and circled all the booths I needed to stop at and for what item. Some were just for the Passport, some were to enter drawings, and others were for purchases. This definitely helped keep me on track and I will do it every year that I attend Stitches.

The current sweater I’m knitting, the Radiance Cabled Jacket, has a hook and eye closure instead of buttons. On Friday I’d noticed some beautiful Norwegian pewter hook & eye clasps at AffectionKnit, so I stopped at their booth first. I surveyed all their pewter clasps, and all the sets of 3 were $14, but I got this one for $9, so I felt like I’d found a bargain. The booth was already extremely crowded, and several rude women pushed their way ahead of me in line so I ended up standing there for 15 minutes waiting to make my cash purchase. In fact, I think these women must have been around me all day because the level of rude people at Stitches was at an all-time high this year.

I didn’t make another purchase for quite awhile since I was gathering Passport stickers/stamps and entering my name into daily drawings for this and that, but when I stopped at the Fibersphere booth to get my Passport stamped, I noticed some bags (of course), As I was looking over the sock size bag, the vendor shared with me the story behind the bag. Since I’m a sucker anyway for any type of bag, when I found out that women in Cambodia were making them and were being paid three times as much as they’d normally make so they could support their families, I just had to support the cause. I’m not sure what the material is on the outside of the bag (bamboo?) but the inside of the bag is fabric lined with two open pockets, one zippered pocket, and the strap is adjustable.

We walked around for awhile, collecting stamps, and entering drawings, but when we ran into Cindi, Barbara and Rhonda at lunch time, we decided to pass on the $10 hotel sandwich and drove to Baja Fresh for a quick and inexpensive lunch. Of course we weren’t there long since there were schedules to be kept by the others in our group, so I returned to the market to continue filling up my Passport.

The next Ravelry passport stop was Article Pract. As I walked in to get my stamp, I noticed the Malabrigo worsted with a sign saying $10/skein. Then I noticed the Julie Weisenberger patterns. Next thing I know, I’m walking out of their booth just having purchased the Katarina pattern, the Malabrigo Loafers pattern, as well as 3 skeins of Malabrigo worsted in Forest and Azul Profundo.

I had meandered around the WEBS booth on Friday looking at the huge assortment of yarns and trying to decide what I wanted for which project. I was so overwhelmed though, and so tired from that day I opted to wait and purchase on Saturday. Well here it was Saturday and as I started to wander a bit, a lovely young woman named Cirilia asked if she could help me. Realizing that I got nowhere Friday trying to help myself, I said yes. Boy am I glad I did. I showed her my printed Ravelry queue page and asked her for recommendations for the projects I wanted to knit. She was so nice, quick, and knowledgeable, that before I knew it, I had 3 sweaters worth of yarn in my husbands hands. I had intended on only buying one or two sweaters worth of yarn, but since I chose Valley Yarns for 2 of the sweaters, I was able to afford the 100% Alpaca yarn.

The blue yarn is Valley Yarns Longmeadow and I’m intending on using it for Drops Design 100-34, although I could use it for a few of the projects in my queue. The red yarn is Valley Yarns Williamstown and it’s intended for Katarina by Julie Weisenberger. The olive green yarn Blue Sky Alpacas 100% Alpaca and is intended for Henley Perfected. I can’t wait to start on these projects.

At this point I could tell that my husband was at his shopping limit and so we decided to head back to the room to rest for awhile before dinner. That plan didn’t last long though. The market floor called to me from inside my room, so I left hubby to watch a movie while I wandered the booths for awhile. I wasn’t planning on purchasing anything, but when I saw this little book, I couldn’t resist.

This softbound book is called Knitspiration by Fiona Ellis which is a knitting journal. I have long been in search of a small notebook that had both lined and graph pages in it so I could play around with some ideas that float around in my head occasionally. This knitting journal has everything I’d ever want in a journal, with inspiring words and Fiona Ellis even signed it.

Dinner was a driving mis-adventure (no thanks to OnStar) to B.J.’s Brewery to meet-up with Lain, her husband and her son. Lain and I originally connected because of knitting, and although she knits beautifully, she is actually a scrapbooking designer, instructor, and podcaster. For what the Yarn Harlot is to the knitting world, Lain (ScrapHappy) is to the scrapbooking world. Someday I’ll say “I knew her when”.

After dinner I met up with the group from the previous evening for more knitting until 1am, although hubby did not join us this night. When I booked our hotel room, I’d debated on whether to stay Saturday night and at that moment I was so glad I booked us through Sunday morning. Spending time knitting with others that enjoy the same things as I was a priceless moment. I knew that although the classes, and shopping were great, spending time with current friends, meeting new ones, and spending time with those who share the same passion, was the true gift of Stitches.

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Stitches West 2008: Friday

Friday was an amazing day at Stitches, especially since I attended an all-day class taught by Cat Bordhi on the Foxglove Sock Architecture as explained in her latest book. It was amazing just being in Cat’s presence, but watching and listening to her information about sock construction was very enlightening. Her visual aids and her method of explaining techniques were so great, that I really feel like I have reached a whole new level of understanding regarding sock design and sock architecture. She was extremely patient, and was available to anyone at anytime for one-on-one attention if they needed it. It’s really hard to put into words just how amazing this class was.

When class finished in the afternoon she asked to see the baby sock I designed and I was shocked when she said it was one of the better designs she’d seen. Since I didn’t plan the design and it was just created as I knit, I realized that sometimes I over-think things and that just going with the flow sometimes produces the best results. By the way, I hate this photo of me, but since this is the only photo I have or will probably ever have with Cat, I will treasure it. And yes, that is the Tangled Yoke Cardigan.

When class ended that afternoon I met my wonderful husband in the market for more shopping. I only picked up a few items, and although it’s barely worth mentioning the stitch markers I purchased at Ellen’s Half Pint Farm, it is most definitely worth mentioning the Full Thread Ahead booth. Normally I prefer to not shop at these types of vendors since they are a LYS from the local area. I personally would rather give my money to my LYS, but Full Thread Ahead had two items my LYS doesn’t. An over the ear light for knitting in low-light conditions and the new Cookie A sock patterns. I ended up only purchasing the Trystero pattern, but I’m sure the others will be added to my sock patterns fairly soon.

The Ravelry booth had a few fun things to purchase, but I decided on the Raverly pin and the Bob pin. I really wanted the Ravelry canvas bag, but honestly I have too many bags as it is, although on Saturday I forgot this fact. Other than meeting Jess & Casey, the Passport was the best thing at the Ravelry booth. Several exhibitors had their logo imprinted on a page that looked exactly like pages in a passport, and the idea was to go around to each of those exhibitors and get a stamp or sticker from them for your page. When you filled your passport, you then returned it to Ravelry for inspection and you were then entered into a drawing of prizes donated by the participating exhibitors. This Passport got me into lots of “trouble” on Saturday, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see why.

The marketplace closed at 6pm, so hubby and I went to dinner with Laura, Barbara, Cindi, and Rhonda. Since both Laura and I had a vehicle, we got to leave the horribly overpriced food at the hotel, and went to Red Robin since it was affordable for everyone in the group. The food, drinks, and service were wonderful although little did I know that later I was going to later regret eating the Bonzai Burger, fries, and large beer.

Back at the hotel, nobody wanted to “call it an evening” so we sat in the hotel lobby to knit and got lucky enough to have both Michelle and Rebecca join us as well. Hubby sat with us for 2 rounds of drinks. He ordered us Bailey’s Coffee and that was another item I regretted later on. He left us to our own devices around 10pm and went to the room to watch a movie. We all stayed up until 1am and then decided nobody was going to be useful the next day unless we turned in for the evening.

Back in the room, hubby was in bed soundly sleeping (so cute) and as I leaned over the weird sink to wash my face, I felt a rumbly in my tumbly and it wasn’t good. But that’s not the worst of it. While the rumbly continued in my tumbly, and the horrible feeling of “worshipping the porcelain god” was going on, I had an intense fibromyalgia flare. It was so painful, that even wearing my jammies hurt like hell. It went on for hours until I took a second dose of Flexeril and finally fell asleep. What a day!

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Stitches West 2008: Thursday

There’s so much to share with you regarding Stitches West, but I’m going to break it up into several posts so I don’t overload your systems with photos.

We left the house Thursday morning and drove from Southern California to Northern California. We were lucky enough to be staying at the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency hotel which is attached to the Santa Clara Convention Center where the Stitches classes and shopping are. The hotel is very nice as are the rooms, but it seems like they tried to make everything a little bit contemporary which made for poor room functionality.

The bathroom had a wonderful shower curtain rod that bowed out so that you felt like you had more space in the shower, but the sink in the bathroom had the faucet mounted to the left of the sink which turned out to be very awkward to use.

After getting settled into our room, I went to the hotel lobby to meet up with a Laura and a few friends from the Anaheim Hills Knit Night on Mondays, so that we could attend the Ravelry meet-up together. Actually if it weren’t for Ravelry, there would not be a Monday knit night with these incredible women. It was interesting to see so many Ravelry users in one room, and I loved finally seeing Jess and Casey in person (from obviously a distance).

The only downside to the event was the cash bar. Obviously nobody told catering that knitters do indeed drink, and so there was only one small bar with one bartender. There was a continuous line for that bar for at least an hour. I felt so sorry for the bartender. After the Ravelry meet-up I met my husband at the hotel sushi bar for a bite to eat to fortify myself for the 3 hour shopping spree I was about to participate in. The area was crowded, understaffed, and slow as mud, but luckily the sushi was quite good. We finished dinner just in time to race to the market area to meet up with friends.

Most everyone was stopping at the Raverly booth first to pick up their Passports (more detail on that in a future post), but hubby went there for me as I raced to the Blue Moon fiber Arts booth. I grabbed a lot of skeins of lightweight sock yarn as I made my way through the mass of knitters in the booth. Since the purchase line was really long hubby waited in line for me while I figured out what I wanted. I think there were 7 skeins of yarn in my hands when I met up with him, but when I saw there will Mill Ends for about $7 less a skein than the regular skeins, I dumped most of the yarn I had and grabbed 3 skeins of it. I handed hubby enough money to make the purchase for me, and then told him I’d meet him at the next booth. Do I have the perfect husband or what?

I ended up with 3 skeins of Socks That Rock Mill Ends (1 skein of lightweight and 2 skeins of mediumweight), and 1 skein of Socks That Rock Silkie in Valkyrie. I just noticed yesterday that the Blue Moon logo is backwards on the labels and there are no colorways written on them so who knows what they are. I guess I’ll just call them gorgeous!

Next, I was off to Purlescence Yarns to purchase the Tulip Baby Cardigan kit. It was a bit more money than I’d normally spend on a baby cardigan, but I believe I’ll be using the pattern over and over again since there never seems to be a shortage of women having babies.

My final purchase for the evening was at Chameleon Colorworks for a skein of her beautiful Bambino yarn. I first saw her hand-dyed yarn at TNNA and instantly fell in love with the Twinkle Toes, Bambino and Evolution yarns. The Loopy Ewe just added the Bambino and Evolution yarns to her store today, so I suggest you get over there and pick some up. Believe me, you won’t regret it.

The market was open for 3 hours, but frankly after only getting 3 1/2 hours of sleep the night before, I was too exhausted to continue on and wanted to rest up for my class with Cat Bordhi. I think I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.

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GP’s & FO’s

Most of the time I seem to share my GP (Guilty Pleasure) of purchasing yarn, but today, it’s something completely different.

Go ahead & click on it, take the tour, and sign up for your free account. I did and believe me, I may sleep better knowing everything is a bit more organized now.

One other Guilty Pleasures will be happening on Saturday. I’m going to see the Yarn Harlot! Obviously I will provide photos and details on that next week.

Finished Objects!

Pattern: Shedir by Jenna Wilson
Source: Knitty.com Fall 2004
Yarn: Rowan Calmer colorway 492 (1 skein)
Needles: Addi Turbo (2) 24″ circular needles size US 2 (2.75 mm)

Comments: I originally attempted knitting this with size US 3 needles, but halfway through I was running out of yarn, so I frogged it and cast on again with my size 2 addi turbo needles instead. I didn’t love working all the cables with the less pointy Addi turbo because frankly I believe the Knit Picks pointy tips are better for this, but what did help with all that cabling was knowing how to cable without a cable needle. I love the finished hat, but I don’t think I’d knit this again since my hands ached with all the cabling and I was stressed most of the time knitting it that I was going to run out of yarn. Speaking of the yarn .. it is FABULOUS! If it were less expensive, my stash would be filled with every colorway.

Pattern: Garterlac Dishcloth by Dave
Source: Criminy Jickets
Yarn: Peaches & Creme Ombre in Raspberry Swirls
Needles: Knit Picks Options size 7 US

Notes: Once I figured out how the triangles and squares fit together, and what order they were worked, this knit up very quickly. This was my first attempt at entrelac, and I liked it so much, I’m knitting more! Thanks for a great pattern Dave. I predict that I’ll be including these in many Christmas packages this year, and I also predict many will end up in my kitchen too!

I found out through Judy’s blog that if you purchase Cat Bordhi’s latest book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters, you might want a set of stitch markers that utilize the letters A through H. Since I DID end up purchasing the book because of Judy’s subtle blog-post coaxing, (although I’m still waiting for Amazon to ship it) I obviously also needed a set of these stitch markers. Of course Judy had the solution by giving the link to J.L. Yarnworks Etsy shop, where she sells the very thing, but upon doing a further search I fell in love with the stitch markers and row counting bracelet at Hide and Sheep’s Etsy store, so I placed a custom order with her.

My order arrived very promptly from Hide & Sheep and not only is their customer service fantastic, but the items I ordered were even better than I expected. Everything arrived in its own tin and not only is the quality of the work outstanding, but no detail was overlooked. I especially love that on the bracelet, there is a small “hook” to hold stitchmarkers. She has quite a large variety of stitchmarkers and bracelets and she even does custom orders, so you should really check her out.
One last very important thing, if you’d like to be entered in a drawing to win some fabulous prizes, please go to Noolie Knits and donate to the Light the Night walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. All the details are in this blog post and although last year she raised $1,218, this year she’s only raised $555 thus far and there are only 17 days remaining. Please let us help her exceed last years number!

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UFO’s

See those 3 items on the right sidebar under UFO’s? I hate them. Why are they there then? Because I don’t want to feel like I’ve wasted yarn money, so maybe if I have a list of UFO’s to look at, I may get off my butt & deal with the problem. I’ve decided to tackle them one at a time by either finishing them or completely frogging them & doing something else with the yarn until there’s hopefully nothing ever in the UFO list.

I’ve decided to first attack the Felted Slippers (Curiously Clever Clogs). These clogs aren’t Curious or Clever but actually Confusing & Contemptible. That’s right! These are the Confusing Contemptible Clogs!!

Since I belong to the Curiously Clever Clogs KAL, and most of those members seem to also have issues with the pattern, I’ve decided that the only source of help will probably be at the Stitch Diva Studios booth at Stitches West . Hopefully someone in their booth has knit these & can help me. I’ve had this in the UFO list for awhile & I’m just not going to let a $7 felted slipper pattern go to waste. I also noticed that there’s a Knit Doctor at Stitches West as well, so if I can’t get help at the Stitch Diva booth, may the Dr can help me!

On a side note, you may want to check out my favorite jewelry designer at her etsy shop named Twisted Lily Designs. She just uploaded some new jewelry today & it’s beautiful! Of course a lot of the best pieces have already sold, but there’s still some amazing pieces remaining. In fact, if I had more money, lily would be mine! She’s also got a great blog that includes knitting that I absolutely adore!!

One last thing, If you commented on my blog & you didn’t hear a personal response back from me, it’s because I don’t have your email address. Blogger is a hit/miss kind of thing with that so if you can leave me your email address next time, that would be great! THANKS to all of you for the comments on my socks. I guess I should re-title my last blog post to “Beautifully Black”.

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