Ah, Spring!

When a girl's thoughts turn to...working on that big heavy sweater of Daven's. I'm blaming it on the fact that I came across it again when I was packing up. I finally finished the back last night (with about 3" extra knitting to accommodate for Daven's Mighty Shoulders), and now I can finally get started on the (stupidly long) arms. At least those won't be as ridiculously hot to work on during the drive to CO, even if Daven has monkey arms that take forever to knit for.

Socks continue, of course, as well. I'll get the April work shots up eventually; probably after I clear off the guest bed enough to take a picture of the blanket that I finished. (I realize the majority of people who even read this blog have already seen it in person, but it's so I can remember what I make. Some months I feel so unproductive, it is nice to see that I really am making a lot of stuff.)

Now, off to pack up the couch to give to Dave and Britt. The next week will be crazy. More non-knitting stuff will likely leak into the blog, but don't worry, I'll stay pretty fixated.

Also, hi to the lovely lady who found me via Pioneer Woman! *wave* Yes, we totally need to teach Ree to knit. You know, in her copious amounts of spare time. *grin*

MD Sheep and Wool 2010

This year's MD S&W was a bit different from past excursions, but very fun.

The weekend started with Jennie and Happygoth coming up from Atlanta late Thursday night. Within 5 minutes of their arrival, there was an epic battle around the living and dining rooms with the Nerf swords. Just having them around made me so ridiculously cheerful that I stayed giddy through work on Friday, and I was more of my "yay, stuff is awesome!" self, rather than the "meh, stuff sucks and I'm tired" self, which gave my coworker pause. He playfully accused me of saving all of the grumpy for work, which was terribly thoughtful of me. *chuckle*

I left work early on Friday, to make up for some hours that I'd worked extra the week before, and once I got home, we started working on the evil plan that I'd hatched halfway through the work day. This was the painting of our new 6'x12' trailer that we bought for moving purposes, and for general "haul stuff" once we arrive in CO.

The end result:




Daven's sister Rattlefox appeared about halfway through the painting the first side, and dove right in to helping us paint. She is the creator of the slightly dazed looking crab. Dave also popped by to escape some traffic and helped out. I love the end result. It makes me feel like I should run away and join the circus! I look at it and have to grin; it is too ridiculous not to.

After we were done getting high on paint fumes (Whee!) we hit our favourite sushi joint and had yummy bento boxes. The girls played dress-up with the stuff I have left over from the big "please take away my stuff" purge, then sat around and knit in the living room before turning in relatively early for our big day on Saturday.

Saturday, Daven got up early to cook a fabulous tasty breakfast, which we enjoyed immensely. Rattlefox had stopped to get donuts, which we each cut chunks out of to sample, and they were AMAZING. *drool* I think we'll have to stop and pick some of these up on the first leg of our move, since we'll be heading to her place first. So, after breakfast, Spyke came over and we headed off to the festival, following some kilt-based shenanigans.

That took a while. A long while. For, lo, MD S&W has become STUPIDLY popular, and it ended up taking about an hour and a half to go about 4 miles. Highway 32 sucked. On the upside, we had a lot of fun and silliness with the herd of folks in the van, but, dude. We had planned to arrive around 10:30, and it was closer to 11:30 when we arrived. That was no fun at all.

Once we got into the last portion of the drive, Daven went off with the van to park, and the other 5 of us got out to walk the quarter of a mile or so to the show. Also, to have dandelion fights, as we do. :) Once we were in the festival, we met up briefly with our friend Jim and his wife, before beginning the shopping spree. After fighting similar traffic (though we warned him to not use 32, so he missed that nightmare) Bald Scott made the good call of parking a mile or so away from the festival and walking, rather than dealing with the retarded parking traffic. Food was attained (though, since it was nearly 90 degrees and I don't deal with heat well, I mostly lived off of strawberry lemonade for the day) and once we stopped feeling all angry and hungry, shopping for the fibre fiends continued, whilst those slightly less interested in the difference between a Romney and a Lincoln cross fleece went to sit and enjoy the people watching. Darcy helped me select a couple of fleeces and when we went back to deposit these relatively heavy items to our fibre sherpas, they cleverly made a base camp under a small, but useful tree. Dave and Britt turned up and joined the merry gang of folks sitting under the tree. Further shopping excursions were made, but we would constantly re-group with the pile of stuff and people. During one of these lounge breaks, Colleen happened past, whilst taking some fibre to be processed, and to pick up a few big bags of finished yarn. I volunteered Scott and Spyke to sherpa for her, as there was a whole lotta yarn involved. (So pretty! But I'm kinda trying to behave. And yes, though I bought some stuff, I didn't buy nearly as much as I did last year, and most of it was on my mental list.)

Beside the oppressive heat that prevented me from really being able to eat anything (ugh), what was really weird for me was that they had rearranged the vendors a great deal. Basically, if someone had a tent, and was popular, they got moved to the back 40. That sucked for them; they'd previously been in very highly trafficked areas, and we spent most of the day going "man, I wonder where vendor X went to...maybe they aren't here this year..." before finding them right at the end of the day. I spoke to a couple of the vendors, and they were just languishing. Yes, I understand that they did this for safety reasons, but this seemed to be a last minute change of location, as evidently they were not on the site map. Yes, you should totally take some of your most popular vendors and isolate them so they have a terrible sales year. Great plan! *smack smack* If I was a vendor, I would be seriously pissed off. They were trying to be upbeat, but as I've been on their side of the table...this was tough. :/

We managed to close the place down (a first for me), which meant the lion's share of exit traffic had already dispersed. There was a caravan to a fantastic Mongolian joint near Scott's house for dinner, with Daven, myself, Jennie, Laura, Darcy, Scott, Dave, Britt and Spyke slowly becoming more human again following food and lots of water.

I'm still a little dehydrated today, but I had a fantastic time. I was so happy to visit with so many folks that I don't see nearly often enough.

And the haul round up:
1 Romney fleece; dark gray. Skirted, but otherwise unprocessed.
1 Rambouillet fleece; 2 shades of gray. Same state of unprocessedness.
4 hanks of sock yarn from Creatively Dyed.
1 hank of sock yarn from Spirit Trail Fiberworks. This is so luxurious. 75% superwash Merino/15% Cashmere/10% Bombyx silk, in the "Firedance" colourway. I totally have to buy more yarn from these people. Everything I touched made me go "oooh!"
1 astonishingly soft black fur hat that is totally an old lady hat and I DON'T CARE BECAUSE IT IS AMAZING. Also, I usually look like a moron in most hats, but I don't in this. *beam*

And more fibre-related goodness: Whilst I was lamenting being so far away from MD after the move, Rattelfox cheerfully brought up the Estes Park Wool Market. Yeah, that'll be an hour and a half from our new house. Yes, even after hitting MD yesterday, I'm totally going to Estes Park in a little over a month. YAY! *happy wiggle* Hopefully I'll find good suppliers for critters that will be semi-local to me! Plans are already being hatch to get Jennie and HappyGoth out for that one next year. *glee*

No strings attached.

So, in the effort to diversify a little bit around the blog, I'm going to be putting down my thoughts on the whole "farm" thing, too. The yarn talk will continue, but this will track what's going on as I transition to CO farm chick.

Speaking of chicks...I placed an order with McMurray Hatchery last night. 5 Barred Plymouth Rocks, 2 Black Stars and 3 Rhode Island Reds, all hens. 4 "straight run" silkies, 2 black and 2 white. (These are clearly pet chickens, but they are so cute. Daven keeps calling them alpaca chickens, so they had to come along.) And just to keep my life complicated...a variety pack of 25 meat roosters. I figure I'd like to try a bunch of different breeds. Yes, as of last night, I've locked myself into killing and eating a bunch of birds. I've already asked my parents to come down to help with butchering, since they raised chickens when I was growing up, and I certainly remember slaughter time. We'll be doing things a little differently, or at least that's the plan. More about that, later. I'll give warnings before launching into (literal!) gory details.

A day late, but the monthly round-up of photos

This is what March has wrought for me. I've been a little busy.


Welcome to my living room. It is full of string and crazy. Watch out for the brain eating cthulhu plush dolls.


My dad's birthday socks. I sent them along with the red&pink socks that I knit back in January for my mother, as I am a slacker and their birthdays are within a month of each other. I enjoy the fact that my parents are very happy with receiving socks as presents. :)


More socks that will be presents. Hopefully they'll fit. The first socks I've knit using the magic loop method. I've cast on another pair of stripey socks using the same method, with different yarn. This is my blind/travel knitting that requires no real attention from me.


The first of the pair of socks from the big box of sock kits. I'm not keeping up with the "novel pair of socks" every month, mostly because...uh...I'm knitting everything else under the sun.


I didn't knit all of this in March. No, I cast this on back before Daven and I got engaged and had knit about half of it. I've been moving it around from house to house ever since. Funnily enough, once I picked it up and started working on it again, I finished in about 3 hours. Self, please remember that in order to finish a project, you must WORK ON a project. As I said to HappyGoth on IM "This is going to be a lesson that I feel I will learn numerous times in my life, and always be surprised by it."

And this is the big bastard that has been taking up most of my time. It's a queen sized blanket, obviously knit in panels. Size 17 needles, 4 strands of acrylic. I decided I would rather move a finished product than a big bin of random acrylic yarn, so cast this on. It is super easy, but incredibly heavy, so I have to wear my elbow brace if I'm working on it at all. I hopefully am on the last panel now, and hope to finish it before too long.











I also spun a bobbin of fine yarn, but I didn't take a picture because it loses something on the bobbin. Maybe next month.

For every horror show, there is at least one cute thing.

And this is that cute thing. Oh, I squee. Must. Make!

Reason #349587 that people look at knitters oddly

Because there are knitters who will design things like this. The page tends to imply that they then expect others to want to make this item badly enough that they will pay for it. (For those without Ravelry accounts, BEHOLD!)

Also, these are tragic. Why? WHY?!

Monthly Progress Report

Well, I think I documented what I knit during February pretty darn thoroughly, really. I did knit the second sock to the single sock I took a photo of at the beginning of February, but then I had a friend compliment it, and as she has the same size feet as me, they followed her home without a photo being taken.

These things happen with me.

I have done a teensy bit of spinning and I cast on a sock, but nothing really to write about. I finished the Adult Surprise Jacket (stupid i-cord) but it's waaaaaaaaaay upstaaaaaaaairs and I'm laaaaaaaaazy. Maybe there will eventually be a photo, but it really isn't all that different from the last picture.

I've done almost no knitting since finishing the Olympic sweater. I think I finally found my knit-limit! *gasp*

Don't worry, I'm sure I'll be back at it soon, and there will be more pictures in the future.

End of Day 16

Lo, Verily. Behold!

Steeks! That worked!

I'll come up with a better post another time, but mostly...I'm exhausted, but happy that the sweater is (basically, I've got a couple of ends to weave in) done.

HOORAY! I DID IT! *happydance*

End of Day 15

Ta da! Collar and neckband! I'll deal with the sleeves...tomorrow. I'm terribly pleased with how this turned out. Ah, so you steek to get very crisp lines. Cool.

Still afraid of the sleeves.

End in sight. Knitting all done. Only cutting and sewing left. *crosses fingers* AH CAN DOOO EEEEEEEEET!

End of Day 14 - Steeeeeeeeeeeek!

Sleeve/Crotchless leggings.


Pre-steeked body.


Post-steeked body.


And now that I'm set up to knit the collar tomorrow, I'm going to take Elizabeth Zimmerman's advice and have a nice lie down in a dark room.

Steeks are still scary. I hope it all stays!