In the list of things I learned in my bid for Knitting Olympics gold:

10. I got all kinds of comfortable with knitting cables without a cable needle. That alone made it worthwhile.

And…

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!
It’s here! Here, I tell you! Here!
My Majacraft Gem, that is. Xmas layaway finally paid off. Woot!
(It’s an original, not the LG2, but it looks for the most part as though it has been well cared for, and I totally can’t wait to get home and play with it tonight. I’m thinking the Lisa Souza biffle is the way to go to christen this puppy)

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Saturday I washed two Shetland fleeces. Yesterday I drum carded them both. Now? Everything smells and tastes like lanolin. Everything. My coffee? Wet sheep. Last night’s pizza and beer? Wet sheep. My shampoo this morning? OMFG, yeah, wet goddamned sheep. The only thing that doesn’t seem to smell like wet sheep? You guessed it. The rest of the wet fleece. Which smells like nothing. Nothing at all.

My nose is broken.

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And yet, way too far away. My dreams of Knitting Olympics gold were pretty much gone by the end of last weekend, but I kept on keepin’ on, and managed to get a lot more done than I thought I could. Really, had I not gone to bed last night I could have done it. But sleep was more important to me at this point, so I put the knitting down and went to bed.

The exercise was not in vain, mind you. I learned several things over the past 16 days, some good, some not so good:

1. I have a very low tolerance for ribbing. Lower even, apparently, than my tolerance for alcohol. Although the reactions to the two things are… different.

2. Knitting my ribbing with some of the stitches done in combination knitting instead of plain western knitting makes the ribbing look much less like it was knit by a first grader after a serious Krispy Kreme and cocoa bender. This is a fine, fine thing.

3. Jo Sharp Silk Road Tweed, while yummy and soft in the ball and once knit up and blocked, is harder on the hands even than most cotton tends to be for me. This suprised me to no end.

4. I don’t do well with having only one project going at a time. I’ve suspected this during prior single-project jaunts, but this time really knocked it home for me. I really ought to have at least three knitting projects and one or two spinning projects going at a time to really be a happy camper. And yes, I will be casting on for a lace stole and picking the socks back up tonight. And lo, it will be good.

5. I love cables.

6. I really no longer have any fear whatsoever of dropping back a small section of knitting to fix a mis-crossed cable 20 rows back.

7. I suck at basic counting. Especially when there’s beer involved.

8. 5 plus 7 equals 6.

9. Which, really, isn’t an issue. So yay! Beer!

I’ll be taking pictures of stuff at some point today, so I’ll take some pictures of Durrow in its current state. Honestly, I’ll probably have it finished in the next two or three days (since I’ll be cheating on it with Socks That Rock, Lisa Souza Wensleydale, and Alpaca Cloud). It’s all good.

In other news:

Today I have a play date with Heidi at The Artful Ewe in Kingston. I heart Heidi. If you haven’t been out to TAE yet, do make the time to do so. And if you’re just jonesing to meet Heidi, she spins and knits at the Kingston Quilt store on the 3rd Sunday of every month, and starting next month will be doing spinning demos in Port Gamble on the first Saturday of every month, in the big yellow building. I’ll be there for some of those too.

And! OMFG! Yesterday I paid off my xmas layaway at Woodland Woolworks. So my (new to me) Majacraft Gem will be here before I head up to Bowen Island! Wooooooo! I SO can’t wait.

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Remember the Great Christmas Chicken Massacre of ‘05? Probably not. I didn’t write most of that gruesome event up for y’all, ‘cos it was Nas-Tay. Seriously. Coming home from vacation to chunks of your pets all over your yard is not only not fun, but not so much fun to write up and post for all the world to read about. But that’s what happened, almost exactly two months ago.

When we left for xmas vacation we had five chickens. When we got home a week later we thought we had none, and got to spend a couple of hours in the dark and the rain picking up chunks of chicken from all over the yard and the deck. The next morning we discovered that we had one lone survivor. We got her a friend early in January because she seemed lonely (and that friend, although more than a year old at this point, may well turn out to be a rooster… if you’re up on your Polish chicken knowledge, PLEASE drop me a line). Life went on.

Moments ago, I was looking out the window into the back yard being amused that the crocuses and the daffodils seem to think it’s spring, and I realized that the chicken I was watching wasn’t Sunshine. Not unless Sunshine had suddenly gotten much paler, shorter, bearded, and had grown some seriously furry feet. Now, mind you, it’s the middle of winter, and our chickens seem to feel the need to molt right about now, so… maybe it was Sunshine. Critterboy said I was obviously smokin’ crack, but when he came and looked, all he could say was “that’s TOTALLY a survivor!”.

We live in the city (kinda), and our neighborhood is totally infested with hats. I mean raccoons.
Hence the chicken massacre to begin with. So where this chicken has been hiding for two months in the dead of winter, and what she’s been eating, and where she’s been getting her water, we have NO idea. But she’s back. And damn if that’s not a miracle.

And, in other miraculous news, Critterboy’s astounding green thumb strikes again:

This is an orchid that came to me as two leaves and nothing more about 4 years ago. This is the first time it’s bloomed (as far as I can remember). Go Critterboy!

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The kind that end with you getting a tattoo that basically says “note to self! don’t be a dumbass!”? Yeah. Me too. (Don’t believe me? look around the site and find pictures of my arms. Proof is in the pudding*, as it were). ANYWAY… This all comes back to me sitting here thinking to myself “godDAMN something unpleasant weather-wise comes this way”. How do I know? Other than the fact that I looked it up on the NOAA site, and they said so, my right wrist is all achey and feels like it’s at least as big as my ass. It’s not, mind you, it just feels that way.

I can see you all sitting there wondering what the hell I’m talking about, and how those two things could POSSIBLY be related, and tempting as it is to just let you sit there and wonder, I’ll explain.

Several years ago I learned The Power Of Denial. Prepping vehicles for a rally, replacing the struts in the MR2 iirc, and Critterboy finds a (dum dum DUM) Stuck Bolt. I’m sure this comes as a huge surprise. Stupidity ensued. Like a dumbass (see above), I offered to stick my tiny little hands in the stupidly small space in which the stuck bolt was lurking, and try to unstick it. With a BIG wrench, and all my strength, I pulled up on it. And LO! It gave! Well, it sheared. Not quite the same thing, but close. Right? Alas, it sent my right wrist directly up into a piece of sheet metal, neatly snapping the bone.

Oops!

At the time I was Poor. And had No Insurance. And always have and always will have a serious aversion to all things doctor. So…. yeah. I didn’t go. “It’s not broken” I said with a perfectly straight face (albeit a perfectly colorless one…), and even though it was bent at a rather unwholesome angle, nobody forced the issue.

All these years (3?, 4?) later, it’s still kinda crooked (although as long as I have my watch on you don’t notice it), and whenever the weather is about to do something ucky, I am FULLY aware of it well in advance. Makes me feel old. ‘Cos, yeah, I can feel it in m’bones, dontchaknow.

*Don’t EVEN get me started on that idiotic saying and the 80million permutations of it. Just let it go, people. Deep circular breathing, calm blue ocean.

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Or monster post, really.

Hoo-ee! Have I ever got a head fulla words for y’all. Seriously. I’ve been totally jonesing to post for more than a week now, and haven’t been able to due to the fact that dingoes ate my blog. It was messy, I tellya.

Anyway. This is going to be a picture heavy post, so be warned. Ready? Thought so.

Think back to the holidays…. I know it’s been a month and a half, but bear with me. Branching way the heck out in my fibery pastimes, I made a quilt for Critterboy’s folks for xmas. This was one of those crazy appliqued things, which was a technique I’d never done before. Turns out it’s kinda fun. Who knew.

So here’s the quilt all on its ownsome:

And in its final resting place (and I swear I didn’t plan it to fit EXACTLY in this cabinet):

Then, there was the surprise gift of the season: the pink alpaca/silk shawl for Auntie Pink. Not that you can tell from this picture, but it’s this shawl in this yarn in the ‘flower garden’ colorway. Critterboy watched me work on this shawl for more than a month, and never guessed who it was for. This made me giggle. A lot. Mostly because he knew it was a christmas present for *someone* in Denver, and he watched everyone at the family gathering open their presents and didn’t see it among that lot, and right up to the point that I handed her the package and he leaned over and whispered “what’s in that?” he didn’t have a clue. He did, however, get slightly misty-eyed when I told him and when she opened it.

Auntie Pink is a knitter. She’s been a knitter for a long, long time, but last year her doctor told her ‘no more knitting’ - it’s just too hard on her body at this point. I think she’s allowed to do a teensy bit now, but it’s definitely not a carefree activity anymore. I adore Auntie Pink. I’ve only met her twice, but she made such an impression on me both times, and she’s very special. I started this shawl for someone else, and it fought me HARD. It didn’t want to be that for that person. Wasn’t going to go there. But the idea of Auntie Pink came to mind and it just FLOWED (well, other than that damn gaping hole issue, but even that was a smooth fix). It made me unendingly happy to make it for her. So here she is, all wrapped up in it, next to me looking like a total dork (as usual)(and yes, I cropped Critterboy out of the picture becuse he would have killed me in my sleep if I had posted a picture of him looking quite that bad for the world to see):

Ok. Moving on to the present. And Madrona! Hooray for Madrona! I took a couple of days off of work to get my car fixed and to hang out with some FT’ers who were in town. I, like an idiot, didn’t take pictures of them. But they were there. And they’re not imaginary friends anymore! They have faces! Go me for meeting people in person!

I got to hang out with Angela, which is always a good time, and she brought Lara and Lynne down with her. Lynne owns Knitopia in White Rock. If you’re up that direction, or passing by that direction, it’s well worth a stop. Tell her I sent you. And promise not to brush your teeth in the shower. She’ll understand. L&L kick all available ass. I heart them. And I got to meet several other people. Some of the names are fuzzy at this point (it was total people overload), but new people to adore: Roz, Jessica, Denise, Vanessa, Jean, Stephanie, Sam, Marti, and.. um… wow. I’ve forgotten a LOT more names than I realized. I’m bad with names. I admit that. Really bad. But I had SO much fun meeting everyone. And I managed to get through conversations with both Harlot and Nancy Bush without fainting OR vomiting. It was SOOOO Cool. (Stephanie is on the FT list, and actually did some hanging out with us, although I kept mostly missing those moments. Timing, as we all know, is NOT my forte.)

On to the pictures, what few of them there are:

Thursday, tooling around Seattle with Angela and Lara, got a lovely picture of Angela hiding behind her Wool Peddler’s…

…standing next to the Troll:

And the view from A,L,&L’s hotel room:

And the view of the inside of the hotel room:
and

And that was just the first day’s shopping haul. There was some Damage Done there, folks.

And, last but not least, some Lisa Souza goodness:

That’s the wensleydale in Deep Sea that I finished spinning up last night. I have another 4oz bump of the wensleydale in Elektra, so once I get that spun up I’ll have to figure out something to do with them. It’s REALLY nice stuff to work with, as is all of Lisa’s stuff. Addicting, though.

Beyond that, there have been two pairs of socks and another Rogue finsihed, but I don’t have pics of any of that yet. I’ll get some pics of my Olympic sweater progress tomorrow, and maybe the two pairs of socks. Maybe.

Oooh! And I almost forgot the last picture. This one for the total WTF were they thinking?! file:

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…and I’ve got to say, at 5am on a Saturday morning, that concept is not particularly amusing. All you TSA airport employee folk? I must admit that I don’t feel even a teensy bit safer after the totally half-assed Super Special Security Screening y’all did, especially with the total level of out-freaking you did over my goddamned knitting bag. The fact that my bag set off every alarm you had, and to each one you squealed a LOT and then assured me that it was a false positive WHILE NOT REALLY CHECKING. That? Completely fucked up. If you’re going to screen, then do it. If you’re going to pat me down, then actually pat me the hell down. Don’t go over the major body parts where nobody would be fool enough to try and hide something. My GOD people. Come ON. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Especially at five in the damn morning. I was pretty damn proud of myself for keeping my mouth shut and not telling all y’all how I really felt about the whole thing.

Although I have to say that watching the TSA guy try to a)extract and then b)replace a sock-in-progress on size 1 1/2 dpns was totally priceless. He made it look like the sock was alive and trying to eat his hands.

The second Critterboy Cousin Wedding went swimmingly, and I learned a lot about a sect I didn’t really know much about, and stood through an hour+ church thing and didn’t run away screaming or burst into flames. That’s got to be progress.

Then there was Jesus* and the interpretive dancing. That made the whole thing that much more worthwhile.

And damn if there isn’t some of the most incredible geology right there on display next to the highway for miles and miles and 5 hours worth of miles. So beautiful. I heart Colorado.

*not his real name, just what everyone calls him

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