So, back in… February? At Madrona, I saw this hank of Dicentra targhee that for whatever reason I couldn’t resist. It made no sense at the time. NONE. It was ORANGE! and MAGENTA!, two colors which, honestly, I CAN’T STAND. But I couldn’t walk away from it. It exerted some sort of freaky fiber-power over me, and I had to buy it. The look on Angela’s face spoke volumes, since she knows the colors I like and these? Not on that list. Anywhere.

It took me a while to spin it up, but the Reeves 19″ saxony did a lovely job with it, and I ended up plying it from a center pull ball, and it came out soooo beautifully. And it has languished on top of the basket o’ fiber ever since.

I saw it sitting up there the other night and thought ooh! that would make a lovely panta! So I pulled it down, and got out some needles, and waffled for a bit between making a panta or seeing if I could get a pair of fingerless mitts out of it. I opted, finally, for the panta.

Not only is the panta SOO perfect – it starts orange, and fades gently to MAGENTA at the center, and then, amazingly, PERFECTLY back to orange! Like I planned it that way. And on top of that little bit of joy? I found another skein of it, having totally forgotten that I ended up with two skeins, so I still have plenty for a pair of fingerless mitts! Hooray!

Musta been meant to be…
(batteries are dead, pics to follow)

EDIT: For those that don’t know, a panta is a headband. The pattern that I used was the translation from Crafster, but I think this one might be a better version of it.

But oooh! Yummy handpainted sock yarn goodness, courtesy of Kirsten at Through The Loops (and I know you’re jealous of my consistently crap photography skills and inability to get any kind of lighting to ever work FOR me…):

And (no laughing, Lara), a genuine quilting injury (caught my arm on a pin while reaching across it, and rrrriiiiiiiiippppppppppp went the skin. Woot! And who knew it was that difficult to take a picture of your own forearm? Not I, certainly):

And, a truly rare (for me) good wildlife shot (mama seagull on the piling at the ferry dock – the babies are Not Cute anymore, sadly, but this picture makes me giggle):

That’s it for now. It’s been a tremendously fucked up couple of weeks, so not much has gotten done, and really, there’s just not much to tell. Things are picking back up and getting less crappy, so actual knitting content will return soon.

There were not one, but TWO boxes waiting for me when I got home today.
TWO! So lucky I am.

The first one was from my secret pal. Who, you must know, Kicks All Available Ass. Bigtime.
Check it out (enclicken to embiggen – it deserves to be full size)

Everything in the box was individually wrapped, which made it that much more fun to open, and inside? OMG. Verklempt, people. That’s what I am.
Top package? An OUNCE of QIVIUT. I kid you not.
Then? Two ounces of gorgeous hand-dyed alpaca.
And a fuzzy sheep pez dispenser/key chain!
Then! Chocolate brown yak! That doesn’t smell like yak!
And? It doesn’t stop there – next up?
GUANACO A bag of guanaco!
Then coffee! And Chocolate! and a lavender & bergamot Badger bedtim bar that smells so good I just want to take a bite out of it.

I? Have the best secret pal EVER. Seriously. I am the luckiest girl in the world.

And then there was the second box, which was from one of the wonderful people on the FiberTraditions list who was destashing her sock yarn supply. Woo! Who could pass that up? And Jen says sock yarn isn’t stash enhancement, so it’s ok. She divvied her stash up into paper bags, and sent it out random-like. I got two bags worth, which turned out to be two skeins of Lorna’s Laces in Ember, and two skeins of Socka Color in browns with sparkles! Both should be great knit up, and were WAY too good a deal to pass up.

And one more pic for you, just to round out your day:
Our ever so balanced breakfast from Saturday with the TechniViking (who has put his pics from the rainforest trip up in the gallery):

peace out

Hooray for xmas! Go Booger with your fibery self!

I’ll be up in the Vancouver area next month, and will be checking out as many yarn stores as I possibly can (which, if this trip is anything like last year, will be none). In Sheep’s Clothing has a fairly decent selection of the sock yarns even though the place is teensy. It was all kinds of cute, and her prices weren’t unreasonable. So. Now all y’all know.

On a completely related note (I’ll leave it to you to figure out the relationship there), I had SUCH a cool weekend. Saturday I finally got to meet Sam in person! She is amazing and wonderful and it was much fun. The Booger spent, get this, Five Straight Hours cranking the big-ol’ drum carder making batts for Kim to spin. She’s currently knitting herself up a hat out of the two skeins she ended up with. There was much spinning, and there were tasty vegan foodsnax (omg. If I could live on that apple pie and these donuts, I could be vegan. Alas. But those donuts? Not present at the demo, but available at hippie-marts everywhere, and worth the trip and the price. And that’s coming from a confirmed donut snob.). Other than the temperature in the greenhouse when we arrived (none of us were prepared for HOT), the day totally rocked. Especially the part after the demo when we got to go have dinner at Kim’s. Not only are Kim and her husband Franck both phenomenal cooks, so the food was super tasty, but then we had to take some chocolate home with us. Oh, oh the burdens we must bear…

Sunday morning, The Booger, who has up to this point never had the slightest interest in spinning on anything but spindles, decided that she wanted to learn to spin on the wheel. It was a rocky start, but once she got it, she really got it. I’ll have pictures of her first wheel-spun skeins later this week. They’re very cool.

So there you have it. Life is still a train wreck, but at least there was one good weekend in the middle of it all. Ooh! and I’m in the middle of making plans to invade Canada! Well, at least one small hotel in Vancouver over turkey-day weekend. And some yarn stores. And buttons? Did someone say buttons?

On the bright side, this means that Woooo! It’s sweater weather! And perfect sock knitting weather. And, well, yeah. I dig the hell outta that.

So, yes, with the bad comes good. Not always, mind you, but generally. Sometimes you have to wait a damn long time for the good after the bad, and by then you’ve forgotten the bad and it all seems so unrelated, but lo! it is not. So there.

If you’re in the Redmond area this weekend, there’s agonna be a spinnin’ demo at Classic’s Nursery (damn but I hope that’s the right link) on Saturday. Afternoonish, methinks. All afternoonish. C’mon by! Say hello!

The project was the Sunburst Pullover from the Summer 2002 Interweave Knits. I made it with Blue Sky’s Organic Cotton. The pattern was all kinds of fun to knit. The yarn? Divine. Yummy even. The finished sweater? Cute as hell until I wore it for 15 minutes. Then the inherent satan in it took over and it committed messy hara kiri before my eyes. The hem rolled in weird ways. The sleeves got shorter by the minute, until they were no longer the wonderful fingertip length that I love, but some god-awful chunky just-below-the-elbows nightmare. Other than that it was ok, but ferfuxake the ever shortening sleeves and the flippy hem action made me crazy. Alas. I’m pissed off at it, and am going to rip it right the hell apart and make a baby blanket out of it. So there. I’ll show *that* damn sweater. Ha!

In other news… uh… hmmm… Oh!
The Rogue for the booger? Yeah, in the, what, three weeks since she’s been down here (! yes! three whole weeks! it has been beyond freakin’ great), she has managed to grow. So it’s too short now. Alas. I’ll get some more yarn and make her a new one, bigger and thicker for winter.

Um, what else? Ooooh, there was the ugly yarn. Which isn’t quite so ugly any more. It’s not wearable yet, but at least I don’t cringe when I see the ugliness of it’s color anymore. (It was, btw, not something I originally dyed, it came to me in a trade and while it looked lovely in the photos, in real life it was the most sickly shade of aqua imaginable. It is now a VERY nice, saturated cobalt blue, which will, in due time, become a wonderful, saturated, dark greyish cobalt, which I will cheerfully wear. Huzzah!)

And pickles! I made dill pickles yesterday. 7 quarts of plain kosher dills (which ain’t kosher in any way, shape, or form), and two jars of spicy garlic dills for Critter Boy. Mmmm, and some raspberry/strawberry jam. It’s yummy. I’ll let y’all know how the pickles turn out when a) they’re done pickling and b) I can get someone to taste them. I hate dill pickles, but Critter Boy likes them, as do most of my friends, so I’m sure that six weeks from now we’ll have a verdict.

Beyond that there hasn’t been much to report. I did finish a super cute round lacy washcloth from the new new pattern from Fiber Trends. Fun pattern, that. And I’m almost ALMOST finished with the Lavold tank that I started a majillion years ago. Might even wear it tomorrow. We shall see.

I’ll try to bust out with the camera and actually post some pictures of some stuff tonight. That’d be nice, no?

I was reading Norma’s blog the other day, and got hatefully inspired by her stash documentation project. Then I got curious as to just how much yarn really is in the basement… Silly me.

Mission Falls Cotton? Yeah, apparently I got that. 50 skeins I’ve uncovered so far. FIFTY, people. And I haven’t even found all of it yet – I know I’ve got at least another 15 skeins tucked away in a partially finished project box.

The beginnings of the madness can be seen in the gallery. Descriptions will be added as soon as I can face it. And keep in mind that what you see there tonight is only the beginning. The tip of the iceberg. And I haven’t even started in with the fiber yet. Pounds and pounds and pounds of that too. Oy.

And for your chicken update, there’s a new gallery of chicklets .