I’m officially OLD.

At the risk of annoying the vast legions of knitters who are young at heart – last week I officially landed in the “old” category.

Old = you no longer have children.

The two people I’ve birthed are officially adults. Therefore: I’m old.

Granted, Matthew will probably be forever somewhere between 3 – 10 years old, mentally, and in spite of the difficulties involved it still brings joy to my heart to see how excited he gets over things that most adults will simply sniff at. We’ll never lack for excitement on Christmas Eve in this household! Nor will we get much sleep that night...

Since Matthew and Rachel were born on consecutive days the third week of August tends to become Birthday Week, a no holds-barred extravaganza of parental indulgence. Sort of.

We went to the County Fair. Matthew will ride anything and everything and I went on most of them with him, but I completely refused to go on the ferris wheel and that horrible carousel swing ride (I’m terrified of heights) and after eating “fair food” we also nixed the ride that is really nothing more than a giant barf factory centrifuge.

Of course I had to check out the hand-craft exhibition – loved the quilts, but was a wee bit disappointed with the number of knitted/crocheted items displayed – a tiny fraction of the quilts. The winners were beautiful but it was a mere handful compared to previous years I’d seen. Every time I go to the fair I vow to submit something the following year… perhaps next year?

Over the weekend we went to Discovery Kingdom (locals will remember this as Marine World) and went on some seriously extreme rides.

I do love me those roller coasters, even the hundred feet high upside down twisty things, but still nixed that darned carousel swing. {{Shudder}}.

I also refused to go on any of the coasters that went backwards – if I can’t see where I’m gonna die, I’m Not Going!

I took my current sock in progress but upon pulling out my WIP on the ride to Vallejo I found my KnitPicks circular needle cable broken right at the join. DH (what a love!) even stopped at the Michaels on the way so I could look for a replacement needle – alas, Michaels doesn’t acknowledge needle sizes below a US size 4.

On the upside, with a nothing-ventured-nothing-gained hope, I asked at Discovery Kingdom’s guest services and was really happy to find out they had passes for disabled guests so we were able to bypass the few long lines and use the elevators to get to and from the rides. No waiting = no knitting. We still get (unfortunately) the glares for skipping lines – no one sees Matt going up and down stairs and has no idea how difficult it is on him and us – and that is always an unhappy situation. Matt looks just fine on level ground, but put a even a simple curb in the way and it become a whole 'nother story. Make it a dozen steps - yikes - lets just say one missed bleacher step got me a broken nose when Matt was fifteen years old and thirty pounds lighter...!

Sadly I discovered after our visit to to Discovery Kingdom that my cursed ginormous insteps wouldn’t fit the size I'd chosen for Queen Of Beads.... Splat – frogged!

While I wait for my KnitPicks replacement needle(s) and recover from my tragic visit to the frog pond, I’ve returned to my Hey Teach! Cardigan.

So silly – with the back and sleeves done, I had maybe ten rows to finish the front pieces before I abandoned this last year to the cold weather. The fronts are now done and with luck I’ll complete the button bands in the next day or three and have an Actual Finished Object – YAY!

So. Sock Summit.

Sock Summit was pretty much everything that I might have hoped for. Amazing people. Fabulous yarns. Outstanding classes. Voodoo doughnuts. I have to say I hated the lighting in the convention center – a migraine inducing set of yellowish fluorescents that had me on a steady dose of Imitrex, leaving me pretty loopy a lot of the time. Yech.

It was almost too much to believe at times. Barbara Walker is likely one of the most amazing people I've had the privilege to listen to. Tina Newton and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee cemented their statuses as goddesses in my book.

Parts of the trip were lonely and sad though. All of my stupid insecurities came screaming to the forefront, leading me to babbling like an idiot trying desperately to fit in and be liked. And failing miserably. I'm such a dork! In spite of myself I managed to make a few new friends and I hope to see some of them again. I wish I'd taken better pictures of them, but every last one is blurry.

The Ravelry party was big fun and I was glad I made myself go when what I really wanted to do was to hide in my hotel room. They handed out a really nice swag bag full of goodies!

I didn't have any particular shopping list and so I bought the things that really called to me. I blame the combination of Imitrex and wool fumes. But I'm not saying sorry ;-) It was really hard – there were so many beautiful hand dyes there and I have a long list of vendors I want to purchase from in the future.

All of these pretties make me happy! It is really hard to pick out a favorite from these… I was tickled to find a vendor who was selling items from her stash and purchased a skein of Kauni yarn that is bigger than my head and a skein of a beautiful lavender lace weight – each for $10.00.

At every fiber event I've gone to there is always one particular yarn that captures my heart and I find myself going back to that booth in a vain attempt to talk myself out of buying it. This time it was the gorgeous skein of pink/ grey/lavender colorway called Sakura from Wool Candy, shown in the left photo above, second from the left. Next to it are two skeins of Bugga! which was crazy popular and sold out in minutes. Of course I couldn't leave without my Blue Moon fix either!