Sometimes yarn cajoles. Sometimes it bellows.

I went on a bit of a yarn crawl today with several of my SnB friends – Cheryl (our gracious driver), Terry (who provided the cute little GPS gadget) and Nancy, a co-worker at my LYS.

Foolishly I forgot to bring my camera, so all I can do is show the aftermath. We started at Green Planet Yarn – what a beautiful shop! This is very close to the kind of shop I’d open if I had lots of money just lying about when I win the Lotto. The owner, Beth, is a delightful woman, and I wholeheartedly hope that her shop enjoys nothing but success. Her yarns are all organic or eco-friendly, and I couldn’t resist this:

This is Blue Sky Organic cotton – soft as a cloud. It is a bit more rust-colored than this photo shows, and not the sort of color I’d usually pick out, but my friends said it looked good with my coloring.

If my current February Lady Sweater ends up looking good on me, this is what this yarn is destined for. I’d love to have a light weight cotton sweater. The weather right now is miserably hot and I’m having to force myself to work on anything woolly.

Cheryl got the same color too!

Next on the agenda was Bobbin’s Nest, a very sweet little shop with a small but nice selection of yarns and an equally nice selection of Amy Butler fabrics. Now I know where to get those fun, kitchy fabrics that you cannot find at your average Joann Fabrics stores. I didn’t buy any yarn there, but did get a pattern for some very cute fingerless mitts, called Truffle.

Last on the list was Purlescence Yarns, one of the very few shops that stocks Blue Moon yarns. They’d begun to receive some of their fall yarn shipments and the place was crammed and a bit disheveled from its usual clean and neat appearance. While I like the yarns that they stock I have to admit I’ve never been more than tepid about the reception – I think I’ve been there six or seven different times and only once been greeted or acknowledged – until I went to the register to pay for something. Maybe it’s just me…

Anyhoo, after groping the STR and making mental notes about future colorways I’d like to have, I found the Dream In Color yarns and this color was begging to go home with me. Screaming, pleading, and bellowing, actually.

Dream In Color – Baby. Ooooooooh.

No way was this staying behind. 700 yards of lace beauty!

We ate a quick lunch and headed back home, but stopped in to admire Terry’s enviable score of some Wollmeise yarn. Now I see why everyone loves this stuff – the pictures don’t do it justice

I finally slogged through the stockinette section on Rachel’s sweater, so it is nearly done. I’ve got the ends to weave in and buttons to sew on, and I think I’m going to add a crochet chain to the inside of the neckline because it seems to be loose and tends to sag.

I may also reinforce the button band with some old-fashioned grosgrain ribbon since the button band doesn’t look to be quite as stable and firm as I’d like. It is pinned shut for the photo, but it is just short of being wavy.

The linen part of the yarn is making its presence known too – you can see the wrinkles! I’ll get a photo of Ray actually wearing it, but this may have to wait until the temperature cools here a bit – she tried it on for fit (and it did fit!) but couldn’t get it off fast enough… 90 degrees+ is not sweater weather and we don’t have an air conditioner.

The February Lady sweater is moving right along. I’m done with the garter-section of the yoke and am trying to figure out the eyelet spacing. Actually I’m trying to decide if I even want the eyelet row, but this yarn is so springy I don’t think that they’ll show that much. Loving the yarn, in spite of it being wool and all, and too frackin’ hot to even think about wearing right now!

Late breaking new: Miss Rachel has passed her AP exams!! (which hopefully translates to college college credit for my almost-a-high-school-senior-kid) Her comment: "Now Daddy has to buy me something shiny!"

To which I responded "when has he ever done that?" Her: "Well, never, but I can try, can't I?"

Can't fault her optimism!

It's been a while.

So much to say, so little time these days. Work continues to be just plain nuts. There may (or may not) be a recession on, but thankfully no one has informed my clients. I actually had to fudge some May hours into June for one client so as not to overrun the budget... I've never had that dubious pleasure before!

Short updates: My brother evidently has an angel sitting on his shoulder and has made a remarkable recovery. He seems to be okay for now, though I think he still drinks. Still living in his own crazy world he chose Friday May 13th to finally wed his long-time girlfriend in a civil ceremony at the county courthouse.

Some more belated posts: On the very night I found out about my brother being hospitalized, the adorable teen daughter went to her first prom. I do believe I spent more on her dress/hair/makeup/manicure/pedicure than I did on my own wedding finery! In a stunning (and oh so typical) act of grace I managed to drop my DH's 35 mm digital camera square on the lens (yep, broke it) so the pictures from my little purse camera are pretty ehhh.... I'll eventually get more from my friend (whose lovely 35mm I abscoded for a time, but these will do for now. This is Rachel and designated date-boy, Mark.






One of the other parents was very gracious in hosting a dinner party for eighteen or twenty prom couples, with parents filling in as wait-staff - a truly great idea - safe, sober and fun.





All the pretty girls --- and all the handsome boys.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In mid-July the girl and I will begin the College Tour, but for right now it appears she has her heart set on Cal Poly, with a business major (and throwing a bone to her parents) a minor in music.


And while spring is pretty much done I managed to snap a couple of photos of the view from my upstairs window - critters raiding the qumquat tree.
I do love spring - except for the lunatic mockingbird living in the tree near our bedroom who invariably begins his search for his lady love at, oh, one a.m. Perhaps two a.m. if he isn't feeling so energetic. DH is ready to blow the dust off his pellet gun... Earplugs can only drown out so much. Mockingbirds are loud!

Knitting continues here, often into the wee hours of the morning, since my sleep issues don't seem to be letting up, mockingbirds notwithstanding.

I finished a shrug of K1C2's Second Time Cotton - this will be a shop sample if I can ever get around to writing up the pattern. Easy-peasy, except for the writing-it-up part. It does defy photos, so I'll have to get one of Ms. Adorable modeling it since I sized it to be small/medium and I, well, am not a small/medium.












I"m also working on another shop sample but ultimately it will go to Ms. Adorable.

It is so her.














Oooooh! A couple of my SnB friends went to the Blue Moon Sock Camp earlier this year - which made me wildly jealous - so I joined the Socks That Rock Club in the hopes that this might just secure my spot in next year's camp. I was sort of shocked that Blue Moon was still accepting memberships for 2008 but delighted to have gotten in. It was sort of like Christmas in May to get my first shipment. Wow. Love the colorways I received. I think that these will be my vacation projects since we're supposed to pack very very lightly and (howls the queen of over-packing) I'm just not wired that way!

Reality is beginning to set in regarding our upcoming vacation plans, and my stomach is doing a bit of a lurch just typing this up. One of our oldest friends is turning fifty and to celebrate she and her husband have chosen to go on a river rafting trip. Six days through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. Mind you, my idea of camping is to ensconce myself at Camp Hilton where "making do" involves little tiny bottles of shampoo and perhaps forgetting my razor. This is six days of no showers, no bathrooms, no mattresses. In August.

I've realized that this leaves me with five or six weeks to lose twenty or thirty pounds, get a tan and pack. This should be do-able, right? I can do at least one of these. How much does sock yarn weigh, exactly?

Honestly I think the hardest part will be missing my kid's birthdays. Rhonda, who's birthday we're celebrating, turns 50 on August 19th. This is also our son Matthew's birthday. Daughter Rachel's birthday is the next day, August 20th. And Rachel begins her senior year of high school on the 22nd so we'll miss arena check-in as well. Actually I won't miss arena check-in at all (think three hundred kids plus checkbook-toting parents crowded into a blistering hot gym moving from the get-your-ID-picture-station to get-your-gym-clothes-station to get-your-athletic-league-card station...) We have to decide in the next week or two whether it'd be easier to get Ray her own checking account or just hand her four or five signed checks.

I shall continue to knit, if only to save my sanity.

What. A. Day. Twice.

This last month has been insane. Work-wise, I’ve been buried. I think this last month and a half I’ve had at best three non-working days. bitch, bitch, bitch... Family stuff is wearing me down too. Three weeks ago my brother suffered a series of seizures that kept him in intensive care for four days. He is still hospitalized, and yesterday it became pretty clear that he isn’t going to return to anything near “normal” for a long time, if ever. As his nearest next-of-kin I’ve begun to look into getting power of attorney so I can try to help him as best I can. Our father is currently out of the country and I’m waiting for him to call me so I can fill him in on the sad details. The saddest part is that his condition is directly attributed to drugs and alcohol and something that he could have avoided if he could have found a way to ask for and accept help. Heartbreaking.

Today we took our son Matt to San Francisco for his dental work to be done. Because of Matt’s disability he needs to be under a full general anesthetic for any dental work to be done, so the doctors take care of anything and everything that needs attention. Unfortunately for poor Matty this also turned out to be having all four wisdom teeth extracted. It’s been a long day for us since the doctors wanted us in SF before 6:00 am which meant getting up at, oh, 4:15 this morning. Unfortunately for me I almost never ever fall asleep before midnight unless Ambien is involved, so I’m staggeringly tired right now and still trying to scrub from my brain the conversation about just how big that bladder tumor was... what's that... that's your pee... no really, that's your pee... yes, it'll be pink for a while because of your surgery... yes, blood... in your pee... no, it's okay, really... that was conducted on the other side of the recovery room. Gaahhhhh. But on the upside I did get some knitting done:

These are the Waving Lace Socks from Favorite Socks using the Malabrigo Sock Yarn test sample I got at Stitches West. There is teensy little problem with the yarn however – I’m enjoying it so much I’ll be really sad when I can’t immediately get my hands on more!

And I got almost all the way through the last row of clue 3 of the Mystic Light Mystery Shawl when the nurse told us that Matt was in the recovery room, so in this photo it is more of a lacy amoeba than a lacy shawl. The yarn is Plymouth Happy Feet, a very reasonably priced sock yarn.

And because I just don’t have enough projects on my needles I signed up for the Goddess Knits Anniversary Mystery Shawl. This one is supposed to be a round (pi) shawl and the really intriguing part is that the designer is offering different lace motifs for the expanding circle, making it more of a mandala. It means that potentially everyone could have a unique design – a totally cool idea.

The designer has chosen Jojoland Harmony, a laceweight with really long runs of color. This rang a bell in my mind and I rummaged out of the stash a purchase from Stitches West -

This is “Graceful”, 1800 yards of deep rich laceweight. I think this is going to be something really beautiful.




And a P.S. for Bets:
I was getting spam postings so I changed my post comments settings and this somehow disabled comments altogether. Another charming Blogger eccentricity, I 'spose.

Sort of like Burning Man, but without the misery *

*overheard at the Maker Faire.

Today my husband and I actually attended a crafty kind of event together. That alone makes it an event. The Maker Faire is a total hoot, heavily populated with geeks, freaks and full on nerds. I was so at home - with my people. I had been sort of on the fence about going this year, but hearing that the Yarn Harlot would make an appearance sold me. What sold my husband were two phrases: The Eepy Bird guys and "power tool races". With a little planning and a bit of freakish good luck we actually arrived early - a very good thing as it turned out, because I heard horror stories of traffic jams and limited parking. This put me in the extraordinary position of being one of the very first people to arrive for the Yarn Harlot, and I got front and center seats - one for me and three for a few of my fellow SnB members. I was pretty stunned. Stephanie, as always, was hilarious and utterly charming.






I even got a picture of me and the traveling sock (woo hoo!) and Stephanie holding my in-progress Malabrigo socks. Why I'm squinting like that I haven't a clue. This is why I hate pictures of myself!





I scored some beautiful yarn from Ceallach Dyes . Silly me, I kept pronouncing it like “sell-ack” – when it is actually Gaelic and pronounced as “Kelly” – the name the dyer goes by. Her work is beautiful and I think this will be perfect for the Spring Mystery Shawl . Yes, I am a total sucker for those mystery lace things. Kelly is even local to the Bay Area and I predict she’ll see more business soon. Her stuff is beautiful – “solar” dyed too, which even impressed my husband.





There were so many amazing things to see that I found myself wishing I’d purchased the two-day ticket. Perhaps next year. Here are a few random samples:







The Eepy Bird Diet Coke + Mentos Show. Yes, we got wet.

Odd bicycles.

Really odd.

Man-made lightning. Very cool.

And very large… things.

And courtesy of the MCY thread on Ravelry I saw this tonight – and can’t quit giggling.

You’d think I’d be over it by now.

It's been one year today since we had to put Salt to sleep.

I'm still not over it. I still miss him fiercely. I read a news column in the paper a couple of years ago about "lifetime dogs" – those dogs that you remember forever. The ones that hold a special place in your heart, no matter what dog you've had before or after. Salt was a lifetime cat, and there is a Salty-shaped hole in my heart to this day.

I have a low threshold of amusement.

The camera has returned, so here are the latest pictures.

This is, of all things, the toilet at my client's new place of business. For some reason, this struck me as hilarious.






The toilet seat cover had a trout on it too.

And here is proof positive that knitting can be accomplished even in the limited flight time between Boise and San Jose. This is a soon-to-be shop sample of a shrug knit in Second Time Cotton:

Sometimes my life is a (badly written) sitcom.

Have you ever seen a sitcom episode where the hapless character is locked out of his(her) hotel room sans clothing? That was me this morning. Not quite so embarrassing, but incredibly stupid, and (after the fact) pretty laughable.

A week or so ago the doorknob on our kitchen/garage door finally gave up and broke (picture DH and DD opening door only to find the detached doorknob in hand and insert laugh track here). The old door lock would not allow you to open it unless was unlocked which apparently is no longer being made because of the safety factor. DH replaced it with a fancy brass number that doesn't require the door to be unlocked to exit. See where this is going? Rachel and I have both locked ourselves out repeatedly, but we have a key stashed nearby so it hasn't been too much of a problem. Rachel left at the crack of dawn for her first college campus visit(!!) and DH also left for work early this morning, but forgot something inside the house so he used the stashed key to let himself back in. Annnndddd left the key in his pocket.

When I got out of the shower this morning I remembered that it was St. Patrick's Day, so clad in nothing more than a towel I headed out to the garage/laundry to fetch my freshly washed green sweater. The door locked behind me.

Many curse words ensued.

Good news: I had enough clothes available to almost dress myself properly (we shall not discuss the missing bits). Bad news: our neighbor with the spare key was gone. Possible good news: with a broom handle and a good deal of stretching I can reach through the cat-door and just barely knock the keys hanging on a hook in the kitchen to the floor. Praying that one of the keys hanging up is a door key I flail away and knock several random sets of keys off the wall, then drag them to the cat flap. Almost dressed and with uncombed wet hair, I gleefully head to the front door... and none of them is a door key. Good news: someone forgot to lock the front door (DH or DD, doesn't matter – the front door is unlocked!).

DH got a very pointed email this morning…

Last week I had to go to Boise on somewhat short notice. I was going up upload a photo or two but evidently Rachel borrowed my camera this morning for her visit to the CalPoly campus today, so those will have to wait for a day or two, along with photos of the smidge of knitting I managed to do. Like so many knitters, I pack enough yarn for two weeks worth of knitting yet only manage a few hours of knitting. I was able to gift some really pretty Malabrigo and Manos to my cousin Lori who was kind enough to put me up in Boise, and feed me spectacularly to boot. Such a deal – a couple pounds of the heavenly Major Dickason's coffee from Peet's and a mini-round of to-die-for Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam cheese and Lori provides lodging! If we were ever to move from the SF Bay Area, these two things would be on my top ten list of most-missed items.