Stitches swag (even though I didn't go)

I have awesome friends!

Circumstances worked out such that I couldn't go to Stitches with everyone on Saturday. I couldn't get it through my head that it was a different weekend this year than last year, and didn't make the connection that it was on one of my work Saturdays until it was too late to request leave. *facepalm*

As you can guess, I ended up missing the whole thing. And then Jody showed up at Panera with some of the sample yarn that people had been giving out, and offered it to Jolene and me, since neither of us had been able to go.





470 yards of Malabrigo laceweight (!) in a gorgeous rusty orange, and Fibranatura Aspen in pinks and purples.

Yay to Jody for snagging the yarn, and to Jolene for saying, "Jen, you should take the Malabrigo and make a scarf out of it." :D

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My Northern Lights socks only got through about 4 pattern repeats before I faced the fact that they would be huge on me. Yeah, you start out with 55 stitches... which then immediately increases to 85 stitches. I'm thinking about just doing a basic toe-up... I haven't made plain socks yet.

The positive thing was that, for those 4 repeats, I actually did feather and fan without any major mistakes for once! Woohoo!

Renn Fest!

I spent a lovely day Sunday at the Renaissance Festival. It was a hot, dusty day out there... which is far superior to a cold, wet, and muddy day.







Fried foods, shopping, a couple of shows... 4 of us bought honey at The Bee Folks, and were joking about how now we need to have a blind honey tasting. I also got some herbal tea, and a purple velvet beret from Tall Toad, a lampwork glass pendant from Transparent Sands, along with my jar of mint honey.






I've also started socks for Socktoberfest:


Cherry Tree Hill Supersock "Northern Lights", and the Tropicana pattern from Magknits (which uses a feather and fan stitch). The pattern should be more visible once I have more than one repeat done... LOVE the colors in this yarn, though. Mostly black and dark purple, with bursts of magenta and green.

Musical theater geekout, sorry

Sweeney Todd trailer's up!!!

We did Sweeney Todd when I was in 10th grade. Sadly (and thankfully), all of the photographic evidence is at my parents' house. We didn't exactly pull in big box office receipts, nor had we gotten large audiences for Into The Woods the year before, so for 11th and 12th grade it was back to things like Wizard of Oz and Carousel. Those first two years, though... oh, we had such fun with those two shows. It was Sondheim-palooza. I'm so excited for this movie!

And in some knitting news, I finished the cables on the front pieces of Ljod. In another inch or so, I'll have to sort out the buttonhole situation (i.e. the pattern figures that you'll do one front, evenly space out the buttons on that, then place the buttonholes on the other front accordingly... which isn't helpful at all if you're knitting both fronts at the same time).

DonorsChoose

Ok, there's a little website out there called Television Without Pity. Nowadays I read mostly for the 24 and BSG recaps, which... yeah, none of those until 2008.

Anyhoo. Many of the TWoP recappers also maintain blogs/websites elsewhere, and one such site is Tomato Nation, run by Sars. Ordinarily, I wouldn't bother you all with "I read this site, so you should go check it out" stuff, but through the month of October, Sars is hosting a DonorsChoose challenge. DonorsChoose is a fantastic organization that matches sponsors with underfunded school projects submitted by teachers, many of whom are working in high poverty areas. Sars has gone through and earmarked $35,000 worth of projects for her challenge, and as of this post, TN readers have already raised over half of that. In one day. The mind, she boggles. We're set to blow the initial goal out of the water. :D

If you have a spare $10, $20, anything at all, click on through and pick out one of the challenge proposals to sponsor. Every bit helps, and there's always the sweet promise of Sars having to run around in a tomato costume (plus a giveaway contest for those who donate).


***Edited to add: The initial challenge has been met! Woohoo! There's now a bonus round set up here. Never underestimate the power of a bunch of folks on the internet who genuinely care about something. If you're a teacher, or you know any teachers, you're well aware of what they go through to try to give kids a decent education. Knowing how many teachers and students and schools are going to be helped because of this gives me such warm fuzzies...***