Memorial Day weekend...

First, I finally made sense of the not-all-that-helpful set of instructions I found online for doing two socks at a time on two circulars.



I needed the two-at-once option because this is a large pair of mostly plain knee-high black kilt hose. One at a time? No way, not if I actually want to finish them. They're going with me to Montana, and between the flights and layovers and time in the car and time sitting around at J's house, I'm hoping for some significant progress on them.

Also, after almost 2 years, it was time to upgrade my stash storage from the wire cubes...



I was tired of having to go digging through the wire cubes every time I was looking for something. The shelves on these are smaller, so nothing will get buried behind 5 other bags. It's more-or-less organized by weight. I'm loving how manageable and reasonably-sized it looks. :)

Huzzah

We had our Medieval Mania program at the branch... think Ren Faire, but much much smaller and without any food or beverages or port-a-potties.

I wore three things that I had made. Given the following descriptions, guess which one got the most compliments:

My Simple Knitted Bodice, which took me several months to make.
My Chanson en Crochet, which took several days to make.
A crocheted lace cap, which I made in less than an hour the night before the program.



Seriously.

Renaissance Rose Cap from Inner Child Crochet
Yarn: Rowan Summer Tweed, less than 1 skein
Size F (3.75 mm) crochet hook

A tiny plied sample

I've been playing around with my new Golding spindle, and I decided a couple of nights ago to try plying what I had... in truth, it's the first time I've ever spun anything thin enough to even be able to *think* about plying, so this was a first.





This roving is a bit hard to work with on a drop spindle. It's some Karaoke from SWTC, so it has soy silk, and it sticks to EVERYTHING. It spins up nicely, it was just that the drafted pieces I was working with kept deciding that they were going to stick to my arm and tear into multiple pieces... and we won't talk about the couple of times that I got the fiber tangled around the single on the spindle.

Gotta love that colorway, though.

Sheep and Wool lootz

"Yeah yeah, you did stuff, you saw people, blah blah... show us the yarn, woman."

C*EYE*Ber Fiber sock yarn, colorway Napa







The Sweet Sheep superwash merino, colorway May Day (pretty appropriate for a May festival, right?)







Tess' Designer Yarns Super Socks and Baby





Tess' Superwash Lace





And then the thing I had no idea I was going to buy. Hello, Golding drop spindle.




I also got a book about making kilt hose and stockings, since Nick from our Star Wars group would very much like a pair of kilt hose. That'll probably be my main project for a while... I don't mind taking forever on projects for myself, but I feel like I should crank a bit harder on stuff for other folks.

Maryland Sheep and Wool 2008!

This is going to be a lengthy, photo-heavy post; consider yourselves warned.



J and I had a very nice trip to South Dakota, where we saw Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse and more kitschy tourist shops than I ever knew existed, and got massages, and went home not wanting to kill each other. We had a great time, and I'm already planning to go see him at the end of the month. :)

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This past weekend was MDS&W, which is always crazy and fun. I even worked my way up to it by doing a bit of pre-shopping the weekend before, and got 2 skeins of "Tabali" from Esther Bitran Hand Dyes:





It's cotton and viscose, and has a really neat look to it from the different weights of the singles that were plied.

Friday night, I hung out at Erin's pre-MDSW party at the C*EYE*Ber Fiber studio, along with a few of our usual Knit Night crew, Sarah, Stacey, Gin, Michelle from The Sweet Sheep, Dawn from Knitting Gnome, and tons more I'm forgetting because I didn't take a single picture. *facepalm* Erin has such a great space there, and we were even able to spread out into the room next door.



Saturday was S&W day. Since Jolene just signed the paperwork to buy Cloverhill (YAY!), a lot of our group were helping out at the booth. Coleen had the afternoon shift, so we wandered around together for the morning. I got to ooh and ahh over the pieces that she and Jody had entered for competition.







And of course, there was some looking at fearsome beasties...


And just a smidge of shopping...


That's the Cloverhill booth. Jolene and Jody and Sarah and Coleen (and many others, I'm sure) did an amazing job putting together the displays and running things smoothly. The booth was full of people every time I saw it... Can't go wrong with a booth full of gorgeous yarn and fiber from indie dyers and spinners! I was thrilled to see them doing so well - yay for my gals!

This is long enough already, so the loot gets its own post later. :)