Yarn Radar

J and I were in Billings for a weekend trip a few weeks ago. While we were driving around, I found Purl Yarn Boutique, a brand new yarn store! J joked that I must have some kind of yarn radar... I have a tendency to find yarn any time we go out of town.

Anyway, we went in, and it's a great store. Very open and uncluttered, friendly staff, and two adorable shop dogs. I'll definitely go back next time we're in Billings.

J was drawn to the Manos display, and picked out this skein of Maxima in the Arctic colorway:


And I picked up a few skeins of this gorgeous red Spud & Chloe Fine, maybe for a second go at a Whisper Cardigan:


I can't get over how smooshy this stuff is!

Huck's Room

I love when the mail at work contains a telltale bag of yarn. I'd have it mailed to my home address, but I no longer trust my mail carrier with anything of value. He's taken to periodically wadding my mail into a ball before sticking it in the mailbox. Seriously.

Anyway... yarn




Lorna's Laces Swirl DK in Jimmy Beans Wool August colorway "Huck's Room". I have 4 skeins, which should be enough to make a little shoulder shawl.

Antidote for the blahs

Look what showed up today to help combat the rainy day blahs:




You may know the drill by now: it's a Jimmy Beans limited edition color. Again. This one is the June 2009 offering, called "Jimmy's Journey", and I'm a wee bit in love with it.

No decent shawl pictures yet, owing to the rain today. Tomorrow should be clear, so I'll shoot for then.

Ah-CHOO

Look at this face:


And this "Hey, where ya goin'?!" pose:


You would never know to look at these beasts that they are agents of destruction. Wet, stinky, allergen-bearing monsters. Lounging and baa-ing atop their layer of WET HAY, which just added that extra oomph. I was fine when I walked into the sheep barn. Not so by the time I came out on the other side.

But they sure are cute, eh? I just can't stay mad at them. ;)

Sunday was my Sheep and Wool day... way too much "real life" stuff to do on Saturday, including some general housekeeping and making from-scratch samosas for my D&D group Saturday night. Sunday was a rather wet day, but it was nice to be able to move freely and not be squashed by throngs of fiber-crazed festivalgoers. Saw some of the gals at the Cloverhill booth, stuck to my budget, and got some beautiful yarn.

Like what?

How about some Lavender Sheep superwash merino sock yarn from the Cloverhill booth?

"Bordeaux" is a perfect name for this yarn, which is all wonderful shades of reddish-purple. It made me promptly break my "No sock yarn" rule. Could you resist this?

Or some merino/silk from Ellen's 1/2 Pint Farm?

I believe this is the "Aquarium" colorway. Those blues and teals caught my eye as soon as I walked into the booth. This picture shows off the "shiny factor" very nicely.

And there was also a big hank of Duet from Brooks Farm:


Somewhere down the line, I'm going to take a look at how my two colors of Duet look striped together...

Both skeins have the same beige in them... it might work.

Eye candy

I spent my Saturday outside on my balcony, knitting. It was a gorgeous day here: 75 degrees and sunny. PERFECT outdoor knitting weather. I gathered up a smaller project and a glass of iced tea, and had a blissful afternoon.

A couple of days ago, I played around a bit with my camera and my Lorna's Laces stash. The next best thing to actual yarn--pictures of yarn:

I finished a sleeve!

The ball of yarn I'm on, working very hard


The current sleeve-in-progress:


And not just any sleeve, but a SECOND sleeve. You can see the first sleeve hiding in the background in the above picture. I spent a lot of time in NJ knitting and watching the NCAA conference tournaments with my mom, and finished the sleeve while I was there.

I also ordered some more Lorna's Laces...


This showed up on Monday, which was grey and dreary and involved my coworkers and me spending the morning cursing at Verizon. Again.

The telltale bag of yarn from Jimmy Beans Wool made it better:


How could that NOT cheer a person up? The colorway is "Robin's Eggs", which is the April '09 limited edition color. It's like candy. Smooshy wool candy.

Fireworks!

It rained here on the 4th, but I still got some fireworks:



Ha! I kill me. Anyway, say hello to the special July colorway of Lorna's Laces from Jimmy Beans Wool.



I love it. It doesn't look much like the picture on the site, but that's fine with me. JBW's picture is washed out; the yarn in person is very bright, very colorful, and very summer-y.



I've been staring at black 5x1 ribbing for the last couple of weeks, so I loved opening the package and pulling THIS out.



New yarn probably makes me far happier than it should. ;)

I can quit whenever I want

This is the June 2008 special Lorna's Laces colorway "Blueberry Snowcone".





Ok, maybe I have a couple of yarns in my stash that are this same blue/black/purple combo, but that doesn't mean I have a problem.



That's only 15 skeins there... Ok, 17 now with the Lorna's Laces. That's perfectly reasonable, right?

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.

Snow day!

Things aren't bad where I am, but I'm guessing other parts of the county must have been a mess this morning. Whatever led to it, woohoo!

I've spent the morning so far poking around Yahoo Travel, and will soon go work on some knitting.... speaking of which:



I went to All About Yarn on Wednesday before work, and was so excited to see that they're carrying the Manos Silk Blend. It's still one big single, but seems to be less thick-and-thin than the wool, and it's SO SOFT. Also got some Jo Sharp Silk Road DK Tweed for a hat, which will be mostly dark brown with just a wee bit of light blue:

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

-----

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!

Something pretty for the weekend

Colinette Shimmer Five, "Tuscany"

My hands smell like wool

You cannot believe how good I was at MDS&W.

A big group from Knit Night went, along with some Friends of Knit Night, and we all gathered at Coleen's for breakfast/coffee/mimosas before heading out. Check out the watermelon that Coleen carved for the breakfast spread. She made us a lovely melon sheep to get everyone in the mood for yarn, yarn, yarn!


(Those are her knitted barnyard animals surrounding it)

Did I almost get left behind at Coleen's? Oh, quite. I blame yarn frenzy.

I think I've reach a point where I'm really quite comfortable with the size of my stash. I didn't get much (I had a nice chunk of my budget left at the end of the day), but I LOVE the couple of purchases I made.

Some Brooks Farm Four Play in whatever colorway this is:

It's all lavender-y purples and burnt oranges and browns, and is GORGEOUS stuff. Soft and scrumptious. I loved the Four Play yarn at Stitches, but was already getting a big skein of Duet and didn't want to go nuts at the first booth I stopped at... so I waited for S&W. It wasn't an "I must have this yarn" thing, but I knew that if I was going to buy anything from their booth, I wanted it to be Four Play in whatever color grabbed me. I got enough for a tank top or a vest.

And there's this Fleece Artist roving from the Peace Weavers booth:

I think this might be my S&W tradition: buying extraordinarily bright roving. I grabbed this while Diane was picking out her Sea Silk. By this point in the day, I had mostly gotten the sunscreen out of my right eye and could actually see properly. :)

I also have one of the official t-shirts--purple for me, natch. Jody's husband was such a good sport and stood in line for all of our t-shirts! Woohoo!

We were very excited to see that Amie's Sock Ness Monster socks nabbed her a first place ribbon, Jolene's yellow socks ALSO got a first place ribbon, and her lace shawl got a fifth place ribbon. Knit Night gals represent! :D And Stacey got stopped by at least one person wanting to take a picture of her Turkish stockings, which are the coolest things ever. We were all excited to get to see them in person.

All in all, a really nice day spent with my friends, surrounded by yarn. :)

Rowan All Seasons Cotton

Earlier this week, it was 25 degrees and snowing... Today, it's in the mid-50s. Seems very fitting to me to show off the Rowan All Seasons Cotton I received yesterday, since Maryland is doing everything it can to cram all the seasons into this week. :D





I ordered this from the Knitting Garden. I'm using some pale green All Seasons Cotton for my Bejeweled scarf, and I LOVE working with it, so when I saw this stuff on closeout for $5/skein (it normally goes for $8/skein), there wasn't a whole lot of debate over whether I was getting it. I'll admit, the picture on the website was more of a purple, but I'm really taken with the actual shade: a nice dark mauvey pink. I don't know exactly what I'll do with it, but I can see it being a shrug or a springy tank top/shell.

Unicorn chaser

If you read Boing Boing, you're familiar with the concept of the unicorn moment. Don't know about you, but I know I certainly need something along those lines...



How's a yarn porn moment? Does that work?

This is some loveliness from Wool in the Woods. It's called "Rayflax", a laceweight rayon/flax blend that caught my eye. It's nice stuff. I have a few various skeins of laceweight yarns... Think someone's trying to tell me to try actual lace?

I've been watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show for most of the day (the libraries closed at 1, and since I start at 1 on Tuesdays... snow day!). The Pedigree "shelter dogs" ads are killing me. "I know that I am a good dog, and I just want to go home." *sniffle* They're up there with Hallmark ads, in terms of emotional blackmail.

If you're in the area and are getting the snow/ice/freezing rain combo, be safe. It's a mess out there.