Harlot

I spent the morning trying to figure out what to wear to the see the Yarn Harlot on tour. Do I go with the most impressive piece of knitting? Do I bring the really really bad sweater I made in 1987? Hmm.

I went with the Knit for Brains t-shirt, Purl necklace, and pi shawl. Oh and the socks, didn't forget the socks.

Except half way through the day I found I had a HUGE hole in one sock. I made these in January. This is not a good sign.

We arrived at 4 for her talk at 7, and we weren't even close to the first ones there.
We were a rowdy bunch of knitters.

I think we freaked out the manager a little bit.

She came out and took crowd pictures.

I took a whole bunch of blurry pictures of her. This is one of the only ones that came out.

And then my needle broke right in the middle of my cast on. VERY irritating.

That is an Addi Natura, one of my most favoritest needles. I didn't do anything at all stressful to it, it just broke.

Stephanie spoke and cracked us all up. Someone gave her a grey squirrel. (See, blurry pictures).

Her talk was hysterical. I haven't laughed that hard since I can remember. Awesome.

She talked a lot about the affect that knitting has on the brain, which I really got a kick out of. It was really mostly accurate too (which is unusual... usually I cringe when non-neuroscientists talk about brain research). Turns out I picked the right thing to wear!

My favorite was her quote of the conclusion of a Cambridge study that of course "it's not practical to carry emergency knitting for times of stress."

Ha!
We waited in line for a while by this guy who cracked me up with this very professional looking purple pointer.

I pulled out my sock to knit on in line and found out I'd broken *another* needle. This was a 1.5 brittney sock needle, so that wasn't terribly surprising. I probably squashed it in my bag. It happens when you knit with toothpicks.

When I was about 5 people away from the table the lens fell out of my glasses.

Now this was getting a bit ridiculous. Fortunately someone else in line had a swiss army knife. So I could you know, SEE when I got to meet her.

I have a couple of really blury pictures of her, but this is the only one that isn't blurry. She took a picture of me with my broken needles, and she said she'd been waiting for someone official to tell her if she was way off.

Nope, she got it pretty right on.

Sneak Peak

OK once again... I'm not posting

But that's because I've been designing...

Love

The Greencastle Fiber Event was awesome!

There was so much yarn and fiber that a couple of times I was actually overwhelmed.
We were good and shopped more than half of the booths before I saw this


Which I had to buy immediately. It's Alpaca silk.

I luuurve it.

It's considerably harder to spin than any wool I've used before, but, I'm getting it.

I did not even look at the wheels because I know they're not in my price range. I want one. A lot. I figure the only way I'm going to get one is if I find a used one somehow.
The other thing I went specifically to get was this: 1500 yards of organic undyed wool. I also got some natural dye stuff.

I've been collecting various undyed yarn, soon to appear (dyed) in my store, but I didn't have anything organic until now.

Stay tuned!
Oh and one other thing found it's way into my car.
She is an Angora English doe, about 7 weeks old.

Caitie has been asking for a rabbit since last year's fiber festival. She got books from the library, researched it a lot. I've said for years that I would let her get a pet when she turned 10. Which it so happens, she will be doing tomorrow. Dang, how did that happen so fast?

Not Nothing

I may not have been posting, but I haven't been doing nothing.

This is most of the knitting I did in March for the store

They range from newborn to 3T. Details to come on how to make those cargo pockets (those were fun :)

There are a few more things that aren't shown above. I'm in the midst of embellishing.
When I blocked and washed all of these, the amount of dye that came out of that bright pink soaker was so strong that I dyed this skein of yarn with it. It's a very subtle pink/white, I love it. It's going to look adorable on some baby girl!
Also, I wanted to mention that April is Autism Awareness month. 1 in 150 children in the US is autistic. And 1 in 94 boys. It should be considered a national crisis.

Many of you know my daughter is autistic. It's something we deal with every single day. For April we're all doing our part to raise awareness. So 10% of sales from my store for the month (including patterns) will be going to the Autism Society of Indiana.

Caitie is growing organic tomato plants and selling them to members of our local food coop for a few bucks to raise money too. I am intensely proud of her.

As Promised...

Yarn:

Hand painted 3 ply merino from 100purewool.com

Nothing

The longer I go without posting on my blog, the more I feel like I have to have something really really important to say, something great I have to reveal. Some great masterpiece I've been working on that's kept me so busy I haven't had time to type a whole sentence.

The truth is I've just been plain, ordinary busy. I worked on the mitts. I knit a million pairs of shorts for the store. I embellished. I volunteered at school. I carpooled, I delivered, I cooked dinner and cleaned the bathroom (less often than I care to admit on that one).

But I really had nothing at the moment to show you, and I'm not nearly as good at describing my everyday life as the Yarn Harlot. And now that I've got a few minor things I could post, I'm feeling like everyone will be thinking, we waited a month and all you have to show us is yarn!?

So, I have nothing to say, but I wanted to break my streak of not posting.

Tomorrow I will post yarn.