Maybe it just means that I really like it.....

Okay, I'm back from the yarn shop now. What a nice, nice store. Good inventory, and super-duper nice people. I was able to score some of the Neighborhood Fiber sock yarn, so I was very happy. I didn't go way overboard either, which is impressive. Here is my haul.

I got the Neighborhood Fiber studio sock in Kingman Park, Tofutsies sock yarn in some color that I can't even think of how to reference seeing as how I don't have it in front of me, and some Malbrigo goodness. The Malbrigo is lovely, but apparently doesn't like to be photographed. Here's a much darker shot that's a more accurate representation of it's color.

Frankly I surprised myself a little with my Tofutsies purchase. I'd been wanting to try it out since I read about it's impending release, but I just haven't been thrilled with the colors. They had a sock knit up with it at the store and it looked nothing like what I've seen poking around online. I initially went straight for the purple/pink yarn that the model was knit up with but then stopped myself when I recalled that I have socs made from Fixation that are almost the exact same color. After picking up and putting down about 4 different colorways, I finally decided on the one which I purchased. The whole ordeal got me thinking though, and reminded me of something I noticed the other day at work and my shopping practices at MDS&W. The first thing was me noticing how some of the colors from Art yarns are exactly the same as those of Scarlet Fleece. I was in awe because while I realize that there are only so many colors out there, these two colorways were exactly the same. Scarlet Fleece is a hand dyer, too, which made it more weird. Anyhow, I then thought about my freakish STR splurge at MDS&W and how I later said that I could tell if I really liked a color if I made a mad dash to scoop some of it up twice. Anyway, today I got to thinking about what I've got going on in the stash and on the needles. This is just a minor wedge of all that's going on, but do you notice anything?

Here I have another Fixation sock I'm reworking (I frogged a pattern out of it last night and am redoing it all in stockinette), some STR in Algae, and the Tofutsies from today. This picture doesn't really show the lime green in the Tofutsies, but it's there. Then we have this.

Hello! Totally the same freakin' thing! I mean, I suppose I could look at it as me just really liking these certain color combinations, but it's like that with sooooo much of my stash. It's like I've just gone from yarn company to yarn company buying the same exact thing. Thankfully I've bought so much that I have just about every color represented, only in a giant clump of sameness. I'll just have to be a little more aware with my shopping from here on out. The funny thing is that a lot of the colorways I buy come home with me because I think they're so unique. I must have some sort of short term memory loss when it comes to fiber.

Busy, busy, busy

What's that saying...."There's no rest for the wicked" or something like that. Well, I must be one of the wickedest then. That's not necessarily such a bad thing considering the modern connotation of the word as being something ultra cool. Anyhow, the end of school has yet to bring me any peace and/or relaxation. I haven't had a day off yet, and I'm sad to report that my sleeping issues from winter break have resurfaced. Those issues being that I no longer sleep.
So today my task is to drive my mother to UM and then drive her home a few hours later. Then it dawned on me, Hey! I can jaunt on over to A Tangled Skein and check things out. I hear Neighborhood Fiber Co. dropped off a delivery not too long ago. Now my day sucks far less ass! Pictures later.......

Seven Facts

This is a meme that I found on Storm Moon Knits. While I was not officially tagged, she mentioned that she would be interested to see what I would come up with and , after some thought, I was a bit curious to see what I would come up with as well. I find myself living in sort of a dichotomy between feeling that it's terribly difficult to think of 7 facts that would be of any interest and feeling that it's terribly difficult to choose a mere seven things from the vast pool of facts about me. So, here it goes.

1. The first profession I ever wanted was to be a hooker. Oddly enough, one of my sisters wanted to be a hooker when she was younger, too. I don't really know what her reasoning was, but I know that I had the impression that hookers were fabulous and had rockin' clothes and went to fabulous parties and all the guys loved them. They were also very independent and didn't take too much shit from anyone. Now, looking back, I think my most of my career aspirations came from watching a few too many Jamie Lee Curtice movies at too young of an age. Things swiftly changed when we got cable and I saw a crack whore giving a guy a bj in a filthy alley while watching a documentary on something....probably crack whores. I can still recall my feeling of ,"Whaaa...??Uh....hold up...". That totally changed the course of my life. My sister didn't become a hooker either.

2. I don't have a complete brain. I was born with a brain defect that didn't really show itself until I was 12 or 13. I had to have 3 surgeries in total and was in the hospital for many months. They had to cut off part of my brain that had dried up. I should be a lot taller, and I like to think that I'd be a freaking genius if I had a full brain. In reality though, I'm only missing pieces that have to do with my balance and coordination. If you ever see me walking around like a drunk, it probably has more to do with my brain sending out creepy commands rather than actual liquor consumption. Besides, I generally stay sitting down when I'm drunk.

3. Speaking of my brain....I blew the back of my head open once at a WWE (at the time it was still WWF) event at the Patriot Center (which doesn't exist anymore). I left the hospital after either my first or second surgery and went to the event, got all spazzy and excited because I LOVE wrestling, ruptured all my stitches and had a hole in the back of my head. Yay, fun! I also once blew out the back of my head with a really bad sneeze. I like the wrestling story better, and I think the WWE should give me some sort of fan honors. That event may or may not have been the same one where a wrestler threw a quarter into my sisters eye, leaving a scar. That's the same sister who also wanted to be a hooker.

4. Due to the various back-of-head-blowing-out incidents, I had to have my head patched together with cadaver pieces. Yummy!

5. I was born a freakishly huge baby. My mom thinks I was born a month late, but my sister (the one with the quarter in the eye and hooker aspirations) was kind enough to regale me with the story of catching my parents in the act of conceiving me, being scarred by it, and knowing for a fact that I was born right on time. Anyhow, (yuck) I was so gigantic that I couldn't wear any of the baby things. I had to have big kid diapers and all that. I also pushed myself up on my hands in a crawling like position and cried big tears. They used me as some sort of freak-show exhibition for a few days before releasing me. One of my nephews was pretty freakishly large, too, but he didn't do too much of the weird stuff. He did projectile vomit pretty continuously for the first few years of his life though........perhaps we're some sort of demon breed. P.S. I almost never throw up.

6. I am an incredibly awkward sleeper. This has just been the way it is from the time I was born (see notes of freakishness in #5). When I was an infant, I would sleep flat on my back with my arms and legs spread out around me. I also spread my fingers and toes apart while I slept. My mothers theory is that I was rebelling against being crushed in her womb, seeing as how I was so monstrously huge. I think I must have spread out a bit in her womb as well, because I destroyed her abdominal wall. For those of you who have met my mom and witnessed her sort of apple-ish shape, a lot of that has to do with me. Back to the sleeping....there have been numerous times where I've woken up turned completely around in my bed, or even with my legs vertically pressed up against a wall. I also frequently flail about in my sleep and have mildly violent dreams. I always had to sleep away from other people when I had slumber parties and whatnot because sometimes I would punch people while I was sleeping. That mostly went away, but within the past 8 years I have broken an ex boyfriend ribs in my sleep, and thought I broke my hand while slamming it against a trunk. I also tend to build a nest around myself while I sleep and there are many pictures of me wrapped inside a huge piles of pillows/blankets. The bright side of this sleep issue is that I always get to have my own bed when we go out of town. Sometimes I also make siren noises in my sleep. That's particularly strange because I become aware of the fact that I'm doing it while I'm still asleep. Once someone wakes me up I usually immediately apologize for making the noises because I know that's why they woke me up.

7. Hmmmm.....last one. My first kiss was Billy Warlock from Baywatch. I met him at a Days of Our Lives convention downtown that my sister (hooker wannabe) had won tickets for on the radio. He was hot, but like 4 feet tall. At the time though I was much shorter so it didn't phase me.

Okay, so that was fun. I'm sticking with the plan of not tagging anyone else. It's fitting since I wasn't officially tagged at all myself. So tomorrow I get to go do step 1 of not having all my teeth fall out in a giant clump. (damn, that would have been a good fact, too. We've been speaking of it recently due to obvious reasons. I somehow decided when I was kid that when it was time for my teeth to fall out, they would all just spontaneously drop from my mouth. I lived in fear of not being able to catch them all and losing out o the tooth fairy loot. To remedy the situation, I would only wear outfits that had a giant pocket on the front of them, like Osh-Kosh overalls did. That way, when the fateful teeth-losing day came, I could just open my mouth over my pocket and they'd all be safe.) I HATE, HATE, HATE going to the dentist. I had to have all the literature about tomorrows proceeding removed from my reach because I kept looking at it and freaking out. I'm totally not liking any of it, and am half wanting to just say screw it and let all my teeth go. I also was smart enough to not take off work or anything so I have to be at the shop 2 hours after my procedure starts. So, if anyone wants a good laugh during the day you can call me at the store and listen to me try to drool out words like some sort of Quasimoto mouth. I don't know if I spelled that right, but it seems phonetically sound. Okay, I gotta run. I want to finish the heel turn on my mom's sock before I go to sleep.

Sock Tale

I don't know what it's been lately with all my sock mishaps. There's the one pair that I kept finding in dirty parking lot puddles. There's the one where I waited and waited to use this pattern that I really liked, only to find that it doesn't show up a single bit in the yarn.....Oh! And what's the deal with me never being able to get a sock over my heel anymore? My heels don't look like they've suddenly expanded greatly. My legs, maybe. Heels, no. Anyhow, remember how I ordered all that sock yarn the other month and it all accidentally came in at once and I thought I was gonna pass out? I stayed true to my prediction and plunged right into the Fire on the Mountain.

preeetttyyy

With help from my mother, I was able to successfully wind it into a center-pull ball using hands and the winder, sans swift. I don't know why it never occurred to me that this could be done. I recently read somewhere about doing this, and while it was a tad troublesome and undoubtedly more time consuming/messy than doing it with a swift, it worked none the less.

I decided to keep the pattern about as simple as a pattern can be 1) because I didn't want to obscure the color at all and 2) I wanted my socks quick. I opted for plain stockinette socks, loosely based on the Sock Love pattern at Chic Knits. Then this happened.

fug

As unappealing as I found the severe, creepy tie-dye-gone-heinously-wrong appearance of this, I received multiple compliments on them. I kept thinking."Well, maybe they're not so bad." and kept knitting, in case you're wondering why I worked all the way thru the heel while a large part of me loathed them. I like my heel, so I new it wasn't the necessarily the sock yarn itself.

I did some poking around on the internet and after I saw what some of the less goofy socks looked like, I knew what had to be done.

ouch!

Luckily I was able to salvage the ribbing because I've developed quite an aversion to doing it. All I did was decrease 4 stitches around and this what I ended up with.

worst FO shot ever

Please excuse the fact that it looks like my feet are propped up on a mountain of trash. They're not, really, but I quickly cleaned off the table afterwards. Since completion, my socks have travelled to Atlantic City, where I mistakenly hoped they would be some sort of good luck charm, and got to go on the beach. Then my f*cking shoe broke exposing a large chunk of metal that poked and rubbed away at my heel. I was able to quickly get another pair of shoes, but I thought my socks had bit it. After I got them home and washed up, I thin they'll survive. They must have had some luck in them after all. If I can figure out how to send my phone pictures to my printer, maybe I'll show some of our adventures. Maybe I'll also get off my butt and take some shots of my finished Quill Laces Socks, which I realized earlier that I had never done. Oops.

Some things I forgot

I was picking up around the house today and found a few S&W purchases that I had forgotten. I think this mostly has to do with the fact that I got most of them technically before the festival itself, but they either came from the festival or were something that was a planned purchase from MS&W but happened to be procured right before by chance. So here they are.
1. No Sheep for You by Amy Singer and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off: The Yarn Harlot's Guide to the Land of Knitting.

I initially hadn't expressed much interest in the No Sheep book. However, as I was standing in line for STR, the ladies in front of me had one very lovely tops which I was told were "Tomato" from the book. I know at least one of these ladies is a semi-local knit blogger, though I have no idea what her name is. I suspect I recognize her from the shop. She's one of the one's photographed on JavaJem's blog from the meet up.

2. A smallish umbrella swift!! Yay!!

3. This next one is something that was gifted to me by Carole after she and pretty much everyone else who works at the shop got to go pick out yarn on Friday while I held down the fort. I couldn't have picked better myself.

Ellyn Cooper Yarn Sonnet's Fine Merino in Strazzberry

4. Because I liked the yarn above so much, I decided to pick up a little more. I thought this color would work particularly well for my Horcrux socks from the Six Sox Knitalong.

Ellyn Cooper Yarn Sonnet's Fine Merino in Misha

In unrelated news, I got some very bad news yesterday. As many of you may know, I've been having a great deal of problems with one of my wisdom teeth lately. I finally was able to see the dentist yesterday and it totally did not go as planned. During my initial look-over, it was discovered that I have bad periodontal disease and that there's essentially nothing that can be done to save mt front bottom teeth. The problem was amplified by my smoking (which I quit doing a while back) and my tongue ring (which I very begrudgingly had to remove). I also have some bad issues in all of my molars and my front teeth on top. As I understand it, hopefully the bottom ones are the only ones that are totally f**ed. I was also told that all of my orthodontal work has given me substantially less time before my teeth pop out like pez because all the shifting significantly shortened my roots. I guess the problem started a long, long time ago because it's way down in my gums and I have had extraordinary flossing practices for quite a long time. However, I have had a truly dismal history of visiting the dentist for like 10 years, unless there was an emergency. The ironic part is that my teeth themselves are fabulous. My gums just suck. I was particularly fond of the dentist telling me how wonderful my teeth were yesterday because it really doesn't mean jack right after telling someone that their teeth are soon going to be ejected. I'll tell you, if it's not one thing it's another. And the best part? They're not going to do a thing about my wisdom tooth until they can get however much of this periodontal stuff under control that they can. Now I get to suffer through the pain of that while thinking about the swarms of bacteria festering in the lower regions of my gums, destroying all my connective tissue. Super fun!! At least I'll be able to get a lot of knitting done while I'm hiding toothless in my house waiting for partials to be constructed.

Disclosure

Maryland Sheep and Wool was very exciting for me this year, to say the least. I didn't get to go last year because I was foolishly attempting to save some dough for a trip to France that was supposed to be happening a short time after the festival. That trip got cancelled not too long after I had missed out on all the yarny goodness. Anyhow, back to this year. I had a plan. All I wanted to do was get there, get some STR in colorways unavailable online, and get out. I had a party to attend later that day and I'm really not in need of any yarn. I made this plan one, maybe two weeks prior to the festival. As the weekend approached, I came across more and more accounts of STR selling out in mere minutes and herds of knitters storming the booth as soon as the it opened. I devised a plan to get to S&W really early and just wait. I heard more and more tales of empty yarn bins. I began to panic. At some point a few nights away from the festival I actually had a nightmare about lack of yarn. Scary. So Sheep and Wool day came and I got up super dark and early (in the 5am hour) and made it up to the festival by around 7. I can honestly say that I may have been the first non-worker sitting around that day knitting on a bench. By 7:45 others had joined me waiting outside barn 3, aka the STR barn. By 8:15 I actually had to go stand in line in front of The Fold because others were flocking in and I'd be damned if I was going to get up that friggin' early to be beaten out by a bunch of late-comers. When they finally undid the little rope that was between us and the yarn, it was anarchy. Luckily, since I was right up in front, I was essentially thrown face first into a giant wall of STR mediumweight by the 50 or so people pouring in behind me. It was heavenly......though I bit panic stricken.
So here's what I ended up with.

Brooks Farm Duet......lovely

Little Curly Mohair Handpainted by The Flock Bransonas

Blue Heron Rayon Metallic in very pretty greens & purples

Gypsy Girl yarn in Angela (pink) and Goblin (green/purple)

Oh yeah.......and that STR I was talking about?? I got just a weeeee little bit of it. It looks a little something like this......

Wooo!!! I hit the motherlode. What can I say?

I wish I could tell you all the colorways, but I had to quickly stash the goods and didn't have enough time to write it all down. I'll give it a whirl from memory.....uh, holy goodness, I think I know it all....at least the majority of it. What can I say, I know my STR. Here it goes, from top left to bottom right. Algae, Crazy Lace Agate, Carbon Dating, Hard Rock, Neptunite, Red Rock Canyon, Highway 30, Lemongrass, Alina, Country Clare, Pebble Beach, Azure something or another, Romancing the Stone, Heart-something, and Amethyst.

I wasn't satisfied (somehow) with the first 13 skeins I got in the early morning so I ho the booth again a little later and picked up some more!! Hello, Psycho! My crafty coworker later pointed out to me that I picked up a duplicate colorway during my initial buying frenzy.

Country Clare

While it is probably one of my favorite new colors, I just wasn't down with the duplicate. I had to go back and exchange it for something else on Sunday. I got there a little too late and there were slim picking to choose from. I ended up getting this......

....which is a merino/tencel blend from BMFA in the Tiger's Eye colorway (damn, I good with the color names!). It's quite nice and I'm not too sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I also picked up a good number of patterns, all of the sock persuasion. I have a feeling that they might just come in handy during the next few months. I have no idea why.

Okay, that's it. I finish school in just a few days now. I'm so through mentally that I hope I can wait for the next few days to pass before I run off screaming in the middle of the night. I think I can do it. Oh, and I have at least one FO to show....maybe even a second by the time I get around to posting again. Excitement!

Shhhhhhhhh.......

I've been poking around on the Internet for quite some time and it seems to be the trend for Fridays to be yarn porn day. This couldn't be more fitting considering that today is perhaps the most yarn-pornyest day that ever there was. I have to kind of keep it on the down low though. I think I may have reached a new peak in the "Oh my GOD! What have I done?!?" category. Anyhow, let's get this party started.....
First off is aforementioned Lorna's Laces Shepherd sock.

Here's a bit of a closeup that shows the colors a little better.

I don't really remember what all I d about this yarn before, but the green one is Envy and the other is Vera. Yum, yum, yum. Even if it is way thinner than I had in mind when I ordered it. I still couldn't really capture all the coolness of the Vera. It's a very strange yet pretty combo of dark pink/mauve/fuchsia with some browns and grayish greens. The Envy is the one I'm attempting to knit up for my sister, though I think I'm going to have to frog it once again because now the sock is turning out super huge. Did I mention this before?? Possibly.....

Okay. Now here is what caused me to think that maybe I've really lost it this time. This is like the Adult Film Awards of my yarn porn.

Voila!

And in a view that makes me froth at the mouth just a wee bit more....

From left to right we have Pink Granite, Socktopus, Rhodonite, Lunasea (which is particularly applicable to me), Puck's Mischief, and Fire on the Mountain. All of it is STR mediumweight, with the exceptions of Socktopus and the Pink Granite which are lightweight.

Socktopus and Lunasea are two of the new colors from the Tides collection. I literally almost threw up from excitement when I saw that they had added them.

Fire on the Mountain is just like a hippie tie-dye rainbow for the feet. I'll be looking forward to digging into this one. It'll take me some time to think of something to do that won't f#%@# around with the color scheme. I got these two patterns, also.

I like the patterns from BMFA. I still am uneasy about mixing lace with colors, but apparently sometimes it works out just fine. So, what does one do when all these goodies happen to arrive on the same day?? Absolutely freak out. Now, I've hid yarn before for various reasons. I wouldn't want a kid to touch something or I wouldn't want someone to see something that may be for them. There have also been times where I was little ashamed that I had to pick up this or that while I as out so I may have just pretended that it didn't happen for awhile while the yarn rested in a hidden bag. This however........

You have to remember that the above happened in like a nanosecond while I thought someone was coming up the stairs. Yes, this yarn was hidden out of pure fear. Fear o what, I'm not exactly sure, but fear it was. It as like having a soft, squishy, super wash merino panic attack and moment of sheer joy simultaneously. Scary. I think I'm going to have to take them out one by one and just pretend the others don't exist. Then, once one is safely hidden, I'm come down and nab another one. Sickness, people. That's what this is. Plain old crazy-yarn-lady sickness.

Hope everyone has a good weekend !!

laziness

my keyboard is broken in a way which prevents me from capitalizing letters. sorry for that. I'm feeling very lazy/tired today and really didn't feel like uploading pictures. if i had done so, i would be showing you a completed quill lace sock along with about half of a second. I'd also perhaps show off some of the new Lorna's laces i got to make my sister and myself some goodies. I'm a little peeved about the Lorna's laces though because i realized, only after splurging on quite a few different colorways, that i was ordering the sock weight and not the sport. the sock weight is okay and feels about as good as any other sock yarn, but the sport weight is soft, cushy, and all around my preferred Lorna's laces sock type product. i started my sisters socks on a size one and worked and worked my little hands off. after about a night's worth of work.....which yielded an approximate total length of about 2-2.5 inches, i found that it there was absolutely no way in hell that any full size human was going to fit it over their foot/heel. i ripped it out and started a new pattern with 80 stitches and am now thinking, after knitting and knitting and knitting, that it may be far too large an fiber consuming. this is one of the main reasons why i am a very selfish knitter/person in general. things just don't turn out right when i try my hand at random kindness.
okay, I've grown tired of playing with this monstrous key board so I'll bid a quick farewell and come back when i have some visuals.

Quill Lace Socks

I decided not to waste any time before diving into another sock. Surprise, surprise. My latest endeavor is the quill lace socks from the current (??) issue of Knitty. I'm liking the pattern now, but found it a little tedious at first. I'm often that way when I first start something new. Now that I have it in my head and can just do it, the sock and I are getting along better. Oh, and this is my Little Bunny Foo Foo medium weight STR. See the resemblance to Lucy??

Here's a detail of the lace.

I made some sort of heinous mistake on the cuff and ended up with surplus of stitches. I did my best to fix it but knew as I was doing it that it wasn't exactly working out. I should have been less lazy and ripped back a few rows, but I don' really care too much. You can see a pretty obvious screw up here in the middle two columns.

It's in the back of the sock and it's not like a person could tell (I hope) without really looking. The sock also has an 'Eye of Partridge' heel, which I don't think I've even done before. It's not all that different stitch wise from my usual slip stitch heel, but there's quite a contrast in appearance.

I've gotta play around with my camera some more and figure out how to get shots that have more color accuracy. I keep getting wither really dark photos or the flash bleaches everything out so much that my pictures look either black & white or like a giant shiny thing. I'll have to put that on my to-do list. That's all for now : )

Goes From Virgin to Yarn Whore in 60 Seconds

I've come to a realization about myself. I need to anticipation of packages arriving in the mail to get through the average day. I knew bad things would happen when I started shopping online. I knew it! Oh well. I guess having yarn issues,while still a legitimate worry, is much less severe than many problems one might develop. That being said, here is what arrived for me this week.

I hate to say it but I'm less impressed with this shipment than i was with the previous one. I think it's practically because the colors are a wee bit different than they appeared on the screen (whereas the others were spot on) and that the first order I placed was ones that I really, really wanted while this one was more in the category of "Hmmmm...do I want this one?.....or do I want that one?" which basically culminated in my just kind of randomly deciding on two of the multitude that I desire. I still like them though. And maybe when they're knit up I'll be doing imaginary back flips over them like I did with the first order. And yes, sat here for a good 10 minutes with at least one hank of the yarn pressed up to my face while I semi-psychotically inhaled it's fabulousness. The one on the left is STR Henpecked and the other is Little Bunny Foo Foo, both in medium weight. LBFF is essentially Lucy but with pink instead if the blue. In my head I think of it as being grey, but it is in fact a beige-ish color.

On to the next subject.....oddly still related to my new found obsession with STR.

Guess what I have???

Why yes, that's a photo of me relaxing in my super-terrific Monkey socks!

I enjoy standing in them, too.

Here's a closeup of the pattern.

As previously stated, this is the Monkey pattern from Knitty. I used STR lightweight in the Cracked Canyon colorway and size 2 needles to accommodate my humongous feet. I love them.

Now I get to break into the new stuff: )-

One down

I'm loving my Monkeys. I'm also loving my STR. Big time. The sheer awesomeness of my socks is so great, in fact, at it may case somewhat of a family rift. My mom, who doesn't even wear socks, picked up my completed Monkey and put it on her dirty foot. She then asked me which color I was going to make her a pair in. My first reaction was to go to BMFA's and show her the colors. The underlying plan being, of course, to throw a hank or two into the order for myself. But then.....then......ughhh. I don't even want to say it. She wants my new Lorna's Laces. My new, pretty, pink Lorna's Laces for which I had already printed out a little pattern which was carefully placed in a it's own special plastic sleeve just waiting for my Monkeys to be finished. After I picked up the crumbles of my heart, I quickly formulated a new plan. I would order more or the Tickled Pink and get a few hanks of the Vera colorway, too. Then I thought better. It's very rare that I can knit with the same yarn multiple times. I get bored and part of the whole sock yarn draw is the novelty of color. I decided to just not be selfish and make her the freakin' socks.......except then I had a big realization while I was freakishly sitting up in my office staring across the room at the yarn I had spread out over the adjacent chair. The Tickled Pink has a great big glob of purple in it! So does the Rhodonite colorway from BMFA that I've been stalking. The new and improved (and tentatively final) plan is this. Purchase the Rhodonite and knit both it and the Lorna's Laces. Then I can fully consider the extra yarn purchase as being part of a highly involved experiment. Excellent!

So I was going to Chick-Fil-A for dinner.......

Oops. I forgot that the JoAnns with the big yarn section lives right across the street from the Chick-Fil-A in Columbia. So, while I intended to run out and come home with some chicken nuggets, I came home with this instead.

The guy who checked me out asked me if I was a new knitter. I felt a little bad about being asked this because I still carry a bit of buying-shitty-yarn shame. I said that no, in fact I was NOT a novice and explained my predicament about being in town to buy some chicken, but being so close to yarn of virtually any sort makes me go a little nutty sometimes. He then asked me if I liked the color green. Hmmmmm. The darker colored ones are Patons (not too shitty) wool and the other ones that have more convoluted coloration are something so cheapo and terrible that I won't even mention the name. Come to think of it, I don't even know off hand what the name is. Anyhow, it' absolute crap but I like the colors they come out with.

Maybe the next day or the day after that, I stopped by FiberWorks while waiting for a prescription of my mom's to be filled.......two towns or so away.

The maroon yarn is something from Universal. We just started carrying the company at the shop, but we didn't get in any of this stuff. The other yarn is some new stuff from Online, producer of the yarn in my fabulous orange socks. In all honesty I probably wouldn't have actually bought the stuff if Rene hadn't been so kind as to go out of her way to show me where it as on the shelves and show me a poster of it. Its interesting and stripes in a very oddball sort of way, bu I'm just not really feeling the jacquard (or however one spells it) yarn at the moment. And the needles....ahhhhh, the needles. Pretty, pretty, cheap, plastic needles. I love them so. I had to run out to Micheal's to pick up something random and naturally couldn't go without getting myself a prize, too. I've been wanting these needles for a fair amount of time because I like the colors and truth be told, I really don't care too much about using plastic needles for things that aren't teeny tiny.

A few days later I had to go back to Michael's in search of paper Easter grass for a basket I was assembling for my grandpa.

This yarn is extremely pretty, and feels a bit like an old brillo pad. Oh well. I'll suffer through. It's really not that bad and I figure when I combine it with the boucle, it'll be better.....slightly. I really like it though and think it'll make a nice scarf. I like he way the pink and brown goes together.

Speaking of pink, look what just came in the mail!

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Tickled Pink and Flame. Yay! Clearly, my mental status is flailing. I think that maybe subconsciously I'm getting nervous about the prospect of being dirt poor while I'm in grad school. By buying a non-sensical amount of yarn now, maybe I'm just trying to set myself up with a little something nice for later.

Oh, and just to feel just a weeeeeee bit better about the yarn purchases. here is a little baby WIP shot.

In case you can't tell, it's part of a Monkey. That seems to be the definitive thing to do nowadays. This is the Cracked Canyon colorway from BMFA in lightweight. I LOVE it. In fact, I love it so much that no sock pattern was deemed worthy for it. I had some massive trouble at first since I seemed to hate everything that would perhaps detract from the yarn. The pattern may be a bit busy for the yarn, but I'm fine with it and I think that's about as close to being very happy with a pattern as I'm going to get. BTW, a new color palette is being being released this coming week I believe. I'm a tad panic stricken that they'll remove some of the colorways that I'm still stalking. I hope not.

Sad day

My guinea pig Angel passed away at about 3:15 this morning. I'm very, very sad about this. He was seven, maybe even eight years old. That's quite a run for a guinea pig. He was one of my most favorite guinea pigs of all time.

That's him on the lower right. The cowlicky one with the white nose. It's sad to even look at the picture because everyone in it is dead now. Angel used to like to chase Beau around and bite her tail. Sad, sad, sad......

The worst part is that I knew he was dying for a few days. He got super sick yesterday morning and I kept checking on him all day. Finally, at about 7, I thought he was dead and I went and made him a little coffin and dug a little grave. When I went to get him though it turned out that he was till alive, and we just had to wait until early morning. That was horrible beyond belief. At least now he's not suffering or anything. I HATE burying animals though. I can think of few things worse than having to deal with all that. I'm just not cut out emotionally for such things.

Alright, not much else to report. I haven't been knitting too much.....or at least have nothing to show for what efforts I've made. In fact,I pretty much am moving backwards knit-wise because I decided last night that I need to frog my Caruso socks due to sizing issues. Once I get that sucker on my leg I'm fine, but I just can't deal with the fight of pulling it over my heel. I keep feeling like I'm going to snap all the slipped stitches in half. No good. Hopefully the rest of the week will be more cheery and I'll get more fun stuff done.

I had thought of a witty header......

When I was driving around tonight I though of something that would be the perfect title for this post. However, sometime between then and now, it's escaped me. First things first. Someone was kind enough to gift this upon me.

Notice the freakish, large saw. Why,in the name of all that is holy, would a gnome carry a large saw?? This to me is undeniable proof against the notion that all gnomes are friendly, forest dwelling protectors of nature. Nature isn't protected by giant saws. Here is another shot of him, the evil gnome-of-toe-chopping, as I expect to find him one night, slowly creeping through the darkness of my bedroom to de-toe me.

The above photo is quite dark so depending on how your screen is, you may have to tilt your head or something to partake of the horror.

Okay, that being taken care of..........there's something I want you all to see! It's beautiful, and it made me truly feel like an addict when I opened it.

Yes, my STR arrived. In fact, I already have one sock of it finished! On the left is heavy-weight Lucy and on the right is light-weight Cracked Canyon. They're both quite lovely.

I love, love, love it! The heavy-weight is soooo dense. It as crazy to feel it against the lightweight. I can't wait until the medium weight comes back in stock...which should be next week. Excellent. Well, I guess that's all for now. I have a bunch more to show, but the batteries on my camera died and I haven't had a chance to photograph any of it yet. Now I think I'll go back to my CSI:Miami marathon. I had to momentarily leave the room to avoid seeing that cheese commercial where they butcher EMF's fun hit "Unbelievable" by their musical proclamation that their product is 'crumbelievable'. Perhaps it's just me, but that commercial truly drives me insane. Fun.