Inspiration in a Box (or Two)

We never used to do much online shopping, but you know what? I think we’re getting the hang of it. I haven’t had any projects that I’m really passionate about lately, I’ve just been doing a little busy work (although I stumbled across something fun that I’m really enjoying now – but we’ll talk about that when it’s finished) but now that I’ve gotten my mail I’ve got so many fun options that I’m barely hanging onto my project to get it finished before whooshing off to something else. I ordered my two packages about a week apart, but they showed up at the post office the same day! (Maybe they caught the same ride over?) The first was a package from Amazon that I bought as a reward for meeting a personal goal:

That’s the Harmony Guide to Basic Crochet Stitches, the Harmony Guide to Lace and Eyelets (that would be knitting), and Crochet Me: Designs to Fuel the Crochet Revolution. I am really, really excited about these. I finally caved (I’d been resisting because I almost never actually use patterns, not because I didn’t want the book) and ordered the Crochet Me book after I saw someone make the Baby Doll Dress (scroll down almost to the bottom, or just Ctrl+F Baby Doll) as a shirt. I don’t know about you, but I’m not much of a babydoll dress fan (especially one that’s crocheted…out of worsted weight yarn…) but as a top it is really cute. Let’s see if I ever make it.

The stitch dictionaries are just as exciting! I’ve already paged through them each twice and I’ve gotten too many new ideas to keep track of. Just the thought of designs I could make with this stitch or that – it’s so inspiring, and I can’t wait until I’m done with my current project so that I can attack something new with a clean conscience.

In the second package I found something very special:

It’s a brand-new wooden swift! It is so beautiful. I love it. (My children can never, never, never know that I have this, or where I am keeping it. They would break it, and I would cry.) I bought it from JoAnn’s online store when they sent out that 40% off coupon. What a deal! Now it will be so much easier for me to use my Gloss, and my Cascade 220, and that awesome yarn I bought in Colorado – and dyeing will be less hassle, and maybe now that I don’t have to keep it over my knees or around a baby gate, I’ll unravel a few more sweaters! I am jumping up and down over this. I haven’t gotten a ball-winder yet, but I don’t mind so much winding it by hand as long as I don’t have the tangles and snarling problems to contend with. I can’t wait to try this out too.

Then (because I was already ordering a package from JoAnn’s and paying for postage, and NOT adding a little something else would just have been wasteful) I ordered a little bit of yarn.

It’s TLC Cotton Plus (about which I have heard good things) and it was on sale for $2.00 a skein. That’s enough to make two large projects. YAY! I’m leaving them in their protective little baggies until I decide what to do with them – except, of course, the two little skeins that are in a bag that’s only tied, not sealed.

So. Darn. Gorgeous. I haven’t decided what to do with them yet: I may make my Baby Doll Top with the Tan, who knows? I’m also thinking that I might make the Ruffled Surplice from Interweave Knits with the Kiwi. You may recall that I bought the magazine with the pattern and some yarn for it last fall at Kid n Ewe, but it looks like (big surprise) the yarn I bought is the wrong weight. Really the wrong weight. (I am not so awesome at gauging yarn weights.) So, now I have 1200 yards of gorgeous wool/silk with no pattern attached, and a lovely summery pattern with no yarn attached, and a bunch of new, cotton-blend yarn just begging to be used.

Now that I’ve written it out, I think I will work through at least one pattern (though the urge to design something with my new yarn is strong) as a bit of a vacation. I can’t wait to play with my new toys! If only I could get that pesky project finished…

Kid ‘n Ewe…

…and children, too! Yes, that’s right, today Max, Charlie and I made the trek to Kid ‘n Ewe, marking my very first fiber festival! I think the expressions on the boys’ faces really says it all about their attitude towards this particular event.

Awww. They were kind of excited. Mostly to get out of the car. We got lost in Boerne and spent an extra thirty minutes trying to find the fairgrounds. So we moved them from their carseats into the portable two-person baby prison and they felt a little better. Once we got inside, I think I must have lost my head, because I only have one more photo from the entire thing:

Yup. Those are alpaca ‘tocks. We got to pet alpaca! (They were soft.) Max kept trying to pat them on the bum, the one place the woman leading them said would get you kicked in the face. Yup. It was quite the experience, though – we went into the first building after staying a while to listen to the musicians playing the dulcimer out front. The whole place was full of yarn, and fiber, and books and needles and patterns and beads – the whole building smelled like sheep. There were probably 15 women at the back of the building, spinning (they were having a class). Max was fascinated by the wheels, even more so when I told him they were making yarn.

We went from there into the next building, stopping briefly to ogle the angora bunnies outside. In there we found Melanie at the Yarnivore booth and chatted for a while. They gave Max and Charlie each a chunk of unspun angora to pet – apparently at a fiber festival they hand out chunks of fiber like tootsie rolls (at least to little children). In the next booth over a very nice old man handed them each a chunk of wool about a foot long to play with while he gave me tips about how to get started with a drop spindle. I think I’m going to make one and mess around with it. I saved the fiber from my boys when they got bored with it, I thought I’d start on that.

Also in the second building was Amanda! She had a little box full of Ravelry nametags for any Ravelers who came by – and boy, there were a lot of us! It seemed like everywhere you turned you saw a little green and white tag, or a beta tee. It was fun to meet some people I’d only seen online, and it was cool to meet some new people too. We picked up something else at Amanda’s booth, too -

a set of size 5 Chiaogoo bamboo needles, perfect for some nice, thick socks. In the third building (the alpaca building, apparently) the free sampleage for the kiddos continued. The nice woman at the Tierra Prometida booth (that means ‘promised land,’ incidentally – and I figured that out before I went to their site. Woohoo for high school Spanish!) had a rack of little knitted finger puppets that were just adorable and gave the boys each one. Check it out:

She picked two that were the same (she obviously has children). I think it’s cute that one of them is smaller than the other one – big brother, little brother. I have an urge to make up a third one, and a troll, so we can act out the 3 Billy Goats Gruff. It was here that I picked up a 4oz skein of undyed alpaca with unknown yardage. Pretty!

And the boys had had just about enough and started to howl. We headed back out of the building, but I stopped to pick up a back issue of Interweave Knits -

The top on the cover has really grown on me, and I’d just decided to be on the lookout for it yesterday. And there it was! That’s really only important because it spurred me to stop by the Brooks Farm booth again. We’d spent a good chunk of time there earlier, but I’d left empty-handed because I couldn’t convince myself that I knew what I would do with anything I bought there. With pattern in hand, though, I picked up three skeins of the green Acero I’d been sighing over.

Crazy pretty. I really hope that I worked it out carefully enough to be able to use it for this pattern, but it’s entirely possible that I’m deluding myself with the strength of my love for this yarn…

So. Um. No yarn shopping for a while.

Lots of ‘New and Exciting’

Yesterday I went somewhere new…

and it was exciting!

I took pictures. I couldn’t decide if I felt more like a stealthy ninja-blogger, or a ridiculous yarn-store tourist (it was my first time at a yarn store!). I didn’t ask the other customers what they thought. They had lots of yarns I’d never heard of before, along with many ‘famous’ brands. There was, for instance, a wall in the back full of Manos del Uruguay:

Dang, that’s a lot of big, pretty yarn. Also fun things like Baby Alpaca Grande, Noro, some really lovely Patagonia Nature Cotton, lots of sock yarns, lots of other yarns; silk and alpaca and mohair, oh my! I think. It was a little much to take in all at once. I didn’t even duck into the room with the books, which is ridiculous, since (as you may recall) I have a full-blown case of PAS (pattern-acquisition syndrome) that is only rendered sillier by the fact that I almost never use someone else’s pattern. You know. The whole thing. I just looked: the last time I used a pattern was for Greg’s Christmas gloves. Almost six months ago. Only because I had never done gloves before. Sigh. I should probably invest in some good stitch dictionaries instead.

Anyway! I saw a sample in the ‘specialty’ yarn area that reminded me of something the Yarn Harlot did last week:

Actually, it’s the same thing. Same yarn, everything. Look over on the left side of the picture – that red/orange/yellow ball even looks like the same color. At the time, I mentioned it to Melanie (the owner), and used words like “yarn harlot” and “blog” in public conversation and she knew what I was talking about (or, at the very least, pretended to quite gracefully. She said she’s not much of a blog reader. Hello, she owns a yarn store. Would you be on the computer?). It was surreal.

Speaking of Melanie, I asked her if I could get a picture of her for the blog. After a brief pause (I think she was trying to decide whether I was a crazy person) she agreed.

See? She’s very nice, and helpful, and seems to know a lot about the yarns and notions in the shop. (She endorses the Knitpicks Options needles, although of course she can’t sell them – she has good taste, too! I’m in love with my Knitpicks dpns…I’m going to get the Options. Eventually.) On the left there is Sheila the Dressform, Melanie of course is in the middle, and on the right is a selection of yarns dyed by the Yarnivore staff. See that skein just left of the yellow one? 100% Silk, and the color is lovely. A leetle bit out of my preferred price range, though.

I snapped the shot of the storefront while we were leaving, and as I was editing the photo today I noticed something interesting reflected in the window:

See? It’s us! There I am, taking pictures in full-blown blogging dork mode, while Greg looks in the bag and says to himself, “She spent 20 bucks on what?”

Now on to the yarn, of course:

It’s pretty.

I got two balls of Cashcotton DK in Sage, which I think, with care, will produce a shrug. I can do that with 284 yards, right?