Festival of Yarn

I truly appreciate the local wool festival organizers in my county. A wool festival on Mothers' Day Weekend is an absolute guarantee that I will get my favorite gift, yarn, for Mothers' Day. Thank you, clever wool festival organizers!

My first stop was Enchanted Meadows. I love their alpaca. Love it. I bought a skein of blueberry alpaca from them last year, and knit a hat. And gloves. And a neckerchief. It was the endless ball of blueberry softness, but it was also a mystery ball: I lost the tag shortly after winding it into a yummy yarn cake. Luckily, I recognized Mr. Enchanted Meadows and his humongous skeins of yarn in the first building I entered at the festival, so getting another endless skein was first order of the day. I left it to my boys to pick a color for me as a gift. There were lovely reds, purples, blues, greens, even orange skeins. My colorblind son and his conservative father picked out... brown. I will be knitting hats for the boys, I guess.

They also picked up a smooshy skein of angora, about 80 yards worth, from HoneyGold Acres. It's lovely, really - incredibly soft, undyed... and makes me break out in a minor rash.

So far, the yarn purchasing was not going well. Time to take things into my own hands! I stopped at one stall and fell in love with naturally dyed corriedale. It was a lavender purple blend that I was pretty sure would match the lavender alpaca gloves I knit from last year's festival yarn purchase. I took a card, in case I stumbled upon the same vendor that sold me my lavender alpaca.

I walked through a lot of yarn, touching and crooning along the way, and ended up at a stall called Corny Goodness. The colors of their yarn were fantastic - true color wheel yellows, oranges, blues, greens, and purples. I don't even like orange, and their orange yarn was drool-worthy. It was 100% corn, too. I chatted with the vendors ,a husband and wife just starting out in the yarn business. Paul told me that corn yarn won't stain, won't fade, and won't shrink. It feels like a stiff cotton. I bought two shades - Blue Eyes Dark and Spruce Medium - that I will use to knit baby hats and booties for my cousin's twins, due in September.

I passed by the stalls with commercial yarn, and looked for the indie spinners and dyers. I had to pass up lots of wonderful stuff! I usually don't look at needles or knitting accessories, but a young woman knitting a sock on short black dpns caught my eye. The needles were carbon and a pleasure to use - warm to the touch, with a light weight that felt nice in my hands. I knit a couple round on 0s, then tried to bend the free needle. It didn't give a bit!

Since I am a loose knitter, I am always downsizing two or more needle sizes to get gauge. That means a sock knit on 2s or 3s has to be knit on 0s or 1s for me - or smaller. I special ordered five 5" 00s; I should get them next week.

I finally wrapped up my festival buying with the lavender-purple corriedale I had found early in my browsing. I had $16 in my pocket, and although the first two skeins were $19, the next was... $16! Perfection This yarn is slightly thick-thin, with a soft halo. It should make a lovely hat.

My latest project is designing a cap using an entrelac base. I like the geometry of it until I get to the top - I'm having trouble ending my cap! I've done two prototypes, now for some research and experiments with different decreases to make the stitches move where I want them to!

Harvest Wool Festival

I spent a few hours this morning at the count sheep and wool festival. This was my second festival, and my second go at photo contest coordinator. I am not usually a solo volunteer - I will chaperon, I do my Boy Scout stuff, but it was a stretch for me to volunteer for the photo contest last year. As I recall, I volunteered to make sure I would remember to go to the festival - I had forgot about it the year before.

Last year I was pretty anonymous, didn't know what I was doing, wasn't prepared - but had fun anyway. I loved the photos, loved the people. When wonderful Winnie, she-who-coordinates, asked me to do it again, I said I would.

This year, I am Photography Contest Coordinator, according to the website and in the printed festival guide. Woohoo! I was better prepared, with markers, construction paper, scissors, pens, and tape, plus voting instructions and posters inviting people to view and vote. I was even able to answer questions from lost people who wandered by.

There were sixteen photos throughout five divisions, and they were all great. The photographers were charming and lovely people, and they totally made me want to move to a farm and get a a pack o' sheep or alpacas.

It's a people's choice photo contest, so after I posted the photos, I had to convince people to vote. I tried several tactics, but found this to be most effective:

"Would you like vote for a photo in our photo contest? It's people's choice, so if you don't vote, no one wins."

I don't know why this worked, but it did. Being merely polite didn't suffice, but making a vaguely dire prediction got a chuckle and usually a few minutes of viewing and voting.

Note to self: next year, bring posters for each division. And more tape. And clamps. And coffee.

I can't report on the awesomeness of the yarn yet - I had no time to browse, as today was Meet & Greet from noon to 2. Boomer and Bear were stars (a sure sign I am becoming immune to puppy cuteness: I had no idea they would be so popular). Several families fell in love with the foster pups. It's hard to pick one family over another, but when I stopped worrying and just thought about it, the choices were obvious. Bear will go to a sincere family with a sweet nine-year-old girl who has begged for a dog for about four years. Boomer will go to a starry-eyed young couple who want a dog to go hiking and boating and fishing, although I think his sweet kisses were a deciding factor, also.

Tomorrow, Mothers' Day, my wonderful boys will take me back to the festival so I can buy me some alpaca (mmm, alpaca) and tally votes for the photo contest, hang the ribbons, etc. I will try not to spend more than 3 hours there... but I'm making no promises.

The new mother of invention... Guilt

Guilt is a funny thing. I was supposed to turn in my chemo caps last Wednesday. I had knit 8 of them, and on Tuesday had them bagged up and ready to turn in, along with 3 or 4 unused balls of yarn.

Wednesday, I was in bed until 6:30pm with a migraine. I fired off an e-mail to the hat collector, and she said this was OK, she would get the hats Thursday or Friday. On Thursday, she e-mailed me that she would pick them up Monday.

I felt awful, that I had thrown off her donation schedule... so I knit 5 more hats. I didn't intend to, but I had lots of knitting time thanks to Sandman's practice track meet on Thursday and final track meet on Saturday. I had yarn and needles, but wasn't in the mood for a pattern, so I improvised with seed stitch, and crown patterning, and diamonds, and finally seed stitch plus ribbing plus a mushroomy-top.

I have a couple cute one-offs that need more tinkering, but my final hat design is quite nice, even in acrylic. I did two prototypes before working out my math and techniques in the blue cap pictured here. I tried the hats on me, on Sandman's pre-teen head, and on Khi's melon head, and the result was quite charming on everyone. I have designed a cap!

Instead of having just eight hats and several balls of yarn, I have 13 hats and one ball of yarn that was just too unbearably ugly to knit. You can see its less ugly sibling in the photo to the left - the Sage Butter Ombre was knit-able, but Autumn Print was just too hideously rust and brown and gold. I grew up in the seventies; I refuse to relive them in bad yarn.

Percy survives more puppies

Boomer and Bear have lots of energy. Lots. They tumble and play all the time. I realize that tumble and play room is a bit short in the bathroom where they are stabled, so I give them closely supervised playtime in other areas until they have earned my trust.

They did play time in the kitchen, and did very well. They had play time outside, which was also a success. I decided to go for play time in the living room, and after a couple short sessions, we all seemed able to maintain a satisfactory level of sanity, as long as all pens/paper/socks were put out of puppy reach.

Of course, I had put away all my knitting. Puppies love knitting - they love running with balls of yarn bigger than their heads gripped tightly between their tiny teeth. They love pulling needles out of projects. They love chewing on wooden DPNs, and the cords of circular needles with metal tips that discourage chewing. Puppy + knitting = badness. I know this, so I had put all my projects in a tote bag. No yarn dangled, no needles stuck out. Everything was tucked carefully out of puppy view.

I don't know which little puppy nose stuck itself into the knitting tote, but when I glanced down after stepping 8 feet away to close the hall closet doors... Boomer and Bear were playing tug of war with Percy.

After this discovery, I'm not sure what happened (besides a shriek). I know sharp puppy teeth were removed from lace. I know puppies were returned to the bathroom with No Chance of Parole for Some Time. I know they had somehow neither pulled Percy off the needle nor broken the size 0 bamboo circular. I checked only that much, then stuck Percy back into the tote and moved the bag off the floor. I could not check Percy for wear and tear, not yet at least.

After lalala ignoring Percy for almost a week, I have just inspected the shawl this evening. It appears unscathed. I found one loose loop near the working edge, but no obvious tears or snags anywhere else.

Poor Percy. Lucky puppies.

New pups: Bear and Boomer

Jack and Daniel joined the household April 18. They are sweet little Kentucky Brown dogs, fluffy and tumbly, scratchy and bitey, and smart to boot!

Of course I'm not calling them Jack and Daniel. Daniel just wasn't a Dan, or a Danny. He is Boomer, and has been since day one. I did call Jack by his given name for a couple days, but the only way I could tell the two pups apart was that Jack looked like a little bear. In my head, he was Jack the Bear. After a couple days, he was just Bear.

Boomer and Bear know their names, or they at least know when I pitch my voice just so they should come scampering over. They eat like crazed hamsters, throwing the food all over and always trying to eat out of the same bowl.

They are the quietest pups I have ever had. They never cry - not at night, not when they hear me get up in the morning, not when they are bored. They bark occasionally if startled.

All in all, they are excellent pups.

Percy progress

I've been working on my Percy shawl on and off, and put some good hours into it in the past week. A third repeat of Chart B took just another 5 grams - but the ball of yarn is (finally) noticeably smaller.

I'm on row 4 of my fourth Chart B repeat. Can I do another full repeat, plus 0-27, plus Chart C? I think so. I may do some Ravelry research to see where others started the edging chart...

A little this, a little that

I've been knitting this and that. Several washcloths, some mitered, one lacy. I knit a wonderful licorice ombre cloth with a skull design for the Sandman, who asked for something for the downstairs bathroom. I used Pisgah Peaches & Cream for the first time, and really liked it. At $1.47/ball at W-Mart, it's much softer than the stuff I get at Michael's or JoAnne's.

I used a stashed ball of Knit Picks Main Line for a wonderful teal blue bib for a baby shower at the office. I started a hat, but didn't think it would be that

useful for a boy born in May. Quacking Up! is super cute, and the pattern designer, Elaine Fitzpatrick, has a bunch of fun bib/cloth designs. There is a great monkey that I will have to do next. I may have worked through my beige (monkey-colored) cotton, but I think I have a ball of orange! Orange monkey would be good. Maybe yellow?

A couple more chemo caps are off the needles. Robin's Egg was simple but very pretty, even in acrylic. I tired a new hat pattern for my third ball of Fixation - Wavy Cable Lace. It's very pretty, and a very comfy hat. I have one more ball of white Fixation, which I'm planning to use for a Mobius cap.

If I can get it knit this week, I will dye all four Fixation hats this weekend. I know where my old fabric dyes are - I just hope they are still good after fifteen years!