Because I like you

I’ve been sneakily adding pictures of finished objects from 2008 to their corresponding places in my half-complete list.

I need to do some photo shoots of the FO’s that still live with us, but some of the giftknits’ photos were lost in the Great Hard Drive Crash of June 2008 and I won’t be able to put up photos of them. You will just have to Use Your Imagination.

This also means I will be trying to sync up what I have in iPhoto with what I have in Flickr with what I have in Ravelry with what I have in the WordPress Image Library. Please send aspirin, or perhaps a six pack of a local amber ale.

Knit Night was great. I claimed a table in the back room and for the first time in my life, my friends came back and asked if they could sit with me. With ME!!! I am finally one of the Cool Girls!!! And I got to show off Tom’s Mittens and the bamboo socks, and work on a Super Secret Project for almost the whole time. KittyMommy and Molly Bee and Dale-Harriet and Yo Jane were there, among many many others — it was a pretty packed house.

I want to cast on for my January Personal Sock Club socks now. I’ll be thrilled if I can get the cuff region completed tonight. I’ll sneak in a few more pictures if I can.

So, this one time, at Sheep and Wool…

…we had this little party, and about 40 people came? And had cheesecake? And won door prizes?

And then we all got massively tired and wished we could sleep for weeks and weeks. But we did take some pictures. They’re not great, but they’re pictures, and they’ve already taken Stage One of their journey and now actually reside on the computer rather than in the camera.

I’ve got a few things to do first (like shower, and run out for diapers and wipes) but I want to take advantage of this being a 3-child school day and put up a very nice blog post with some of those pictures and lots of words.

Here’s our display at the Country Store on Saturday morning. I don’t know why the camera was doing that! (Hi Brandy!)

Here are some sheep (including Shetlands). Check out the horns on that Jacob!

Four-day-old lamb, 2008 WI Sheep & Wool

 

 

Shetland sheep, 2008 WI Sheep & Wool

 

[/Jacob Sheep, horns and all!]  

The feed is sweeter in the other pen!

 

Here is the food at the Afterparty before anybody had some. Chocolate chip cookie pizzas in three flavors, pizzelles in two flavors, chocolate dipped pretzel sticks in four varieties, and two types of cheesecakes with three fruit toppings. Coffee, soda, water, etc. The wine was a door prize ONLY.

 

Chocolate dipped pretzel sticks

 

 

Cheesecake bar — New York style and chocolate mint chip

 

 

Chocolate chip cookie pizzas

 

Here are the door prizes, almost all of them. Some people came to the party and dropped more items on the table.

And here is the TARDIS I made just for the party. You won’t believe how cool my children think this is, and where it is now.

Off to do errands, then I’ll fill it in later.

A tremendous thanks to everyone who attended, everyone who just stopped by the table to say Hi even if they couldn’t come, everyone who helped in any way, and especially to Cheesehead with Sticks, who really made it all possible. I really hope there’s an event like this next year, even if I’m not involved with planning and running it.

September 11: OK, I almost give up. Sorry about the formatting. If I can figure out how to fix it, I’ll do so one picture and caption at a time, saving in between. Meanwhile, I’m on with the rest of my life.

Ravelympics, Day Twelve

Finally, some progress. Last night the gods smiled, the angels sang, two cans of Coca Cola kept me alert, and I got some knitting done on the second Rose’s Wrist Warmer. I was feeling pretty good about this all day today until I grabbed some heavy pans while preparing dinner and got so much pain in my left hand I thought it was broken. My very first thought was d@mm!t, there goes the wrist warmer. But it seems much better now. I’ll just knit s-l-o-w-l-y and perhaps my hand won’t mind.

Want to hear about the Mystery Knitter I met at Irish Fest? Of course you do! But first, some background.

In May of 2007, in cahoots with my never-met-but-sure-we’re-sisters blogger friend Lauren, I checked out a web site called Clanarans, which promised a sweater or sweater kit that corresponded to your Irish clan. Lauren was able to order sets for her surname, but for some reason “Dooley” wasn’t included. Not Irish enough for them? I don’t know. Anyway, I emailed them about it, supplying the English and Gaelic spellings, and asked if they would have it available someday. They wrote back and said, Not now, but keep checking. So, every few months I’ve been checking. Still no Dooley sweater.

So. Fast forward to Sunday at Irish Fest. I was at the Cultural Village anyway, so I decided to take a look through the tents and see if there was any wool. A few years ago, there was; lately, not. But you never know. I went through every tent, I tell ya. Nothing.

There was one tent left, which looked like it was probably selling T-shirts and jewelry. I decided to go in anyway.

Just inside the door were dozens of knitted wonderful things. Aran sweaters, baby bonnets, “longies,” mittens, you name it. I recognized the sweaters immediately, but a big sign behind their table confirmed it. Clanarans.

“You know,” I said to the woman on the left, “about a year ago I emailed you because you didn’t have a sweater for my name.”

“What’s your name?” she said, jumping up to check the list.

“Dooley.”

“Hmm, we still don’t have it. Tell you what, e-mail me with the Gaelic spelling of it and I’ll see what I can do.” She took out one of their flyers and wrote her contact information on it, then looked up at me. “I’m the sweater designer for Clanarans.”

Folks, she also had just finished four days of teaching a class on sweater design as part of Advanced Knitting during Irish Fest Summer School. She teaches you how to select cable patterns, allow for proper size and fit — the works.

Guess where I want to go next year!

It gets better. I pulled out my completed Rose’s Wrist Warmer for her to see. “You can do this,” she said. I felt that same warm rush I got in college when a professor told me I could write. My goodness, I’d been writing constantly since I was about eight years old and pretended to start a neighborhood newspaper. But the Validation by an Expert still gets to me, in a good way.

So, I’m going to email her, and keep plugging away at this. Four years ago I didn’t own a set of knitting needles. Three years I thought I’d only need one pair if I picked the right size. Now I’m afraid to count them. If you insist upon learning something…you can. You truly can.

In and out

Hi all, we returned from the Trip Of All Trips on Sunday and I’ve been playing catch-up ever since. I can’t tell you how many miles we put on the ol’ van, but we had an oil change the day before we left and we probably need another one by now.

Here are some bizarre statistics:

States visited: six
Knitting completed: two sock-heel flaps
Yarn stores visited: one
Yarn stores spotted but not visited: three
Ravelry members met: three 
Great-grandmothers visited: two
Number of times Tom fell down the stairs: one (the first day)
Knitted items photographed: three
Blogs I read: none

So, I still have a lot to catch up on. Unfortunately for everyone who’s waiting for me to catch up to them, tomorrow is the start of the Olympic Games and, more importantly, the Ravelympics. I am only doing one project, but there are many more people planning to do many many more projects. It seems a little silly when I try to explain it to non-Rav people, but we of Team TARDIS are having lots of fun already. I have new friends all over the world because of mutual love for Doctor Who (keep it clean in the comments, ladies) and it’s just one more fun thing to do. Oh wait, one more stat.

Anthropomorphized fat globules knitted and sent to to England: one.

So, the deal is I cast on for my project during the Opening Ceremonies, and try to cast off before the Closing Ceremonies. I’ll be knitting a pair of Rose’s Wrist Warmers, the ones Rose wears in Doomsday (last episode of season 2 of Doctor Who). This should certainly be doable for me. I’m slow but I can crank out a pair of mittens in a weekend if I need to, but there’s just one thing. The pattern is….charted. The backs feature traveling-style cables with seed stitch in the middle, and the Very Colorful Chart is something I’ve never followed before.

We’ll see.

Because I spend more time on Ravelry than I should, and I feel guilty, I will make an effort to post on the blog every day during the Ravelympics instead of just hanging out over *there* with my *Ravelry* friends. Who knows, I might even try to post a picture.

Progress report: Pre-Ravelympics

Bamboo socks: Sock One at foot, Sock Two needs gusset stitches picked up. 
Silk Lace Stole: Still stalled.
Tyrone: Still stalled but I’m getting encouragement from afar to finish.
Secret Christmas Project: conceptualized, begun, and hidden. This is a **new** project and I’m looking forward to the Reveal pictures at Christmas. But I can email details if you’re interested.
*Sheesh, am I doing anything else?*
Heelflap scarf: Still stalled. 
Irish Hiking Scarf with cursed yarn: Still stalled.

I sense a theme.

Anyway, hi to everyone in Blog-Land, and I’ll try to catch up on your blog (and revamp my own) soon.

What happens at Knit Night….

…stays at Knit Night, of course.

But the short version of last night is that we had a perfect storm of Wisconsin knitbloggers (ElizabethSABLE, Jaaladay, Dale-Harriett, Cathy-Cate, and more), a knitting ‘zine distribution (knitcircus #3), knitting tattoos (thanks Cathy-Cate!), delicious drinks, awesome projects, and a newbie who lent who lent structure to our evening. I wish I’d been wearing a wire so I could provide a transcript, but there was a lot that was Not Safe For Work, Not Safe For Children, or generally Not Suitable For Public Sharing. But all hilarious. If I get the chance to recall some of the evening, I’ll try to. We were a wild and naughty bunch hiding in the back room.

I handed out Ravelry badges and left 20 copies of the Second Sock Worksheet at the Sow’s Ear for distribution to whoever would like to help test them out. I also worked on my alpaca shawl exclusively and didn’t even take the Adipose project out of the bag. (Ironically, DH was at home watching most of the Doctor Who episode that included the Adipose; I still haven’t seen it.)

I’m still catching up with my Doctor Who viewing, but I don’t know how I’ll manage to see any of Series 4 before the finale on August 1. Series three, I should wrap up tomorrow night. Then I have less than a week to clean, plan, and pack for a multistate trip that will include a family reunion, two family mini-get-togethers, as at least two Ravelry meetups. If I can do some online viewing of Series 4, it means I won’t be sleeping. Just like now! But I really want to be aligned with the rest of Who-ville.

No other projects are getting attention now that I’m more than 80 percent done with the alpaca shawl (I’m conveniently ignoring the time it will take to make a crocheted  or I-cord edging, since I don’t know how long it will take). I need to mail at least one FO, and make arrangements to send out items for a swap so I can get the rest of my Doctor Who Scarf yarn. And I could probably finish the rest of my Ravenclaw mitten if I wanted to.

I haven’t even thought about my travel-and-trip knitting. Does anyone have suggestions for what WIPs I should take along? A week after I get back, the Ravelympics begin, and I’ll have a lot of simple knitting on my plate, taking my full attention. Then it will be time to really, really, plan that festival Afterparty.

Yikes, I’d better get busy! I didn’t know I was so far behind…..

Podcast me!

I now have a hand-me down iPod shuffle, thanks to Mr. Chocolatesheep. My music is all on CD in the car for listening while I drive, so I thought I would start listening to some knitting podcasts.

But I don’t know where to start! I have heard of a few…but don’t know what would be to my liking.

So, what’s your favorite podcast and why? Don’t put a link in your comment, as you may end up in the Spam Bucket and it’s been icky in there lately. Just give me the name of the podcast or who does it, and I’ll follow up with you if I need more information on how this all works.

Knitting update: doing the hand decreases on Mitten One right now. Did more of a Debbie Bliss demin square. Everything else is just sitting around.

Top Chef tonight! It’s Restaurant Wars everyone!

The Summer Lineup

School is winding down here, and the summer schedules of travel, Scout camp, and pre-kindergarten school (!!!) are visible on the horizon. It’s going to take a while to figure out when & where we can go, especially with the price of gas being what it is. Maybe we will rent horses and ride to Ohio. Best not to dwell on that.

Also our TV seasons are ending — not all at the same time, of course. Our favorite BBC America shows (Top Gear, Last Restaurant Standing) have already had their season enders, Bravo (Top Chef) still has a few weeks to go, and Food Network (Next Food Network Star) is about to start. Somehow we missed most of the NBC season of Thursday night shows, but managed to catch the season finales of 30 Rock (Mexican cheese doodles, anyone?) and The Office (I said, OKAY). We’ll have to watch the full seasons their second time around, with more daylight and no school to get the kiddies to bed early when something like My Name is Earl is showing at 7pm.

I’m conveniently ignoring the other stuff like office visits, hospital procedures, baking for the pizza place, and coordinating this Sheep & Wool afterparty. Because when your husband points out that you haven’t blogged in a while, maybe it’s time to get back on track.

Last weekend DH & I went to the unsold empty house on Saturday and did some work on it. He mowed the shaggy lawn, we moved in a set of washer & dryer to give the laundry room that “laundry room” look, and I vacuumed all the carpeted rooms. The drive belt had snapped on the vac the day before, so this meant hooking up the attachment hose and doing all the work crawling around on my hands and knees. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But at least the house got aired out & looks better. We brought back 2 sets of cross-country skis — what timing!

No meetups (too much work to do), no trip to Herrschners (I think he’s on to me), not even garlic cheeseburgers from Marvin’s (they weren’t open yet) or cannolis from Cheese Louise (they were closed already).

But I did get some knitting done. I did one and a half sock-yarn squares for the Doctor Who Afghan Project, and worked on the cuff for the second Panda Cotton sock (cast on at Late Night Knit on Friday, amid much fretting and grumbling).

And Knit Night was good, even without the traveling Dale-Harriet in attendance. Her daughter Lovely Mary was there, hiding from a sock gusset (unsuccessfully, as it turned out), Molly Bee stayed longer than usual, and I met some new (to me) knitters while sitting at the Big Table. I saw yet another knitter with a boot cast on — what is the deal, and I hope this isn’t catching!

So, here’s the project summary:

Tyrone (for Jack Tom): Still on hold, but I know where the project sheet is. In my pattern binder, of all the odd places. Yeah, I know!
Irish Hiking Scarf (for ???): Still on hold while others go first, has no priority.
Panda Cotton socks (for DH): Sock One on hold pre-heelflap; Sock Two at mid-cuff.
Acrylic tube scarf (for ???): on the verge of frogging. I am really starting to hate this thing. Will trade for fiber, please make offer!
Acrylic heelflap scarf (for ???): I’m using leftover yarn from a pastel Colleen sweater and knitting a scarf in Sl1, K1 across, Purl back. I’m only a few rows into it and it’s still curling up at the bottom, so I’ll have to do a bunch more before I can see if it looks good enough to keep.
Hufflepuff mittens (for me): Working thumb gusset on Mitten One. After some of these “exotic” fibers I’ve been working with lately, knitting with Plymouth Encore Worsted feels great!
Silk stole (for me): Snuck this one in on you, didn’t I? This was supposed to be a cotton lace washcloth. But I found a couple of balls of Shire Silk in baby blue at a new local yarn store, and cast on for a “washcloth” with size 15 needles. I haven’t done a repeat in a while, I don’t know how much yarn I’m going to need, I’ve never used silk, I’ve never done lace. I don’t care. I’ll get more yarn when I need it.
Leftovers afghan (us): I’ve started on a second five-inch square from the Debbie Bliss Denim Cotton Aran yarn. In about 35 years I will have a blanket. Or, 4 squares if I never find any more of this yarn on sale.

I had a knitting dream the other night, too. I was working with some sort of cobweb weight green lace on a really fancy project that I had completely hosed. The border didn’t go all the way around, some sections looked like entrelac squares done with a different shade of green…..you could almost hear the frogs croaking offstage. I was glad to wake up from that one.

What else is up for this week? Big Tom has an appointment tomorrow to be fitted (perhaps) with a mild orthotic (his left foot turns in, sometimes). There’s a colonoscopy scheduled for Thursday (not mine) that could use some positive vibes. And there was a line from yesterday’s mass bulletin that caught my eye:

“Pray for the sick, for there are many.”

Lucky for us, we already know that cooking and knitting are prayer.

Big Tom

When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.
— Steven Wright

Happy Birthday #2 to my little man — my friend Jen calls him Big Tom since he’s been underweight and behind the eight ball for so long. But he is catching up fast. He is such a sweetie and a ham.

Of course, the State of Wisconsin thinks he turned two yesterday. Silly trusting me didn’t bother to double check his birth certificate until after his first birthday, so apparently I need to do some legal filings to get it corrected to his real birth date. I was going to get this done in time to be a birthday present — but I didn’t.

My oldest son has wrong information on his birth certificate, too, oddly enough. Right after he was born, someone said brightly, “Look! Right at nine o’clock!” Everyone in the room turned to look at the clock, which was one of those enormous schoolroom types that you can see from the other end of the hallway. It read 8:50. Sure enough, when the birth certificate came, it said 9:00. That genius was the person responsible for reporting accurate information to the state. Sigh.

Anyway.

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the comment contest. I met a bunch of new (to me) knitters and read a bunch of new (to me) blogs, got a lace washcloth pattern to work on, discovered that there’s a whole blog dedicated to tracking knitting blog contests, and found out a lot more than 10 people read my blog. (Who knew! Well, now I do.)

Congrats to Molly Bee for winning! She has yet to pick her prize package.

I guess now I need to knit, and write about it, and post some !@#$% pictures every once in a while.

And everyone has been so kind not to bring this up, but I haven’t been mentioning much chocolate in the blog lately. I certainly haven’t stopped eating it.

That may change. There’s a local (within walking distance) pizza place that would like to offer desserts, and when I stopped in to tell the owner I was thinking of going to baking school, and would he be interested in my homework, he about flipped. I just bought a new pizzelle maker and will be making some samples for him soon. If that works out, I may be baking at his shop one or two nights a week. So I will have dessert pix to share! If WordPress lets me share them.

I’ve also got the WIS&W afterparty to bake for, and I gave myself a pretty ambitious menu to learn. But I’m one of those people who needs deadlines. Desperately. So blast it, it’s time to get started.

But knitwise… I decided to cast on for the bias square for the Doctor Who afghan. The plan is to collect enough squares for two afghans — the U.S. one auctioned to benefit Doctors Without Borders, and the U.K. one auctioned to benefit a hospice that helped care for David Tennant’s mother when she recently died of cancer. They are easy peasy 4 inch garter stitch bias squares, not even mitered squares (I guess that’s next), made from sock yarn. My first one is more than half done, and my plan is to just keep making them until I run out of leftover sock yarn. NOTE: I am NOT coordinating this effort. It originated in the Who Knits? Ravelry group (come and join us!), and I am just making tiny little squares.

I may start doing this with larger amounts of oddball yarn, too, and just tucking them away until I have enough for an afghan for myself. Maybe I’d better put an explanatory note in with them in case I get hit by a bus and somebody finds this bag of squares and thinks WTF.

Next on the list is starting the second Panda Cotton sock, so I can work two heel flaps right in a row and have a cigarette. I’m figuring it will be Just. That. Exciting. (I’m kidding, folks. I have never smoked anything I was offered.)

Knitwise the other projects are the Red Heart tube scarf, the MCY IHS, and Tyrone (sigh). I will probably knit that lace washcloth before I start any of them! That’s just the kind of knitter I am. I have to have a plan so I can thwart it.

ETA (edited to add): The Yarn Harlot has just shamed me into putting Tyrone at the top of the list. If anyone can encourage me through the weird first few raglan rows of sleeves-meet-body, please comment with said encouragement. I haven’t touched the sweater since last October, and it’s quite likely I don’t know what I was doing, or what to do next.

Contest time!

Hi folks….sorry for the lack of posts. The Internet connection is continuing to be crap, but now that we have DH has rearranged the living room, it seems to be better. (I know, WTF. It’s like the “magic” sticker on the big VAX servers in the Olden Days. Don’t touch it and everything will be fine.) Not knowing when I’d get dumped has kind of tarnished the relationship, yaknowwhatImean?

But anyway…..I just looked at my blog stats and saw the Comments total is at 987. You all know what that means, a goodie bag for the 1,000th comment! (Nothing for you, Mister Spam. Move along.)

I don’t know for sure what the prize will be. Odds are high that it could be a styrofoam head on which you could pose your latest knitted hat. Or, you could pick What’s Behind Door Number Two: a classic Chocolate Sheep care package from good ol’ Wisconsin. This will probably involve both yarn and chocolate. I’m planning an intimate party for 200 during WI Sheep & Wool Festival this year, so maybe I can test some recipes on you. If that sounds good, comment away!

Back to the knitting. The brioche scarf got totally frogged and converted to a tube scarf so I can have something for my hands to do when my brain is otherwise occupied. So that’s grinding along. In fact, I think that’s how I’m going to use up all my acrylic: cast on for tube scarves on 16-inch circs. Merry Christmas!

I’m a few inches (6!) into the first of the Crystal Palace Panda Cotton socks. The pooling is fabulous, like a fractal swirl around the sock. I think one more inch and it’s time to knit me a heel flap. And now that the Yarn Harlot herself has annotated Page 144 of Knitting Rules for me, I’ll never forget how to slip those stitches again. (Hint: the needles are tip to tip.) But before I get to that point, I’m going to take someone’s advice and cast on for the second sock and work it up to the heel flap, too. Then I get to do two heel flaps in a row, squee! (That may also mean I have to buy another set of size 2 dpn’s, oh darn.)

I did one repeat on the IHS-with-cursed-yarn and set it aside again. Just not in the mood, I guess. There are still at least three skeins to be wound up, so it’s miles to go before I sleep, it’s for me, there’s no deadline, yadda yadda yadda.

The Packer Hat was mailed out, and I never heard from the guy again. I don’t know if he even received it. I think I’ll just assume he’s on vacation in Door County or something. Hey Brian, give me a shout out when you get back.

I haven’t been brave enough to pick up the Tyrone sweater yet — what is my problem? But in other Backyardigans news, my BY blog Backyardiknits just got a comment from a Spanish language Backyardigans fan blog. I just finished adding them to the blogroll over there. See how trusting I am that my connection will be stable long enough to do such things?

OK, I’m not brave enough to try to add a picture. I’m sure there’s something I want to say that I don’t want to lose in the inevitable failure to connect.

Top Chef related: I totally called out Nikki on this one, though I would have been thrilled to see Dale go home after this episode. Whenever someone’s this poisonous and they get the feedback and they get to go on to the next round, it certainly doesn’t discourage them or their tactics. And bravo Stephanie! And Richard for giving Stephanie his prize sight unseen. She deserved it.

What else is going on? Mr. Chocolatesheep has a state of the art iMac in the other room so he can make other magazines at home in his spare time, when he isn’t at work making magazines. It is freaking awesome. It is so freaking awesome I knew he wouldn’t mind if I snuck away and did a blog post. Mind? I don’t think he noticed.

Next thing to cast on? Maybe that can be what I judge comments on. What should be next on my needles. Socks for myself? My Dale sweater I actually bought the pattern and the yarn for? A knitted thing for my Birthday Buddy Swap on Ravelry? Or a mitered square for a Doctor Who afghan?

I’ll be in touch with you, number 1000.

Acquisition

First of all, thanks to everyone who was keeping my family in mind over the last few days. I didn’t want to spread any icky personal details all over the Internet, but let me reassure you, we’re not worried about Tom. He is running full tilt into things and using more words every day, including (finally!) DADDY. The actual Person Of Interest has more doctor appointments and future tests scheduled and a leisurely pace. I think the thing that was freaking me out was how quickly the docs wanted to do things last week. (It’s never good when the doctors want things done immediately, is it? But we’re not on the “immediate” schedule for now.)

So. I replaced the size 7s with the only needles I could — Susan Bates aluminum circs. Get this, my nearest JoAnn’s does NOT carry aluminum single points. They’re all Clover-brand bamboo. Then there’s a mix of plastic and bamboo and aluminum circs, then aluminum crochet hooks. Well, at least they were 40 percent off. I have the Brioche scarf on them now but haven’t made one new stitch on them.

The jury’s out on how rough I was on the old needles. Well, clearly I did something wrong in expecting an infinite number of k2togs out of them. But seriously, it’s not like I was knitting bobbles. And now I’m left with a beautiful solo needle that could be a shawl pin for an elephantine-sized shawl. But probably I should have been using larger needles anyway, to make it more drapey.

Here’s the current project list:

Packer Hat. Gotta do it.
Salt & Pepper sock #2. Still in the !@#$% ribbing. After I get past that, it will fly.
Cotton demin aran socks. I snuck this one in on you, didn’t I? Unfortunately I’m beginning to think it’s a mistake and I should frog it. I’ll take a poll at the Harlot event on the 28th, or Knit Night this Friday.
Blanket for Colleen. Another one under the radar….then I got splinters in my needle tips. Must fix before proceeding.
Brioche scarf. Awaiting mojo.
Irish Hiking Scarf with MCY yarn. On hold, awaiting mojo.
Zigzag scarf. This is what I picked for my mindless knitting, and it worked! I memorized the pattern quickly, and Colleen has already claimed it for her own. The yarn is 90 cents’ worth of mystery acrylic from the thrift store, in a black/purple/evergreen colorway — I suspect it’s Patons.

I’m also set to acquire two raw Romney fleeces tomorrow — one white and one dare-I-say chocolate brown, from a very local breeder. She raises Romneys and sport horses, and is awaiting at least 4 lambs and one foal right now. How lucky! She will come by with the fleeces tomorrow night. I tried to time the transaction so she was here when my husband wasn’t, but oh well! it’s time for some honesty here about all this fiber. (I think he would be willing to overlook some more fiber if only I would start on his bamboo socks.)

Maybe it’s also time to start spinning some of it up. Maybe I can get some mojo from Molly Bee. Go check out her spinning results now. Yes, right now. Then come back. I’ll wait.

(taps toe)

I **KNOW**!!! Isn’t it stunning? I hope Lauren is getting some of that spinning mojo as well. (Why are so many of my knitting friends sitting around with their legs in casts? I’m afraid, very afraid….)

So…the hubby’s away tonight…what say you for a triple date with David Tennant to finish off his first season of Doctor Who? While I also fill out five sets (I think) of school paperwork and finish the Packer Hat, of course.