yarn
It’s a Major Award! I won it!
I am sitting here at Friday Night knitting waiting on all of my knitters to show up. Good thing I got this new keyboard for my iPad…I can sit here and kill time pretending I am writing a script or something while I enjoy my tasty adult beverage.
My friend Ashley had hit me up on twitter and asked why I hadn’t talked about my award. A few posts back I had mentioned that I had won first place in a Flickr photo contest for Yarn Crawl L.A. After kicking around a few emails, I coordinated with the Yarn Crawl folks to pick up my prize at one of my local LYS’s. Ashley had also won one of the Yarn Crawl drawings, but had coordinated to pick it up at a different yarn store…so you know what that means…two yarn stores is twice the fun!
On a Wednesday afternoon, Ashley and I headed to pick up our stuff. First we stopped at the yarn shop closest to us. I picked up my prize and, luckily for me, was the first person to do so and got my choice of color. Gray. Of course, it’s always gray.
But here is the rub. My ‘major award’ was a set of 16″ Clover circular needles and a Rowan Kid Silk Haze scarf kit.
I’m allergic to mohair.
You can’t really see it, but I am holding my yarn with salad tongs. Thanks Ash for the suggestion!
It is so damn beautiful, but I can’t do anything with it unless I want to suffer horribly.
They handed it to me in a cute little mesh bag and I tried my hardest to not touch it at all. It was really hard, but I avoided all actual contact with it.
We walked down to the local Porto’s and had some lunch. We sat outside to knit and eat. Inside, on the opposite side of the glass, were two older women who were admiring our knitting. They had finally gotten Ashley’s attention and decided to start asking her questions about her sweater… through the glass. It was amazing. I am not sure if they understood that I had absolutely no idea what they were saying. I’m not sure Ashley knew what they were trying to say either.
Lunch.
From there we headed to our next shop where Ashley picked up the knitting bag she had won and I sat on the floor agonizing over their signature yarn. If I couldn’t knit my prize yarn, I think I need to compensate by inflating my stash with yarn I CAN knit with.
I ended up buying the skeins on the left and in the center.
To your battle stations! (or how to identify a bug)
I had such plans for today. I was going to be productive…get things done.
It started off pretty well. Got a call from a friend and chatted for awhile. Pinned and repinned the latest sewing project. I even showered. Hooray!
Then, at some point after lunch, I heard a noise. A flippy kind of buzzy noise. Like something had gotten in. I looked over to the corner of the dining room and there he was.
WHAT IS THAT THING?!?
It was pretty big, about an inch and a half long, with a missing back leg. Of course, I don’t know bugs, so I immediately thought the worst. I mean, bugs in general don’t scare me unless THEY CAN EAT MY YARN.
So I proceeded to do what any concerned fiber artist that can’t identify bugs would do…I went to the Internet.
I posted pictures to Instagram, Facebook, and twitter…tagging all of my trusty fiber artists to get feedback. I grabbed all yarn in the vicinity and threw it in a trash bag and shoved it in the freezer immediately. I pulled out an extra bag of cedar balls from the stash closet and started leaving them everywhere.
Of course, I’m getting mixed answers of the identification of this thing, from grasshopper to locust. I’m still planning on getting my hands on some lavender so I can start sprinkling it everywhere.
Hopefully the stash is safe.
(And for any of those concerned, I didn’t kill him. I took him down the hallway and let him go outside.)
Monday morning craft attack.
Where do I even begin?
It’s Monday morning, and in an order to pull off that whole faking it thing (see previous post), I need to hit the ground running. Funny enough, the only mojo I seem to have gotten back is in the knitting department. I have crocheting and sewing that needs to be jettisoned though…and soon. I need to try and reclaim my living room.
The sewing part.
Knitting mojo, it’s a funny thing. I guess it only really took me completing that quick and dirty Jayne hat to help me get it back. I’ve been looking at my pattern collection and stash to see what I can use. I would love to start working on making the stash smaller again. I was also inspired while having coffee with Dana last week. She was knitting this really cool looking shawl called Nightlock. I had always wanted to knit a Danish style shawl. I really like the idea that the ends are long enough to tie behind ones back, saving you from having to have a shawl pin with you. So I grabbed my newly stashed Oink Pigments yarn and purchased the Nightlock pattern.
Danish Tie Back Shawls.
So I began my shawl…and as of this writing I am about halfway done. I worked on it last night, even though the AC is out at our place and it has been rather warm lately here in sunny SoCal. It was almost too hot to knit…*almost*.
Named for reasons only known to me.
So, now that the blog is done, it’s time to get my crap together and attack my sewing project head on…with breaks for lunch and crochet. It is going to be a very busy day!
Yarn Crawl LA, Day 3 (the photo edition)
Outside Alamitos Bay Yarn Company. Still pinned!
Feather yarn inside L’Atelier.
The floor inside L’Atelier.
I bumped into Doctor Gemma at Wildfiber!
Turkish Delight at Zoe Zeynep Knit Studio on Melrose.
Yarn Crawl LA, Day 2 (the photo edition)
Phebie’s NeedleArt in Claremont.
Our Chucks.
Just outside Phebie’s.
Colors 91711.
Ash getting her passport pinned to her shirt so she doesn’t lose it…again…at The purlSide.
Outside Compatto. We squeaked in right before closing time to get our stamps.
The alley behind Knit Culture.
The owner of Gather DTLA handed us her dog.
Yarn bombing outside Gather DTLA.
Inside Gather DTLA.
Yarn Crawl LA 2013, Day 1 (the photo edition)
Our first stop to pick up our passport and bag…The Knot Garden.
Court and Ash outside A Close Knit Circle.
Ang, me, Ash and Court inside Abuelita’s in Pasadena.
Ash and Court inside The Yarnover Truck.
Inside Unwind in Burbank.
Yarn Crawl LA 2013
You guys….YOU GUYS! Yarn Crawl LA was amazing!
3 days, 32 stores (2 were visited twice)! I feel like this was some sort of Olympic sized yarn event…and it was so much fun!
My Yarn Crawl La Passport.
I didn’t go into this with any real yarn “wish list”, so that helped me to keep to a budget. I ended up with quite a haul though! The good thing is that, while I am stashing yarn, I have a purpose in mind for most of it.
The contents of my yarn crawl bag.
We met some really great people and got to explore quite a few stores we had never been to before. It was definitely an adventure! I am hoping it helps inspire me to get over my knitting funk.
I have a ton of pictures…so be prepared for more photo heavy posts!
Stitches West 2013, The Haul
I almost forgot to post a picture of the haul from Stitches this year! This picture represents *most* of what we purchased during our weekend.
The Haul.
And a few other pics of our weekend, just because.
Dr. Gemma interviewing folks for her podcast.
The wheels at the Carolina Homespun Booth.
I showed restraint. I am no longer allowed to bring dirty fleece into the house after that last incident. But…look! It has my name!
Court and I…with some cheese.
Getting things done!
I have been a busy girl! Between looking for “real work” and doing…”freelance” work, I haven’t had too much time to do my own thing.
I finished my sample knit for Miss Babs and it is packaged and ready to be shipped. I was really happy with the finished dimensions. I have been toying with the idea of taking that yarn I bought for weaving and use it to make another one of these Merging Ripples Shawls. Apparently, I can’t have just one.
I also used my needles to pry in a little time to finish a hat. I stayed up late this past weekend to work on my Varia. I knit it completely out of leftover yarn. I used the leftover Cephalopod Bugga! yarn from my Merging Ripples Shawl and some Anzula Cricket from the Hermione Hearts Ron hat.
I know things are happening with my own things too…even if I am not seeing them. I still have patterns out to testers and I am waiting to get this last wave of feedback before tweaking things and then, hopefully, releasing something! I am chomping at the bit to get stuff moving! I need to keep reminding myself to be patient!
I’m back from Stitches West 2013!
Well, I’ve technically been back since Sunday night, but no ones keeping track, right?
To be honest, I seem to have picked up a case of Con Funk…or sharing a bed with Ashley has “given me pink eye all over”. Either way, I am nowhere near functioning at 100%. It’s alright though, my body waited until I had attended Stitches West AND finished the big project I was working on before deciding to try and tell me to slow my roll. It’s cool…if anything, I know that I have been firing on all cylinders lately and this is my body’s way of telling me I should probably chill out a little.
I am not really wanting to take a break. Stitches was a huge ego boost for me. For once (because it doesn’t happen very often), I decided to purposely pimp myself out. I brought my “creations” and walked them around the floor. I also wore some of my knitting to show off.
The funny thing about Stitches West, and fiber arts people in general, is that they really like to touch things. After you get over the initial shock of people touching your stuff, you get to be okay with it. Think it’s mostly because people will compliment you while they are touching you. That somehow makes it alright in my brain.
I got a lot of compliments on my neon pink Nefretem. The folks at one booth got all excited and asked if I had knit it in their yarn (I hadn’t). It definitely got people’s attention (as it should, because it is shocking pink). I know I had mentioned it before, but it bears repeating…I knit it Baah! Pink Tourmaline…which really is the color of awesome.
For as many compliments as I got on my hot pink number, I got twice as many for my orange and gray Merging Ripples shawl. People really liked it…the pattern, the color choice, my actual knitting. It was so liked that Babs of Miss Babs grabbed me at one point to show it to the ladies working her booth…where they asked me for my business card and handed me yarn to knit a sample for their store. Yeah you heard me…THEY HANDED ME YARN TO KNIT FOR THEIR STORE. This is the point where my brain exploded.
I also got a lot of compliments on my top secret creations. I made sure to tell people that patterns would be available soon. I need to get to work on that.
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