Is It Stitches Time Already??

Yes, indeed... This morning at 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time, XRX opened registration up for Stitches West 2008 (Feb 21-24, 2008, for those of you living under a big rock...). Since I'm on a wee bit of a budget, I only signed up for three 3-hour classes, and none of them are on Friday or Saturday when the crowds really hit. (And gee, I wish I could remember what I signed up for... too damn late and I can't lay hands on the registration confirmation. You'll just have to wait to find out.)

Jazzed I am!

I did a quick check just before starting this post and saw that there's already one class sold out: "Tips and Tricks with Lily" (as in Lily Chin).

Dad's still here; we're going to hang out at the Valley Fair mall tomorrow (I refuse to call it "Westfield Shoppingmall at Valley Fair." Yecchhh.) where, for lunch, we will feast on Ivar's fish and chips made with sole. Mmmm-mmm good... Not as good as Spuds in Kirkland, but the best that we can get around here.

Gratuitous knitting picture: A mitered heart WIP (it's done now; I just haven't stuffed it yet).

A Fine Yarn Mystery

So there I was in Stockholm in August, walking down the 3-mile-long Osterlanggatan (a really long street-shopping-cafe-alleyway in the Old Town), when I spot Sticka, a yarn store. Hooray! They had a beautiful shawl in the window, and carried most of the high-end yarns (Debbie Bliss, Garn Studios, etc.) and kits for the shawl in the window and another similar one. I picked up some alpaca (go figure) and some sock yarn (go figure), talking with the other cruise-ship tourists who knit while waiting to check out.

Happy!

But wait... Down the street, not much more than 6 stores down on the other side of the street... what's this? "Anntorps Vav, Garn & Handverk"?? "Garn" = yarn, I think. "Handverk" = handwork; a good bet. "Vav" = weave? Maybe. All signs point to a yarn store, or at least a store selling hand-made yarn goodies. We walk in - it's a yarn store! They also carried some familiar high-end stuff - Colinette, Dale of Norway - but also some names I hadn't seen before and couldn't have pronounced. (Sorry, I don't remember the names.)

And.

And.

And they had what looked like hand-spun and hand-dyed yarns in bulky and worsted weights... but they also had a bin of lace-weight. Most of the colors were fairly vibrant, in blues and reds. But I dug around and found this skein of pale greys, creams, pinks, and a little streak of pale mustard. Beautiful. Well, we were running out of time and had to get back to the ship, so I bought the skein and carried it back.

Later that same night, after we had left Stockholm and the ship was rocking gently towards Helsinki, I pulled out my yarn booty to touch and fondle it. Okay, the silk/alpaca was lovely, and the sock yarn will be cool. But I kept coming back to this lace yarn. After the 4th or 5th fondling, I said, "Oh, shit." Kelly's not used to my using that language when I'm not knitting, so it got his attention. "What?"

In my joy of finding the store and finding the yarn, and in my haste to check out, the only question I asked the lady was "how much is here?" There are no labels on the yarn - no fiber, no colorway, no brand, no nuthin'. All I know is (a) it's beautiful; (b) there are 600 meters of it.

See? Isnt' it pretty?

FO FOtos

Voila! The completed shrug. None of these pictures really show off the pretty colorway of the yarn. Yeah, I know it's acrylic, but the colors are nice.

The back shot shows (sort of) the big basketweave I put in the back to stop the endless stockinette from getting to a lethal level of boredom.

Ravelry with Revelry

What fun Ravelry is! As I suspect many Ravelers have done, especially when they first get their accounts, I've stayed up 'way too late for 'way too many nights perusing, loading, photographing, captioning, and loading some projects and stash. It's been fun! I'm 'MegKnits408' there, too.

In other news, my baby brother (okay, he'll be 47 next month) and his wife arrived on 9/15 and left yesterday. Dad flew out on 9/18, so we had 4 days with 5 people in the house. The house is 3,000+ square feet with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, mind you, but DH and I have gotten so used to how we live in it, that 5 seemed like an awful lot of people - especially when 3 are blood relatives and 2 are married in! We all survived, though, and had a good time. It's been a long time since we were all together in one place - maybe even since mom died in 1997.

So dad's here now and will visit until October 2. DH and I will have to pretend we're adults for another week!

Another FO! I had started a shrug last year. It's a very simple shrug; the hardest part is keeping track of the rows so you increase evenly up the arms and decrease evenly down the arms. No, I take that back... The hardest part is knitting flat stockinette for close to 60". It was sitting partially done at about 20-odd inches long in the bottom of a bag, languishing. I figured I'd get around to finishing it "eventually" and hadn't touched it for close to 8 months. My sister-in-law's birthday is the day before mine, though, and when they arrived here shortly after her birthday, I thought it would be a good birthday gift. So I figured I could drag it out, dust it off, and finish it, then she could take it home with her as a birthday gift, to save shipping costs.

I put aside my knitting ADD and knit nothing but that shrug for 5 days, watching it grow longer and longer. I finally finished the second arm, seamed it up, and tried it on (she and I are about the same size). #*$^%# The center of the knitted back did not quite match up with my actual back, and the sleeves were two different lengths. I unseamed it, unbound the second sleeve, unraveled it to the right length, centered the back with the sleeves, then re-knit the cuff and bound off. Smarter than the average bear (this time), I let her try it on and, lo and behold, it fit. All that was needed at that point was to pick up around the opening and knit 3" in rib.

I knit like the wind, I knit during meetings, I knit during movies, I knit late at night. As they were getting ready to leave last night, I was still knitting - and still had a good 2" of ribbed collar to finish. *sigh* It's done now and will be mailed later. Oh well. It looks good, but took 'way more yarn than the pattern called for (which, it turns out, was a constant comment regarding this pattern on Ravelry - good to know it wasn't just me). Photos to follow.

Kicker? I found out that she used to knit Aran sweaters to bring in money for the family when she was younger. So here I am, giving her a super simple acrylic shrug like it's some big deal - why did no one mention that she is a good knitter?? Dope slap me, please.

I am in, baby - IN!

Ravelry likes me, they really like me! Got my email invite this morning and already put in 2 projects just 'cuz I wanted to play around a bit. It's quite lovely, and I have already found some familiar faces and yarn and projects. I must set a timer when I log in, though, or else I'll be there all day... not a good thing when you have a houseful of visiting relatives who expect to be entertained!

But next week....

Any Day Now...

So Debbie got her Ravelry invite today, and she signed up only 1 day before I did... When she sent me the message that she's IN, I knew I wouldn't be far behind. I just checked... There are only 735 in front of me now!! This week, maybe even Monday or Tuesday. Oh, I'm so excited!

In knitting news, I have put all my knitting energy towards the shrug I'm making for my SIL (Caron's Simply Soft Shadows). She and my brother arrived today (from New York) and are leaving Friday, so if I keep at it, there's a chance she might even get to take it home with her.

Closer and closer

Step by step... slowly I turn...

...and suddenly there are only 1,647 before me on Ravelry!