Sea Anemone Knits

A few weeks ago, my friend Susan sent an email around to a bunch of us in the knitting group asking if any of us wanted to go see the Yarn Harlot magically appear in Austin. I wrote back immediately with a resounding YES!!! Apparently, I was the only one who did that without even checking the calendar. I was just going to make it work and any other plans be damned. As happy luck would have it, I had nothing going on for these dates. By the week before the event, we had managed to gather a group of 6 of us to be representin’ the H-Town. Whoopee!!! Kelly, Jet, Susan, Jennifer and I drove up together and Staci drove up seperately. Have a picture of us sitting in the Church before Stephanie came up to chit chat with everyone. Actually, I’m not in the picture because I was behind the camera!

I had an absolute blast. The Harlot was wonderful! She gave a talk and signed books and she’s so lovely and funny and down to earth. I mean, she’s totally just another knitter, like all of us, but at the same time, she’s a knitting rockstar! We got a group picture (my hair is allllliiiive!!!)

I was a struck by an inability to speak reasonably intelligently when it was my turn to have my book signed. I think I mostly grinned at her. I know I managed to ask her if she would take a picture with my "Mom Sock" to which she kindly obliged.(for my Mom who is in the hospital right now… that was the bitter part of the time in Austin. I immediately hopped in the car and drove down there within 15 minutes of being back in Houston. I’ve spent a lot of time in cars in the last 3 days…)

I didn’t really meet a bunch of new people while I was there but I bonded more with those that I knew. I ran into Christine, which was lovely. She had organized a lunch gathering across the street from Hill Country Weavers at a restaurant called Guero’s. With smiles on their faces, they can handle about a bazillion loud hungry knitters who are high on knitterly energy. Quite fun and I enjoyed the food alot too. Thank you Christine!! I hope she is able to join us on Thursday night soon.

I did get to meet a very lovely knitter named Sarah. I met her because I went over and proceeded to gush a bit about how much I liked the tank she was wearing. It is the Waterlily top from the Spring 06 Interweave Knits. I have some Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton that may have to become this tank in the near future. I am inspired! I then got to talk to her just a tiny bit more at Guero’s. But not as much as I would have liked.

While I was waiting my turn for the book signing, I wandered around amongst other knitters. Some were drinking beer to combat the nasty life-sucking heat. Others were inside marinating in lovely cold air conditioning. Still others were inside HCW shopping and cleaning out the yarn. I bought some lovely things. Spent more than I should have. But how often does one get to meet the Harlot and shop in a new place?? I think every person there can offer the same explanation! My first purchases came before I met Harlot. I cast on a sleeve for the Hourglass Sweater from LMKG on Thursday night at SnB. I wanted something nice and plain to knit on this weekend. I cast it onto a 16" Circular Boye needle. By the time that I sat down to listen to the Harlot, the needle was making this scratchy noise and was no longer knitting smoothly. Jet confirmed this for me and I put it down in disgust because I couldn’t tolerate the scratchy. So my first purchase was a 16" Addi to solve this. Smooth sailing since! I’ll provide pictures soon.

My second purchase included these two things:

The teal wool will be used for my attempt at shibori knitting. I bought a bag of marbles at walmart that I will tie into the finished fabric before I felt it to create the bumpies. The needles are a new set being released by Blue Sky Alpacas and they were most definitely bought while tripping along high as a kite on so much knitterly energy that I apparently didn’t notice the price tag, because WOW. I have knit with them and they are quite lovely. Very smooth and easy to handle. Plus, the tin will hold many more needles than the set of 5 that come in it. I’ve currently got all of my nice birch dpns in there too. The needles will only fit if they are 5" or less though. A requisite kitty shot follows and that will wrap up the post for today as I really really need to go to sleep so I can wake up for work on time. Yikes… I’ll only barely get 6 hours tonight… Oh well! Ciao!

So, I went to the Dr yesterday and was throughly violated, but I like my new Doctor. She’s still pretty young, but very disarming and nice. Totally made me feel comfortable about the fact that I let her poke and prod my body about 5 minutes after I first met her. The result of this Dr’s appt meant that I had the rest of the day off to play. Yay!

My first stop after my appt was to mail off my package to my downstream SP and pick up my giftie from my upstream SP.

Monsiuer le Bug inspected the package on arrival to assure that it was not tampered with by my lovely mail person.

Upon opening, I find these!

Bug thinks I’m a spoiled rotten girl. He may be on to something.

Upon closer inspection reading the card I discover that the pretty blue yarn

is some yarn that was handspun by my SP. Am I lucky or what?? If I had spun that, I’d be unwilling to let it go! It’s gorgeous, soft and squooshy; ie: perfect!

She also sent some pretty mystery green wool (I think it’s got a little mohair or perhaps angora in it. I will need to look into this when I get home tonight. And, oh but wait, there’s more! She sent a skein of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn in the most delicious purple-y green-y colors. The sock yarn children broke down crying last night by the way. They are jealous. They know that Laura’s yarn and this will totally be the next socks to be knit instead of working my way through the sock yarn according to acquisition rank.

And then, I know! More?? Geez. I’m gonna be a total priss after a box of goodies this good!

It’s a new book of baby patterns! Exactly what I needed as I’ve got three babies to knit for! Dark Chocolate (half gone now, by the way!) and last, but most definitely not least, a moose magnet! I love the moose! Moose are so funky looking and funny. I love this magnet!

I can’t even remember what else I did with my afternoon off. It was all eclipsed by my box of surprises! Thank you SP!!!!

I had two visitors this weekend. Terribly excited to see both. As of 8am, this one has left.

The other is more of the permanent houseguest variety. But he’s nice, doesn’t make a mess and I don’t have to explain all of the yarn to him. Could you ask for more? And a picture of my squooshy little man lest you think I may have changed my "single" status.

So, as noted by Kelly, Meredith and Susan on Thursday night, I have indeed broken my $#!+ knitting curse. Heaven shall only ever know what I did to deserve such torture. But I have started an "Oh Woe Is Me" project as a result. This will be my second Anthropologie Inspired Capelet as designed by Julsey from Craftster. I’m feeling sociable, have a picture!

I made this one back in January…

I’m really happy with this first one, but it’s so warm and fuzzy that it will only really work in like cold weather. And I wanted one to wear with tank tops in the summer, so hence the "Woe" project of needing one in a more Summer-In-Texas friendly yarn.

I also got some work done on the blue baby sweater. See? I did work on things that have a deadline!

So Friday night, Meryl and I met up with Kelly and Rob at Aztecas for margaritas. Note: Please never try more than two. These people are not making pansies over there. We saw some guy get sick. I later heard his friends comment on the 4 margaritas and 2 shots. This was not some little guy either. So there’s some proof of the pansy-less-ness of these ‘ritas.

Saturday saw us watching A Scanner Darkly at the Angelika. We both decided that we don’t hate the movie, but we don;t really love it either. I’ve decided that I like it, but don’t particularly enjoy the exploitative-ness of humans without their knowledge going on in the film. Definitely worth seeing though. Afterwards though we felt the need to go to a bookstore and look at books. We marinated in books for 4 hours. Can you imagine anything better?? Nope, me either. Anyway, it’s "Laundry Time" and I must go forth to the laundromat to create some clean clothing to wear to the office. I get the feeling that they don’t appreciate wrinkles and such…

I’m actually kinda sleepy though I don’t know why. My boss decided that she’d work from home again. This would make it like the second or third Friday in a row. Which, actually, I don’t mind all that much except it means that I don’t stay on the ball and get work done. Now, don’t get me wrong, I got things accomplished, but probably not near what I’d have gotten done if she’d been there.

Example: I was on the knitty board today at exactly the right time to find out about a 50% off sale that KnitPicks was having on EVERY addi turbo needle in stock. I grabbed 8 different sizes and still didn’t have $40 so I emailed Kelly, Mo and Susan and asked if they wanted to jump in on an order. Susan did. But by the time I clicked through to the checkout counter on the site, 40 minutes later, 5 of my eight needle sizes were sold out! Yippee Sh*t! Now, I know knitters can be a little wild when it comes to sales, but where did the rush come from?? So, as an end result, Susan’s needle was available, and I’ve got two 12" US #1 circs, two 12" US #3 circs and a 24" US #3 all to be coming my way shortly. I love me some socks on 12" circulars…

I’m kind of feeling "eh…" about knitting this past week. I finished the cowl and I’m terribly pleased although she grows. A lot. I wonder if I should have gone down even one more size so that I didn’t feel like I was wearing a bag after one outing.  I’ve been working slowly on the tank top. I only knit about 2 inches of lace during the enitre trip and I didn’t even hit a yarn shop the whole time. GASP! Those who know me know that as soon as i confirmed that I was going to be in NJ, the first, and I do mean first, thing that I did was google yarn shops in Princeton. I saw the yarn shop in Princeton. I even walking down and gazed lovingly in the windows. But it was closed when I got there. When I got to NY, my dad’s girlfriend convinced my dad to allow that we stop at a yarn shop for me, (even though I’m 24 years old I’m not allowed to spend the day in NY by myself? Strange, but apparently true) I immediately called upon Mo who graciously and frantically googled yarn shops in NY for me as I had come unprepared. But even with notes and scrambled addresses scrawled across the back of my pattern, the closest I actually got when all was said and done was to wave at one that we happened upon by random chance as we drove by in a cab while trying to get back to the hotel to pick up our bags and dash to the airport. Oh well. It was not to be I suppose. I actually don’t really mind. Probably because my cousin Joanie dropped a little purl of wisdom in my lap. Apparently, her parents are quite good friends with Julie Carles’ (she of the Yarn Girls fame) husband and they very kindly told me to let them know the next time I was going to NY and they would call them for me so that when I dropped into her yarn shop, they might know to expect a knitter who has never walked into a yarn shop without a disastrous slip and fall near the register resulting in a swipe of the debit card as I go down.

I leave you with this picture

This is my "baby" and his name is Bug and he is 7 years and 2 months old. I adopted him on Sept 9, 2001 (I dug up his paperwork the other day. Hadn’t realized that I had gotten him so close to 9/11)

Have a great weekend folks!