two knits of ivory

So back to March. March. Yeah. Hmmm. In March I went to Vegas. It's not my kinda town, but it gave me an opportunity to take a helicopter tour of Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam, and the Grand Canyon. I much prefer the majesty of the naked earth to the glitter and glam of Vegas, its air diffuse with schmaltz, smoke, and despair. I don't know my Canyon geog, but I'm pretty sure we toured what is known as the west rim. The desert landscape was awash in what looked like green mold. We oohed and aahed over the fact that Vegas recently received a whopping five inches of rain. Little did we know , our basement was filling up with 18 and one half inches of water. Maybe even at the exact moment I took the above picture. 18 and a half inches. Oh March, first you murder Randy Rhoads when I was just a young bubelah, then you go and, well, you know what you've done over many, many years. Now this? March, you are so dead to me. Or not. Oy.

Back in September I went up north to spend the weekend with my Dad's wife, Chris. The reason was the Vermont Sheep and Wool festival. VT Sheep and Wool is a small festival that held several delights. One of these delights was a sheep shearing demonstration. The demonstration sought to illustrate how old "skool" tools work, rather than the art of shearing. The docents used a hand cranked shearing tool. It was extremely labor intensive. While the demonstration was fun, Chris's being able to walk away with the fleece, free of charge, was priceless. That they gave it away surprised us so much, I realized later I never got a decent picture of the completely shorn (shorn is so a word, blogger!) fleece. I was further surprised, and deeply impressed, that Chris was over the moon with the prospect of transforming that greasy, feces encrusted pile of mess into spinning fiber. My sensory idiosyncrasies bar the thought of such a thing, never mind the the deed. Througho...

The second half of my Saturday trip to the NHSW festival was spent focusing on spinning supplies, albeit with copious amounts of gratuitous fiber fondling thrown in. Chris gave me guidance on what type of roving to buy and I settled on an 8 ounce bag of natural colored Correidale. Ascribing to the William Morris maxim, " [h]ave nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful ," I was overjoyed to see Golding Fiber Tools had a booth. When I considered getting a drop spindle, I immediately envisioned buying one of their intricately carved whorls. I found more than one to fall in love with, but easily settled on a hand carved vintage spindle ( #13 ). When no one came promptly to ring up my purchase, I began to rethink the purchase and found myself returning the spindle to it's display. I had been hypnotized into gratifying every whim at the festival up until this point. The extravagance of the purchase finally awoke my slumbering pragmat...

My blogging mojo has been as weak as an extra light cup of decaffeinated joe. I've got a lot of metaphysical questions and ideas floating around in my head these days much of which I either don't want to share or worse, desire to share but am unable to distill into a coherent narrative. I am in a fugue state brought on by the nexus of some personal revelations and my immersion in the biographical material of Christopher Jonathon McCandless , the subject of the book and movie entitled Into the Wild. But there is both knitting and even a bit of introductory spinning going on at chez yarn these days, but before that I want to get down my thoughts about the weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed my jaunt up to Contoocook, where the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool festival was held. The web based weather forecast I read indicated it would start out cold and cloudy but get nicer as the day progressed and it was right on the money. It was raw as I left my house at 7:30 am and I was glad to be...

Sunday morning I awoke with the fresh vigor that comes with knowing that even though it's a Sunday, it is a Saturday Sunday because there's no work the next day. I love that feeling. Knowing I could procrastinate one more day on changing the sheets and duvet and taking care of the rest of the laundry, I dove right into La Digitessa . I think hubby wanted to ignore some impending duty because he suggested a road trip up to Center Harbor, New Hampshire, home of the fabulous Patternworks . Who was I to resist? I packed up three projects and we were off. The shopping portion of the trip was a bust. I was really hoping to find something to inspire me to replace Yellow Toot . They sell Dalegarn, but they had not a single inspiring Dalegarn pattern pamphlet. I was also hoping to find some of that Lime and Blue Malabrigo which I used for Ripley's sweater for another project. Again, nada. But I didn't walk away empty handed. I picked up this little doodad: In case i...

I am one of those people that looks at the clock on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and thinks woefully "Gee, if I sit down now, I'll only have six hours to knit." Yet, if you put me in a car or on a bus, train, or plane for more than an hour I'm a friggin' Mexican jumping bean. On my own I'm quick to find a couch, but once I'm cooped up with no choice of movement, I'm a ball of nerves. Recent discoveries in technology have changed all that. My hubby bought me a portable DVD player two years back and it's therapeutic benefits are consistent. I can now face being cooped up with aplomb, as long as I'm well stocked with movies. I can look forward to the five or six hour plane ride with thoughts of productivity, not hysteria which is good because in the last few years my Christmas tradition has taken on the form of travelling across the country to see my sister and her family in one of the least Christmassy of locales, the American southwest. It...

For the Rhinebeck trip I dutifully took two of my WIPS with me, the Project Stole and the Firestarter socks . But I also took along this yarn: It's been burning a hole in my stash for about a month. I picked up this lovely skein of Uruguayan, kettle dyed, merino wool from Malabrigo in the Marron Obscuro colorway during our day trip to Pattenworks last month. It has been meaning to be a dog sweater and after about five hours in the car on our way to and from Rhinebeck, it has magically turned into one: When fall comes back to central New England I'll get a picture of Ripley wearing it. Until then that pic will have to do. I used the same template as the second sweater I knit Ripley, with some minor alterations. First, I reduced the CO stitches by four to compensate for how much the second sweater expanded on Ripley as he wore it. The Manos del Uruguay yarn is very similar to the Malabrigo. It is a single ply merino wool. The Manos del Uruguay varies from sport to bulky weight...

Who can't help but pick up the excitement in the blogoshpere and at Ravelry regarding Rhinebeck, where New York States Sheep and Wool festival is happening this weekend. I've been vacillating all summer about whether I could handle such an overload of yarn and people and I didn't make up my mind until I had some serious help from my Aunt yesterday. I am going, but only for a morning. Tomorrow morning to be exact. It'll be a brutal 4:00 am wake up to get to my Aunt's and then to the festival by the 9:00 am opening, but I have no doubt it will be worth it. I don't intend to spend a lot of money, but from what I've read that type of belief usually turns out to be delusional. I don't know if festival virgins like myself are more susceptible, but we'll see come tomorrow afternoon, wont we. At the Rhinebeck Ravelry forum on how much others are spending I've read over and over again how people are refraining from buying sock yarn. That's my primary...

Ahem. These. Are. Done. Did you get that? Done. As you can plainly see the toes are green. By Friday night, even without the help of the new scale I could tell I was completely wrong in my assessment that I'd have enough yarn to finish off the socks. And hubby unwittingly came to the rescue yesterday morning when he suggested a road trip to help ease us out of last week. Quicker than one could say boo, I was thinking Patternworks ! It was perfect weather for a drive through New Hampshire and perfect timing because I desperately needed some fingering weight sock yarn to complete hubby's socks. And complete hubby's socks was my mission for this weekend. Patternworks did not disappoint and I was so proud of myself to leave with only having spent $60, $10 of which was spent on a sweater rack, so it doesn't count, right? I had really hoped to buy some Koigu as I have yet to work with this yarn but their selection of greens didn't work for me so I settled for something t...

I'm at home recuperating from the whirlwind roadtrip with a new project and several episodes of Showtoo's Big Brother After Dark today. It's sooooo good to be home. This is the top of Brandon Gap (road elevation 2144 feet about sea level) on Route 73 in Vermont. I just love the Green Mountains!

Having a blog made it easier to tamp down the inner voice in my head that requires I take the path of least resistance, even if that means missing a yarn store in geographic location I have a) never been at; b) rarely been at; c) may never get a chance to go to again; and d) any combination of a, b, & c. It would be easy to say I am lazy. That is what it looks like, but it isn't laziness, it's my aspyness. If I decide to go to point A to point B and am en route, any deviation will cause generalized anxiety. This engenders a physical and emotional uneasiness that is better left unfelt. When I saw a brochure for a yarn store at the New London, CT ferry office on Saturday I took one but I truly believed it would wind up being thrown in the recycle bin with a deep sigh of acknowledgement of my 'limitations.' Ten minutes later I was in a whole new place. Yes! I wanted to see the yarn store. Yes! There is absolutely no reason on earth we shouldn't stop at the lovely y...

Saturday the hubster and I took the ferry from New London, CT to Orient, NY (the north fork of LI) for a birthday luncheon. My grandmother turns 85 this year and my Aunt and Uncle put together a surprise lunch at a pub style restaurant in Riverhead, NY. As is my aspy way, I failed to mention to her that she looked great and not a day over 65. This is not hyperbole. We arrived at my Uncle's and she was fotzing around in the pool with her great grandson. The ferry ride down was brisk. We sat on the upper deck and breathed deep the salty sea hair for approximately one and a half hours. It was all knitting, all the time. I worked on the Brights socks which I've decided to call Sweet Tarts. The stitch markers are to keep track of the purl stitch decreases I'm making every six rows. The evening ferry ride back is always colder so I took the opportunity to work on the Burgundy throw. I definitely made some headway into the final set of skeins. Unfortunately, all did not remain pea...

So we threw caution to the wind and trekked up to Patternworks in Center Harbor, New Hampshire in search of this 104" yarn swift/ball winder combo they sell in their catalog. Saturday was beautiful, the hubster was obliging, and Ripley's never been in the car that long, so hey, why not go to the source, rather than using mail order. (Yes, I am the only long distance purchase aversive person alive – and the result? It’s taken me two years to get up the nerve to purchase the ball winder and swift!) It didn't take long to realize there were more bikers on I-93 north than cars, but then again we rarely get into NH during the summer, and since it is the live free or die state, we first thought nothing of it. That is until we couldn't ignore it any longer. It's June, it's beautiful, and yes, it was a great day to take a long ride behind 20 bikers, with the one directly in front of us stowing a plush, stuffed penis. Yes, you read that right, a plush.stuffed.penis. ...