In My Room.....

Once upon a time, there was a college boy who lived with us.  He went away to school, he traveled to Australia for a semester, then he returned to us for the summer.  The summer dragged on and on and his room got messier and messier.

He finally found an apartment to move into, and moved from our house on September first.  Shortly thereafter, I claimed the room as my own.  It didn't start out much better than when he lived here.

But the stuff I was moving in was much more exciting (at least to me) than the stuff that he'd moved out. After cleaning, carrying, storing, shopping, and arranging, my new yarn and fiber room was complete.

I have a lot of my yarn displayed in these shoe organizers.  I know it's not the best way to keep the yarn clean and dust-free, but I love being able to look at it and touch it whenever I want to.

Buddy likes to visit my room.  He has a blanket to sleep on in here now.

I love my room.  I wish I could spend all of my time there.  In a perfect world.....

We Interrupt our Regularly Scheduled Knitting Content

for a quick commercial message.

We own a condo in Palm Desert, CA, which is available for vacation rentals.  It was previously listed on a vacation rental website, but we decided to take it off of there this year.  So I have started another blog which details all of the amenities of our condo and gives contact information.

We have lots of availability for rental this winter, so please check it out and contact me if you are interested in a trip to the sunshine sometime during the upcoming cold season.  It's a great place to visit.

There's a link in the sidebar, or use this one: Palm Desert retreat.

Thanks for reading!

What I Learned at the Fair

Ever since we've lived in this house, we've gone to the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe, Washington most summers. When the kids were little, they'd go on the rides, we'd watch the pig races, look at animals, and of course eat lots of scones. As my interests evolved over the years, I've enjoyed looking at the displays of fresh produce, flavored vinegars, and flowers. I always love looking at the handmade quilts that are on display and the knitted items caught my eye the last couple of years.

In reading blogs, I noticed that some people actually entered their knitting into the fair! Of course, people have to enter or there wouldn't be anything there to look at, but I always thought you had to be some kind of expert to enter. I was reading Yarn Pirate last year and she entered some handspun yarn and items knitted from her handspun into our own Evergreen State Fair (she lives an hour or so north of me.) Last year I was interested in seeing her work, so I made it a point to find it and see how she did. She had ribbons on her items and that got me thinking that maybe it wasn't so far-fetched for me to actually enter something of mine.

So I looked at the entry categories and dug around in my closet and came up with two items that I thought looked impressive enough. One was my Kauni cardigan and the other was my Pillars of Fire socks. (Ravelry links) The socks were ones that I didn't think I'd messed up in any way, they're made in beautiful Wollmeise yarn, and I hadn't worn them much so they still looked new. The cardigan always gets a lot of attention, so I thought it would be a good entry.

I filled out the forms and turned them in. When the fair opened, we went out to see how I'd done. The knitted items were in one room and were mostly in glass cases. The handspun items were in another room, and were displayed on shelves, hangers, and dress forms. The handspun area was what I'd remembered from last year, not the encased-in-glass knitting display. Here's a photo of the area last year.

Anyway, we looked in the cases and found my stuff. The cardigan had a white ribbon on it and the socks had a blue! I hadn't won one of those great big rosettes that say "best of category" or "best of show", but I was happy. Ribbons from the fair! Woo-hoo!

Buddy was a little too close when I went to take a better photo of my socks. See his feet?

When I went back to pick up my items, I understood more about what goes on. Each item is judged and an evaluation form is filled out by the judge. I thought they just looked at the item, decided whether it looked cool, and awarded ribbons. Wrong. They really rate them on lots of categories; finishing being a very important one. I found that I had received 97/100 points on my socks, being graded down slightly on degree of difficulty, presentation, and because they noticed the end that I'd neglected to weave in. Oops.

It seems like the ribbons are awarded based on points; so there can be multiple blue or red ribbons in a category. The big winner is the person who gets the rosette, I guess. You can see that lots of the socks in this case have ribbons on them.

My sweater was a different story. I received 72/100 due to "technical errors". This meant that they really looked at the outside and the inside of this sweater, which was the first colorwork I'd done, and the first sweater in the round with steeks that I'd done. I'm not that good at finishing, and this judge totally knew that! So that's what I really learned - how the judging works. It's not enough to enter something that looks nice; it has to be technically perfect as well. (An aside - the judge spelled steek as steak, so too bad I can't get points for spelling.) This was so helpful for next year, since now I know the judging criteria and I can choose a project to enter that is more carefully finished. Probably not another sweater, but you never know!

I'd really like to work on my spinning until it's good enough to enter something into the handspun category. In a forum post on Ravelry, the Yarn Pirate declared that she wouldn't enter the plain knitting category because it was too hard. So I guess my stumbling in and entering and winning a blue ribbon was beginner's luck. It's sure whetted my appetite for next year. I want one of those big fancy ribbons!

Since we can't finish the post about the fair without showing some of the other essential items, here they are. Goats, scones, and Elvis. I hope you had a chance to go to the fair this year and that I've encouraged you to enter something. It's fun!

The Princess Goes To College

Yes, I'm way behind on posting again, but I'm trying to keep things in chronological order, so I must document the leaving of the Princess before moving on to other things. Way back in August, I went to the Sock Summit, I returned from the Sock Summit on Saturday, and we had a large graduation/going away party for the Princess on Sunday. Note: I wouldn't recommend organizing a big party when you're going to be out of town the days immediately before it is scheduled to occur. It is possible, but it isn't enjoyable.

That being said, we had a wonderful time. The Princess has begun her college career at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, so we decided on a casino theme. We set up some card games and a little roulette wheel in the basement, but everyone stayed outside, since it was a nice day.

Elvis came.

We had balloons. Here's Ben filling them up with helium.

We decorated and set up. A little kiss for Ma from a helper.

We had food. The enchilada bar is what's enticing all the people into the line.

We had karaoke:

Collegeboy makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in tune-carrying ability.

Grandpa delighted the crowd by reprising his version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in a non-existent foreign language, which he used to sing to entertain the kids on road trips.

It takes a real man to sing "I Feel Like a Woman".

We found out that Dad really can sing.

All in all, we had a lot of fun, the Princess made everyone cry with her slide show (at least she made me cry) and then all that was left was to actually take her to college.

That was a long day! We got up early, flew from Seattle to Las Vegas, checked her into her dorm, went shopping for all the stuff that we couldn't bring with us, then went back to the dorm and got everything put away. She set up a shrine to the boyfriend on her desk,

I took a quick photo of her with a couple of new friends,

then I left and went back to the airport to come home.

She seems to be getting out of her room a little bit.

It's quiet around the house now - the son who had been living with us this summer finally moved out, so I'm in the process of making plans to turn his room into my spinning/yarn/fiber room. I can't wait to see how it's going to turn out.

We Came, We Knitted, We Conquered

Sock Summit 09 is over and what can I say?

I thanked my lucky stars every day I was there that I didn't give up when the server crashed on registration day and I got to go. Apart from the inauspicious beginning, it seemed (at least to an outside-observing-attendee) spectacularly well organized. From opening the registration desks on Wednesday to having one of the largest trade-show marketplaces that I've ever seen, to handing out the world-record-attempt tickets early in the morning, to having volunteers staffing every classroom, I saw very few long lines, no teachers lacking supplies or technology or chairs, and just no unpleasantness in general. It was great.

I drove down from Seattle on Wednesday with my friend and when we walked over to the Convention Center from our hotel, this is what we saw.

And then as we were taking photos, a couple of knitters who were leaving the building asked if they could take our picture together in front of the signs. What a way to feel welcome right off the bat!

I didn't have my camera with me always, but have a few more shots. Here's my ticket to the world record event .

The link takes you to a local Oregon news clip reporting on our attempt (which I think was successful) to break the world record for the most knitters knitting together for 15 minutes (with straight needles.) There were cameras there, there were witnesses, and there was an official from the Guinness Book. The hope was to fill the ballroom with 1600 knitters, but I think we only got 935. Still should be enough. It was really fun. If you watch the video to the end, and you know what I look like, you just might see me.

That room was pretty full. Here are a couple more shots. Tina and Stephanie were happy (and slightly blurry due to camera operator error.)

I thought I'd document my knitting at this momentous event. I decided to knit a swatch out of my first wheel-spun handspun. Here's how big it was when we started,

and here's how big it was when we finished.

I didn't take any pictures of the marketplace, but it was impressive. I couldn't find my way around without the map and even with that I managed to get lost plenty of times. The goodies I got:

Fiber! Superwash merino top blended with some sari silk and angelina. I think it will make an elegant stole if I can get my wheel spinning refined enough to make it thin enough. This is the black shiny fiber on the left and came fron Enchanted Knoll Farm. The beautiful purple on top is merino/nylon pencil roving from Fiber Optic yarns. This will make great sock yarn. The other two luscious items are from Crown Mountain Farms. The beige fluff is baby camel/merino and the gray is Alpaca/silk. Both are unbelievably soft and squishy.

Yarn: I didn't get too much sock yarn since I already have cough, cough a bit... but couldn't resist the Schoppel Wolle Zauberball in browns, possibly for a pair of socks for DH. The sample showed cool uneven stripes when it's knitted up into a plain sock and it feels really soft. I also got a sweater's worth of Madelinetosh Worsted in the Norway Spruce colorway. (Not all skeins are shown.) I haven't decided which pattern I'll use for this. (These were both purchased at the Webs booth, where there's a quantity discount. It helps....also having a friend, and I mean you, Goatlady, along to talk me into buying mass quantities was instrumental.)

The only other yarn I bought was a beautiful skein of merino/silk/nylon/silver! from Kitchen Sink dyeworks. This was too pretty to pass up and will hopefully make a lovely scarf. I bought one of the last two "City of Roses" skeins from Knit/Purl, too. I had looked at this online and even started to reserve some twice, but never did. I think the colors in it are wonderful and the fact that it was a limited edition for Sock Summit makes it really special. And the Knit/Purl folks are so nice, too!

You didn't think I could leave without a new spindle or two, did you? I've heard of Avi Wasserman for awhile, and loved this little one. It's made out of olive wood from Israel with ebony and silver. I thought it was beautiful. You can see I already tried it out with some of the baby camel. Works great. I purchased this at The Fold's booth.

The other one I couldn't pass up is this Ken Ledbetter. I fell in love with the painting on the whorl and had to have it. The colors of the flowers and the delicate painting kept me from putting it down once I picked it up. This came from Carolina Homespun, and it's difficult to stop with one at their booth. Into the spindle collection it goes.

I was disappointed when I realized that I'd missed the date to buy souvenirs, which were supposedly being sold only online and picked up at the event. Luckily there were extras and I got a couple of things I wanted as remembrances.

And my sweet friend, Goatlady, brought me a ravatar pin that she'd had made for me. I love it and appreciate the thought so much!

I also bought an Ashford Niddy Noddy, but everyone knows what they look like. Now to put everything away.

Final Preparations

It's going to be busy and wonderful. Tomorrow I leave for Portland, OR to attend Sock Summit, the place where everyone who is anyone in the knitting world (or alternatively, was lucky or persistent enough to survive the server overload and crash and get tickets) will be this week. Living in Seattle, there was no way I was staying home for this. A quick drive down the freeway and I'll be there!

I managed to get into some classes and the welcome gathering, which I think is going to be awesome. I'm meeting up with my good friend from Tennessee, Goatlady, who I haven't seen for over a year, and am really looking forward to that. I will attempt to take some photos for posting next week, but I'm sure there will be plenty to see in the knitting internet universe.

In getting prepared to go, I finished a couple of projects. You saw the baby stuff I made yesterday, but I also finished Shawl That Jazz (in time for the weather to come down out of the 80-100 degree range) and also my Asparagus Cables socks.

The shawl is made from Dream in Color Classy, purchased at The Loopy Ewe. The colorway is Nightwatch, and I used about 3-1/2 skeins on the project. I think this will make a nice, casual shawl that will be handy for cool evenings.

The socks were made from nummanumma Toasty in the colorway Pesto. I also purchased this at The Loopy Ewe. The yarn is great, though I had a little splitting trouble, mostly when I was making (or fixing) the tiny cables. I don't know the reason, but I had tons of trouble with the second sock, so I am really glad to be done with them!

I'll be back from Portland on Saturday because we're having a huge graduation/going away party on Sunday for the Princess, who leaves for college on August 18th. I hope I've got it organized enough...when I come back it will be time to finalize food and decorations for the 80 or so people we're expecting. And also to arrange with the weather gods for a day of sunshine and 75 degrees. Not asking too much, am I?

See you later. I'm off!

When you make a baby a blanket....*

she's going to want a hat to keep her head warm.

And when she gets the hat, she's going to want matching booties.

I hope she likes them.

*With thanks to Laura Numeroff and her wonderful children's book, If You Give a Moose a Muffin.