Fiber Festival!

Today I went with Wendy and Amy to the Fiber Festival in Yellow Spring, Ohio. We had such a blast!

We left the Yarn Shop (fortified with coffee and tea) around 10 AM.

Wendy was very exctied. That's a pinwheel blanket she's knitting with Lorna's Laces in Apple Hill. She very happily dubs it "Knitting Crack"

We arrived at said festival and got straight to work, with Wendy and Amy immediately buying some Malabrigo, both laceweight and worsted. Wendy bought like a million skiens (Okay.. like.. 7) of a happy pink color (Strawberry fields right at the top). At this vendor I got to fondle feel Blue Sky Alpaca Organic Cotton. It was so soft and yummy I had to have some. After some coaxing from Amy and Wendy I purchased 3 skiens.

The color is deeper in person. It's really awesome!

Yes, coaxed! It was the first time I was going to buy yarn without a specific purpose and I was nervous and indecisive. But it's lovely and I'm glad I got it. I'm fairly sure it's going to become some version of Liesel.


There were tons of yarns vendors (Which I didn't take photos of).

And some cuddly animals (which I did take pictures of):

(I bought some honey from this farm, yeah local products!)

He bleeted so pitifully during this demonstration... lol.

And (importantly [almost as important as yarny goodness]) ice cream:

Amy is eating cookie dough ice cream with hot fudge and whipped cream in a waffle bowl. I had peanut butter cup with hot fudge and peanutbutter topping. Wendy had cinnamon ice cream (with apple pie stuff in a waffle bowl) which I think I actually preferred to my peanutbuttery goodness.

This is Wendy after consuming said ice cream it was time to fondle our purchases (Note: All of those bags except the one on the far left are hers).


After icecreamy goodness, we went for a second round (Read: Wendy wanted to buy 2 more skiens of that pink Malabrigo ;] ).

On the way home, Der Dutchman and overstuffed ladies.


I spent a reasonable amount of money (Read: not too much over budget) and I got 2 Christmas presents out of it:

This will be a lace scarf for my grandmother.

This is a sock kit I found for $20. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to get it to make for my mother for Christmas. She loves lighthouses. I was so excited I came home and colored the charts (they were scary looking in just black and white with symbols). As I was matching up the colors of yarn to the list that I had, I noticed something. I HAVE A COLOR MISSING!! I noticed when I bought the kit there was a hole in the bag and I figured that someone was just trying to feel the yarn, but no. Somehow the red yarn for the rooves of the houses escaped (Unless it's sitting in Amy's car, because I couldn't wait until I got home to open it up).

I cast on anyway (as you can see in the pic) and discovered that the yarn was sort of hard to knit. I think it's because it's so thick and it's being knitted on size 4 needles.

The yarn is Peace Fleece. I haven't made up my mind about it yet.


I also bought a bottle of hand made hand lotion. The scent is Kimono. It's girly and delicious. If anyone is interested I'll post the wed address of the woman that makes it (It's downstairs and I am no otherwise I'd just post it now).

It was a good day.



Also, I finished my Hat Attack hat! It is on its way to my target as we speak.. Bwuahahahahaha!

It's blurry because my camera only focuses when it wants to.

Also, this pattern made me want to chew rocks. Mainly just because the gauge was 6/5 sts per inch. I didn't really like it when I started knitting (the yarn or the pattern) but it grew on my and I liked the finished product. I was almost sad to see it go (almost).

Also, I thought that I'd done the first row of a color incorrectly and so I ripped back like an inch of knitting to fix it. After knitting back to where I was I realized I didn't actually mess up (This may be why I was up until 1 o'clock Wednesday night to finish it). That also made me want to chew rocks. The reason I thought that I had made a mistake was because I wasn't realizing that the first row of the contrast color shows up as the MC, becuase you're knitting those color sts. So like I was knitting brown and then I switched to green and the knits and purls for the first row show up in the brown yarn. For some reason this didn't occur to me as I wasted about an hour trying to fix it, ripping it back out, and then re-knitting it. >.>

Bah.

Oh! I almost forgot, A dog herding ducks:






TTFN

Substance

On Sunday there were 75-80 MPH winds here in Ohio, thanks to Ike. Now I know that for a lot of more southern states this is par for the course and they're used to dealing with winds like that during hurricane season, but man it was just weird. There are still about 350,000 Ohioans without power and have been without since Sunday. Luckily, I am not among them.



I've been knitting my mom's Emerald. I love the yarn. Cascade Ecowool. It's soft and even though it smells like sheep I like it a lot and I know it will be a nice, warm sweater. The pattern is easy enough, it's from knitty. I had to make a gauge adjustment, because I was getting 4 sts/inch instead of 3 so there was some math involved. It's working out so far. It's my first sweater so I can't really gauge how well it's working out (get it, gauge?! oh, I'm funny).



I also knit another Unoriginal Hat A Yarn Harlot pattern. The last one is a Christmas present so I made myself one out of some Malabrigo Chunky (If you scroll all the way down to the bottom, I used the Sapphire Magenta colorway. It's green and deep purple and luscious) and I loves it. It covers my ears and is thick and soft and I imagine it will be a cherished "*&#% I wish winter was over!!" hat. I loved the yarn up until the end when it started going thick/thin. Which I loved in the single ply worster, but in the 3 ply that was constant up until then, not so much.



It seems that since my SP Catherine sent me that purple DB, I've been wanting to knit more and more things in purple.



Hat-Attack 2 Started yesterday!! Unfortunately the Gauge is 6.5 sts/inch. I'm knitting a hat on size 4 needles. There's no way it'll fit me, which is sad. I know I'm not keeping this particular hat, but since the correct gauge is required to be able to 'kill' your target I know that the hat I'll be getting won't fit either. I have a big head (Like.. 22" big >.>).



The hat pattern was 9 pages long. >.>



That was mainly due to charts AND written directions as well as tips and such.



Saturday I'm going to a Fiber Festival with a few friends from the LYS. It should be good times. I spent a couple hours there yesterday, knitting, and it was hard not to buy any new yarn. I'm saving my yarn money for Saturday.

Have a lovely Wednesday. =)

Third day in a row!

My Therapi yarn for HA 2 came in! I got #549 (brown, supposed to be dark brown but it looks almost like mauve..) and #538 I think (it's the dark green, also not as dark as it looked online). I don't know how much I like it yet. I swatched the brown immediately and it has random fuzzes on it.

On my Mini Cardi I have 4 more rows of increases to work (That means 8 rows total). That'll be about 2 hours of knitting time because there are so many stitches now. After that I'll probable work the body a little more for some more length.

Pictures this weekend! (Maybe a FO for the cardi! ;-] )

FO

Sorry, no pics, but yesterday I knit up a hat for my younger brother. His birthday is tomorrow (He'll be 16, eek!). I modified a Skull Cable (nonravelry link) pattern I found on Ravelry. Some gray yarn and 6X6 ribbing and viola, a great boy hat. =) I fully intend on writing up the pattern and posting it within the next few days. I will also be able to post pictures within the next few days, as I will finally be spending some time with the boyfriend, which means laptop and a camera that works with it.

I am looking forward to spending time with the boyfriend. Being alone all week is what allowed me to finish a sock, my Ribbed Lace Bolero, knit Younger Brother's hat in a day, frog my OSU scarf and cast on August is for Jack all in one week. >.>

I also joined Hat Attack a competitive knitting thing and I'm pretty excited about it! I have to purchase the yarn. It's Therapi by the Southwest Trading Company. It's pretty but it'll be a little on the expensive side. I might try and substitute it for something comprable, I don't want anyone to be dissappointed with their hat!

SP 12 questions! (I've been slacking)

Have you ever entered your knitting (or anything else) in the fair? Would you ever consider it?
I haven't. I might consider it once I get a little better at it!

What Olympic event would best describe you knitting/knitting style?
Er... I'm not sure. I'm not even sure what this question is asking about... Maybe the All-Around Gymnastics since I try and do a little bit of everything?



It's Friday. I'm glad the weekend is here.

Oh, and look me up on Plurk if you're on! My username is BeautyIsntPerfect



TTFN