Sneak preview

Today I am just wiped out from the crazy weekend. I had a dentist appointment at 10 an hour away. When I got home, I had to do my quarterly taxes then finish my bookkeeping for my real job. When I finally got home, I was just *done*.
Hopefully I will have more tomorrow to show you what it really is.

And here is the crazy picture of our cart when we left the trade show! I know some people took home a lot more than we did, but we sure got a kick out of getting this all out of the hotel!




I'll have more to say later when my brain is not fried.

'twas a knitting weekend for sure!

I got to go to a trade show for my little yarn shop. One of the highlights was taking a class with the wonderfully encouraging Cat Bordhi! She's just awesome and we learned so much in a class called Sockitechture. We can't teach any of the things until her book comes out next March-June sometime. However, the stuff was just great and I can't wait to get ahold of the book. I'll just practice in the meantime. I learned a GREAT new toe-up cast on which was featured on knitty.com last issue.

When I have time, I will post a picture of our cart when we left the show. Even though I couldn't spend a lot, I ended up bringing some things home. I've already started a pair of socks and a purse from the stuff I bought. The purse is sample knitting and the socks just because I wanted to try the new cast on before I forgot!

More later, soooooo tired tonight!

Mariner's Stitch n Pitch.....

We survived! Our seats were the next to last row in the highest level! As I said, I am terrified of heights, but will wonders never cease? It was a GREAT place to sit. We could actually *see* the game and we had some great knitters sitting around us! This was taken about an hour before game time. When Bunni went to find our seats and kept going up and up and up and up, I started to wonder if I would just spend my time hanging out in the shop area....haha

It was soooooo much fun. There were a lot of stores set up there so we got a chance to add to the yarn stash!
The first pitch was thrown by a knitter and instead of a baseball, she threw a ball of yarn. :)

I decided to be kind in showing our presence at the game.

Here's Bunni:

And Lauri:

And me:

This is what happens when you are screaming for the Mariner's and not paying attention to what you are doing:

I knit off the second needle and it fell free into my lap and the sock was on one crazy twisted single needle.

Of course, I had to get a picture of my sock in progress with Ichiro! This just happened to be his first hit of the night!

and a picture of him doing his famous pre-batting routine:

We also got a close-up view of the Mariner Moose:

Next year we are definitely going to try to get together a big group of people to go with us!

Still alive and knittin'

I haven't posted in forever. However, I am still knitting. Lazy is the word.

A few weeks ago I started a new shawl using a new pattern by Fibertrends called Ruffles and Ridges. I'm using JJ's Montage, a hand-painted chunky yarn. The killer? I had to cast on 807 stitches! By the 6th row, you have 273 stitches. Sometimes it helps to read the pattern. I struggled through one long row, knitting in the back of every stitch and needed to find the center of the shawl. When I was well past the center and there were supposed to be 30 more stitches, I had about 100! I had read the pattern as "k3, k2 tog" and it was actually "k 3, *k2 tog across row from *" Oh welllllllllll............

It has been fun to knit and I do like the ruffled edge now that I am getting a little bit away from it. When it was all so tight on my 47" needle, it looked like a clown ruffle to me but not so much any more.

The other project I am working on is a pair of Friday Harbor socks from Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush. I'm using Bearfoot yarn for these. They are pretty easy to do and I'm enjoying them a lot. I even knit on them when we got away this weekend....in the Jeep with the top down! I had to contend with the tail flying all over and getting knit in here and there...ha ha. Pretty tricky trying to keep the pattern from blowing away and keeping that tail out of the work, but I did make pretty good progress!

Today I'm headed to the Mariner's Stitch n Pitch! I was trying to get the Friday Harbor socks to the point of mindless knitting, but they aren't so hard that it really matters. I'm really looking forward to the game although I am TERRIFIED of heights and we are in the highest level! Everyone tells me that getting around all those knitters will counteract the height thing. We'll see...if I make it through it, I will post about it soon!

Blah knitting days

I have been knitting, I have nothing exciting to show. I am making a simple shawl out of handpaint yarn that starts with a cast on of 807 stitches. By the sixth row, you are down to 273 stitches. On the second decrease row, I read the pattern wrong... it said k3, *k2 tog* to last 3 st. So what did I do? k3, k2 tog across the entire row. Then I struggled through knitting through the back loops in the next row...only to discover that on the decrease row I should have k2 tog across the entire row. :( I frogged back to the decrease row and am halfway across the k2 tog row. I was so surprised when I was marking the halfway point and when there should have been 30 stitches left, there were about 100. oh wellllllllllllllllllllllllll. I'm not discouraged, I'm only working on it at work anyway. I didn't take any pictures because how many frogged pictures does a blog need? haha
Other than that, I have just been working on socks here and there. They are all projects I will finish for sure but I can't seem to stay with one pair. One of these days I will have LOTS of new socks!
Lauri gave my little guy a pirate hat today and I took his picture, dirty face and all. He didn't take the hat off until bedtime. I haven't been real thrilled about sharing pictures, but I thought he was pretty cute. This is exactly what he was saying.

Later:

Well, the adventure goes on...first thing this morning, this is what jumps in front of me:

I just can never get him without his eyes closed. Lol....he's much cuter than he shows sometimes.

Well, he must have been worried because the next thing he does is this:

Sock Candy

I've been playing with the Sock Candy yarn. I'm not sure how I feel about cotton socks, but I played with ideas in the car today. The yarn is really pretty...just not sure how I want to knit them.

I need to remember to take pictures in the daylight...but I stuck my started sock in this cute basket I got from a friend of mine. I should make the hot chocolate in the cute cup I got and put my feet up and relax. (like I've done anything else since we got home!) haha

Wow, I was tired when we got home...glad we get another day off! I need a rest after our time away...but what fun it was!

my birthday...what a great day it was!

Hubby and I got a chance to get away for a greatly needed rest. We left home last night after I got off work and weren't sure where we'd end up. Astoria, Oregon was the place. We have come through here many, many times. We went on down the coast a bit but since it's a holiday weekend, there was nothing available at a price we cared to pay so we came back up to Astoria. We got up this morning and went to church, then drove to Cannon Beach for breakfast. I got to go to the little yarn store there and it was so fun to walk in the door and have the store owner greet me by name! This is what I got:

Sorry for the quality of the picture...it's dark and late. On the left is Socks That Rock medium weight Spring Fling. The other two are Sock Candy...colorway Boysenberry and Marigold. I had a great time visiting with the shop owner and had to decline an invitation to a barbecue at her home because my kids were on their way to see us.

We had a little party in our room then went for pizza. Afterwards we had to visit the Astoria Column which is just beautiful. It was so foggy and cool until right before we drove up there...could it have been any more perfect?

Of course, I am the only one too chicken to go to the top...so I stayed down and knit on my Sock Candy....of course I will frog it ... ha ha ... but I also listened to my I-pod...what fun, until I looked up and saw this:

Ha ha...well you can't really see, but Daddy is holding up my youngest to wave at me. I told them I wasn't waving back, I was trying to tell him to PUT HIM DOWN! Just kidding. This is what I got to look at while I waited for them and listened to Robin Mark on my I-pod.

Can you see the bridge there? It connects Oregon and Washington.

Here they are at the bottom, safe and sound:

I also got some fun gifts from the family for my I-pod. Now this is just about a little more cool than I think I can handle. haha. I got a gift card for I-tunes, a case, a cute little portable speaker, and an FM thingy. Of course, they are just going to have to teach me how to use it all, but I'm pretty excited.

After the kids left, hubby and I decided to go to the movies. How we did this, I don't know, but we forgot to watch the time. At 8:20 he asked me what time "Lake House" was showing....hmmm, 8:30? We thought it started at 8:20 but by the time we'd called, we found out it started at 8:40 and we walked through the door of the theater at exactly that time and didn't really have to watch all of the previews by the time we got popcorn. I love Sandra Bullock and the movie was interesting....we had to sort it out all the way back home.

I am sooo grateful for my family and friends for making my day special. I got text messages from the kids wanting to know if it was a special day for me...and from their "friends" wishing me a good day. It was good and I feel very, very blessed and so thankful to God for the wonderful things He has done in me and in my family.