Maryland Sheep & Wool 2013

Well, hello there.

My epic gauntlet of travel has been completed, and I have no reason to leave Allegheny County again until I go to Oklahoma City at the end of the month. It’s WiP Wednesday, but I actually do not have any WiPs to show you, since I finished my Love Actually cowl last night!

So, in order to feed the blog for the first time in way too long, I shall show you my Maryland Sheep and Wool purchases from last weekend.


From left to right, this photo includes: Three flavors of honey from The Bee Folks (Queen Anne, Bamboo and Radish), my 40th Anniversary Festival mug, a Melissa Jean hair pin, a pair of US 5/stiletto/33” Signature circs, a 2014 Sheep Incognito calendar, a new drive band for my Schacht ball winder hanging off the calendar, two skeins of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted in Pussy Broadway, three necklaces and two small beads from my latest addiction: Kris Schaible Glass Studio, a Miss Babs Color Affection kit, two skeins of Into the Whirled sock yarn, a new belt, and a Lion Potter mug.

 Not much yarn, but I do feel like I got a lot of stuff. Now for show-and-tell with the non-fiber stuff.


In the last couple months, I’ve gotten to know the wonderful and talented Melissa Jean thanks to my work with SpaceCadet and a pair of shows. I was intrigued by this cool hair pin, and it came home with me.

And now, for the largest rabbit-hole of the entire weekend. One of my running buddies, CelticQueen, was headed for the Noni tent to get a zipper for an upcoming project. I wandered around the upper tent farm in the opposite direction and stumbled upon a completely dangerous vendor. To the tune of three purchases in two days.


Kris Schaible makes some amazing beads. Throw them on a cable or a cord, and you have a beautiful necklace.


This purple bead was my first purchase. Then I dragged CQ and my friend Dianne to the booth later in the afternoon. And this one caught my eye.


I felt like this one looked best with a ribbon instead of a cable.


And then we stopped by again on Sunday and this happened.


Oops.

Of course Kris’ husband had discovered her “junk drawer” overnight and threw a bunch of those beads into a bowl. And I found two that Kris turned into pendants for me. (for scale, they’re propped up against the Twisted in the top picture. They’re pretty small, but very pretty)


Yeah. I love her stuff. A lot.

The other stuff is pretty self-explanatory. I adore the two Lion Potter mugs I already had, so getting the green mug (far right in top picture) was a no-brainer. It’s so hard to find good belts that buying one from the vendor at MDSW was also a simple decision. Drive bands and calendars are boring but helpful. I also got two Festival t-shirts, but I didn’t throw them into the picture. Oops.

It was a great weekend with good friends, and I’m already looking forward to next year!

Festival!

Last weekend was the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival, and I spent Friday and Saturday working at the SpaceCadet Creations booth. Of course, a few additional items had to come home with me.

On Friday, I went and checked out the Knitting Notions booth, and as always, I found a bowl that I loved.


It’s fairly large, and I’m quite certain it will find a place to live somewhere in my house. It’s handmade and beautiful. I love it!

I also snuck across the aisle and brought home a self-striping skein of DK-weight yarn from Fibernymph. I’m gonna have stripey feet to keep warm next winter!


Saturday was spent elsewhere, and I really had no plans to buy anything else. But on a bathroom trip, I walked past the Knitting Notions booth. And the runner-up bowl from my difficult decision-making on Friday? Still there. Oops.


This one is much smaller, and is already in use as a catch-all next to where my phone plugs in overnight. I love it too! For scale:


Working the festival added two items to the top of my queue. A Lintilla (long story, I’ll probably be knitting it this summer!) and a Dublin Tee. I had intended to be very patient and get some SpaceCadet yarn (Lyra!) for this project, but then I spied the precise color that I wanted in the Knitting Notions booth. And it came home with me.


Here’s hoping I can get started on my awesome summer sweater very, very soon!

Ponder Dusk

I’ve been trying to be very selective on my sock yarn purchases. Really! But when the October shipment of the Dream in Color Dream Club appeared at the store, there was no way I could pass this one up.


It’s part of Dream in Color’s new base yarn, Smooshy with Cashmere and the colorway is called Ponder Dusk. It really just feels divine. And the purple? Well, it’s so rich and has so many tones that it was just plain impossible to leave behind.


I managed to get another skein in this base with my Anniversary kit from The Loopy Ewe, so I’m pondering making another Daybreak shawl with that skein and this one. We’ll see if that’s actually what I do. If you have suggestions, fire away! Meanwhile? I’m just going to enjoy petting this skein every so often. Yum.

Blackstone Tweed

The more I peruse my LYS, the more impressed I am by Berroco’s line-up of yarns.

We’re starting a new Knit-a-Long next week for Nonpareil, a sweater knit in Berroco’s Blackstone Tweed. It’s been about a year since I participated in a store KAL, so I decided to jump in on this one.


Despite the fact that there are some amazing blues and greens in Blackstone Tweed’s line-up, I made a point of stepping out of my rut and picking something different. This is the “Atlantic” colorway.


It has a great texture and the tweed flecks work really well. It’s 65% wool, 25% superkid mohair and 10% angora rabbit. I was the tiniest bit worried that it would be itchy (I’ve had angora problems in the past) but it isn’t bothering me one little bit.


And I’d know, because I cast on for my sweater on Wednesday at Hurricane Knitters!


Loving it so far. Here’s hoping this sweater flies along!

Happy Friday!

A week ago, I wandered into Bloomin’ Yarns for work and there were two boxes from Manos sitting there on the floor. I immediately saw a bundle of a new Manos base yarn, Maxima, and decided I’d call it George.

I had a class to teach, and while that was going on, a customer found a different color of the Maxima and bought half of it. On Saturday, Celtic Queen came in and bought three skeins of that same color, leaving just two in the store. I couldn’t leave them behind, sad and lonely.

Meet my Maxima


This base yarn is just lovely. It’s a single, and as soon as I touched it, I immediately though “Look out, Malabrigo. There’s a new kid on the block with better colors.”


This particular colorway is called Beehive. It’s 219 yards/skein, worsted weight and listed as 100% extrafine merino wool. As you saw on Wednesday, it jumped onto my needles right away. My möbius is coming along nicely, thanks!


Now I just need to resist the “original” George. Wish me luck!

Imperial Stock Ranch

Anybody who talked to me shortly after my field trip to the TNNA marketplace last June in Columbus, Ohio, got an earful about the yarn I was most excited about.

Imperial Stock Ranch is a 150 year-old family-owned ranch in the Oregon desert. They have all-natural practices and are relatively new to the hand knitting universe (Here’s a link to the ranch site, rather than the yarn branch linked above). Over the years, they have bred a unique type of sheep that thrives in their harsh climate. That’s the wool in the skeins below.


We purchased the ISR pencil roving for the store, along with pattern support for it. But I fell in love with the above yarn, their Columbia 2-ply in Spring Sage. It’s going to be my first Barbara Walker “Knitting from the Top” sweater. I honestly believe this yarn is going to shine in plain ‘ol stockingette.


I also indulged in the above skein to make a plain garter shawl. I can’t find the tag right now, but I’ll edit the colorway name in when I find it.


The yarn has a slightly “natural” feel to it, but is still plenty soft and I’m so excited to clear my needles and get to work with this yarn. I’ve been excited about it since June and there’s no reason to stop now, since it’s finally in my hot little hands.


Oh, and since this is a small family-owned company, there’s no having to buy a full bag of this and a full bag of that. I needed seven skeins (at 4 oz/220 yards/skein of 100% wool) of the green and one for the brown, and that’s all we had to order. Love it!


As soon as I finish a project or two that is currently on my needles, I’ll be knitting with this yarn. You can count on it.

YPF: Deep Stash

It’s amazing what you can find when you’re a slob, like me, and you do some de-cluttering.

Before vacation, I tackled my knitting baskets in the TV room. The ones just off my left elbow while sitting on the couch in my primary at-home knitting spot. There was a great big surprise at the bottom of one of the two baskets. This:


It’s 1,200 yards of Schaefer Laurel, a 100% mercersized pima cotton. 400 yards and 8 oz per skein with a 4-5 sts/inch suggested gauge. In the “Empress Wu Zhao” colorway. It was one of my very last purchases at the wonderful Beach Knitting, my left coast knitting home, before moving back east. Which means it's been sitting right there for at least three years.

I have no idea what I had planned to make with it, but I swatched three years ago!


The fabric is wonderful and hefty, and I’m thinking it needs to be some sort of pullover. But I figure it’s marinated in the stash this long, why be in a hurry now?


In my California days, a great deal of my knitting was done with cottons and other similar fibers. I will always have a love of cotton, and defend it. Not all cottons are dishcloth cottons! Many are wonderful to work with and don’t hurt your hands. I’m quite certain this will be one of them.

Softball Socks 2010 • Now with More NCAA Championships!

This is the third straight year that I’ve knit “softball socks.” These were started while I was attending the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City, although it was too damn hot to do more than a tiny bit of knitting while I was there. Basically, I cast on the first toe, got the sock into the round and put it away until I could spend some quality time with my good friend Mr. Air Conditioning.

Turtle Daddy sock blockers!

These socks rekindled both my sock knitting mojo and my love for a plain stockingette sock.


I don’t need pattern stitches to keep my interest. I think there’s a beauty and serenity to just going “knit knit knit” in the round. Nothing changes while life swirls around you. Although I did change needles for the cuffs, going up one needle size to make these socks easy on/off.

Toe pic!

I used my very favorite toes for this pair, the garter toe. They could not possibly be easier to execute, and they fit perfectly every single time.

New Pathways arch increases/heel turn

I used my Zen Yarn Garden “Represent” yarn, which was Roxanne’s entry into last summer’s Dye for Glory contest. My BruWins certainly did “Represent” while I was knitting these socks. Softball won its 13th national championship and baseball has played itself into the NCAA Championship Series for the first time in program history (best-of-three begins tonight against South Carolina)

I loved watching the rainbow of colors pass over my needles, as you can see on the bind-off.

Once again, I used Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off for these socks. I love how the colors flow on variegated yarns when I use this bind-off. Plus, it does exactly what it says it will. It’s very stretchy!

All in all, I’m very pleased. And yeah, you can expect another ZYG pair of plain ‘ol stockingette socks up next on the sock needles.

Softball Socks 2010

Pattern: Riverbed Master from New Pathways for Sock Knitters by Cat Bordhi
Yarn: Zen Yarn Garden Superwash Sock
Colorway: Represent
Yardage: 430 yards
Needles: US 1/2.25mm for feet, US 1.5/2.5mm for cuffs. 16” Hiya Hiya with “2 circs” method
Started: 6 June 2010
Finished: 27 June 2010

Ilanaaq

Since my crazy friend CelticQueen decided to stand in line at The Fold on Saturday morning at Maryland Sheep & Wool, I told her there was one colorway she should purchase for me if it was available


The minute I saw the Socks that Rock colorway Ilanaaq go up on the website back in February, I knew I had to have it. It has actually gone “on vacation” already, so I’m glad I got it when I did!

The color was released at the beginning of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver. Ilanaaq is a stone landmark that was built by humans at Whistler in Vancouver and it was the basis for the logo for the Vancouver Games. This colorway is based on the colors in that logo.


I like that this is a full-spectrum variegated yarn. Many more colors than the usual variety. And it’s kind of like Pride, but with purple and slightly less saturated colors.


Most likely, this will eventually become a pair of socks. Eventually. For now, I’m happy to just have it in my stash.

RT does TNNA

Two Sundays ago, fresh off of my Oklahoma trip, I drove Roaming Tigger and LYS co-worker Valerie out to Columbus, Ohio, for a day at TNNA.

We had a wonderful time and are expecting lots of really awesome things to come into the store over the next few months. Pictures aren’t allowed on the show floor, so here’s a little bit about what else we did that day.


We were lucky enough to get rock star parking when we pulled up to the Columbus Convention Center at 9:45 on Sunday morning. Yay for free parking on Sundays! You can see the entrance to the convention center right across the street. I don’t think it would have been humanly possible to park closer.


After a few hours on the floor, it was time for lunch. We all headed across the street to the North Market and everyone picked the food they wanted for lunch. Oh, and we had ice cream. But I’ll get back to that.


There was a Lorna’s Laces ad on the display at the end of the crosswalk to enter the convention center.


For dinner, Michelle and Janice took us to their favorite Columbus restaurant, Lemongrass. It was yummy.


And then, of course, we needed more ice cream. Jeni's! On my first trip, I had Salty Caramel and Dark Chocolate. The second trip, I had Buckeye State and Honey Vanilla. All of it was really yummy.


All in all, I’d certainly do it again, given the opportunity. I’d love to take a class or two next time, but if I continue to go to the softball World Series, it’s going to be tough. But who the hell knows what I’m going to be doing a year from now, so I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Meanwhile, I can’t wait to show you some of the stuff we got at TNNA, once it comes into the store!

Miss Babs

Yes, there is more Maryland Sheep & Wool swag to show off. Better get it done now so I have YPF space once the stuff I saw at TNNA starts coming in to the store. Yeesh. Anyhoo …


One of the “stampede” booths on Saturday was Miss Babs. I took a pass on Opening Day, but strolled by on Sunday. Not too crowded, so plenty of room to paw the stock and pick something.


I originally picked something different than this skein, but then I wandered over to a “booth extension” and found a different base yarn and this colorway. After consultation with Miss Babs herself, I confirmed that this base was a bit heftier (and therefore more to my liking) and switched gears.


It’s the Miss Babs “Yummy” base, which is a 3-ply superwash. The Cleopatra colorway in this base is 335 yards and 5.2 oz. Once again, I don’t know what I’ll make with it, but it’ll be something cool. I’m sure about that!