Armed with Pointy Sticks

Lone Blissitude

It's early-ish on a Sunday morning.  Well, no lie, it's proper brunch time, but I am the only one awake.

I want to get stuff done today.  We did a bit yesterday, but we could have done more.  We played a whole lot of Mario Party 8.  We ordered pizza.  It was that kind of day.

Right now, with all of the other adults in  bed, I'm thinking about the possibilities of today.  I finished the knitting portion of my pirate hat, only felting remains.  I can cast on Norberta, but only if I can find size 6 needles.  Went through the addi collection last night.  No addi 6's, but I'm sure they're in my straights collection... I have no idea where my straights collection is.  Worse comes to worse, I go to AC Moores today and pick up some 10 inch Bates.  I probably should, in any case.  I didn't leave the house yesterday.

Anyway, I do have more than sleepy, yet insightful, drivel this morning.  I want to introduce you to my Secret Pal!

My SP10's name is Stacey, of Peaknit, and she took very good care of me :)  I have a fantastic collection of Wisconsin post cards adorning my cube, two wonderful skeins of sock yarn, one fantastic bundle of unspun Merino, lots of yummy chocolate (that's a lie.  I no longer have that.  Sorry), some very pretty stitchmarkers, one of Cookie's patterns... well, let me show some pictures.  You guys respond to pictures, right?  If you've read this far take a moment with me and make dirty looks at those who just scrolled ahead looking for pictures.  Ready?  Now.  ... ... ... Feels better, doesn't it?  It's their own loss, really, this stuff is brilliant!

These are from the last package.  :D  Little wedding favors for Chris and I (jeez, this is getting close), some gorgeous fiber from Fat Cat Knits, and a sock blocker with a sock!  Let me say right now, those sock blockers are cool, and they are infinitely cooler wearing a sock!  The three packages Stacey sent me were all met with giddy squees, and I'm glad to finally know who she is, and have her blog to read, and her Ravelry to... ravel in.  I cannot wait to put up pictures of the socks that will be made with the yarn she has gifted me :)   Thank you, Stacey :)

The best part of these SP's are the friends I have made.  You all know who you are, and you're a rocking bunch.  I will not be taking part in the next SP as I have to focus on the wedding.  Now that my aunt Bev is done with my cousin's wedding she's ready to help, and the help is nice to feel.  Chris's mom want's to get going, too.  Hopefully, by next week, we'll have all the where's figured out and we can finally start to make things happen.  I have the site for the wedding, we just need the site for the reception.  Luckily, my dad has even more friends in Brunswick.  Everything will come together.

OK, I'm going to go get those things done.  The other adults in my house are now awake, and I have even been served breakfast.  Everyone take care.

Because Everyone Needed to Know

      

Your Score: Modern, Cool Nerd

      

52 % Nerd, 52% Geek, 30% Dork

      

      

      For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

Congratulations!


Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Professional Wrestling

Love & Sexuality

America/Politics

Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST       

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test Thank Trillian42 ;)  HGG fans rock.  Go see her new Hitchhiker wheel, Zaphod.  If you don't get the reference right there, maybe you shouldn't, but if you do, the Gods will smite you if you do not.

Ravelry Pwns Joo!

So last week, or maybe the week before, I got my invite to Ravelry.  You saw already, did you?  Chris told you about how we cataloged all of our downstairs yarn?  Yeah, we've got yarn upstairs too.  So there's more coming.  And pictures.  I've got to find good artsy fartsy places to take pictures.

Chris didn't tell you how addictive it is. 

It's horrible.

The forums have so many great people.  The patterns are just great to surf through, and you see things that you have to knit, so you add them to your queue, where the whole world can see that you've loftily declared "I must knit that!"  The yarns are fun to go to when you see something in the patterns and you go "oh my gosh.  What is that?".  Bam.  You know. 

I've listed projects that I've done and I have pictures of.  I'm going to find more pictures and list more.  I've linked them to blog posts that talk about them.  I've pulled over the pictures from Flickr.  I've started paying for Flickr again.  Today I exported my Library Thing list and plugged all of the books that apply into the database.  I can only put up books that are already on file... so I'll import it again as they add more.

And Chris didn't talk about any of this.

But go see ErickaJo at Ravelry, go look at my projects.  Yeah, see those toe up socks?

I didn't put them there ;) 

Where'd the stash go?

Hey all, Chris here again.

We decided to get cracking on the Ravelry account. Don't worry, some crazy yarn-thief didn't break in and empty the stash box...it's all on the couch.

Its a nice moment here in the house. The "downstairs" yarn has been tagged. All that we have left is the sock yarn upstairs.

What I did on my summer vacation

Howdy all, Chris here. Got a lot of ground to make up, and with it, I gots a lots of pikatures :)

First off, three weeks ago, we found ourselves in Harpswell, Maine, looking at the spot that we most likely will be getting married.

That's looking off the deck, across the "road", and out into the bay. About 1/5th of a mile out and to the right, there's a "public" beach that would also serve as a great wedding place. Its funny, with Ericka's Navy background, we have tried to go out of our way to not get all Nautical, and here we are thinking about getting married either within view of the ocean, or on a beach.

The following week, we found ourselves in Lisbon, Maine, to visit Amy King of Spunky Eclectic. We didn't get any pictures of Big Boo and Baby Boogey. We did, however, catch Melissa with a drop spindle.

I guess it looked like so much fun that Lora had to join in.

Lisbon is just over two hours from Manchester, so Ericka wrapped up not one but TWO socks.

Number one is a pair of socks for her. Number two is a birthday present, and has been a secret up until now. Here's some another hint.

We also bought a bunch of stuff from Spunky.

I love the way that Amy braids her large roving. Ericka got some roving, and I got some sock yarn, and it turns out that we got the same color way (Mahogany) in both yarn and roving form.

This weekend, we had TWO fiber events. Saturday was World-Wide Knit In Public Day. We were slated to knit in Victory Park in Manchester. At noon, it looked like this:

Due to rain, we moved over to Derryfield Park, also in Manchester, because it has a gazebo. It looked a lot better, almost like this:

In the back is Jackie's girl, and in the front is Lora's littlest boy. They were more emotional support than knitting participants. Melissa's baby, Rusty, was also in attendance for moral support.

We also had a table full of goodies.

And knitters were knitting, crocheters were crocheting.

One-ply spun fiber became three-ply yarn (Clowin Around from Sereknity Yarns).

And kids played around in the rain.

And feetsies were socked with mis-matched finished socks from those in attendance.

At the end of day, most of the knitters went home, but some intrepid folks braved the...well, I guess it had stopped raining, so there wasn't much to brave, but we wound up at Olive Garden for nummys and knitting.

Today was the Maine Fiber Frolic, held at the Windsor Fair Grounds in Windsor, Maine. We met up with a bunch of people we've run into before, including Sheep Shed and Spunky Eclectic. Before Ericka was able to fill my hands with bags of fiber, I was able to work a little bit on my sock. I also met admirers of the toe-up sock.

I swear, there were more at one point. Don't really have many more pictures of the festival itself, but we did catch some Lupins on the way to Indigo Moon Fibers.

Why did we forsake the ENTIRE Fiber Frolic for just ONE fiber farm? Well, Marylynn of Indigo Moon wants to move from the Augusta area down to the Portland area, and part of the move has been getting rid of as much as possible, including her fiber. All her fiber animals have already found new homes, aside from a single alpaca that will be staying on as a guard alpaca for the new owners. From Marylynn, we walked away with some respectable selections, some blending merino, baby camel, angora, and...wait for it...qiviut.

There it is, off to the left there. All these bags are from Indigo, while the rest is mostly from Spunky and Sheep Shed. Wait, here's some better close up:

At the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool, we got some Merino/Tencel from Sheep Shed. Ericka's spun it up for me, and we got some solid Charcoal to go with it.

Ericka got a sparkly batt from Spunky, which looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

Well, this was 2oz, so its now a half-full bobbin. The only time I have ever seen vendor-to-full-bobbin spinning from Ericka has been with Spunky's yarns.

Ericka's first attempt at Navejo plying is off the bobbin, and ready for a final setting.

If you have stayed on this long, you might have noticed that we've been up to Maine every weekend for the last three weeks. Here's the bomb, we were up in Maine the week before this post started, for a Wedding. Check the last post. But the upside to all these Maine trips is that we've been able to catch up on Brenda Dayne's Cast On podcast. We're up to Episode 43 so far, which puts us at last autumn. We usually get three or four episodes in per trip, since we run out of WFNX just north of Portland proper.

Well, I think this is both the longest post, and the most picture filled. My mission is to finish my latest pair of socks by Wednesday (and it counts if I cast-off at Famous Dave's).

A Frenzy of Everyday

I need to blog.  I need to blog for the simple fact that tomorrow, there could be even more than I have to blog.  I have to stay caught up, savvy?  Yes, savvy indeed.

I just heard thunder roll.  I love thunder.  I think I just found my baseline.  I've been hectic, full of static, today, but I feel better now.  Weird, huh?  And again.  You might get a good post after all.

Ok, guess who saw the Harlot last week?  Yes, it was I,  and Chris, and we just had a great time.  The Harlot is wonderful, and the type of people she attracts, well, they're just good folk. 

We checked into the hotel (Chris and I had the week off, it was a good week to have off) and met up with Gigi.  As we were leaving the hotel Chris almost hit Steph.  Read it again.  It's funnier that way.  We answered her question as to whether or not there were any other knitters in the hotel.  And she liked my Knit bumper sticker.

The Calvin is a very big venue, and we almost filled it.  It's a good feeling to be in a rich theater like that, surrounded by the clacking of needles.  Cuddled up in the surrounding feeling of community.  At the door we all got yarn and needles, and by the end of Steph's talk most of us had turned out a 7x7 square for Warm Up America.

Steph explained that Knitters are super responders.  100 normal (normal, implying we're otherwise.  Ha!  Work with me here) people in a room are asked to respond to a problem, and a few do.  100 knitters are asked to respond, and most of them do.  Small repetitive actions add up to a whole, big result.  Steph asked us if anyone had something in their hands that could be used as a visual representation.  Hundreds of mostly finished squares for hundreds of afghans went up.  Socks, sweaters, and whatevers went up.  Drops in the bucket will eventually fill it, and we know that.  It's usually easy to give a little, and we will give, because we know that the xxxl cabled sweater with a hood is knit one stitch at a time.

After the talk, and the QA, this whole family went back over to Webs.  I like Webs.  Last time I left with yarn for two sweaters and then some.  This time I left with mostly gift yarn, and two extra signed copies of Steph's book.  One for my secret pal, and one for the raffle we're having at knit in public day.  I can't wait for knit in public day.

The line for Steph went back into the warehouse again, but the company was pleasant.  I got to spend a long time talking to Kim of Some Bunny's Love .  She does an amazing amount of work on the Boston Knit Out, an event of which I am a huge fan.  September 30.  Mark your calendar.  I will be there.

I also ran into Jessica of Ravelry.  Hear me now, this is a great site.  I've only started putting around with it, and I might have to start paying for my flickr again, but it's fantastic.  My major suggestion:  I'd like to see their "books" section link to my Library Thing account.  I should write to her. 

We finally got up to Steph, and she remembered us from last time.  I'll be completely honest, no one really remembers me.  I'm innocuous.  Chris, on the other hand... he's male (we remember our males better in the knitting world.  There's less of them)  and he's a red head with a beard.  In knitting groups he tends to stand out.  I love him.  "oh yeah!  I was there!  I was with the bearded redhead!".  It works.

Chris actually got interviewed for a story in the Hampshire Gazette.   He went up front to grab a basket, I'm waiting for him in the (very warm) warehouse with a few skeins of yarn... and waiting... I go up front and he's talking to a skinny blond!  He's lucky I saw the recorder as fast as I did ;)

After we got up and spoke to Steph it was 10... and we were hungry.  We found one restaurant that stayed open til 11 and happily tucked in.  After that it was back to the hotel.  We knit comfortably with our feet dangling in the pool until about midnight.  We were hoping Steph would join us (she said she might) but that poor gal didn't leave webs til after 11.  I would have gone to my room and been dead to the world.  Still, I'm sorry we didn't get that time.  I enjoy Steph's company. 

The next day took us to Amherst.  As I was leaving the hotel I passed one of those racks full of flyers from local attractions.  Emily Dickinson caught my eye.  I love her so much.  So we spent the day wandering through Amherst's downtown and then taking the guided tour of the Homestead and The Evergreens.  Both sites are just starting some intensive repair, as they only just became a "museum" in 2003, and I will be back.

I have pictures, but I'm at work.  So you'll have to wait, won't you?  I know you'll be patient. 

I've got more to post.  I went to see Amy Boogie,  and that was fun.  I need to blog that before Saturday, because Saturday is KIP day!  Huzzah!

Ok, got to work.  Later.