Weekend Update - Part 1 - Early Start to the Weekend

I didn't have any major plans for this weekend, but it turned out to be a pretty good one.  I took a half day on Friday.  It was the last day of our fiscal year and it was my last 4 hours of vacation time. 

I went out to lunch with Heather (Amarylis Musings) and another knitty friend Dianne.  After that, Heather and I went to a yarn shop, Knit One.  We decided to go to Knit One because my mom bought me a gift card.  My mom bought me a gift card on Mother's Day.  Yes, you read that right.  She bought me a gift and got me a card for my "fur babies."  She was so excited that she figured out a yarn store to get me a gift card.

Knit One is where Heather and I took our first knitting class.  We haven't made it over there much because they used to only be open one evening (Thursdays, and that's our knit night in a different location).  Knit One now has a new owner and I have really high hopes.  They've added another evening and they've gotten rid of a lot of the yarn that I didn't like.  It was a little sparse, but they are getting new stuff in.
They had some Madeline Tosh left from a large order they got in a couple of weeks ago.  Originally I zero-ed in on Lepidoptra, which is a pink with purple in it.  I realized that I had just got a color like that, my FairyDust in Shalimar Breathless.  So I finally decided to use my gift card on a sweater quantity of Madeline Tosh DK in Cousteau.

I spent a half an hour on a couch there staring at it with ravelry up on my phone trying to find a pattern.  In the end I think I'm actually still undecided.  Any good dk sweater patterns?

Heather came with me with no intentions of buying yarn and yet she walked away with a sweater quantity of tosh dk in Stargazing.

Heather and I spent the rest of the day walking my pups in the park, hanging out, cooking dinner, and watching TV.  She told me I needed a current picture of my puppies on here because all of you need to see that Jimmy is now indeed larger than Toby (I think she is still bitter that she put them in the wrong crates a while back because she couldn't tell them apart. I love you Heather!!  Thanks for being my emergency dog letter outer!  Even if they were so confused when I got home!)

Any how, I thought you should see why I don't have a current picture of my puppies together...because it is SO HARD to get a good photo of them together.

Attempt #1: Toby looks scared because I'm saying, "Here here here!" with my hand in the air trying to get them to look at me.  Jimmy is just not paying attention.

Attempt #2:  They are both looking and you can clearly see that Jimmy, on the right, is now bigger than Toby, on the left.  The photo turned out blurry because I was trying to snap the photo fast while they were looking.

Attempt #3:  Toby says, "What's Heather doing over there?" and Jimmy says, "I think its time to lay down."

Attempt #4:  Toby says, "I'll look at you mama, but I can't make any promises for Jimmy."  Jimmy says, "Now I want to know what Heather is doing!"

Attempt #5: Toby says, "I think I'm going to go find out what Heather is doing."

Attempt #6: Toby looks scared because I told him to sit again and Jimmy is blurry.

Attempt # 7:  I don't know what happened here.  I was losing them to doggy A.D.D.

Attempts #8 and # 9:  I tried to start over, but Jimmy wanted to know what I was doing, he's on the left now.

Attempt # 10:  This is the best that I got.  They are side by side and looking.  Jimmy is on the left and Toby on the right.

Do you see how exhausting that was?  Impossible! Toby still looks worried in the photo!

They were exhausted too because they crashed right after that.

Stay tuned, I have some nephew photos from Saturday and Sunday.  I saw him twice this weekend!

Sam :-)

New Yarn - Gram/Pittsburgh/Maryland

I've added a bunch of yarn to my stash in 2014.  The majority of it was my Grandmother's.  She liked to make blankets for people in the family and for different charities for children.  She used to use Red Heart, but a few years ago I introduced her to Stylecraft.  I think the local chapter of Project Linus even orders Stylecraft now.  Its super cheap and it the softest acrylic.

I now have 55+ skeins of Stylecraft.

I bought her this Twirl that she started a large blanket with.  I'll finish it eventually.

I think my top 3 colors are:



Emporor





Teal





Plum

This yarn will probably fuel my baby stuff for quite a while.  I have no idea what I want to do with it all just yet.

Now a very luxurious purchase this year was made at Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet.  I saw these two colors of Shalimar Breathless and I knew I had to have them.

The purple is called Heliotrope and the pink is called FairyDust.  They are going to become some sort of striped sweater!  A glorious cashmere and silk sweater for me!  I have a bunch of ideas, but nothing concrete just yet.  I want to finish my first sweater (Aran weight) first.

I also purchased this beauty at Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet.

This beauty is Ball & Skein Glissade in color Mountain Ice.  I bought it to go with a lone skein I bought a couple of years ago.

It is a deep purple called Elderberry that is hard to photograph.  There are plenty of two color shawls that I have in my favorites that these two can become, Bolt maybe?

Maryland Sheep & Wool was a fun time this year.  I went knowing that I didn't have a ton to spend and that I just wanted to enjoy the experience.

I saw plenty of adorable sheep:

The first item that caught my eye was a kit that Ellen's Half Pint Yarn was selling.

The kit contained two 50g skeins and a pattern.  I'm not sure if I'm going to use the pattern, but this kit meant a lot to me.  It was $25 and all of the profits ($15) went to cancer research.  It put a smile on my face for the rest of the day.

I did know that I wanted to purchase yarn for a Shawl that Jazz from Blue Moon Fiber Arts on this trip.  Many of my friends from my knit night have made this shawl.  Those same friends purchased more yarn to make another.  It has become an unofficial KAL.  I chose the color Royal.

There was a different color I spotted first with purple and grey, but once I saw this one all bets were off.  It is so pretty.  I wound one hank of the yarn immediately that night.

The ball was ginormous! :-)

The next day of the festival we went to see the sheep herding demonstration.  These dogs were amazing!

I did splurge on the last day and get a kit from Miss Babs.  It is the Perfectly Wreckless kit.  It has beautiful purples, orange, pink, and green.

That pretty much sums up all of my new yarn in 2014.  Did you find anything awesome this year? Splurge?

Sam <3

WIP Wednesday

I'm still working on my dad's Hue Shift Afghan, I have 20 squares done now.  That means only 196 more to go!

Even though I haven't touched it in a while, I plan to though.  Here is the current status of my Linen Stitch Scarf:

I think I'll need about 10 more rows.  For me though that is 10 more hours of work.  Yes, one row takes me an hour.  In my defense it is 500 stitches across.

Also, I went to Pittsburgh Indie Knit and Spin over the weekend and this is my purchase which will become a Color Affection.

...and here's your regular scheduled Toby update.  I told you last week that he likes to sit with me and watch me knit and now I have a photo to prove it.

I've linked up with Tami's Amis.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sam <3

The Yarn That I Bought :-/ .......

So, I bought yarn recently.  I kind of got obsessed with a little thing called Wollmeise.

First I bought this lovely skein:

There's a lot of purple in this skein that I just could get to show up in the pictures.

Next I bought this purple/pink skein:

Next I bought these skeins, two greens, a purple, and a teal:

The next two skeins I bought, I got from the actual Wollmeise shop.

Out of all of these skeins, I gave Heather three as an early birthday present.  I let her choose which skeins.  She took the bright green, the blue/purple, and the teal:

I've decided that I'm going to make a Whippoorwill out of these two:

So I really haven't kept with my yarn diet lately, but what are you going to do?  These skeins are just so gorgeous and I wanted to splurge on Heather.  She's been so great to me lately and she went all out on me for Christmas.

The second purchase of yarn that Dave bought me came in yesterday.  I show it to you soon.  The pictures I just took are a little dark.

Sam :-)