I think I’ve figured out the reason why I’ve been such a lax blogger lately. I absolutely and totally procrastinate on writing the posts. Photos hang out on flickr for weeks before I can muster the motivation to sit down and write a couple of paragraphs. So! I’m going to try to post more and write less. Photos are the fun part, right?

Here’s my trip to Maryland last weekend in a series of pictures and minimal of pesky words. I managed to convince my friend Allison to accompany me, and it was mucho fun!

People! I’m the silly looking one in the green shirt. Everyone else is: Olga; Cristi; Lolly, Isel, and Jenna; Jess; Jody and Christy; and Christa (who recognized me from my mascot, Tissue-San!). We went to the Ravelry meetup in the afternoon, but didn’t stay terribly long. And go figure, I don’t have any photos of the people that we spent the most time with – Chris and NanC, fellow Texan fiber enthusiasts.

Sheepdogs! I want to get a sheepdog and watch it herd the cats. The sheep were hilarious. They were such sheep, all huddled together and generally clueless.

Baaaaaa! Heh.

DC! We skipped the Rav party to meet up another friend of mine in DC. Next year I will party with the knitters, next year. We did some touristy things on Sunday, including the adventure of finding street parking near the National Mall. Fun!

Of course, you want to see what I bought, right? I was quite restrained and spent a little over half my budget (where my budget was what I spent last year).

The last thing that I need is worsted-weight, scarf yarn, but the Brooks Farm Solana was irresistible. It’s a bit more purpley than it looks here, and I’m going to call the other color orange rather than brown, so that I can wear my future worsted-weight scarf with my black jacket.

Tess Super Sock and Baby. I heart this stuff, and I know I’ll use it. At this rate, I’ll never knit through all of my sock yarn.

Fiber roll call, from top to bottom (the links to go individual flickr photos):

Camel fiber from the Fold (we stopped by after all the crazy STR junkies left).
60/20/20 Angora/merino/silk batts from Wild Meadow Farms.
50/50 Merino/silk from Cloverleaf Farm.
BFL from Cloverleaf Farm.
70/30 Merino/tussah from Cloverleaf Farm.

As you can maybe tell, I really liked the Cloverleaf Farm booth. They had pretty awesome prices – the BFL was $10! I should have bought more. Now to get spinning!

Things that are dull:

1. Endless stockinette in black fingering-weight cotton.

2. Blogging about endless stockinette in black fingering-weight cotton.

I’m slowly phylloing my way to a completed sweater, but ugh! So much stockinette! I’m really trying to finish this one before I leave for Baltimore on Friday. There is one sleeve remaining, then the sweater gets a bath and a date with our dryer. My fingers will be crossed the whole time as I hope and pray that my row gauge really does shrink from 9 sts/inch to 11, as my swatch said it would. I’ve been doubting this the entire time I’ve knit the sweater, but swatches don’t lie, right? A side affect of the change in row gauge is that I get to knit the sweater 20% more than my desired length, which adds to the fun of endless, black, soul-sucking stockinette.

I did get a ton of knitting done over the weekend in the car to and from Austin! Our goal was to hit the Texas wine trail for some wine tasting, which was surprisingly tasty. We also celebrated Staci’s milestone birthday, had a tasty gospel brunch with Sarah (praise jesus for migas!), and visited with an old friend of Rob’s. Fun!

I’m endlessly amused by Texas’ love for, well, Texas, so I had to snap a photo of this as we left our hotel:

Um, maybe I kind of sort of want a Texas wafflemaker now. We’ll see how much money I end up spending on yarn this weekend.

We’ve returned, finally! Colorado was great, but so very dry. I felt like kindling the whole time I was there, and I’m just beginning to moisten back up now. Houston is good for something, and that’s humidity.

There’s so much to do in the Denver vicinity – we spent some quality family time in the city, then did a little CO college town tour (Boulder and Fort Collins) and checked out Rocky Mountain National Park. The roads to the good, high peaks were closed for the season and we weren’t really prepared for some hardcore mountain hiking in the snow (and wind). But we did have an encounter with some of the cutest wildlife around.

Hello, hearty magpie, you’re so cute and plump for the winter!

It was cold enough to skip past the fingerless mitts straight to full mittens.

Brrr! I’m also wearing my Sarcelle and handknit socks. I grabbed a few pairs of socks, not realizing that I’d wear the Mad Color Weaves every night as house socks (Rob’s brother’s house was COLD). My favorite pair was the Hederas that Silja sent me for Sockapalooza. I originally thought they were a wee bit snug, but they fit perfectly and stay up the best out of any of my handknit socks. Note to self: knit socks slightly smaller in the future!

We got to meet our almost-four-month-old nephew on the trip, which naturally meant that I got knitting.

Remember my great spin-out this past summer? I knit these out of this Spunky Eclectic yarn. The yarn was crazy uneven, but they didn’t turn out half bad! The hat is based on the kittyville Little Devil hat, and the thumbless mittens (hee!) are sort of based on the Baby Mittens pattern here. I may have done a half-assed job writing down the mitten pattern, so I winged knitting them on the plane. In addition to being crazy uneven, the handspun changed gauge as I knit with it, from worsted-ish to dk-ish. I’m still pleased at how well the hat and mittens turned out, and they almost fit baby Isaac. Yay!

I leave you with the strangest thing we saw on our trip (well, besides the townies singing karaoke in an Estes Park bar):

This gigantor sculpture sits outside the Denver Art Museum. Um, Denver is a dirty, dirty city and needs a good sweeping?

We are back! We were awake at 3am central time to catch our flight back to the big TX on Wednesday, and hoo boy I’m still recovering. The trip was good, the weather was awesome (almost chilly at times), and the shawl well received on Rob’s grandma’s 90.5th birthday celebration. We also got to go to NY while we were in town and Rob let me drag him to a number of places that make him antsy:

Purl. Purl is very pretty with their lovely window display and so-soft yarns. Everything is smooshed into filled cubbies, so you need to pull out the yarns to see what they are. Which isn’t such a bad thing, since they have the softest selection ever. Soft. Squishy. Yum.

However, you definitely pay the Purl tax for shopping there – Koigu is $13.50 a skein. Damn. I just couldn’t justify paying that much for more sock yarn (although I was quite tempted), but I did break the yarn diet for one lone green skein at 40% off. I also picked up some Nature’s Palette, which isn’t available locally – the green skeins are for me, and the blue for Rob’s mom. She loved the socks I knit her for xmas so much that she wants to relearn to knit (she knit in college) and make her own socks. Yeah, I can help with that.

I probably wouldn’t go to Purl again if I was visiting NY, as their entire inventory (at least the yarns) are available on their website. Which is great for those of us living far away, but not so interesting if you stop by in person. It was nice to see their fabrics up close and personal, though.

I didn’t buy any fabric – Rob was getting impatient, and I don’t really have any sewing projects or yardage requirements in mind for fancy pretty fabric. I figure I’ll order some from them at some point when my sewing skills improve. We ended up having lunch at the cafe between the two Purl shops, and the creepy cats in the window stared at us the whole time we ate.

Kinokuniya. I was on the lookout for some more Japanese stitch dictionaries, but I didn’t see anything worth buying. There was one reasonably priced book but it looked questionable, with some swatches knit in mohair (bad, bad idea). I ended up buying this amigurumi book with cute animals and a crocheted milk carton instead. Does a body good, pass it on.

MOMA. Just kidding about the antsy part, Rob really did want to go here. We used to visit NYC occasionally when we lived in MA, but I’ve only been to the Queens annexy MOMA when they were doing construction on the Manhattan building. It was really nice and only saw about half of it in the 2 hours we were there. MOMA makes me appreciate Houston a teeny bit more, as we’ve seen a few MOMA exhibits in local museums in the last year. Houston definitely has some great contemporary art going on between the Menil, Fine Arts, and Contemporary Art museums.

I ended up bringing Petal to Jersey, so I only really worked on Petal. I finished the front up to the arm shaping and a good chunk of the back. Then I ripped a good chunk of the back because my gauge loosened up while I knit sleepily on planes, buses and automobiles, gah! I also reworked the chart for the Sockpalooza socks to make it sock-workable, more on that when I start the actual socks (T-minus 26 days).

We are back! We had a great time visiting our peeps in the midatlantic region, and of course visiting the yarn! We left on Thursday morning and flew into Dulles – my friend Amy lives pretty close to the airport. Also close to the airport is the National Air and Space Museum, and Rob really wanted to check out the planes. My fave was this guy to the right, who looked very hungry.

Then we were off to Georgetown to meet Amy after work. There was shopping. There were crepes and awesome calamari (but not together). There was drinking and mild ridiculing of the masses of urban professionals.

Back at Amy’s place there was Squarey!

I knitted Squarey for Amy a couple of years ago, and this is the first I’ve seen of him since. What followed was a XXX photoshoot with Rob and Squarey, but I’ll spare the internets those photos.

The next day we went the touristy route:

Rob’s seen many of the major DC attractions, so we hit up the International Spy Museum. Silence is safe, people. We also saw the Washington Monument. Again, there was plenty of food and drink – Rob needs to eat every couple of hours, it’s amazing.

Saturday was Maryland Sheep and Wool, the big yarny event. I got up bright and early to drive from near-Dulles to the fairgrounds and busted a move to the Koigu booth. It took me longer than it should have to realize that the booth didn’t exist – apparently there was a fall and injury affecting someone on the Koigu team, so they didn’t make it to the festival. I bounced back quickly enough and explored the main building, buying yummy stuff from Ellen’s 1/2 Pint Farm and Spirit Trail before exploring the rest of the festival.

I don’t remember if I called them first or happened to run into them, but the Dallas troops were at the Fold booth, standing in line with their masses of Socks that Rock. I had met Chris and Nanc at Boerne, and met Jen and Lilyan (and others!) there. We all meandered over to the Tess both, where we split up because I spent absolutely forever in there. There was SO much good stuff at Tess. I was there so long that I ran into awkwardly introducted myself to Jess and Erin, both of whom I recognized from their blogs.

Of course I visited the alpacas and sleepy sheep. Those alpacas were munching in unison, SO CUTE!

Next up was the bloggy meetup, where I met a bunch of the knitters from the internets. I spotted Stacey’s awesome Turkish Stockings from afar – it was slightly overcast at that point, and the socks made a great knit-signal. I also met Kristy, Turtlegirl (spotted her sweater, too), Katydid Knits (whose real name I forgot, sorry!), Jess of the awesome Ravelry, and saw Christine and the DFW gals again. I took off right after the meetup, and happened to stop by one of the first booths where I ran into Lolly, who had just arrived. Whew!

Overall, the festival was pretty fun. I wouldn’t go every year – my credit card can’t take that much pain all at once. Especially that damn Tess booth, their yarns are absolutely gorgeous. I was really surprised at sheer size of the event – the booths were all packed by the afternoon. I was also surprised at how much lamb was on the menu. You’re buying wool, yummy wool, then you eat the sheep? The poor lambs!

The rest of the vacay was spent in Baltimore, visiting some grad school friends. There was, naturally, more drinking (Cinco de Mayo, baby!) and food (Rob must FEED), lots of shopping, and some more sightseeing at the Inner Harbor and a history lesson at Fort McHenry (where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner).

All in all, fun times! We got back Monday morning, and I went straight to work, whee. Yarny photos to come tomorrow!

A bulleted list of Buffalo activities from our weekend visiting the fam:

• A new haircut, with bangs. Last time I had bangs, I was 16 and my mother warned me about how horrible I would look when they grew out.
• Ate unhealthy food and drank $1.61 beers.
• We watched it snow sideways. I know, most of the northeast had much more white action than this, but still! I brought Sarcelle with me, and it made the perfect pretty scarf.
• Took photos of a Buffalo-themed license plate:

• Hung out with a Goldendoodle puppy. Rob thinks they should be called Pootrievers.
• Made sponge candy. YUM! Does anyone outside of Western NY/Southern Ontario eat this stuff?

Of course I didn’t take photos of the fun stuff, like hanging with my peeps and drinking to excess and getting STUCK IN CLEVELAND overnight because of !@#$ bad weather in Newark (which caused our plane to show up late, which then caused us to miss our connection).

There was knitting. No project knitting, but tons of swatching. I’m feeling a bit inspired from the swatching happening here, but completely noncommittal to anything bigger than a five-inch square.

Clockwise from the big black void on the left:

• Phyllo Yoked Pullover (from Knitting Nature) in GGH Safari. The black really obscures the pattern, and I want something with a shorter row gauge so the pattern is compressed, then I can maybe wear the sweater without a cami underneath.
• Shetland Triangle (Wrap Style) in Fleece Artist Sea Wool. Thanks to Amy for suggesting this in my “what to knit with Sea Wool?” post. I knit this on a US 5, I’ll probably go up a needle size if I decide to make this.
• Some travelling cables in Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy. I need to work on the increase/decrease method – there’s some seriously ugly step edges along the purl columns.
• Twisted Flower sock pattern in Mountain Colors Bearfoot. Love the Bearfoot, but I’m thinking it’s a bit too hairy for this pattern. The colorway is gorgeous – it’s teal with some green bits running through it.

My fave of the four is the Sea Wool:

The only thing better than beautiful sock yarn is SHINY sock yarn!

Turkey weekend was great – good food, good company, and plenty of r+r. However, my Target Wave Mittens remain unused – there was no snow! The temps were in the 50’s, boo. I was looking forward to some pretty snow and freezing cold. Last year there was a big snowstorm in PA, and we had to leave early (back to NJ to catch my flight the next morning). I have vivid memories of this because we were driving Rob’s old truck (which he then drove back down to TX), which had no climate control. It was an incredibly freezing cold two hour drive. Brr!

Rob’s brother’s wife (aka MC) taught herself to knit recently. She mentioned that she’d like to learn to make hats for holiday gifts, so I stepped up and taught her the basics of knitting in the round. We made mini-hats to practice joining in the round and working the crown decreases, and she’s now a hat-knitting champ! I’m probably going to send her a little learn-to-knit-more xmas package – I’d love to hear any ideas you have on beginning knitting supplies. I’m thinking that I’ll include the Stitch and Bitch book, which I used to teach myself how to knit back in the day.

An enormous amount of knitting was done this weekend. I’m really amazed at what a little speed knitter I was! I completed all but 6 rows of this scarf while I was away, the rest was finished last night. The pattern is the Lacy Serpentine Scarf from Heartstrings Fiber Arts. This photo gives the scarf more credit than it deserves – it’s still unblocked, and really does look like unblocked lace spaghetti. I’m using Handmaiden Sea Silk (that I bought for a 20% discount at Yarntopia at their crazy end-of-summer sale), which is awesome. It’s shiny and drapey and all that is good in a yarn. The scarf is blocking right now, so I’ll have a FO photo soon!

Kid and Ewe and Llamas, Too – fun! Too bad there weren’t any llamas there. We did see plenty of adorable alpacas, is that close enough? Props to Christine for driving us there and back in her mega-vehicle (I slept the whole way home, as is kelly’s way) and to Julia for the fantastic hospitality! And additional props to both of them for organizing this whole meetup thing! Yeah!

The animals. Humans excluded, because I have absolutely zero photos of people that aren’t blurry (sorry, Abbe, you are perpetually blurry to my camera’s lens), but Staci, Kristen, and Nanc have some good photos of the peeps that were there, and there’s also a nice list of people with linky linky to peruse.

Alpacas! The Caution sign in the left photo says “Our alpacas will capture your heart.” Yup.

Angora bunnies! There was a bin of “fresh off the bunny” fiber, and it was the softest. thing. ever. At one point, the angora bunny owner was spinning yarn straight from the bunny. Seriously, the bunny was in her lap and she was spinning away. Needless to say, this drew a crowd, and by the time I pulled out my camera and jockeyed for a prime photo-snapping position, she had stopped. Staci has a good photo of the action, though.

First up, Brooks Farm yarn. The first two skeins are Four Play, a wool/silk blend. The camo-ey green one will be something for Rob. Rob is down with this, although I don’t know if he’s realized the amount of lovely silken sheen that his future winter accessory will have. The two on the right are yarn that I WON! People, I am not a winner. I never get my hopes up when lady luck is involved. They are Brooks Farm Riata, a wool/mohair/silk blend. These puppies are soft and pass the hold-it-to-your-neck softness test, despite the mohair content. When I went to buy the second skein of Four Play, I mentioned to the Brooks Farm woman that I was the winner of the lovely yarn, and she asked me if I’d like to swap the skeins for different colors. Hell, yeah! So what was a pinky-bluey-yellowy-really-not-kelly mix became two skeins of awesome.

The braided fiber is merino from Clouds of Fiber, on the right is a merino/tussah silk blend from Heritage Arts. Yummers on both.

We’ve been in Houston a year now (!), but never really visited Austin. The YH thing doesn’t really count, since I saw no more than a yarn store, a baptist church, and a restaraunt. Last weekend a friend of ours was driving through Austin (and we have a couple of other friends living there), so we finally made the trip.

We were going to check out the UT campus, but as we drove by there were a large number of people in orange tshirts. Oh, it’s game day, stay the hell away from campus. Instead, we checked out the capitol building. Like everything in Texas, it is large and Texan. Even the drain was a big Texas star.

Bats everywhere! Lots of bats leave the Congress bridge every evening, and we were totally there, man.

I got to see Sarah on Sunday, and it was her birthday – the big 3-0! As a gift to herself, Sarah indulged in some gorgeous cashmere-silk yarn. I was a good little kelp and only bought a couple more skeins of this Claudia Handpaints sock yarn. I had purchased some back in July, but I didn’t think that I’d have enough for my planned project – the Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. If I have a ton leftover, it will likely become socks for an xmas gift.

The scarf is flying by – it’s so nice to see noticeable progress when knitting (unlike a certain Sarcelle…). However, I was getting some major pooling issues. I was alternating between two skeins (which are noticeably different dye lots, despite both being in Lot 003), but they would both wind up in sync, so a third of the scarf was the same medium blue color. I fixed this by joining the second skein on the opposite side of the scarf as the first skein. The color progression of each skein goes in opposite directions, and no more obvious pooling. The colors are still shifting oddly (I’ve knit a bit more of the scarf, and the bottom part is much whiter than the top), but I can live with it. The Claudia Handpaints is less tightly-wound and sproingy than Koigu, but it is very, very soft, mmm.

London was fun! Sights were seen, food was eaten, beer was imbibed. I could definitely see myself living in London – being there makes me yearn for a city with a good subway system. More photos to come, once I return to Central time.

A bit of knitting occurred on those 9 hour flights, even though there was some sneakiness involved with getting the needles on board. We flew British Airways, and it seems that they don’t want needles on the flights. On the way there it wasn’t much of an issue, but there were lots of signs explicitly saying that needles were sharp and dangerous in Gatwick. A Green Gable (well, blue in this case) was started on the way there, and a badly pooling sock was knit on the way back…