Return to Normalcy

Whew! I'm back from my trip, back home with my lovely Lotus and Rocky, and now I can catch up on all the work I missed (ha, ha.) W is gone for the weekend to the Ottowa Film Festival, and so are all of my roommates, so the apartment is pretty quiet.

I thought I'd also share more of my Rhinebeck spoils!

From right to left:

1. 2 skeins of hand dyed wool from Meadowland Farm (They don't have a website, but they're based in Hinesburg, Vermont)
2. 1 skein of Opal Sox
3. 1 Zauberball - I have to admit, these are the coolest things ever! I had trouble deciding which one to buy to make socks for myself.
4. 1 skein of periwinkle sheep watercolor worsted superwash in "Hydrangea" - this color really reminded me of W, so maybe sometime in the future it will become something for him?
5. 2 skeins of Spinnery Sock Art from Green Mountain Spinnery, one in a purpleish handpainted colorway and one undyed
6. 770 yards of Merino Superwash in a lace weight from Maple Creek Farms. (They also don't have a website, but they mentioned an Etsy shop coming eventually!)
7. 1 skein of handspun mystery yarn... I can't remember where I bought it, whoops!

The majority of these yarns I just bought on a whim - I like, so I buy. I'm hoping I can figure out what to do with all of them...

Urg, I need to not by any more yarn for a long, long time... At least not until I use it up!

Rhinebeck Recap

I have to say, Rhinebeck was pretty awesome! I had a great time with Ash and we will definitely be doing this again, with some more planning. So before I disappear for a while to go to a conference, I can grace you guys with this nice long post about it!

Ash and I had been talking with Rebecca about going to NYS&W this year, but we hadn't made any concrete plans.  Then, at the Yarn Crawl, we met a really nice lady that suggested that we go... and that was the sunny day that made the seed of the idea sprout up.  We reserved a hotel room.  I saved two paychecks.

We made the trip down in the dead of night on Friday, checked into the hotel at around midnight, and couldn't sleep.  Regardless, we were bright eyed and ready to go both mornings!

Our spoils:

1. Yarn. A lot of yarn. I actually don't have a picture of all the yarn together (that will have to wait until Friday!) but it wasn't a lot of yarn... but it was nice, fancy, expensive yarn.
2. A commemorative re-useable tote bag (Ash knows me waaaay too well.)
3. A ravelry button (pictured above. We went to the Ravelry meet up but got there too late - some guy gave us horrible directions and we wandered lost for almost an hour - to get any gift bags!)
4. A yarn swift (This was much-needed, and will be shared among the club.)
5. Sustainably harvested birch size five dpns.
6. Samson:

Sleepy rabbit.

Ash and I have decided to share joint custody of this angora rabbit.  He is totally cute!

Note the absolute look of terror on his face.

Being plucked on the ride home.

On top of that, I got a lot of inspiration.  I saw a few familiar faces, and took a ton of pictures!

Apple cider donuts - YUM.

This stall was my favorite - it was like a forest of Christmas trees made of yarn.

All in all, a great trip.

My favorite photo of the weekend

Recent Aquisitions

More on Rhinebeck later :)

Rhinebeck: Day 0

Ash picked me up and we arrived at the hotel around midnight.

It's in a lovely town called Fishkill.

We oogled over yarn that she won, which I tried to take pictures of.

I wanted to take a picture with my camera but it died.

Tomorrow, Walmart to buy a new camera quick.

Then RHINEBECK.

For now, here's a picture of Ash's glorious, glorious winnings.

 One day, I will be a famous knit designer and people will be sending me yarn like this :)

A Quickie.

Just an update - my life is kind of crazy right now, preparing for a convention all next week. Lots of schoolwork... boo!

But a few things you should know.

1. We have aquired another hedgehog, hopefully temporarilly, but he is too cute.

2. I'm going to Rhinebeck! I didn't know for sure what the plans were until a few hours ago, but hopefully I'll be there with Ash :) I'm super excited!

3. I really need a hat. Today is cold, rainy, and gross and I wish I had one :(

4. Today is W's birthday. :)

A Glimpse into the Design Notebooks

Lots of fun things are happening around here, which I'll be able to blog about later in the week, but for now I thought I'd share something very personal... my design notebooks.

This book was started when I was still in high school (over 4 years ago!) The title of the book became the title of my old knitting blog. It has some great ideas...

Kitten mittens and a not so bad hat.

;)

My current book is a bit smaller.

It also has some great ideas... but some of them are in progress, or I looked them up and there are patterns that do the same durn thing... or I just don't feel like making them.

Yes, my original owl design had colorwork... but it didn't look good at all!

Moustache Mittens! Teehee.

I also do a lot of doodling on papers... in class...

Trying to figure out mittens for W... but they're all girly.

Pokemon schematics! My mom really wants a Meowth...

Pikachu schematics :)

Sometimes I'll draw the same thing obsessively...

There are also some horrible, horrible ideas.

Can you imagine how terrifying these would look? Baklavas are scary enough.

This sweater turned out HORRIBLY.

And then there are doodles of the cats that lived in my neighborhood in Sidney.

I have so many pages and pages of ideas... I think if I dropped out of school and just knit, I'd be 100 before I made them all!

How to Draw an Owl

Yes. Another one of these? I don't know, I thought I'd share my madness method.  Also, I would like to post something but am rather depressed and stressed and super-over-worked.  But the quarter is half way over, only 5 more weeks, and next quarter I'm taking less credits (or my parents will cut me off.)

These are, of course, based on the 1,000,000,000,000 doodles I did before I even started working on the owls pattern. I tend to get things in my head, and think about them over and over again, and when they don't go according to plan (as in, I don't see anyone make them, don't have any test knitters, no one says they like them, blah blah) I get rather glum and down on myself. I won't say I'm a perfectionist, just an expectionist, I guess.  

Anyway, here's the little how-to, I'm going to get some cheese for my whine.

(There's a jump, so if you don't want to draw an owl, you don't have to ;P)