Three Things I Love and Three Things I Hate

Last night was a bad night. I was going to write this entry last night, but it is a good thing I didn't and let time and sleep wash over me and anger was away. I am going to change the scope of this Blogstalking exercise and make it a bit more self-focused.

Three Things I Love About My Parenting

* I am supportive and will do anything to help. Flash cards? In a jiffy! Swim practice? I'm already in the pool! Need a parent for a field trip? I work for a place that prides itself on letting parents do this!

* I have a sense of humour. Kids crack me up - especially when they are trying to be on-the-level and adult with you.

* I am a straight-shooter. You did something wrong? You will apologize and make up for it. I don't want to hear any whining. Get up, dust yourself off and make it better.

And now, and maybe more importantly,

Three Things I Hate About My Parenting

* I am horribly elitist. Not about money - I am not that shallow. Educating yourself - making yourself a better person - Being informed. If you don't care about these things, I would have a hard time caring about you.

* I am quick to anger and disappointment. Quick to joy and praise as well, but those two definitely get over-shadowed in my child's eyes by the first two.

* I am a over-achiever and expect the same of those around me.

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It is the last two things on that list that are causing so much strife right now in my home. I am not sure where this drive to be first and a winner every time comes from. My parents always encouraged me to do my best, but there was never an underlying threat of be the best or else. Willow didn't pass her swimming level for the second time and so in a few weeks will be taking the same class for the third time in a row. I am so conflicted by this! I am not faulting her teacher in the slightest - I have been observing the class and know the concrete reasons why she is not moving on. I also know she can do these same damn things in the pool when she and I just go to play! The big thing she can't/won't do in class is swim half the length of the pool
unaided. She will swim for maybe 10 feet and then will cling onto the instructor like a baby monkey. When she and I are in the pool for family swim I always make her swim lengths
for the first 20 minutes before we play and she will swim more than half the length of the pool with no effort. Why not in class!?!?!?

Andrew is much more casual about this. He says she will just keep on taking lessons until she passes this level. I want to scream. I am trying to keep this together. I told Willow I was disappointed and a little angry because I know she can do all these things. She got quiet and said she didn't want to talk to me.

Great. And this is only swimming lessons. What am I going to be like when we start getting real report cards from school?

Only Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes Late!

Mr. Greenjeans has a sleeve!



I stopped working so frantically since I knew I wasn't going to get it done by Stitches.

And a view of my backside. It kind of dwarfs the back side of the sweater...

Dye Pot Adventures, or Miss Dashwood is Over the Moon With the Jesuits

It's pretty, but once again, I don't know what to call it:



I was going for something a mite more fiery - a truer red at the very least instead of the salmon-y melon colour I ended up with. Plain and simple, this is Wiltons red and orange. I should have known better when I was dissolving the red in boiling water and resulting liquid looked like Hawaiian Punch. Oh well, like I said - it's still pretty. Anyone want to name it? I didn't use Patons Classic Wool this time. The last time I was at AC Moore they had Moda Dea's Washable Wool on for half-price, so I decided to give that a shot. It is pure wool, but cabled and slinky-soft. The yardage is a about 50 yards less than Patons Classic Wool so I don't see getting two hats out of it unless they are baby hats.

Here are some close-ups:

I saw this questionnaire on someone's sidebar recently and since I am a big fan of Jane Austen, I hopped right on it:

Take the Quiz here!

That isn't who I thought I would be! Of couse, Elinor Dashwood ends up with Hugh Grant (oh, fine then - Edward Ferrars!), but my favourite Austen heroine is Anne Elliott of Persuasion

I also found this questionnaire on someone's blog so of course had to take it, too:

You are The
Moon

Hope, expectation,
Bright promises.

The Moon is a card
of magic and mystery - when prominent you know that nothing
is as it seems, particularly when it concerns
relationships. All logic is thrown out the window.

The Moon is all
about visions and illusions, madness, genius and poetry. This
is a card that has to do with sleep, and so with both dreams
and nightmares. It is a scary card in that it warns that
there might be hidden enemies, tricks and falsehoods. But it
should also be remembered that this is a card of great
creativity, of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition.
You may be going through a time of emotional and mental
trial; if you have any past mental problems, you must be
vigilant in taking your medication but avoid drugs or
alcohol, as abuse of either will cause them irreparable damage.
This time however, can also result in great creativity,
psychic powers, visions and insight. You can and should trust
your intuition.

What
Tarot Card are You?
Take
the Test to Find Out.

What do you think? I think it is a little harder to be objective about this one - so be subjective with me!

Segue here - since the Moon card is about dreams and all - I had a very convoluted dream last night that I was stranded in a town in the mountains. My cell phone access was spotty, and I was trying to leave messages for people to explain where I was. The only landmark I could make out was a school - it was a Catholic school called St. Ignatius. I remembered this name distinctly when I woke up this morning, so I had to look him up. What do you think this portends? I am not even a Catholic, let alone a Jesuit.

Blogstalking: How I get from here to there

How do I get from here to there?

In a word? Quickly.

Note my dashboard clock. This was the time when Willow and I left home this morning:



This was the time when I dropped Willow off at daycare:



And this was the time when I parked the car in front of my office:



I measured the distance once from my driveway to where I park at work - and it came to 0.4 miles. I have to drive about 3 times that to get Willow to school and then backtrack to my office.

I have to say I was conflicted about this assignment - I want to maintain some modicum of privacy on the blog - and because it such a short distance between where I live and work it would be beyond easy for someone to pinpoint where I live had I posted pictures of the surrounding area.

And yes, I see that I need to dust my car...

WiP It Wednesday

My Mr Greenjeans is coming along nicely:



I think I have about 5 more inches of the cabling to go before I bind off. The instructions said to move the garment onto waste yarn when you have done the required amount of stockinette stitch to see if the cables will begin in an aesthetically pleasing place, and I am glad it did. I have the goods in the chestal area (how am I going write that without attracting the fetishists to the blog...), so I did 4 more rows of stockinette stitch to put the cables below my breasts rather than in the middle of them.

Here is a close-up of my cables and a much truer representation of the green involved:



I just started my 4th ball of Lion Brand Wool Ease tonight, so my yarn is going a long way- I haven't even hit the $10 mark yet! All that and I will have a sweater I can toss in the washer and dryer (very important when Willow is around!). I brought the sweater with me to work today but ended up having a shitstorm of a day - only got one row in when I was supposed to be having lunch and then I found out that I somehow lost the bamboo cable needle that had been in my pocket. I backtracked everywhere I had been that morning, hoping it had just fallen out but it was nowhere to be found. Someone probably thought they had found a freakishly large toothpick and threw it away.

Willow and I were working on a different kind of project earlier this week. She doesn't have her ears pierced and has started to notice that many of her classmates do. I don't have anything really against it - I had my ears pierced when I was in Kindergarten - but I have a feeling that her daddy might have a minor meltdown if I took her to get them done. So, when she and I were in the mall last week I looked at clip-on costume earrings in the dept store, hoping to find something cute - but didn't see a single pair for less than $18. I told her we could do better than that. So, we headed to Michaels, where I bought a package of clip-on backs, a package of sparkling multi-colour rhinestones, and a bottle of tacky glue. I think I may have paid $6.50 for the lot of them... and Willow made out with seven pairs of clip-on earrings:



And she is as happy as a clam ;)

Sleepless Nights (I don't have a problem!)

One thing that constantly conspires to give me sleepless night is reading books. Before I got married I would stay up until all hours of the night reading - who cares if I was groggy the next day? I wasn't trying to impress anyone and a few shots of expresso would chase away the fog. Flash forward ten years - maybe it is just because I am older, but it is getting harder and harder to read all night long. The words start to float in front of my eyes and even though I want to continue reading, I have to force myself to put the book down and sleep.

What is keeping me awake right now? S.M. Stirling's The Sunrise Lands:



Depending on how you look at it, it is either the first book in a second trilogy or the first book in a third trilogy (which began with his Nantucket series). Alternative history - speculative fiction - call it what you will, but I love it. Although - Steve - I have to say I take exception to the fact that the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island have been declared a Death Zone. How can Vancouver die and yet Seattle live? (Characters and storylines aside - I'm just speaking of population vs. farmland and resources).

I also just finished reading Ilona Andrew's Magic Bites and thoroughly enjoyed it.



I think the book needs a second read because I have it in my head there were a few character inconsistencies in the beginning. I asked at the bookstore if there was a sequel or it this author
had other books out and was surprised to learn that this is her (actually their - it is a husband and wife writing team) first book and the sequel to this one comes out next spring. People will draw inevitable comparisons to other genre females - but I have to say that Kate (the protagonist), while healthily red-blooded and having some interesting distractions, manages to stick to business. You can read more about Kate's world and the series on the author's website.

I also have some crockpot cookbooks out of the library right now - and I have to ask... why would someone put cinnamon on beef!?!?! Just the thought of that makes my stomach
start heaving. No, Mom, I am not pregnant. It's just gross.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Ever had one of those days when you can't think of anything interesting to say and you wish someone would just send you a cool meme you had never done before so your parents don't worry because you haven't updated the blog in a few days...?

*********************

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I love my Mom - she's fun to talk to, she can knit up a storm, and I will never compete with her culinary skills (that just makes my visits to Canada that much more tasty!) She is also a horrible person to buy presents for (Mom!) so as soon as she lets me know what she would like, it is in the mail.

Making Up For It All

See, this is what it looked like on Wednesday when I started to compose my WiP it post - and I thought the resulting picture was so woefully blobby that I didn't want to post it.



Flash forward a few days (and some manic knitting on my lunch breaks), and you have this:



Looks more like a garment and less like a blob, non? It is Mr Greenjeans from the Fall 2007 issue of Knitty. I got gauge in Lion Brand Wool Ease in Sage, and I am happy with it. I figure if the sweater is flattering, I will probably make it again in a more expensive yarn (like Cascade 220 Quattro...). I have about 3 more inches of the body to knit before I start working on the cable section. What do you think my chances are of finishing it before Stitches East? I tend to knit well under pressure - my Veste Everest and Clapotis are proof of that.

A gratuitous close-up of the raglan sleeve:



I'm really looking forward to taking photos of autumn this weekend - it looks like the weather will be perfect for it, so stay tuned!

The Guilty Day After (I didn't do WIP It Wednesday) Post

So you noticed I didn't do a WIP It Wednesday post, huh?

I took a picture of my project, but honestly - it looked like a green blob because I really wasn't at a stage where it was anything yet. So, I will be WIPing it tomorrow, folks. WIPing it real good...

Lucky, Lucky Me!

My third and final Knitty package arrive and look at all this loveliness:



Two skeins of a wonderful chocolate brown alpaca (I'm thinking mittens or something like that), and some simply luminous pale gold 'Elvincraft' (Kid Mohair and Wenleydale mix). I am curious whether my very generous SP Shannon spun this herself - she didn't mention it in her card, but she has sent me other yarn she had spun herself. And look at all those 16" Knitpicks circulars - in sizes 6, 7, 8, and 9 - someone is trying to enable my hat knitting obsession! Thank you, Shannon - you have a great SP!

******************************************

This past weekend my friend Asami and I took our kids up to Easton, PA ( a good hour and 45 minute drive from our area) to go to...

**

Anyone care to guess? Where would you find massive crayons falling from the sky? The Crayola Factory, of course! It was a long drive (and I am glad Asami was the one driving!), but well worth it. Willow was in high heaven - everything was hands on and there were plenty of freebees with your entrance fee... not to mention the swag we came home with after hitting the gift store.

There were some funky activities - like this stop motion camera that created all sorts of psychedelic art with kids dancing in front of a stop motion camera:



And fun house mirrors:



Now, you really didn't think I was going to stand in front of the one that made me look wider, do you? Silly mortal. We had such a fun time - and Asami, I can't wait for our next road trip!

** Incidentally, those crayons above are about 10 feet long a piece...

Blogstalking: Purse Guts (and evidence of fall and falling!)

It's not very exciting:



You actually caught me in a clean backpack day - I had recently switched from a different backpack so all the normal detritus had already been tossed. I don't carry a purse - instead I have 3 or 4 revolving backpacks whose use depends on my clothes and activities for the day. This black leather one is my work backpack (you know, me and corporate America and all that...) The contents? Karen Marie Moning's _Dark Fever_ (meh - I hate it when authors aren't straight up front that a book is part of a series. The main male character is an utter ass and there was no sex. So there.), my checkbook, wallet, stamps, Orbit gum, sunglasses, cell phone, company pen, extra-strength Midol, Tide pen (a must!), Trader Joe's Virtuoso spearmint chapstick, coloured lip gloss for when I am feeling wan or girlie (the two often coincide), a couple of butterscotch hard candies, two $10 Borders gift cards I recently won at a company picnic, sunscreen, and the Knitty Daisy sweater I have been working on.

We were at Bellevue State Park for the above mentioned company picnic, and I took some photos of some trees starting to turn colour. There wasn't any of the overt red and yellow yet, but as of 5:10am this morning, autumn is here!

Last night all three of us went to the birthday party of Willow's friend, Haley and we had the best time! It was an ice skating party, and let me tell you, the last time I went ice skating was with Lisa McGladdery when I was 19 year old! I will admit to landing on my bum twice, but overall I think I did really well - I did laps of the rink and felt great afterward. It was the first time ice skating for both Andrew and Willow - and while Andrew fared well (didn't fall down even once), Willow was like a ragdoll on the ice. I honestly expected to see bruises all along her hip and behind this morning, but found nothing.... Ah! To have the recuperative powers of a 5 year old! I am looking forward to trying this out again.

Blogstalking Returns: Who Am I?

I'm a bit of a latecomer to this round of Blogstalking, and the problem with that is that I have seen so many great examples of people explaining who they are - I don't want to copy anyone, so I am going to keep this simple.

I am:

Accident-prone * Analytical * Arachnophobe * Auntie * Baker * Bibliophile * Bossy * Canadian * Casual * Housekeeper * Chief Cook and Bottle washer * Creative * Cynical * Daughter (and -in-law) * Etymologist * Expert * Foreigner * Friend * Gardener * Generous * Granddaughter * History Buff * Knitter * Linguist * Mom * Obsessive-compulsive * Perfectionist * Pollyanna * Sarcastic * Short-tempered * Sister * Smart ass * Verbose * Wife * World Traveler

Okay, the linguist in me is grating at the fact that some of those words need articles in front of them, but I am trying to get a handle on the obsessive-compulsive part and leave it be. I also know that some of those traits are contradictory... but I can't help that.

***********************************

Here's the new skein - I'm calling it 'Over-ripe Raspberries':



This was a combination of Wiltons black and burgundy - and if you look really closely at the black part, you would see that it is more like dark green/dark burgundy/dark purple. I am not sure what I would have to do to get a truer black.

And here is Willow sporting the hat I finished last night whilst watching 'K*Ville' (not a bad show - I will probably watch it again):



I *love* how my self-striping dyeing is turning out - yay me! (And only two ends to weave in for stripes!)

Every Once in a While

I actually manage to finish one of my knitting projects...



This one had been languishing for a while. I finished the knitting part of it back during the first week of July and brought it with me hoping my Mom could show me how to install the zipper, but we didn't end up having time for that... so the unfinished vest went back into its bag and plopped back into the stash.

Then along came the dress code...



This kid was going to need sweaters and vests fast and I only had a handful of colours to choose from! So, last week I pulled this off the stash pile, went over to my mother-in-law's house to raid her sewing room supplies, and sewed in the zipper.



It isn't perfect, but I am happy with it for a first attempt.

The particulars:

Pattern: Knitting Pure and Simple #271 Child's Bulky Hooded Vest
Yarn: Plymouth Oh My in Olive - 4 skeins
Needles: Knitpicks Options size 6

And Willow loves it!

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Andrew and I went into Philly yesterday to celebrate our 10th anniversary by going to the King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute which is starting to be one of my favourite places to go to in Philadelphia. It was a beautiful day:



The show itself... well, I give it a solid B. I love Egyptian history - watch all the documentaries I can manage on television - but I don't think the exhibit was managed well. It was very crowded - the tickets were timed for entrance, but then didn't ensure that traffic was flowing at a good pace so some rooms were clogged. I think it was a misnomer to call it a King Tut exhibit because there was only a handful of objects from his tomb and the famous funerary mask they used for all the advertisements was nowhere to be seen.

Me and Anubis hanging out:



We tried to find a nice cafe or restaurant to have lunch in, but almost everything was closed on this sunny Sunday afternoon - so we headed back to town at had dinner at our favourite place for Prime Rib... which as of tonight has given us 6 portions!

A Decade Ago

A decade ago today I was a scared 24 year old getting married in a foreign country. Andrew and I met - a girl from the West Coast of Canada and a boy from the East Coast of the USA - in Japan, and we needed to get married in order to expedite my immigration process. We were married at Sakura City Hall, with only our boss Margaret Otake and our Japanese teacher Ikegami-sensei in attendance (and with their valuable help we translated all of our necessary documents).

The whole day was surreal. It was a rainy Tuesday morning in our area of Japan, and we had breakfast at a McDonalds before taking the train out to City Hall. The entire process took maybe 2 hours - and was rather anti-climatic. We signed our translated documents (included in that pile were signed affidavits from our respective embassies saying we were of sound mind to get married), waited around, and then a clerk called us to the counter, handed us our Japanese Certificate of Marriage and that was it.

Margaret took us out for lunch to a fancy French restaurant (the name escapes me but I remember it had an enormously long table made from a single log), and then I went home and Andrew to work for the afternoon. When he came home we celebrated with a bottle of Dom Perignon... and tuna casserole. Trust me, tuna casserole was a treat for us in Japan!

Sweetie, it's been a wild ride... two countries, two states, another degree (and another one soon), a child, a house... and lots of ups and downs in between. I love you. You drive me to utter madness sometimes, but I still love you.

Generic Hat Recipe for Cristi

Cristi asked yesterday if I had a generic hat recipe I use for these hats. I do, and here it is:

Gauge? We don't need no stinkin' gauge. For the most part this is worsted to heavy worsted weight stuff and I use size 6 or 8 12" circulars as the mood pleases me and switch to DPNs when it gets too tight.

CO a multiple of 8 stitches plus 1. (For most children's hats, depending on the thickness of the yarn, this will be 65, 73 or 81 stitches). Join, be careful not to twist, and place a stitch marker after the first stitch.

Work a 2X2 rib pattern, and when you get to that last lonely stitch, K2tog with the first one to create a tighter join. Work the rib for 1.5 - 3" as it pleases you.

Switch to knitting every stitch, and K7, M1 all around (this confused me when I first started this, so for you absolute newbies, it means knit 7 stitches, make 1 in that 8th stitch, then knit that 8th stitch). Repeat until you get to the marker.

Knit until you think that hat is long enough to get to the crown of someone's head. I'm afraid I don't have an exact measurement here. I have a 5 year old model and I use make her sit still, pull the hat on her head until I think I am where I should be decreasing.

Count your stitches and start using your elementary school math. If you have 72 stitches, 8X9=72, so when you start decreasing you will K7, K2tog all the way around until the marker. The next round you will knit plain. The third row you will K6, K2tog all around, then knit a row plain. Each decrease row you will knit one less before you start K2tog. Switch to DPNs when it gets too tight on the circular. Keep going until you get to the row where you K2tog all around (no extra K stitches preceding it), and knit the last row plain.

Cut a 6" tail on the yarn, using a needle pull the tail through the last loops, pull tight, and weave in the end. Voila! A child's hat!

Here is a pic of Willow and the chapeau du jour:



This is the Patons Classic Wool I dyed this week and my sister Teri suggested calling it 'Mossberry.' I have another skein soaking in vinegar right now and am trying to decide what colour combination to go with next. I was at JoAnn's this morning using my 40% coupons to get more skeins of Patons Classic Wool (yeah... I brought Willow with me so she could use another coupon and get me more wool. I'm shameless.) I also picked up two new dye colours: black and burgundy. I'm a little worried that the black will just fan out like some of the other dyes have.

On our way back from JoAnn's we stopped at a grocery store that was having a grand re-opening party and Willow was given the coolest balloon:



Wouldn't that be a neat combination? A little burgundy, more pink, then leave some undyed?

Six Hats for Alex

I've been a knitting rut of late.

I had all these cute sweaters planned for Willow and then the dress code caught me unaware and all those cute projects fell along the wayside. I have finished one school sweater for her and am working on another... but it is so ho-hum. Both my sisters are pregnant right now and a dear co-worker's wife just had a baby on Wednesday and I really should be making something for them as well... but I am having such a hard time getting to it.

So what do I do when I am wallowing?

I knit hats.



These hats are all for Hats for Alex and I hope to get them in the mail tomorrow. From L to R: 1) My own hand-dyed Patons Classic Wool; 2) Bernat Twist; 3) Lots of Wool-ease leftovers; 4) Something that had been in my stash so long I no longer had a ball band for; 5) Lots of acrylic leftovers; and 6) Patons Decor. At least someone will benefit from my rut!

The blue stripe one is more adult-sized... but I figure there must be a teenager or a pre-teen with lots of hair at this hospital:



Who am I kidding? I'm 34 - I only get carded once in a blue moon now.

WiP It Wednesday

Skein #2 all dyed up:



Again, this one didn't turn out quite how I intended - but I suppose that comes with practice. What I wanted was a cornflower blue and lime green mix. I used the Wiltons dye that is actually called 'Cornflower Blue', but it separated into powder blue and violet almost as soon as hitting the dyepot water. The only light green I had in my dye box was 'Leaf Green' and I wanted something Spring-ier than that, so I added a dollop of yellow to the leaf green and got the snazzy lime I was looking for.

Here's a close up:



I didn't get a chance to take pictures in natural light so they are a bit yellowed here. And I did lengthen the distance between my lawnchairs when I strung out the skein prior to dyeing, so I hope to achieve the wider stripes on the hats I intend to knit with this skein.

Does anyone have a name for this one?

Arbutus At Best At Work

I was a little surprised at how my 'Arbutus At Best' skein knit up:



I had honestly expected the stripes to be wider - especially since I was knitting a child-sized hat. Never fear! I have another skein percolating in the crockpot right now and I places my lawnchairs even further apart this time to ensure wider stripes.

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I was waiting for the news outlets to make a big deal over the fact that today was the sixth anniversary of 9/11 and am a bit surprised that they have been handling this in a rather low-key fashion. I remember last year watching the CNN coverage from 9/11/01 synched up to real time. It was odd and surreal -because you knew things that will happen that hadn't 'happened' yet in the news cast and you caught all the rumours and misconceptions as they went along.

At work today we broke into a somewhat spontaneous "Where were you on 9/11?" The group I am with now is not entirely the same group that existed six years ago so there were some new stories to hear. Personally, I was at work in a new job that day. One of the women I worked with had come in late because her daughter had an early morning dentist appointment. She came into the office with a bewildered look on her face and said, "I heard the news as I was parking - they said something about a plane crashing into a high rise in New York City." And so it began.

36 Things on a Lazy Sunday

Stolen from Shan:

Three people who make me laugh:
1. Will Ferrell in 'Elf'
2. Gara
3. 'The Office'

Three things I love:
1. My family
2. Malabrigo Wool
3. Coffee Crisp chocolate bars

Three things I don't like:
1. Smoking
2. Litterbugs (ties into #1)
3. Willful ignorance

Three things I don't understand:
1. Monte Cristo sandwiches
2. Drinking the milk from the cereal bowl - yech!
3. High heels

Three things on my desk
1. Smithsonian magazine
2. Framed picture of my sister, Teri
3. Bottle of Advil (my neck hurts)

Three things I am doing right now:
1. Listening to Nora Roberts "High Noon" on CD
2. Comparing numbers
3. Waiting to turn of the sprinkler in the yard

Three things I want to do before I die:
1. Vacation in Iceland
2. Watch a storm in Miami
3. Drive across Canada

Three things I can do:
1. Bend my fingers all the way backward
2. French braid my hair in less than a minute
3. Bake really good cinnamon buns

Three things I can't do:
1. Program my cell phone
2. Reach things on top shelves
3. Change a tire

Three things you should listen to:
1. Leonard Cohen songs sung by Tori Amos
2. Nora Roberts 'In Death' books on CD
3. The Preston and Steve show on WMMR

Three things you should never listen to:
1. The Willfully Ignorant(see above) but Conversely Self-righteous
2. People who spitefully point out your limitations
3. Fox News ;p~

Three shows I watched as a kid:
1. Solid Gold
2. Captain Kangaroo
3. The Friendly Giant

Feel free to pilfer... but leave a comment if you do so I can check your answers.

Chapter 101: In Which Jo is Horribly Spoiled

Woo-hoo! I love getting mail! I came home at noon today to meet the bug guy for our semi-annual rendez-vous and there were not one, but two packages waiting for me on my doorstep. The first was my second package from my Knitty SP9 upstream pal:



Clockwise from the royal blue - Malabrigo (Be still my heart! How I love to knit with thee!) Two skeins of Plymouth Suri Merino in cream and a lovely blue-green, and most importantly - two skeins my SP spun herself! The light blue is a Columbia/Dorset blend and the darker one a 100% merino that is self-striping. Also, not pictured - the current issue of Spin-Off magazine. SP, thank you so much! I can't wait to try these all out! I have never bought this magazine before, either, so I am eager to go through it.

Here is some yarn pron for all of you:

I'm so lucky!

And don't forget the second package - my Turtle Daddy's Sock Blockers came in the mail from Turtlegirl herself! Don't my socks look so much better here? They actually look like socks and not like lumps anymore.

Go visit Cristi's shop - I'm sure you will love the stuff there! The yarn above is Knitpicks Dancing and I have been working on these socks forever. I'm hoping these sock blockers are the impetus to get my socks done quicker!

And she had one treat still in there for me - some destashed sock yarn! This was from something separate altogether but she included it in the package. Thank you - I love all the greens in this yarn.