Spoils

Here is something you would think a person of my age and experience would have figured out sooner:  When choosing a knitting project to work on while on the plane, you should consider more than just the finished size of the item you are working on.  You should also consider (and this is a big one for me) how many colors are in it.  It turns out that even if all you want to take with you is a little old mitten to knit on in flight, if that mitten requires you to wield 8 full-size skeins of yarn in order to perform the color changes, you may still run into trouble.  That's what happened to me on the way from Washington DC to Washington State.  There I was, with this innocent little mitten cuff, and all the yarn in the free world, fighting for supremacy in my lap.  My 300-lb seatmates (one on either side, thank you very much) did not appreciate the exercise any more than I appreciated their elbows in my ribcage (one on either side, thank you very much). 

After that lesson, I promised myself that I would only work on projects requiring not more than two skeins of yarn at a time.  I would have promised only one skein at a time, but I don't want to sabotage my success by setting the bar too high.

In pursuit of that goal, I collected some extremely dreamy yarn last weekend:

From the delightful Village Yarn & Tea comes this Great Northern Yarns mink and cashmere blend.  Really?  Mink? Cashmere? Nothing to object to there, my friends.  And not as pricey as you might think.  What you can't see in the photo is that once it's knitted and washed, it forms this really luxe halo, not unlike 100% angora does.  Very silky and very warm.  No clue what to do with it yet and totally do not care - it had to be mine.  If this doesn't cure me of my need for multiple skeins, then I bet this will:

Locally grown, sheared and processed alpaca, put up exclusively for Renaissance Yarns of Kent, WA.  Lucky them.  Lucky us!  The buttery softness of this skein can only be matched by its perfect charcoal color.  Suggestions for use of 163 yards welcome.

And here I am, by the way, with the incomparable Nancy, who owns Renaissance Yarns.  Lady knows how to rock the LYS, I don't mind telling you.  Her shop is all decked out for the holidays, right down to the delicate scent of pine boughs in the air.  And her customers are all gifted knitters and excellent students, too.  The Mother Ship clearly called me home.

Tomorrow I'm off to Spokane for more adventures with yarn.  I get to meet none other than Kathleen Cubely, of Knitting Daily fame, and then to teach at Paradise Fibers, where we will explore both hats and mittens. 

I can't wait to show my new yarn to the people on the plane.  I think they'll really appreciate it.

Go By Train

Seattle was fun:  2 signings, 2 yarn shops and 2 classes in 3 days.  At the end of day 3, I actually heard myself say I was too tired to knit.  You know you are doing all the right things in a yarn shop if, at the end, you are too tired to knit.  Not that it stopped me from acquiring some fairly prestigious fiber along the way, you understand - more on that later, when I unpack the camera. 

Plus I got to hang out with my family and eat like they just invented food.  "Gobble Till You Wobble", my brother says.   Done.  And there was beer.  We're not savages, after all.  My Liberal-Tree-Hugging-Dirt-Lover husband managed not to black any of the eyes in my Right-Wing-Gun-Toting-Capitalist family, too.  For the millionth time.  His powers of restraint are something to behold.

Worst Moment Of The Weekend:  You know that laptop, the one containing the powerpoint presentations from which you teach your classes?  You left it at your brother's house and there is no way you are getting it in time to teach these smiling faces.

Best Moment Of The Weekend:    Turns out you know your material by heart, and can teach the class just fine without it.  Doesn't hurt that the shop you are in has an extensive library of knitting books to fall back on for visuals.  And then your sister-in-law shows up with the laptop.

Yesterday I came home on the train, where I sat with a couple of knitters who were on their way to my town for a little shopping and sightseeing, while their husbands are away.  One called up the other the night before and said "You know what we oughtta do?", and so they did, the very next day.  I want to be them when I grow up. 

You know what's cool about trains?  No seatbelts.  That's right.  Apparently in a train wreck, the chance of a seatbelt helping you is so slender that they don't even bother.  So if that's the case, what's the big deal on airplanes?  You cannot convince me that my chances of surviving a plane crash are that much improved by addition of seatbelts, when they don't even install them on trains.  How typical of air travel that militant seatbelt use is added to a situation whose comfort level is already deeply compromised.

I'm back home for exactly four days before heading for Spokane, WA.  After a weekend like I had, surrounded by knitters and yarn, it is really surreal trying to slip back into my alternate day-job reality.  I'm trying to shift gears, but man, are they grinding.  In my office, I'm surrounded by people who neither know nor understand about yarn.  I've tried to enlighten and educate them, for which they care Not A Whit.  They belong to a completely different species.  Can't wait to get home and knit.
 

When Knitters Take Over The World

It was a dark and stormy night...

Really, it was dark and stormy.  It was raining so hard that I literally could not see out of the car windows well enough to read the numbers on the buildings.  I abandoned the car in the first open space I found in the general vicinity of the place I thought I was supposed to be.  I grabbed the rolly-trunk of book sweaters and plunged headlong into the deluge.  The sun, had I been able to see it, would almost have been down at this time, contributing to the gloom and lack of visibility.  I ran with my head down (Oregonians for some reason never have umbrellas - we just let it run down our noses) in an attempt to keep my minimal makeup from washing away.  I ducked into a doorway to try and get my bearings.  When I tilted my head up properly, my eyes landed here:

My sense of direction is exactly like my grasp of math:  Flimsy.  So to have accidentally landed directly in the middle of my own book signing was the sort of lucky break I would dare not hope for.  I so seldom find myself in the place I'm supposed to be, it's like being given a present.

And speaking of presents, the Knit Picks staff surprised me with a knitter's dream come true:  All the Colors of Palette.  I flatly cannot believe it.  What an incredible surprise.  The smallies and I wanted our picture taken with it, we were so totally blown away.  Lindsay (center) is looking at the colors with the most cunning little device - it's essentially a color-choosing kaleidescope, and it's so cool that it warrants its own post.  Stay tuned...
 

The lovely Giselle got her copy signed, and has almost decided on what to make first...

And the wee Leland, who managed not to get bored throughout the proceedings, even helped me zip up the sample bags at the end of the evening.

Delightful Kelly Petkun, and her Knit Picks team did absolutely everything in the world to make it a fun event.  No Kidding - that gang is one well-oiled machine.  If I ever need to schedule a safari, or mount an invasion, these are the people I'm going to call.  It was a precision display of crack event-planning skill.  And they even gave away yarn and needles.

Tomorrow, the wet knitters of Oregon and Southwest Washington (did I mention that winter has arrived?) can tune into AM Northwest on KATU, on which program I will be explaining the art and science of the Ugly Sweater, and demonstrating what constitutes one.  I will also have some Non-Ugly sweaters, for comparison.

And then I'm going to Lindsay's ice skating competition.  And then, perhaps a nap.