Break time is over!

Did you miss me?

::cue the chirping crickets::

Riiight. Stitches Midwest was wonderful, had a great time, added to the stash. Riding the bus up and back was no big deal, considering the usual road trips to the 'rents houses. Secretly, I love those trips. Imagine, no less than nine hours of forced, guilt-free knitting time. You'd figure I'd have finished object after finished object after all that time. Ah well. Mistakes were made, a sock was ripped, do-overs were done over.

I'll probably have to do a recap of Stitches at some point. The main thing for me was the market. Imagine all your favorite yarn stores in one spot where you can play touchy-feely with the yarn. Throw in a few esoteric yarn venders, and there you go. Considering I look at everything twice in our local yarn stores, I had my work cut out for me. Was it the walking that exhausted me? Nope! It was the constant restraint. Ha ha! The Fold was there, which I tried not to be a loiterer at. Then, Yarniverse is my new best friend. All the ladies there are wonderful. If I lived anywhere near them, I'd hang out there all the time, as an employee or not. Then, there's a place an hour from my house that I didn't know existed until Stitches. They do wonderful dye work.

Enough of the blather, let's look at what I need to shoehorn into my stash:
This is from Just Our Yarn. Two thousand yards of laceweight. Now I need to think of what shawl I want to do with this much lovely tencel.


Nuts. I thought I'd put this right side up. Oh well. I bought the kit to make the roundish shrug featured in Vogue Knitting's 25th anniversary issue. Can I do it exactly like the pattern? Probably not, since I've already changed the color scheme. Can't wait to start it!



I so totally need a decent digital camera. The current one doesn't do these colors any justice. This is yarn from Hand Painted Yarns and is gorgeous stuff. Rather pricey, but about like Colinette's stuff and is just as if not more lovely.


I found Alice Starmore's The Celtic Collection on Saturday afternoon. Thus, it's no surprise I ran back to Market in the hour I had left on Sunday to try and clean out Yarninverse's collection of New England Shetland wool. I'm determined to make the Kells sweater. Isn't it gorgeous? A bit big, but then, The Celtic Collection was published a while back, before the extreme fitted look came in style. (I can't find the shetland on Yarniverse's website, even though I know I bought it there.)


Here is some lovely Tango and Cascade 220, bought to replace the lovely felting fiasco shown. Sigh.


I love The Fold. They carry mass quantities of Blue Moon Fiber Arts stuff. This isn't the cheapest sock yarn you're ever going to find, but those colors! So lovely!


Speaking of 'cheap' sock yarn... Each of these bags were 75% off, so I had to get enough to make a sweater of both colors, right? I can't wait to see how the self striping sock yarn does on a larger tableau.


Shown here is enough burgandy wool to make a cabled sweater for my guy. Yes, a bribe for the Husband. Not only that, but there's some lovely cotton yarn for a nice summer sweater, too. Both feel wonderful.


Last, but so not the least is a couple of cakes of Koigu for socks, color P812. I'd seen this color at the Winter retreat and managed to resist. I finally gave in and got it. The color is so pretty!

To the far right is the local find I had to visit Chicago to see. It's from Textiles A Mano and is pure silk. It's a little over a thousand yarns of silken loveliness. I can't wait to start up something with it. The remaining skein is a total impulse purchase. What am I going to do with 440 yards of a silk/wool mix. Sheesh! But I couldn't just leave it, it followed me home!


Tomorrow, the windows guys are coming over to install a few windows. One of these is going into the yarn room. It's such a disaster zone in there. Everything is boxed or sacked, but there's so much. I'll need to carve a path... Also tomorrow, the official report of Fry's first day in Middle School.