Don’t try to read my mind, it’s scary in there.
I’ve heard about Sundara’s Yarns from a couple of different blogs. Today I happened to read through some back posts of the Runcible Bin, where I was reminded how how beautiful Sundara’s yarn is. Sigh.
I think I want the Black over Peacock sock yarn more than I want the Wasabi sock yarn from ShiBui Knits, which is saying a lot. I need to start a list… if only Ravelry had a “Yarn Queue” for as of yet unpurchased yarn (and yes, I did request the feature).
Almost a year to the day. Three froggings, two patterns, one time-out. Done!
After knitting two socks, I think I have enough of the same yarn to do another pair. Not sure what I’m going to do with the leftovers. I’ll probably make another pair of socks using a different pattern. For now, however, the yarn will go back in the stash. I just don’t think I want to use this yarn again for a while.
Another entry in the Fabulous Find category. This time, it’s a two-fer. I found this today at the Papery in Bethesda, MD. I would have purchased them, but they were $18. It gave me a great idea for making my own cards, however. A black and white background stamped or cardstock already colored, with a bright colored flower on top. The flower could be attached via a dimensional foam sticky (I can’t think of the correct term) for added “oomph”.
Actually, I guess it’s now a three-fer, because I just had another idea. If you have a piece of lace that you like, you could take a picture/scan it/trace it via a lightbox, and use that as the background image. Oooh.
A picture of some of the loot I procured at MSDW.
Finally, I now own a Yarn Requirements pamphlet. It’s about darned time. Maybe now I will make some better judgements about how much yarn to buy at a time.
The red/orange yarn is 450 yards of baby Alpaca from The Fibre Company in Maine. They only sell retail at MSDW, so it made the purchase extra special. It is SO soft.
The green is 400 yards of superwash merino sock yarn from Spirit Trail Fiberworks. Lovely, green, VIRGINIA yarn!
The pattern is The Incredible Circular Rectangular Mitered Scarf from Strickwear. I purchased it at the Just Our Yarn booth in the main barn. They had lots of beautiful yarn, but I was trying to keep to a budget. They’re also local to Virginia, Falls Church to be exact, so I’ll be contacting them at some point in the future. The only bummer is that they don’t have a storefront. They will be at a number of festivals this year. Check out their website for more information.
Not pictured are my spinning fiber purchases: Yak down, loose carded Buffalo down, and Chinese Camel down. Hopefully one of my partners in crime can help me remember the name of the place I purchased it.
I didn’t end up purchasing a lot, but they were all worthwhile items that I didn’t turn around the next day and discover that I had purchased fugly fug. All in all, a good weekend.
I spent yesterday with two friends at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival - what an awesome day! We drove up Friday night (and spent several hours in wicked traffic) and stayed in Columbia. We arrived at the Howard County Fairgrounds at 9 AM, and easily found a place to park the E-Mobile (Thanks again, Honey! It would have been hard-going without the truck.)
I made K and Ashley promise to not let me purchase anything for at least the first 20 minutes that we were there. I was good and I didn’t buy anything for at least an hour.
We did some fiber shopping, and met some woolly folks:
I wanted to bring them all home with me, but even though our lease doesn’t say anything about livestock, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t like living in the confines of the balcony. 
All in all, a great day. I’ll post photos of my loot later.
I have a large self-healing mat that I carried from Arizona to Virginia. It didn’t survive the trip very well (I didn’t really think that it would) but I kept it because I couldn’t bear to throw such a thing away. Silly, really, since it’s easy to buy a new one, and I can’t really rely on the measurements any more, since the mat is warped in various directions.
But me, being me, I can’t bear to just throw something that significant (in size) away, and to my knowledge, my mat isn’t recyclable. Or is it?
I did a quick Google search on how to fix my mat, and as I thought, it can’t really be trusted to be accurate for measuring. I can, however, flatten it out and cut it up to use for smaller craft projects - like my new card-making obsession! How’s that for a little bit of Earth Day, reducing-my-ecological-footprint action?
Happy Earth Day!
