Category Archives: Festing

Contests, Festing, Randonymity

All work and no knitting…

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…makes Chris a very dull blogger. So dull in fact (brace yourself, Jeanne), I’m going back to the Shepherd’s Harvest pictures again.

I bought some yarn while I was there – a ball of Trekking with bamboo (the same colorway that Jeanne and Renee bought) and 662 yards of laceweight silk that I’ll dye sometime when I’m feeling brave.

“I know that the minute I lunge in for a taste of this yarn, Mom’s going to snatch it away from me. Hmph.” -Mayhem

Just one more picture of that adorable black Shetland lamb…

…and of the baby pygmy goat. I think I would name him Oreo.

“Mmmm… baby pygmy goat. Tasty! Probably. Although maybe squirmier than my usual kitty food.” -Mayhem

I had no idea yesterday when I posted pictures of Mayhem’s ‘tocks that it would inspire others to post pictures of their kitties’ ‘tocks…

Rosemary is having a contest – the first person to guess what was added to the pictured drink for a photo shoot wins one of her lovely shawl pins (Designs by Romi). Contest ends by midnight PDT, May 27.

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone! My plans are to knit, read, catch up on bloglines, dye some yarn with Jeanne and Deb, get out for a walk or two, and just plain relax. See y’all Tuesday!

Contests, Festing, Randonymity

The sweetness of the lambs

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Once again, Claudia’s riding her tandem in support of the MS Society and giving away fabulous prizes to donors. For every $10 you donate, you get another chance to win.

HeidiHo’s friend Karen has two children with cystic fibrosis. Karen and her children are participating in the Great Strides walk this coming weekend. If you pledge money to support them and let Heidi know about it before Friday, May 18, you will be entered in a drawing for a skein of Scout’s yarn.

Amy! had a good post about a knitting wiki – and do read the comments for a link to another one. Zenifer posted a nice list of one-skein projects. Vicki posted a list of triangular shawls organized by how many yards of yarn they use. Both things sound as if they would be great additions to a Wiki!

Yesterday I had the most amazing gluten- and lactose-free frozen dessert – Organic Rice Divine by Good Karma Foods (make sure your sound is turned down and that you have Flash installed). Click Products, then Pints. I tried Mudd Pie, which was very tasty (coffee flavor, with gluten-free brownie bits in it). But I am totally in love with Carrot Cake, which tastes exactly like carrot cake and even has bits of gluten-free carrot cake in it. I hadn’t had cookie/cake bits in ice cream or “frozen dessert” for over 10 years (since being diagnosed as celiac). Bliss.

Jeanne and I went to Shepherd’s Harvest on Saturday. We had great weather! I’m going to spread my report out over a few days and today is Lamb Day, featuring some pictures that Jeanne took of me. The little black lamb was a Shetland and the white lamb was an Icelandic. Aren’t they adorable?! (I don’t know how Jeanne always manages to get so much, um, chest in the pictures.) (Please note that the cats are taking a vacation day today. They’re just too hot to do much of anything – it was 92F yesterday!)

Festing

Estes?

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So who’s going to the Estes Park Wool Market this year? It’s June 16 – 17 in Estes Park, Colorado. Cross your fingers for me – I’m planning to be there! (Shhhh… don’t tell the cats. Remember my thwarted plans last fall?!)

I love the Front Range area of Colorado, but I haven’t been out there since the summer of 2000, when I was in Denver for training and took a long weekend up in Boulder. I haven’t been to Estes Park since the summer of 1993. I’ll share a few pictures from that visit in a minute.

Although lodging with Margene and the Ewe-tah Girls fell through (booked up, alas), it sounds like I will be staying with Kristi and her husband in Fort Collins during the Wool Market. I hope Yarnivorous Lynne has moved to Fort Collins from Australia by then! I’m looking forward to meeting the mysterious Snow, Lisa, and hopefully many more knitbloggers. I’ll also be visiting Michaele in Denver for at least a day or two, probably after the Wool Market.

So, way back in the summer of 1993, a van filled with Forest Recreation grad students set out for a conference in Fort Collins. We definitely explored the area before and after the conference.

The obligatory visit to the Coors brewery in Golden.

A roadside coyote!

We were maybe not dressed appropriately for the hiking conditions…

Is this on the Continental Divide? I don’t remember… I still have that tie-dye tank top and those shorts – although the shorts are maybe too tight right now…

Rumor has it that May might be a Cheshire Cat in training. What do you think?

“What’s this about a vacation?! You can’t leave us alone, Mom!!! Waaaaah!!” -Mayhem

Contests, Festing, Reading

I think I bruised my checkbook…

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Ginger’s having a contest – guess what she named the three chicks she just brought home and you could win some sock yarn. A knowledge of country music will help your guessing! Someone already guessed correctly! Now anyone who comments on the contest post by midnight April 27 will be entered in a random drawing for another prize.

Reading Update
A Share in Death by Deborah Crombie. This is the first mystery about Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his assistant, Sergeant Gemma Jones. I’ll definitely be reading more in this series.
High Heels and Holidays by Kasey Michaels. The most recent book about mystery writer Maggie Kelly, whose formerly fictional characters the Viscount Saint Just and Sterling Balder materialized in her living room a few months ago… Silly but fun and occasionally steamy.
High Stakes: A Tale of Vegas Vampires by Erin McCarthy. The first book in the Vegas Vampires series isn’t great literature by any means, but it was an amusing and somewhat steamy read. My big complaint is that the book ended abruptly, almost as if it had been split into two parts…

Yarnover Update
Well. I, um, might’ve picked up a bit more at the Yarnover market than I had anticipated… No one’s going to be particularly surprised by my purchases. 🙂

I bought some skeins of purple laceweight Euroflax.

Whoops, it looks like I forgot to take a picture of the knitting mystery I purchased – Cast On, Bets Off by Jack Olesker. I hadn’t heard of it before, so we’ll see… I also bought a black sheep magnet and a WPI tool (I’ve wanted one for ages!).

“Hmm, this doesn’t smell particularly sheepy to me. Plus it looks hard to pick up and steal.” -M

Jeanne and I each bought enough Blue Sky Cotton to make the Eyelet Cardigan (sorry, you can’t see the pattern at all in the picture). Um, yes, I bought black…

“Big kitty, I tell you, the only possible conclusion you can draw is that she’s going to make more black kitties. We have to put a stop to this!” -M

“Where do you come up with this stuff, May?!” -C

And I bought some amazingly soft true black (not dyed!) alpaca, which came from an alpaca named Orphelia.

“Now this smells like something very interesting! Not a sheep… What could it be?” -M

“Mmmm… Alpaca, you say? Soft. Mmmm… Mom, can we have an alpaca? I promise I won’t eat it.” -M

Festing

“Un-freaking-believable”

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Yup. That pretty much covers it. (Thanks to MC Mary Lou for summing it all up so nicely.) I woke up this morning feeling slightly hungover from all the yarn and knitting and knitters and general excitement of yesterday – good thing I took today off, eh?

But to begin at the beginning… I wandered down to the Yarnery around 3 pm Wednesday to pick up my copy of …Casts Off... I bought some yarn, to show my support for the event, of course. 🙂 Then Amy (Knit Think) picked me up and we went over to Pad Thai Grand Cafe, where we met up with some other knitters. (Please note that in cases in which I am not sure if a particular blogger wants her name “out there,” I have just used the blog name.)

From the left, CursingMama, flat Vicki Knitorious (the photo), Beadslut, Jess of Mikknit, Stephania of Moraie Knitting, Connie (oh, great, you can see my butt in the extreme left of the first picture on Connie’s blog – but you can also see Limedragon, sitting down and wearing a lime sweater), Cynthia, and Amy.

After dinner, we headed over to the William Mitchell Law School Auditorium and were amazed at the crowd of around 400 knitters. I’m going to miss people and I apologize! I saw Christy of Purling Away, Limedragon, a group of bloggers from Woodbury, Renee of A Good Yarn, Louise of Louise Knits, Jeanne (of course!) of k3tog, Kelle of Knits and Giggles, Shelly the Heathen Housewife, Deb of Cashmere Dreams, Knot All That, Susan of TheRaineySisters (she got a great picture of Stephanie’s hysterically funny t-shirt, available here), and KnittyMama (*gasp* I actually got a picture!).

Here’s the traditional picture of the Yarn Harlot taking a picture of knitbloggers taking pictures of her taking a picture…

Stephanie was brilliantly funny – I hurt after laughing that hard for nearly an hour. And then we queued up for the signing. When I reached the front of the line, she started to sign my book and I put down one of my blog cards. She looked at it and said, “Stumbling Over Chaos?! I’m discombobulated! It’s like meeting Batman or something.” Of course, I mostly lost the ability to speak coherently at that point. And let’s just say that I am not photogenic. Not one tiny little bit – why yes, my eyes are closed. And that’s the good picture!

I actually like this blurry picture of me much better:

Many, many thanks to the Yarnery, for organizing this event so well. They had many, many doorprizes (I won one! pictures eventually) and gave each of us a nice canvas tote.

*sniff sniff sniff* “Wow, smells like a lot of fun, Mom!” -M

Festing, Reading, Those Cats

In the company of knitbloggers

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Special thanks to Mouse for my newly modified sidebar avatar!

Scout’s launching a new sock (and more) club – read all about Scout’s Indie Swag Club, which is going to have a very limited number of members to start with. You can sign up Wednesday, September 13, 9 pm EST. Anyone want to take bets that all the memberships will be filled by 9:10 pm?!

Celtic Kelly is starting a Fall Equinox to Winter Solstice knitalong involving tweedy yarn – check it out!

Reading
Men and Other Mammals by Jim Keeble. Interesting twist on British chick lit – would you call it “lad lit”?! Not a life changing book, but I did read the whole thing at least. (Why, yes, I am utterly lukewarm on this book!)
Cue the Easter Bunny by Liz Evans. I think this is probably the most recent book about British PI Grace Evans. I much enjoyed this and wish the first book from the series would hurry up and get here!
Dating Dead Men and Dating Is Murder by Harley Jane Kozak. The only two books (so far) featuring LA greeting card writer Wollie Shelley. I am eagerly awaiting another book! Bless the serendipitous browse through the actual physical library – I usually come across some great stuff.

Ok, back to the Harlotation on Sunday in Eau Claire. We saw many more folks than I’m going to remember – so please forgive me and leave details in the comments! Vicki Knitorious (with Deb of Wound Too Tight here),

Jeanne of k3tog (really, she isn’t always so serious – trust me, and check out the cool striping yarn she dyed),

CursingMama and Mr Motorcycle (so brave to come along),

Beadslut (ohmigod, she has a decent picture of me!), KnittyMama and KnittyBaby, Catherine of Yogurt and Granola, Jess of Mikknit, kmkat,

Christy of Purling Away, Stephania of Moraie Knitting, Kelle of Knits and Giggles, and many, many more…

And now for something completely different, I thought I would try to illustrate the size difference between Chaos and Mayhem… Note that her collar hangs loosely on her neck… and that her tail is the same length as Chaos’ tail. Poor stubby-tailed Chaos!

*crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch*
Contests, Festing, Reading

Picnicking

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I had a busy (for me) weekend. I’ll talk about Saturday tomorrow (maybe the yarn will be dry by then!). So on to Sunday, when I met lots of bloggers at the Twin Cities Knitters’ Picnic. Tragically, in my efforts to contain my “cargo” to my tiny bicycle bag, I remembered my knitting but forgot my camera… Whoops. Um, so just imagine 25 or so knitters, sitting around on blankets under a tree in the Lake Harriet Rose Garden, knitting and eating and talking and laughing.

Here are the knitbloggers I met:

Kelle of Knits and Giggles
KnittyMama (I met KnittyBaby! And Little Man! And the Husband Who Has No Blog Nickname Yet!)
Christy of Purling Away, owner of the Minnesota Knitters webring (Christy took pictures!)
A new resident of Minnesota, Moraie Knitting (tragically welcomed by the evil hailstorm of last week)
Rina of Rahardjo Knits (Rina took pictures!)
Nancy of Clicking Sticks
Catherine of Yogurt and Granola
Melissa of HyveTyrant
Rebecca of Onspock
Tipper of Daily Fiber Therapy

Hopefully I didn’t miss anybody!

SRP Update
Tool and Die (323 pages) and Nail Biter (260 pages) by Sarah Graves. The two most recent Home Repair Is Homicide mysteries – with a very startling development in Nail Biter! I sure didn’t see that coming…

Jerry is having a contest to test her Random Knitting Theory #1. Deadline is Friday, September 1.

Here’s my entry for the contest: I knit continental, sometimes combination and sometimes using Norwegian purling, depending on the situation. Oh yeah, and it’s awfully hard to take pictures of your own hands!

Chaos could not be reached for comment on today’s blog post.

“….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….”

Contests, Festing, Knitting

Bleary

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The switch upgrade continues on… *yawn*

Sonja is having a contest to tell her the most creative story about why the Mona Lisa in Lion Brand’s ads is smiling. You have plenty of time to leave her a comment – she’s not selecting the winner until October 1.

Hopefully I’ll make it to the Twin Cities’ Knitters picnic this Sunday. Anyone else going? Here are the details:

The Twin Cities’ Knitters picnic: Sunday August 27, 2006, from 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm at the Lake Harriet Rose Gardens in Minneapolis (4125 East Lake Harriet Parkway). “Bring your blanket, your picnic lunch and – of course – your knitting! We’ll meet under the trees behind the Rose Gardens (closer to Kings Highway than Lake Harriet). Visit the Minneapolis Park & Rec Board Rose Garden page for more information and a map to the location.”

Look what I made (Sugar’n’Cream patio pinks, top down) – really, the parents keep raving about how great these bibs are, so what’s a knitter to do?!

Little does Chaos suspect what excitement awaits him…

“Mmmm… sunbeam…”
Festing, Knitting, Randonymity, Reading, See the Sights

Eventing

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If you’re in the Twin Cities and you’re planning to attend the Mountain Goats concert at the Triple Rock Social Club on Thursday, September 14, please let me know! Right now I’m going alone.

A while ago, I asked if anyone was going to be at the Taos Wool Festival (October 7-8), as it will be one of my stops on the Knitblogger’s Fall Tour I have planned for myself. If you are on the path between Minneapolis and Albuquerque and going to be around from September 30 – roughly October 15 or so, please leave me a comment or send an email to chris at this domain. I’m trying to get my exact schedule and route figured out – currently, I have stops planned in Ft Collins, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, and Taos (for the festival), although not specific dates yet.

SRP Update
He Huffed and He Puffed (250 pages), Good King Sauerkraut (214 pages), and You Have the Right To Remain Silent (249 pages) by Barbara Paul. These were the second, third, and fourth NYPD Lt Marian Larch mysteries. The second and third Marian Larch mysteries are described on the covers as “mysteries with Marian Larch” – she is definitely not the main character. In fact, in He Huffed and He Puffed, I wasn’t sure it was a Marian Larch book for the longest time! You Have the Right To Remain Silent is the first book in which Marian Larch is as important as the crime she’s investigating. This book could also be described as The Apostrophe Thief, part one.
Love Is Murder by Linda Palmer, 275 pages. This is the first Morgan Tyler (soap opera writer) mystery and even though I have absolutely no interest in daytime drama, I’m definitely enjoying this series (which I am unfortunately reading out of order). I’m about to start the third book in the series, which I hope will feature the black kitten she acquired in book 2. 🙂

Belated Saturday Sky… So belated that I took the picture Sunday evening! This is a view of downtown Minneapolis from the south shore of Lake Calhoun.

And to prove that I actually do knit sometimes, here’s my charcoal grey Regia Silk waffle sock for Project Spectrum – now with more cat butt than ever!

Dyeing, Festing

Warped yetis and other images from Shepherd’s Harvest

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Hee hee – no, I did not bring home a llama from Shepherd’s Harvest on Saturday! I’m pretty sure that neither Chaos nor the downstairs neighbor would’ve approved. Plus, that llama looked like a spitter to me, too.

I’m bummed that I didn’t run into anyone I was hoping to run into! I got back to Building B a bit late (around 1:30 pm) and didn’t pull my knitting out because it was too flippin’ cold to knit. Or for the spinners to spin, apparently, so the Spin In area where we had all planned to meet never got set up.

I enjoyed the class I took on dyeing self-striping sock yarn Saturday morning. Here’s the warping board we used to create the long skeins – yarn was atached at the upper right corner, wrapped back and forth to the lower left corner, then back up. I think this setup makes skeins with a 20-yard loop size, but you could obviously make much longer skeins, too.

Here’s one of my dyed skeins, drying on a rack in my bathtub, Saturday evening:

“So bright! My eyes, my eyes!”

Part of the Blackberry Ridge booth – I managed to resist, because I haven’t knit up the yarn I got from this booth last year!

An angora bunny, sitting patiently on a chair waiting to be plucked – at least, I’m pretty sure this was a bunny and not an overgrown tribble:

Another angora bunny, looking more like a baby yeti than a rabbit, getting plucked:

And a very cute book I found, on sale for $3.22!

“Knitted cats?! Why do you need a knitted cat when you have me??”