But that's not what you came here for, right? On to the actual content.
I met Romi!!!!!
I am thrilled to report that she is as sweet and intelligent in person as she is on the internet. I took Romi's Shapely Shawl class on Saturday morning at Eleganza Yarn's Indie Artist Celebration. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot, and I can't wait to have a few minutes to study the handout, too. It has a list of additional resources that I will be excited to check out. If I ever manage to get my Sea Turtle Shawl designed, then I do plan to look at some of these other shapes for any future designs. I loved that Romi does not limit herself rigidly to working only with stitch patterns that fit into what she wants to do - if the shape and stitch pattern don't necessarily work together, she fixes it so that they do. I hope I have that kind of confidence some day. I will never have that kind of math skill, but I have Resources. Which is to say, I will make my man do the math for me, or at least check that I did mine correctly. I COULD figure it out eventually on my own (it's not that the little wimmins cain't handle them big numbers), but as he likes math and I don't, it works out just fine this way.
I also met lots of nifty people, some of whom I already knew from the Rav boards, and some that I didn't know at all. It was tons of fun. However, I am exactly as tired as I look in that picture. It had been a long week and Saturday was an early start. Totally worth it, though.
There was a market with Indie artists, with a large variety of stuff available (but only a few things I was really interested in - I'm picky). I bought yarn. There should be a photo here, but I forgot. That happened a lot this weekend. I carted my heavy camera around all day and I think I used it...once. If that. I bought a skein of yarn in a colorway called Minister of Magic, and it is one of the sparkly yarns with silver in it that I have seen used so beautifully elsewhere. I think, after some searching, that it was from Shelby B's Designs.
I also bought a skein of sock yarn from Wild Hare in colors I never buy. It's sort of a pinky yellow orange melon mix. It looks delicious, it makes me think of pink lemonade and other yummy summer drinks (Jeanne, I want you to know that my selection of this skein is entirely your fault). I feel like I have been in a color rut lately, working mostly with dark and muted colors, so I am trying to get a little bit out of my comfort zone and get some brighter tones to mix in. I think it's the influence of February. I'm tired of winter wet and dreariness and as beautiful as my yarns are, they are just not lightening my mood enough. This skein is definitely out of my comfort zone but it made me giggle, so into my bag it went.
I really wavered on a couple of other things but my yarn budget is limited (my car tires didn't pass inspection and unexpectedly had to be replaced, and I wept) and I don't really *need* anything at the moment, so I tried to be restrained.
I cast on Bitterroot in Romi's class with a mohair blend yarn from Kid Hollow Farms that I bought at MD Sheep and Wool a few years ago, but I didn't get very far before I decided that I just wasn't feeling it. I love the Bitterroot design and it's been on my 'to-knit' list for ages, but I just didn't like it in the yarn, and to be honest I liked Romi's sportweight sample so much I am thinking about trying it in something heavier. I ended up putting it away and pulling out Taygete to work some more on it.
I've been working pretty faithfully on Taygete. You see, there's this thing about knitting - when you work on something, it gets finished. Since I'm feeling a little bit of WIP overload, I'm concentrating on finishing some things, which means working on one thing at a time until it's checked off the list. It's been really easy with this project since it's so much fun (I know, I know, there were mistakes, there was ripping, there was fudging, but I'm still having fun). Last night I realized when I went to take a picture of my progress that I had made a slight tactical error. I finished the lace portion on Sunday, and then I spent yesterday picking up the stitches around the edge. The problem is, I didn't take a picture before I started doing that, and now that I have the edges all picked up and I am, essentially, working in the round, it's impossible to unscrunch the things on my needles so that you can see what it actually looks like.
Oops. I guess you will have to wait for the grand reveal when the whole thing is done. All I have to do is the picot bind off.
Yeah...that might take a while. This will be my third shawl for 2011. I have sort of had the mindset that I need to finish one shawl per month in order to make the 11 in 2011 goal (that leaves me a little wiggle room at the end of the year), so I feel quite ahead to have the March shawl finished this early (I mean, it's not done yet, but hopefully it will be done by the end of this week.
I plan to focus on Fiori next in my effort to reduce my WIP numbers. Although it has not escaped my attention that Spanish Moss would be a much faster knit...
I have been a little obsessed with Alaska lately, I would dearly love to visit there, and at the beginning of the year I got an Alaska calendar to hang on the cube in my office. For the last month I've been looking at this:
And now today, I turned over the March page, and I'm looking at this.
Ahhhhhh...much better. (The first picture is Barry Glacier in Prince William Sound, the second is from Harbor Mountain in Sitka Sound.)
Spring is coming (soon to be followed by the oh please kill me now heat of summer, but I'm still looking forward to spring, however brief its visit).
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