Neither Hip Nor Funky

Mustard Wine 900MHz bought from Yarn Nerd (with money from my in-laws)

Local pottery from the Outer Banks and Cherry Tree Hill Supersock DK in Potluck from my sisters

Black Pearl Yarns Cashmere DK in Polynesian Plum from Julia. My first cashmere experience. I’m so excited, and I’m envisioning a Professor Plum scarf. No, I’m not sure exactly what that is yet, but I will figure it out.

Raspberry Sherbert 900MHz bought from Yarn Nerd (with money from my in-laws). I originally bought this for a sweater trim, but I think I will make some thick cabled socks for around the house this winter.

Cascade Sierra #39. Currently becoming my Apricot Jacket. This was bought with money from my Grandma. I knit most of it while I was visiting family, and she kept joking that she didn’t know that she was talented enough to make me such a pretty sweater. (My Grandma doesn’t knit.)

Rowanspun 4ply for Joy from Rowan Vintage Knits (bought with money from my in-laws). I was orginally looking at a deep green for this, but I fell in love with this color. I think it will give the sweater a nice old Hollywood siren vibe.

From Ashley. It is currently in my knitting bag, holding my swatches for my current projects.

A thank you/birthday gift from Amanda. She is a glass blower and makes the beautiful beads herself. I love them. I’m excited to use them on my Salina since the colors go together so well.

My parents got P-funk and I tickets to Spamalot. My mom even wrapped up a can of Spam for me to open, which later led to this email from my oldest sister after I had returned to Oregon:

“You left your can of spam behind. I can only assume that this was a serious oversight and that you are currently distraught at not having your Spam. I have wrapped it in bubble wrap to protect it on its journey and will be sending it to you.”

In all the birthday blogstravaganza and yarn gluttony, I missed my blogiversary. My little blog is 1 year old now. I will be celebrating by updating my sidebars, changing the look of the blog a bit, and making my archives much easier to navigate. So if things start looking different, don’t worry, it’s still my blog.

Also, please don’t hate me and my yarn gluttony, everything that I purchased was on sale. My Grandma may not have taught me how to knit, but she did teach me how to shop.

And I can cry if I want to

Yup, I was baby #1, Ashley was number #2, and Julia was #3. I highly recommend that you read through all the comments here, here, and here. You guys are hilarious. Thanks so much for the birthday wishes and the presents of laughter.

Here are the proposed captions for this photo. (I orginally had the bright idea of crediting and linking to each person that wrote a caption, but I would have never gotten this post finished. So check out the comments; everyone is credited there.)

The dress:

• Obviously upset by the fact those huge sleeves weren’t quite big enough for her to snag a lead role in Dynasty.
• “Mom, I’m not hip or funky, and putting a pink frilly dress on me won’t change that! Jeez!”
• In the process of a rather large poop and thinking pink dresses suck.
• “dammit puffed sleeves again!”
• Who knew you were such a tantrum thrower?? I might rebel at the pink ruffles too.
• “I want this evil lights flashing, away from my blankie-ness to END, DAMMIT! And I hate this pink dress.”
• “no, you’re wrong… I hate pink”
• “I told you I hated this pink dress”!
• “I TOLD YOU I WANTED TO WEAR THE RED DRESS– NOT PINK! I HATE PINK!!!”

The gray, shag carpet:

• Phew, how many times has this weird shag carpeting been USED?! Smelly!!”
• Who put me on this god@#$ nasty gray shag carpet?
• Clearly bent out of shape over being plopped on a lousy fake fur, when you OBVIOUSLY deserve the baby sheepskin photo!
• “Get me off of this Oscar the Grouch looking carpet!”
• “This doesn’t feel like fake fur! This is wrong!”

The tantrum:

• Someone took my Addi Turbos! (Followed by: #2-Here, this’ll make you feel better, #3-I took the Turbos)
• “There’s not enough peek-a-boo in the world to make up for a bad hair day.”
• Stop with the damn pictures already! These wool soakers are making me itch!
• “I don’t want to have my picture taken! I want to go to the LYS!”
• “but I don’t WANT to look like a happy baby!!”
• Crying tears of determination after re-poofing her sleeves and and climbing back onto the Fisher Price My First Mechanical Bull
• I told you I hate this tummy stuff. Get me off my tummy, now! Oh, and did I mention that I hate having my picture taken?
• Not another $@%& picture!
• Even though she had never heard such words as “heteronormative ” and “decider” before, she was extremely frightened when she was told about some aspects of the social and political culture she would someday encounter on a future birthday. Maybe someone should have jumped in and told her there would also be hair elastics? (referencing Ashley)

What makes me laugh even more is how true to life the captions really are:

1. The dress: I went through a big “I hate pink!” and “I refuse to wear dresses” phase in elementary and early middle school. The refusal to wearing dresses lasted for four years, while the hating pink phase lasted until my early twenties.
2. Disliking pictures: I also hated having my picture taken. As a child I dove under things to avoid pictures, and as a teen I just insisted on making ridiculous faces. While you can get normal pictures of me now, I still sometimes revert to the crazy faces.
3. The nastiness of the carpet: Julia had remarked earlier that the blanket may have originally been cream before Olan Mills plopped all those babies on it.

I went with the picking out of a hat method. And the winner of this blog’s prize package:

D! I’ll be contacting you about all the goodies.

*Featured yarn is Sundara Worsted Merino in Chocolate over Cherry. I’m designing a fun sweater out of this yumminess.

Koigu KPM # 1201

Behind the scenes moment:

I originally tried for a lemonade set up, with the yarn in one glass and the lemonade in the other. However, since we normally get a organic, natural lemonade, the lemonade was much lighter in color, almost clear. So…….many of you can see this coming…….I used food coloring. Um, it turned the lemonade a radioactive shade which looked like it would give me superpowers for drinking it.

Going with the painting was a much better idea.

To distract from the lack of knitting and my forgetting YPF last Friday, here is some Fiberlicious fun. It’s some Wollmeise courtesy of Kristy being completely amazing and sending me her leftovers. The deep colors make me drool. I’m not sure yet what I will be making yet, but with 67 grams leftover, I have some options. The droolworthy yarn is pictured with some of P-funk’s homemade maraschino cherries, also droolworthy.

I am knitting, but I don’t have that one project that I am in love with right now. The stag was that project, but he has been put in time out for being to big a stag…that stud. Thanks for all your suggestions on how to fix the size issue. I have heard to many horror stories about trying the shrinking in the dryer, and I don’t think that it will shrink up enough with regular blocking. I’ve decided to rip back and do a half-size chevron on each edge. It didn’t take me too long to do the chevrons, so I am really just procrastinating the ripping and winding of the yarn.

Other than that, there are 3 socks, and then there’s Glee, still slogging along. (I’ll try to give you some WIP it Wednesday pics.)

Maybe this lovely yarn and my recent Koigu purchase from Lint will motivate me. (For Portland people, they are at 30% for their closing sale right now. I always feel a little bad buying things at closing sales for some reason, even though I know that they need to clear out stock.) Or maybe that swatch I made for Salina will take off and become my new love. I’m sure a project will catch my obsessive love soon.

At least, I hope so because I am surrounded by discounted yarn now. “How?” you ask. Well, I am now working part time at Abundant Yarn and its cafe. Hmmm, a job with yarn discounts….now that I can handle. The stock had been getting a little low a few months ago, but they are really bringing in tons of new yarn now. I’m in love and want to roll in all of it. Stop by and visit me….you can interrupt my yarn rolling if you must.

So now my job situation is half solved. I’m still looking for some part time jobs that will use my masters degree, but I think that it might be healthier for me overall to only have my foot halfway in the social work field. That way my other half can hang out with the yarn.

Mmm, fresh from the Canadian sea.  Fleece Artist Sea Wool

Purchased at the Beehive Wool Shop in Victoria.  I can’t do any good yarn shops comparisons/reviews because it is the only one I stopped at on the trip.  We unfortunately missed stopping at the Loom. The first time we drove past, we were too busy debating the merits of saying “Is this where we turned?” versus “Isn’t this where we turned?” on our way to another destination. (For the record, I asked the former).  It was too late the day we drove back past because we spent the first half of the day kayaking.  So, I can’t lie and say that I was upset because the kayaking was great (around the Broken Islands Group, south of Ucluelet).

However, I did like Beehive. Tons of yarn without feeling crowded and friendly staff, one of the employees with amazing flame colored hair even let herself become part of the tourist attraction when a group of tourists wanted her in their pictures. Here is less than half of the Fleece Artist and Handmaiden selection:

Yup, less than half.

Since our anniversary is soon, my mom told us to buy ourselves a present from her and my dad while we were on vacation.  We initially told her that we were going to buy Cuban cigars and rum, but, well, I didn’t want to explain that to customs.  “No, no, you can’t confiscate our illicit Cuban goods.  They’re from my Mo-oo-oom.”

So don’t worry, mom, we got a teapot.  I’ve been searching for the perfect one for awhile now, and we found it in Cowichan Bay.  (Thanks again, Kelly, for the Cowichan Bay rec, we loved it and the cider, mmmm)

I’m entranced by how the texture looks like tree roots. And the extra loop up front, that makes it easier stabilize when pouring…genuis!