I wish I could express how much fun I had. Or how fabulous my traveling companions were. Or how every knitter I met and talked to was gracious and kind and hilarious and fun. Really. It was like being in some sort of fabulous knitting commune where there is every color wool and cute waiters to bring you very expensive drinks and fabulous food and….

But I can’t do it justice in a blog post so I won’t try. I will say that the last time I left my boys for more than one overnight that did not involve work for me was approximately ten years ago. So it was long overdue.

Friday we left at 5am. Why 5am? Because that’s when the Starbucks by my house opens. We arrived at the hotel around 11 or so, got an early check-in and headed to market. Market is completely overwhelming. It’s like 100 local yarn stores crammed into one big space. So many choices. Hence over the course of three days I bought too much!

From the top row by row:
Row 1: Bag from Sweet Shrub Designs, and minis from Miss Babs
Row 2: KnitWitch sock yarn, and raffle prize from Miss Babs
Row 3: Bugga & Little Traveler from Sanguine Gryphon
Row 4: Laceweight from Kitchen Sink Dyeworks, and an Ashford Competition Lazy Kate from Carolina Homespun

Friday night was a Ravelry pajama party in the lobby. Snacks and drinks and knitting and contests. It was fabulous fun. Saturday night was dinner at Scalini’s – a wonderful Italian restaurant owned by KnitWitch’s dad.

The beds were comfortable, the hotel was gorgeous, the company was sublime. And I got to knit as much as I wanted and spend time with friends new and old. I can promise you I will go back next year. And if you weren’t sure about going, you should go. Definitely.

So I’m super excited – I’m going to Stitches South. Just for the weekend to visit the market and to hang out and have a girls’ weekend. I can’t remember the last time I’ve done this. Shoot, I think the last time I went out of town for the weekend without the boys was when they were babies. So I’m getting prepared.

Today I have a very long list of things to do. Cover up very grey roots, catch up on laundry, make sure house is tidy, pack all my stuff… We’re leaving at O’dark-thirty tomorrow morning. That way the man only has to take one day off of work to take care of the boys. I’m pretty sure what knitting I will be bringing. I also think I will bring my swift and winder, just in case I buy something that I cannot wait to play with.

Do you not *love* the cute Della Q pouch? It goes with my brand-new Della Q tote that I got to carry around at Stitches. I figured I needed something more tote-like and less purse-like. And the little pouch will hold my business cards and the cards for the LYS where I work.

Oh and I’m trying something new. I’ve been wearing makeup for nearly 25 years. And I’ve worn the same mascara the entire time. So when I hit the Publix yesterday and they had a sale on Great Lash I got very excited! But then I thought, I might branch out a bit, be adventurous, you know? So I got the Great Lash BIG. I imagine my eyelashes will look exactly the same as they have for the past 25 years, but I still feel very spontaneous.

If you’re gonna be at stitches, come say hey! I’ll be mooshing around wearing one of my shawlettes and carrying a big ole pink striped Della Q bag. Ooh, that reminds me, need to add finding my Ravelry name pin to my list of things to do today… Hope to see you there!

I’ve gone through some tough times when I was on my own. But I figured things out and I had help from my family. Now I am incredibly blessed to have this amazing husband who works so very hard to take care of us. Sometimes things are tight around here, but we have decided it is worth it for me to stay home with the boys. I repeat, I am blessed.

But I can’t imagine if my baby needed something healthcare-wise and I had to pay out of pocket and couldn’t do it. A knitting friend needs some help. Her daughter needs dental work that costs a bundle! She is doing a fundraiser – selling knitting project bags. A knitter can always use more bags, right? I bought an adorable one with a cute little knitting skull and crossbones on it!

Isn’t she sweet? So help a knitter/mama out and buy a bag. Ooh and to sweeten the deal if you buy one of her bags, shoot me an e-mail or comment here and I will send you any two PicnicKnits patterns you would like.

It was the busiest of times, it was the laziest of times. It was a time of great accomplishment, it was a time of great loafing. I got up at the crack of dawn on a non school day to take the boys to the dentist. (+1) I made a hot lunch for me and the little men. (+1) I washed the dog and all his bedding. (+2 – the dog is wiley!) I sat on the couch with my friends and watched a million episodes of various reality tv shows (-17).

I did make some progress on my new shawl pattern. Here’s a good representation of the color.

And here is what the lace edging looks like so far. I’ve thrown in a lifeline and I’m trying the body pattern that I think will look good. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

In the stores (if not in the outdoors) my favorite flowers are in bloom. I love any form of daffodil. Yellow, white, any mix in between. There’s a picture in my mind’s eye of the hills of the Cincinnati Nature Center covered in daffodils at Easter time. Makes me homesick. So I bought myself a little bit of sunshine that I’ll share with you.

I really have some of the loveliest people in my life. Today I went over to SugarbeeStudios’ house so that she could help me take pictures of the shawl. She happens to have a breathtakingly gorgeous daughter who was happy to model. (I paid her in chicken wings!) I really couldn’t be more pleased with the pictures.

Barring a “snow day” tomorrow, I plan on publishing the pattern tomorrow afternoon. If they cancel school it will be monkey wrangling and that could put a wrench in the works. I don’t think we’ll actually see snow – the temps seem to be rising, but wouldn’t that be something?

Well my dear friends would say something else. Something that has to do with donkeys. But I try not to curse (even mildly) on my happy little space on the internet. I would say I’ve been oh so very busy, but so has everyone else. And I seem to be able to find more time to plurk and twitter than I can to blog. The sad thing, I find blogging way more rewarding. Again with the things I should do.

Christmas was nothing less than fabulous. We went to a Christmas Eve party and had an amazing time. Good friends, Santa came for the little ones, and a fun gift exchange (complete with lots of fancy bottles of hooch!) for the big ones. Christmas morning we woke up and had presents with the family. The boys are old enough that they don’t wake us at the buttcrack of dawn, which is just fine and dandy by me. We settled in, opened stockings, and I spiffed up a simple breakfast with cinnamon rolls, sausage, and hash browns. Then we opened presents. My husband totally spoiled me and the boys.

I got the camera I’ve been wanting, some new casual pearl jewelry from the boys, some new Fiesta Ware and some beautiful mixing bowls for the kitchen. Plus I got the HP6 DVD. The boys’ big presents were Rock Band (and the lego version of it) and cell phones. We were trying to wait until they were 12, but the man wanted a fancy phone for his b-day, so we went in a whole family plan. I’ve never seen those boys so excited in my life.

Later in the day we headed over to SugarbeeStudios house and had Christmas dinner with the families of three other of my dearest friends. The boys got more gifts and then the ladies exchanged their gifts. I will just tell you right now I do not deserve my friends. They spoiled me rotten as well. All kinds of fabulousness and thoughtful stuff that I really adore. You should be so lucky as to have friends like this. Oh and yeah. My best friend. Made me do the ugly cry, because her present was that great. Which was totally her goal. And if I didn’t love her so much, I would be very upset that she chose a present for me that she knew would make me weep.

We have a small group, a Fiber Mafia if you will, of amazingly talented and artsy ladies. All of us knit. And then we all have other things we do – artsy/fibery business ventures. All of us spin. Well the rest of the ladies spin on their wheels. I spin on my drop spindle. A wheel was not in the anywhere near future budget for me. You see where I’m going with this, yes? Last night I learned to spin on a wheel. My wheel.

Yeah. You would have cried too. Thank you Chris.

So I have been doing some stash enhancing lately. Working at a yarn store always helps with that. I basically have my pick of all the beautiful yarns there. So nice. And yes, I am spoiled, why do you ask?

But I have to space out the stash acquisitions, I need them as back-up for when I run out of blog fodder. Although I do have a plan for that. I’m gonna make myself do more swatching and show y’all more pictures of upcoming design work. I have goals y’all. Real goals. But onto the yarn!

First up, acquired through one of the swap boards. My good friends have been enabling me in that regard. “You have good stash”, they say. And I think, yes, yes I do. And then I offer up my stash and it’s gone! But I’ve gotten some awesome stuff in return.

This is Dream In Color Starry in the colorway In Vino Veritas. In Wine Truth. Don’t I know it. It’s a gorgeously twisted fingering weight with real silver flecks in it. It would be perfect for a Gaenor or an Argante. But I don’t knit things twice, so it will be for something new I design. Because it’s just that beautiful.

This was the very last skein of Plymouth Ecco Cashmere in the shop. Such a beautiful undyed color. And I already have another skein of it. I’m thinking it might be fingerless mitts and a matching cowl. It’s so soft and lovely, and it just screams lace to me.

And finally the piece de resistance – Wollmeise. There’s a reason this is as crazy popular as it is. My dear friend ContinentalKim has made a career of obtaining Wollmeise – and has decided that sleep is unnecessary. Her crazy lack of sleep is my Wollmeise gain. Let’s just say this Barist O is not the only Wollmeise colorway I’ve obtained from her.

And while we are speaking of dear friends… it’s been one of those days. My boys are sick with some mystery ailment that is not the flu. They are on antibiotics and an obscene amount of ibuprofen & acetaminophen to control their fevers. I’ve been so stressed lately that my jaw is in a constant state of clench. But my friends are my saving graces. Always there to talk to me, to listen to me ramble, to have discussions with me when I’m losing my mind. To send me flickr pool links of the White House because they know my boys will love them, even though they themselves don’t love the Prez in rez. It’s the little things and the big things. And every single one of my dearest friends was brought to me through knitting. Every single one.

(Wow. The sappy introspective nonsense is starting early this NaBloPoMo. Sorry about that!)

We had interesting ideas for Halloween this year. A whole theme with ninjas, and a geisha, and a samurai. But the man’s work got in the way, so the grand plans we had were never executed. So we went a different direction. The ninjas (a normal one and a deadpool one) were already ready to go. But we had a Halloween party at 6pm and it was 11am. Go time!

The man’s costume was easy. But mine required a lot of spray paint…

And some beads and some yarn (which naturally I have a ton of)…

And some cotton and a glue gun and some more spray paint…

And et voila!

I love the way you can see how the boys are smiling in their eyes. And Marge would not be complete without her Homer…

I love the beer can he made up. Actually the man did 90% of our costumes. All I did was sew the tube dress for myself and do our makeup. And if you kids want to do this at home, it’s really easy. The shoes were just old ballet flats. The necklace was 25mm wooden beads (19 of them) strung on yarn and spray painted red. The dress just green t-shirt fabric (from the clearance at Jo-Ann’s) sewn into an A-line tube dress and held up with clear elastic around my neck. I made it tight around the chest so it would stretch and stay on. The hair is a small Halloween bucket that fit my head. The man added a tube of cardboard, which he secured with duct tape. He spray painted the headform blue and then hot glued on a million cotton balls. (Seriously, we used 2.5 bags of triple size cotton balls). Then he spray painted the cotton balls blue. The makeup was hard. We didn’t want to spend a fortune on yellow makeup. So we dusted ourselves with yellow eyeshadow. I added the lines to his head in black eyeliner, and colored his normally grey goatee (which he trimmed short) with brown eyeshadow.

Add some mixed drinks and you have a happy Halloween!

It’s a local yokel sort of day. We’ll be meeting at the Riverside Arts Market around 11am for lunch, knitting, spinning, goofing, shopping, and whatever else you want to do. If you’ve not been to the RAM, you’re missing out. They have arts, crafts, produce, fresh baked bread, fresh pastas, all manner of delicious lunch food and interesting products from tons of indie proprietors. It’s a can’t miss!

So come and meet-up with your fellow fiber fiends and have a good day. I know it’s gonna be hot, but it’s cooler under the bridge and we will be down by the river where it’s the coolest.  Cool river breezes and plenty of good company and good food. The storms won’t be coming in until tonight, so we’ll be safe! Also we might be field-tripping over to A Stitch In Time afterwards to see what kind of new stuff is out on the shelves!