Happy New Year and All that Jazz

Not quite the year in review, but an end-of-year wrap-up, and some thoughts on this coming year. My final finished (sort of - they are both halves of pairs....) objects for 2007 are the awesome Snail Mittens from The Book of Yarn, and the first of the Marie Antoinette socks, part of a slow-going KAL with Miss Max.
The Marie Antoinette pattern - well, it's just lovely! the pick-up loopy-bits along the back of the foot and the back of the heel are funfunfun to work, the yarn is wonderful, the color is great. I stupidly misread a portion of the pattern and didn't notice until some 60 rows later, so I've almost knit 2 socks already what with the tearing out and the re-knitting. I finished this lovely with about 5 hours to spare of 2007. While Max is completing Joelle's Favorite Yoke Sweater, I knit up sock number The First. I'll put the other one aside until Max is ready to take a shot at it, and there begin the knit-along portion of this project. Anyone else care to join us?
And because I am so good at procrastinating the proper Christmas projects that I had planned, I started up on these mitts a few days before Christmas. I managed to complete this one (these lovelies will be a gift for Miss Amy) using Baby Ull and US1s - they were a blast! And went so quickly.
Here I am modelling one of them - the only completed one thus far. These puppies are double-thick throughout - the other side looks like a fish belly of red and grey stripes. They are super duper warm and comfy.

But for the New Year! As mentioned in a previous post, Miss Max and I had been toying with the idea of a year of Knitting From the Stash. And here we are in a new year........

With minimal discussion, the following decisions were made concerning this venture:
∙ knit exclusively from our stash for 2008
∙ all bets are off for Rhinebeck (stash re-acquisition) and/or Taos.
∙ should some yarn *need* to be purchased for the completion of a project, the yarn purchased cannot exceed the yarn in the stash, i.e. I cannot purchase 9 balls of yarn to accompany the 1 ball that I already have in order to make a sweater.
∙ gift yarn is fine, as well as gift certificates.
∙ if all stash is eliminated, new stash can then be acquired. (HA!)

I'll also mention that I plan on remaining in my 2 fiber-of-the-month clubs, so I will be slowly creating more stash through the course of the year. When I get my act together - hopefully this week! - I'll have all of this stash business sorted out in my Ravelry, so as to be able to really track this to-do.

Oh! I also plan on rewarding myself a wee bit for a job (jobs?) well done - a little bit of Stash for Cash. For every ball of yarn eliminated from stash, for every finished object, for every ounce of newly spun fiber, I'll throw some money at the knitting kitty. Stash can also be traded or sold - any funds acquired through selling of stash will also go towards future fiber-related ventures. Ultimately for more yarn. Or a new wheel ;)

Viva La Rhinebeck!

Well, what can I say? It was all that and more. After a rainy journey out Friday afternoon, the weather (thankfully!) cleared up for the Rhinebeck Wooly festivities. I was a bit overwhelmed at the actual fair and ended up not taking many pictures while there - but everyone else did. Cruise around online if you need to see fair pics. Instead, I'd like to share this lovely view with you:

This was the most lovely setting - well, about 40 minutes north of Rhinebeck proper - and it truly is so beautiful and peaceful to take in. We stayed with my cousin, who has the fortune of waking up to this beauty every day. This section of the Hudson River Valley used to play a prominent role in the whale shipping industry, and the region is rich in history and folklore (the main bridge across the river up there is the Rip Van Winkle; it is said that the mountains form his sleeping profile). It's all just so lovely.

But you're really here for the fair, aren't you? Headed down first thing on Saturday with wool and cheese on the mind. This being my first year spinning, I had a new plan of attack . I was very focussed on finding fibers I have not tried spinning yet - after all, this was the ideal opportunity to get a little of this and a little of that. Oh, and in many cases, I could MEET the animals the fibers came from! I also had 2 other specific projects in mind* , and managed to leave with......well, a decent haul. As I was saying while there "I am here to get a year's worth of fiber" and then next year I can go back and do it all again.
I would love to tell you all about these things, but I took very very very bad notes. Here is a mini-inventory, and things that I am sure of: the orange-green-brown bundle at the very top was hand-delivered to me by Amy, the bright pink/red in front of that and to the left is a silk cap (very stringy/sticky), the red to the right of that is alpaca, the 3 in the middle are alpaca (as well as the lavendar), the yarn to the right is Socks that Rock (primarily because....what's the big deal? why does everyone love this? I need to see for myself if it is ALL THAT), and I can't remember what is on the bottom.














Don't these all look so soft and dreamy? There are some wool bundles in there - after all, the roving is the gift that keeps on giving. It's TWICE the entertainment for your buck! Not only do I get to spin it up, but then there is knitting as well. What a bahgain.

Aside from the softness of, well, EVERYTHING, I also managed to meet a gazillion people and make it over to blogger meetup. I'm not going to do links here, but it was great to talk to (I apologize for leaving anyone out!) Lyssa, Boogie, HelloYarn, YarnaGoGo (all the way from CA!), BrainyLady and Veronik, Jess and Casey, AnnieKnits, and about 56290385609 more great knitters. It was really interesting to see patterns that I recognize walk by, on a REAL person, as well as yarn. I was sporting my Branching Out scarf.........too hot for anything bulkier.

On Sunday we went to visit Reggie at Howard Hall Farms - he and Nora have been working on restoring this house the REAL way for a few years now, and the fun has just begun! Reggie gave us a tour of the place, and the chance to see what has been done so far, what needs to be done, and some history on the building while we nibbled on cider donuts. Here's an example of a lovely Japanese joint redistributing a lot of the load on the top floor, and a bit of the detail (and the thickness of the stone walls!) that they are working to preserve:














Along with checking out this amazing restoration, they kindly provided me with an entire FLEECE from one of their sheep! I'm debating how to go about the processing. So now my car smells like a barn.

Oh, and we got cheese OF COURSE.

I'll leave you all with this picture of Amy enjoying her new favorite color:
*more on this to come.

Progress?

Very little to report. Or it could be thought of as "more of the same".....

The other sock? Yeah, I haven't cast-on for that yet. Oh, but I will! Maybe this weekend. I promise.

I've been working a fair amount on the Icarus Shawl, though you wouldn't know to look at it. This shawl is triangular, and knit from the top center down, with 4 increases every other row. So it groooooows. But at a very very slow pace. The portion of the shawl that I am currently working on is dead boring as well - it has just enough going on that you have to pay a wee bit of attention, but it is not exciting at all. I want to get to the fun stuff! I want to get to the crazy lacey bits! But no - I think I have about 8 more rows to go of this first chart, which doesn't seem too bad, but when each row takes seemingly forever, it could be next month before I get there. I present this photo, which looks very similar to an earlier photo posted, but I swear I have been working on this:I have also hit the point in where I am starting to panic about if I will have enough yarn. This is Misti Alpaca (it is LOVELY to work with) and I think I have *just* what the pattern calls for (okay, just checked - I actually have one yard LESS than what the pattern calls for - 875 yds - but I think I may run out for REAL, not just by one yard) and I have read reports of people having run out. I'm not super concerned at this point - I know where I got this, it's pretty cheap, etc. etc. I just want. to. get. to. the. good. stuff. Dammit!

When not busy slogging through the dreadful boredom that is chart 1 of this shawl (almost as boring as socks!) I've been spinning spinning spinning like a mad woman! I'm working my way through the mystery wool from Amy, and working towards a thinner yarn. I *feel* like I am beginning to understand this spinning business a bit more - like I am on the road to owning it, but that road is very very long. Since this bag of fiber is kind of a mystery, I'm learning a bit about different fibers and how they want to behave for me. What I've really come to believe is the secret of spinning is this: tension. I feel if you can just get the tension of these 8 different things to all work together perfectly, things are golden. You just need the planets to align! And I would like to believe that I am working towards that. I've made a mini-skein of something resembling Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift, which, if you have not worked with this yarn it is wonderful, and then I tried out some Navajo Plying which is pretty interesting, and I am pleased with the results of that as well. I can see what I would like to improve on in both of these, and now I just have to figure out exactly how to do that. Max has suggested that I spin at HER place, as she likes the smooth whir whir whir of the wheel. There will be pictures soon - it's tough to get clear pics that will give you some sense of the weight and texture of the wool.

This has all left me even more excited about Rhinebeck this year; I'll try not to come back with any animals.

Let us now praise Wild & Woolly

See that wagon, way off there in the distance? It's the one I fell off of recently.

Yep, in October, I made a pledge to knit only from stash until Rhinebeck 2007. I realized pretty quickly that I'd be breaking my pledge when I go to Taos in May (La Lana! Can't wait...), and that I'd need to get some yarn to make Miles the Hello Yarn pirate mittens he's been hankering after, but otherwise my plan was to divert the money I'd been spending on stash to Cheri Huber's Africa Vulnerable Children project.

Well I'm still feeding the orphans, so don't hate me, but man, have I been buying yarn. Two weeks ago today I hit theknittinggarden.com and ordered a bag of the yummiest Jo Sharp Silkroad Ultra in a beautiful chocolate-brown ("tamarind"), as well as some Rowan Scottish Tweed aran in lovat (a nice medium teal) for Kim Hargreaves' Demi from Vintage Style. This was on Friday afternoon. On Wednesday morning I got a note from the Knitting Garden saying the yarns were out of stock, but they expected a shipment 'next week'. No asking if I still wanted the yarn, no apology for the delayed response, just making me read between the lines to guess I'd get the yarn about three weeks after ordering. If I was lucky.

Maybe not such a big deal except the yarns weren't marked as out of stock on the site, and it's the third time this has happened to me with that vendor. I'm nursing a suspicion that the vendor might be ordering from their suppliers after orders come in from the website. Not saying, just suspecting. When I emailed the owner to cancel the order, I asked her that question, and she didn't respond to it. She did say her server had been down, but still: if you're telling someone their yarn ain't available five days after sending them an invoice, don't you want to mention something like that? Along with an apology?

Anyway, this is not really about the Knitting Garden, but more about Wild & Woolly, because when I called them, they told me they had both the yarns, the colors, and the quantities I needed had a sick sick thing for, and would overnight them for a total of $7 shipping. That's seven measly dollars.

I mention this because Wild & Woolly seem to have a bad rep on the web. The woman I talked to couldn't have been more accommodating - and she didn't have any superfakeynice anything going on. Just authentically nice. So, huzzah, Wild & Woolly!

Btw, I wanted the yarn right away because I was leaving the next morning for San Francisco, and I didn't really have anything to take with me that wasn't already nearly done. Just in case you thought I was totally freaked-out fiber addict. Or something.

Because I'm still feeding the orphans.