Yes, I'm still alive---I think that calls for some yarn!

I'm happy to report that the deadly virus-turned-respiratory infection did not lead to my complete demise. There were moments that I would have liked it to, but I survived nonetheless!

Spurred perhaps by the happy return of my health, or perhaps the happy receipt of my first paycheck, I succumbed to temptation this weekend and made some very small yarn acquisitions! I tried really hard to resist these beauties, but my will was too weak....

Oh, yeah! Who am I trying to fool anyway? I had a paycheck in my hot little hands and since I've now rejoined the ranks of the wage slaves, I felt very entitled to spend a little this weekend, thankyouverymuch. Besides, after two or three weeks (and weekends) of being sick and homebound, I just wanted to have a little fun! So, behold my newest stash additions....

They got a new shipment of Sea Silk at VY&T, so I thought I would head over there and pick up a replacement skein of the light green/blue that self-destructed a couple of months ago. Yes, they had the color I wanted, but I was disappointed in the dye lot this time around---it was very much more green than the skein I had before---IMO it did not have the soft, ethereal quality to the color that I so loved about it before. So I picked another color instead...

Hard to get the colors correct in the picture, but it is a little deeper with more variations of blue than it appears here. I think this will distract me from my disappointment in the lighter color.

Here's some Suri Blue I picked up a couple of weeks ago, in exchange for a color I had bought previously. Turns out the Sea Silk variegated I ended up with was the same colorway as the Suri Blue I had bought previously. So when the new shipment came in, I exchanged it for this...

Again, the colors are much more dark and saturated than I was able to capture here, slightly more bluish-red or bergundy in tone than it looks. I thought I would change over to something that was more fall/winter in tone to use later.

On Sunday, I had a $20 credit at Acorn Street Yarn, so I decided to head over there and pick up a new Evelyn Clark shawl pattern that I've been waiting for. Since the pattern calls for three colors and I will be using Zephyr, I needed to pick up another color to use with Pewter and Indigo I already have. I think this will accent those colors very nicely...

I'll probably try to start on that one when the current Mermaid Wrap is finished, since I think the shawl in three colors will be a fun knit, and I'm anxious to try knitting with Zephyr for the first time!

And finally, while browsing around Acorn Street, those tricky ladies lured me to the shelf where this incredibly soft Malabrigo laceweight was displayed. Once I touched it, I couldn't put it back down. There were so many incredible colors, it was hard to pick just one, but I decided to go with a color that is different from anything else I have right now...

Believe me, the picture does not do this one justice! The only way I can think of to describe the colors of this yarn is---think of a lush and mossy forest with giant redwood trees. There are different rich brown tones with a distinctively redwood-colored hue throughout, with shades of dark mossy greens and browns, with a little reddish tone thrown in. It is incredibly rich-looking, but no matter how I tried to photograph it, I could not capture the colors. Sigh. Trust me, it's gorgeous! So I know no one can blame me for snapping up this final little addition to my stash this weekend!

I have been trying to squeeze in some knitting when I can, but being gone from my house for 13-14 hours a day has not done much for the progress on my current WIP's. It seems the most I can sneak in is a few rows here and a couple of rows there. I have made some small progress on a couple of things, though, so I'll post those pics next time.

BTW, I'm very excited that I will be meeting up with two fellow knit-bloggers next weekend---Kathleen from Quail Hill Knits, and Danielle from The Knitting Niche. I have become email friends with Kathleen over the past few months and am excited to meet her in person. I also enjoy reading Danielle's blog and am looking forward to meeting her as well! I think that one of the most fun things about blogging is when you have a chance to meet other bloggers! I know we'll have a fun time---knitting and chatting, how could we go wrong? :)

Have a great week, everyone!

HEY!.....

Is anyone still out there?

I'm back from my vacation! Isn't anyone going to stop by and say Hi?

Yes, I'm back and I had a GREAT time! I brought back a couple of friends with me from my visit to the aquarium in Long Beach! We go there every time we visit So Cal and it's always so much fun! If you are ever out that way, be sure not to miss it. One of my favorite parts is visiting the Lorikeet aviary, where you can feed the birds little cups of nectar (Lorikeets don't eat solid food).

How 'bout another round, bartender...Can't you see I have an empty glass here?...

It was a great week and I hated to leave my beloved beach :( We did lots of fun stuff, along with some 'just sitting around like a lump' thrown in (after all, it was vacation....). Cute hubby and I are not the types to schedule every minute of our time, on vacation or otherwise, so we did whatever, whenever. So some days we were lazy and others we were out all day and evening, depending on how the mood struck us!

One fun thing I got to do was meet up with a fellow knit blogger in L.A.---G-girl!! We struck up a friendship through our blogs and email over the past several months, and she seemed like so much fun, I just had to meet her when I was in her part of town! Cute husband and I were in L.A. seeing a few sights, and we met G-girl and her super-nice fiance' for lunch at a great Mexican restaurant. Both her fiance' and my hubby were a little skeptical about the meeting..."Why, exactly, is it that you two want to meet....?"

The poor SO's just don't get the whole knitting and blogging thing sometimes. Cute husband keeps emphasizing to me that he fears I'm in a cult! He says that since we all have a strange language, culture and habits that others don't understand, it's obviously a cult! Silly men.

Anyway, we all had a great time and spent a fun couple of hours together! The guys seemed to have lots to talk about, and of course, G-girl and I didn't lack for conversational topics! No knitting accomplished, but lots of fun chatter and gettin-to-know-ya! G-girl and her fiance' were both great, and G-girl even brought me a present!

Thanks so much, G-girl! The stitch markers are soooo pretty and I love them! I brought her a little gift as well (the chenille flower face cloth on my last post), which I hope she enjoys! Both cute hubby and I are looking forward to getting together with them again---hopefully when they can come to Seattle!

I did manage to get a little knitting done while on my trip, but not as much as I thought I would! I worked on a great wrap made out of Sea Silk, which after a couple of trips to the frog pond for gauge issues and an unfortunate mistake, was coming along quite nicely. Unfortunately, I can't show you a picture of it, because it met with an unfortunate demise last night while knitting on it. While pulling the yarn up from my center-pull yarn cake, the yarn suddenly burst out in a huge lumpy tangle from the center! What came out of there was too ugly to even describe, but I spent until 4 a.m trying to untangle and rescue it, but to no avail.

Usually I'm good at the untangling thing, but I am sorry to report that the patient died on the table! The more I untangled, the more the yarn stuck and knotted itself, and I finally gave up in despair. After about 5 hours of tedious effort to salvage the yarn and project, I was so frustrated and pissed off that I chucked the whole thing!! It was truly hopeless. I can hardly believe how evil a gorgeous hank of Sea Silk can become when it tangles. And the worst part is, I REALLY can't believe that I had to trash an entire hank of Sea Silk!!! Ouch! I am heartbroken. I have untangled many a tangle in my time and am usually always successful, but never have I come up against one like this! I was too horrified to even take pictures before I removed it from my sight foreever! I have no idea how that happened, but it REALLY sucks! Now I am afraid of the Sea Silk and wondering if I want to replace it and try again, or if I will just move along and try to recover from the trauma and sleep-deprivation of the whole ugly incident....The wrap was soooo beautiful knit up---I can't believe it's gone because of terminal and irreversible tangling. Ugh.

Here's a picture of something I started that has not turned evil.....so far....(That is, if you don't count that whole uneven ball-winding thing)...

I finally cast on the Tofutsies socks. I thought that size 1's would be small enough, but had to start over on size zero's. Knitting on size O needles is not my preferred way to go blind, so these will definitely have to be daytime knitting! The colors are great, though, and the yarn feels really soft knit up. At my knitting speed, it's gonna take a while to finish these---I'm hoping at least before the end of 2007! :)