OK, so, I’m finally going to catch up on Blogstalking (or more like pick up again. I’m so far behind, I’m not even going to get anywhere near caught up).

Here we have my cousin Beth (the clown) and me (the teddy bear) on our very first Halloween. I was 5 weeks old, and I had a costume. I’m pretty sure I haven’t missed a year since. :D
And here, we have my most current - Saturday at Johnny Mac’s Halloween party.

Speaking of said party, we had a complete blast. And by “we”, I mean me, Kris, Turtlegirl (who drove up for the weekend) and Roxy and her hubby. It was a very Knitty party.

Costume highlights:
Annemarie as Troy Polamalu:

Her hubby John as Dr. C. Harry Beaver (The “C” stands for Clifford. Cristi asked.):

Cristi as a black and white movie (with me):

David as a MySpace page:

Drew as Ozzy Osbourne:

John administering “medication” to Greg the weightlifter:

Justin and Hannah, as Greenbelt Road and a Stoplight:

Their parents, Scott and Dawn, as Sick and Tired:

Ed (yes, as in EdFest) as a sewer worker:

Our host, Johnny Mac (left) and Duk (right) with the best shot of Ed ever:

Annemarie, again. I can’t even caption this one:

And the boys playing poker. That would be my hubby with the scarf on his head:

There are a couple of pictures I can’t get to work right now, but I’ll try to add them later.

I had an awesome, awesome weekend with Cristi - she is a total blast. She taught me to make her famous pattern-row counters, and I took her to Ikea. We are both very dedicated enablers. And on Sunday, we had lunch with Annemarie and Alice, which was a complete hoot. I can’t wait until she comes back for another visit! (*plots evilly to find Cristi a job up here so she can move for good*)

So, here are the real colors of the funky stuff I posted the other day. Again, it’s Artsygal’s handpainted laceweight yarn, and honestly, I can’t say enough about it. It’s gorgeous and soft, and the colors are just awesome. Plus, Jas is a TOTAL sweetie. (Go on, go see her. You know you want to. Plus, she just put up two new colors!)

First, Purple Rain (which looks kinda pink on my monitor, but on Kris’s, the colors were dead on. I think I need to tweak my monitor settings):

This next one was the source for the black and white from the other day…

Mmmmm… fields of silk and wool…

And “Chocolate and Wine” - one of the best color names EVER. :D

Happy Yarn Pr0n Friday, everyone! I’m off to finish cleaning my house before Turtlegirl arrives for a visit! Yay!

ETA: I’m still not sure why the colors are so off on these, but I’m going to have Kris check the pictures tonight when he gets home, and hopefully we can get some more accurate ones up. Seriously - the colors are so lovely, and even though these are pretty, they just aren’t right.

ETA again: Ta da! Now THOSE are the correct colors. Thank you to my smartass husband, “Wool Widow”. Sheesh. Like I couldn’t call myself “Warcraft Widow”. At least he get stuff out of MY obsession. :D

So, Kris and I were taking pictures last night (ok, he was taking them, I was sitting on the bed reading), and he started playing in Photoshop a little bit. He took some of the yarn pr0n that will be posted on Friday and turned it into funky art! All of the yarn is Artsygal’s handpainted silk/wool laceweight, which arrived Monday and is my new love. You’ll see it’s true colors on Friday. (If you go see her shop, tell her I sent you!)

I love how the texture and shine of the yarn comes through on this one. I think we might do an all black-and-white YPF some week, just to show off the textures.

He played with the colors on this one, if you hadn’t guessed.

And this one, he used something called “glowing edges” - isn’t it funky? I love how it picked up on every bit of fluff that haloes around the yarn.
I’m having a hard time blogging lately. I think it’s just that it’s tough to talk about my WIP’s when they are Christmas gifts, and I know that some of the recipients read this. So, I feel like I don’t really have much to talk about. I should have some stuff to post after the Halloween party this weekend (Yay! Turtlegirl is coming up!), and Stitches East next weekend (Yay! Betsy is coming up!). After that, it may just be YPF for a while. Oh, and I AM still working on my Vegas recap. That will go up someday. :D

Today’s yarn pr0n comes to us from the folks over at Herrschner’s, and the faboo sale they had on Noro Kureyon about a month or so back. Not surprisingly, these are destined to become Lizard Ridge at some point. I am still waiting on them to ship one color that was backordered, and then I need to find one more after that, because the other color I ordered apparently went out of stock and is no longer available. (Not that I knew that until I sent them an email asking why my order was 2 weeks later than they told me it would be, and why I was missing 2 colors but my card had only been credited for one. Nice communication, folks. And did I mention that they sent me one color with 2 skeins in one dye lot, and one in another? This is why I am not linking to them.)

Back to the happy stuff. Once again, today’s pictures were taken by my darling hubby. If you like them, feel free to comment here, but why not go leave him a comment, too?

And now, for your viewing pleasure, Noro Kureyon in 5 colors. (As always, feel free to click on ‘em for mondo huge sized versions)

Color #52

Color #88

Color #165

Color #51

Color #92
On the knitting progress front (it’s been so long since I could post pics of WIP’s, you guys probably thing all I do is buy yarn and take pictures of it…), I finished the project for my MIL - it’s just waiting to be washed and blocked, and I have made pretty significant progress on the project for my dad. If I keep this up, I might not have to wrap balls of yarn with an apology note!

And I’ve been working on the Vegas recap, but Kris hasn’t been able to get through his pictures yet. Tell me - would you rather have the text recap and links to pics later, or wait for the recap until I can show you pictures?

That’s all folks! Have a great Friday!

“Delayed ?” you are asking, “but it’s Friday! It’s not delayed!” Sure it is. This was what I was supposed to post LAST Friday.

First, three shots of Wool in the Woods Double Kiss in “Bashful”. I bought this ages ago, and I love it, but I have no clue what I am going to do with it.



Next, some Reynolds Mandalay in color #027, sent to me by my lovely Summer Fling SP Applepieisyum. She was the coolest SP, and I blame her for my new chocolate love: Vosges. It’s pricy stuff, but it is the first chocolate I have ever found that actually can satisfy you with one square from a bar. The flavors are that good. (More on that in the Vegas recap.)

5 shades of Koigu, purchased to make the Charlotte’s Web shawl, which I then utterly failed to find the pattern for. Applepieisyum came through for me on that, too. (See - awesome!)

And Schaefer Laurel in “Judy Garland”. Come on, was I really going to leave this color behind when I found it? Do you people know me at all? I have enough to make some sort of spring/summer tee, probably.
Same yarn, but Kris loved this shot because of the ridiculously narrow depth of field. Just that one tiny edge is in focus.
Happy Yarn Pr0n Friday the 13th everyone!

Shamelessly stolen from Bezzie:

(And yes, I love my new hair, so you’ll be seeing a lot of it. :D)

ETA: Just for the fun of it, I did Kris’s too.

Vacation summary tomorrow - I promise. Pictures will probably have to wait, as Kris has about 600 of them (honestly - I’m not exaggerating) to go through, and he has to do that silly thing called work.

And yarn pr0n tomorrow, too!

So, I’ll recap the vacation soon, but I do have two quick things:

1. I am SO SORRY that I missed last week’s YPF. I originally planned to write up the post before we left, and then put it up while on the road, and I just didn’t get to it. I thought I’d have a bit of time to post something quickly while in Sin City, but I was wrong. I’ll do better this week, I promise! (Cristi - I’ll give myself 30 lashes with wet acrylic, ok?)

2. Re: Weird Al - I love that so many of you are fans, too. :D And as such, I feel it is a moral imperative that I point you to this NPR story about his parody of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”. And here, to download the song, which is just as funny as is expected.

Ok - vacation update soon, I promise! But first, a sneak peek at my new hair, courtesy of my brother the faboo stylist:

OK, y’all may not be aware of my deep, undying love for Weird Al, but I absolutely adore him. I think he’s a genius. And he’s got a new cd out.

Straight Outta Lynwood

I picked it up today, and have been giggling like a loon since I got home. The polka is, as usual, awesome.