The haul:

Top – an awesome sign that Betsy spotted today. I’m still debating whether it will go in the Oz-themed guest room or the kitchen (with my “Don’t make me get the Flying Monkeys” sign).

Next, L to R – a gorgeous batt from Loop, some Brooks Farm Solana, roving from Mama E (“Raspberry Ganache” colorway. Well-named. Makes me hungry every time I look at it.).

Across the middle, L to R – Three beautiful roving braids from Gale’s Art – “Sapphire”, “Potluck”, and “Gold Yellow”, more Brooks Farm – this is Ellie in two colors I plan to use to make Tempest, three colors of Neighborhood Fiber Arts sock yarn in “Capitol Hill”, “Grant Circle” and “Ward Circle”, and a Turkish Drop Spindle with a whorl made of purpleheart (my very very favorite wood. It’s PURPLE. NATURALLY!)

Across the bottom are 5 prints that will be framed and hung in my craft room. LOVED them. Laughed my way through that whole booth.

But the three best things I got this weekend weren’t things I bought – they were lovely thoughtful gifts from three totally kick-ass women.

The dragonfly is a spectacularly beautiful pin that Alice found and bought for me. The picture doesn’t do it justice – it’s so sparkly and lovely.

The sheepy pin is a Spartan Sheep (Eddie Izzard show reference) – Carrie bought one each for me, Jaime, and herself. He’s got the best expression on his face, and he’d totally shear himself with a rusty straight razor.

The bag – you might have seen its twin on CPurl17′s blog a couple of weeks ago. Its creator mentioned that she was making another one for someone else going on SeaSocks. Yesterday, I had two huge surprises while at MDS&W. I got to meet Bezzie! (Sneaky little thing fibbed to all of us that she wasn’t going to be able to make it, all the while planning to come.) And she gave me the bag – I was totally floored that she made such a lovely, thoughtful gift for me. I think I showed it to everyone I saw for the rest of the day.

I have the kick-assingest friends. I’m one seriously lucky woman.

Also, one seriously tired woman. And there are four poker-playing guys who know WHY I am so tired. Raise the damn blinds once in a while, guys! Then maybe the game won’t last until almost 4AM…

Penny Karma – we HAD to take a picture of this for you, my dear.

The Maryland Sheep and Wool Friday Night Band:

Vaguely demonic-looking J on guitar, Kris on drums, Val on bass, and Cristi on vocals. Amanda’s hiding there in the background, and Jeanmarie is knitting in the foreground.

All I know is, it better be freaking GONE by Saturday.

I feel like I need an ark today.

Oh, and the red Jeep? Yeah – that’s Serenity. As in, she of the leaking windshield. Sitting out in the rain. Again.  Eesh.

And yes, I am aware that three of the five colors I bought were blues and greens (Plus the green Footzey Foo heavyweight I used for my Red Dwarf Socks). It was slightly less obvious when I was also picking up pinks and purples for Roxy, but what can I say? I am drawn to them.

I was hoping to be able to post a triumphant FO picture of my Molly sleeves today, but there was an Incident. I cruised through the second sleeve on Wednesday and managed to actually finish it. I slipped it over my arm to admire it (Pride goeth before…), and I looked at the cuff. Huh. That’s really, really big. Way bigger than I expected. I took it off, and compared it to the first sleeve. It was SIGNIFICANTLY wider. I stared at it. I looked at every pattern row, trying to figure out where I went off-pattern. Finally, I found it.
Do you see where the arrows are pointing? I anchored those light green loops in the wrong spot on sleeve #2, which gave me 12 of them, instead of 8. (…aaaaaand there’s the fall). So, yeah. The ENTIRE cuff was half again as big as it was supposed to be. I had to rip the entire thing out, back to that green row, to fix it. (17 rows, if you are wondering.)

On the upside, now that the rows are 2/3 the length they were, they move a LOT faster. I’m back up to the orange row just before the pink I was on when this picture was taken. With any luck (and less foul-ups), I’ll have a FO by the end of the weekend.

Have a good one, all!

Thanks for all the, erm, kind words about my WIPs. And the beads for my Mystery Stole arrived today. Both colors are really pretty. Once the yarn gets here, I may have to ask for some input on which combination to use.

And now we reach the goodies from The Fold – the Socks That Rock. This week, STR Light Mediumweight in “Iolite” (Not sure why I thought Lighweight at first. My bad.):


Oh, and although I missed the inaugural WIP Wednesday (brainchild of Cristi, of course), I’ll be in on it next week. I’ve been entering my projects into Ravelry, so it’s sort of a two-birds-with-one-stone thing. That, and maybe putting it out there will push me to finish a couple of stragglers.

Optim roving. It’s amazing stuff – it’s wool, but is treated so that it is almost as fine a fiber as cashmere.
It’s so ridiculously soft. There was a reason that Cristi wore some of it around her neck all day, and kept petting it.
I’ll probably be dyeing it before I spin it, but for now I’ll just keep petting it. It’s SO soft…

And after reading that “Seven weird things” meme for the past few weeks and managing to avoid being tagged, CostumeChick got me. *sigh*

So, seven weird things about me:

1. I was a very picky eater as a child, but have managed to overcome that with a very few exceptions. I still cannot eat mushrooms, raw tomatoes, or shrimp. The weird thing about that is that ALL of those are texture issues – the flavor doesn’t actually bother me at all.

2. I also can’t stand mustard. I can taste the tiniest bit of mustard in just about anything. *shudder* That one IS a flavor thing.

3. I keep my cds and dvds in alphabetical order (Cds are also broken down into categories), and if one is missing, I can generally remember them well enough to know which one it is.

4. My nose does this weird clicky thing where the cartilage at the tip will actually pop and stay off-center. Kris jokes that I’m the first person he has met that can literally get her nose “out of joint”.

5. I am painfully shy when I first meet people and have a lot of trouble approaching someone to start a conversation. No one who knows me believes that, though, because once I get to know you I just don’t shut up.

6. When I eat anything that is in multicolored pieces (M&M’s, Skittles, etc.), I always eat them so that I have equal numbers left of each color. Always.

7. I have a weird relationship with memes. Part of me hates them, and a part of me really wants to be tagged because it makes me feel like someone wants to hear what I have to say. Sick, I know.

And now, the tagging:
Betsy
Carrie (sucks to be the new blogger, doesn’t it? )
Jas
Jenneke
Zonda
and Sarah

And yes, I know that’s only six people, but I know better than to try to tag Turtlegirl, and almost everyone else has done this already.

ETA: And I apologize to those of you reading this in Bloglines. One of my feeds has gone all silly and has randomly marked a couple of posts as new or updated lately. I’m not sure what the deal is there…

So, I have 4 hanks of this (just over 1000 yards). I was thinking about a Clapotis, but since I’m already making a ribbon one (you’ll see that yarn soon enough), I’m thinking maybe something else. If you have any suggestions, speak up!

We had a complete blast all weekend, starting with a Friday morning trip to Cristi’s fave spot to visit when she comes up – Ikea! I’m sure she’ll be posting her goodies, but let’s just say that the sweater patterns aren’t the only thing we have in common. Friday night, poor Jas got stuck in traffic and missed our dinner meetup at a local diner with theotheramanda and Stariel, both of whom we knew from the Knittyboards. (Amanda has a couple of pics from dinner on her blog)

We got up BRIGHT and early Saturday morning (like 6am early) and hit the road at about 7. We arrived at the fairgrounds just about 8:00 and headed straight for The Fold. We weren’t the first in line for the STR. We were 4th, 5th, and 6th. Ahead of us were two MORE folk that we knew from the boards – Ajastoy and LICraftgal – along with a woman who had come clear from Houston for the fest. We had a blast gabbing and giggling with everyone in line until they opened the booth at 9am and the frenzy began. It gets a bit blurry for a while there, although I do remember the woman behind me who had at LEAST 20 skeins in her arms as she came up to the register.

We wandered around and Jas tried out lots of wheels (Girlfriend was On. A. Mission. ), we all fondled all sorts of fiber, and then we sat down for lunch before meeting up with the knittyfolks at noon. Unfortunately, there was some confusion about the time and place, and we missed some folks, but we did get to see Ajastoy and LICraftgal again, along with alicec and Buckyknits (blogless, but very cool). As we were heading over to the main barn, Mintyfresh passed us, and Cristi recognized her. She was going the other way, but asked if we were going to the knitblogger meetup at 1, so we said we’d see her there. We walked through part of the main barn and then stepped outside to hit the meetup. We ran into Buttercup4225 (formerly Ladybug42), who recognized Cristi and greeted us with, “Hey! You guys are my fellow Fuggers!” She introduced us to Shannon (who does the SSK podcast), and the five of us plopped down on the grass and had a great time chatting and knitting. We were found (again) by Ariel and Amanda (who were TOTALLY following us all day, even if they won’t admit it), and Shannon recorded a bit of us for the podcast. We also got to meet Javajem, Kelpknits, and Frecklegirl (The brains behind the eagerly awaited Ravelry) and Cristi got to meet her very first SP – Jochibi (who was just too adorable – I just wish she had been able to hang with us a little longer). Eventually, everyone started to head off for more shopping, and Jas was itching to play with some more wheels.

We got home and played with our new fiber, Cristi and I on our wheels, and Jas on her brand-new Golding dropspindle.


Sunday, we opted to sleep in a bit, and picked up Roxy at 11-ish to head back for day 2, this time with Kris along to photo-document.

A few highlights from the day:

Carrie in her brand-new crocheted skirt
Maryanne’s FAB new sock yarn
Annemarie being very… Annemarie-esque
Cristi petting her new necklace/friend – Optim fiber (REALLY soft stuff!)
And like she was going to be able to resist these
Annemarie again
Carrie testing out a Hitchhiker wheel
Clearly, Jas and I were better at avoiding the camera. The whole album is here.

It was really an amazing weekend – hanging with friends, and finally getting to meet in person people I’ve been talking to online for almost two years now. I’m already looking forward to next year! (And PKF… and Cristi wants me to come down for SAFF… and I’m still thinking about Stitches again this year.)

PS. Penny_Karma – Lady Eleanor is from Scarf Style. Or maybe Wrap Style. Dangit, I never remember. But I think it’s Scarf.