I did pick up a couple of things (duh):

Three skeins of Spud and Chloe Sweater in “Toast”, which called to me from the shelf and said it wanted to be a Milkweed Shawl (which I’ve been drooling over on Skyline Chilly of late – she’s made two), two braids of merino-bamboo top from Miss Babs in “Frogbelly” (how could I resist a name like that?), and a drawstring reusable bag from Fibre Space.  They aren’t doing paper or plastic bags, so you can either grab one of these cuties for $5, or bring a bag.

If you get a chance, DEFINITELY check them out.  I did hear one of the employees mention that they are still adding more yarns to their stock, so I’m looking forward to another trip to check it out again!

Ended up with just under the 8oz. I started with – looks like I only lost maybe 1/8oz to “whoops”es, which is nice!

Gave it a nice bath, and then let it lie in the sun for a bit to dry.

I’ve got about 179 yards, and it seems to be averaging around 15 WPI.  I’m pretty pleased with it. And yes, the color is pretty accurate in these, other than the drying picture. Yarn’s still wet in that one, so it looks darker than it really is.

Just have to decide what it wants to be.  One of these days, I’m going to pick the project, and spin for it.  Of course, that assumes I can spin deliberately enough to DO that… 

See that afghan on the cover?  That’s the one I did!  Well, I did the squares – MBT assembled it and did the border.  Can I tell you what a neat feeling that is?

It’s a great booklet – crocheted afghans based on quilt square patterns!  And lest you think all crocheted afghans are in acrylic, the one I worked on was done in Cascade 220.  It’s got to be awesomely snuggly now that it’s assembled.  The book has 8 different patterns, plus a bunch of stitch pattern and block ideas, and a cd so you can design your own.  Congrats, Mary Beth, on a great booklet!

Oh, and I decided to go with the two-ply, since that was pretty much the overwhelming response.  I plyed it up last night while Kris was stuck at work (until midnight – ugh) to a soundtrack ot two old favorite movies – The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and Girls Just Want to Have Fun.  (Why yes, I DO have a stash of “Movies for nights when Kris isn’t here”. )  I now have a very full bobbin.

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, especially because I wasn’t paying attention when I started and was plying my two S-twist singles with MORE S-twist.  Not so good.

I hadn’t gotten TOO far when I caught that, so I pulled it back off the bobbin and respun it going the right way, so it’s all fixed.

And yeah, you guys are probably right about the pattern.  I’m going to work on getting the pictures done and writing it up.  Of course, the earliest I can submit it is for the winter issue, so it’s going to be quite a while before you see it.  Thanks for pushing me not to chicken out. 

I just can’t decide what to do from here.  I can leave it as a VERY fine singles, but I think it’s overspun for that and will make me CRAZY, although I’ll have tons of yardage.  Alternately, I can ply the two bobbins together, and still have a nice laceweight-ish yarn.  Finally, I could chain-ply it to a three-ply, and have a fingering-ish weight.  See what you guys think:

Left to right, that’s the single, a two-ply, and a three-ply.  Obviously, it’s a pretty inexact representation, because it’s from the end of one bobbin, but it should give you an idea.  Thoughts?

Also, I need an opinion on something else.  See, I designed a shawl.  And I finished knitting it up about two weeks ago.  I don’t have pictures of it yet, but you haven’t seen it here because I’ve been debating whether I should submit it to Knitty (eek!), or self-publish it.  It got a lovely response from the girls up at Large Marge’s when I unveiled it at the book club meeting, and it even won the “True Love” prize (my very own Dread Pirate Roberts action figure.  ).  The thing that is making me hesitate about submitting (aside from lack of self-confidence) it is that it’s a pi shawl, and there was just one in the Spring issue. So, I’ll take thoughts on that as well.  I will say that if I self-publish, it’s not going to be a free pattern, just FYI.

And, um, still a basketfull left to go. 

I played with it a little, and if I don’t end up with three bobbins to ply, I’m going to Navajo-ply it, because it’s really nice as a three-ply.

At MD Sheep and Wool this year, I asked the amazingly awesome Dave over at the Merlin Tree about converting my HitchHiker wheel to his new double-treadle design.  On Sunday (of the festival – not this past Sunday), I dropped Zaphod off with Dave, and last Tuesday, he came home!

Those of you familiar with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will get the additional level of humor in Zaphod being sent for surgery to add an extra limb…

I’m spinning some lovely green merino-silk fiber that the fabulous, awesome, gorgeous etcgirl sent me ages ago in an SP round over on the Knittyboards.  It’s spinning like a dream.  And REALLY thin – have to decide if this is gonna be a three-ply.  I’m still amazed at people who can plan that BEFORE they start spinning.  Plus, hubby’s off playing AirSoft with his buddies again tonight, so I can watch all the cheesy girlie movies I want.  First up was “Mamma Mia”, now to decide what’s on next…

Oh, and in other spinning news, there’s a new addict around.    (And I’ll do a full recap of the whole adventure soon, but you can also see what CBear and her bunny pal had to say about it.)  I still can’t believe she spun THAT evenly on her VERY FIRST ATTEMPT.  Heaven knows what she’s going to produce when she gets more practice under her belt.  Or even perhaps a wheel.  >:D

Dragonflies on the back of the hand:

Flowers on the palm side, which will become stripes above the thumb (the white crochet thread is waste yarn for the thumb.

I’m using some Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Solids I picked up from DBNY eons ago.  The colors are Bark, Turquoise, and Loden.  The original pattern calls for a fourth color as the solid stripe between the cuff and the patterning, but I opted to use the Turquoise and keep it at three colors.

It’s an easy pattern, and it’s fun!  I’m hoping they won’t take me much longer, and then I’ll have fun new dragonfly mittens to wear.

I’m also spinning the next chunk of fiber – some gorgeous merino-silk tussah top that Morgsarah sent me last year when we did a fiber fest swap – I bought for her at MDS&W, she bought for me at Taos.

Plus, I’ve got to have something to keep me busy – the author is hard at work finishing up NaNoWriMo!

(And yes, he IS wearing his new sweater again.  )

ETA:  The mitten is in time out.  I finished it up, started the thumb, and tried it on.  It’s too small.  Dammit.  So, I frogged it back to the blue stripe above the cuff (the cuff fits fine) and will be re-starting with US4 needles instead of US5′s.  I may also be adding an additional repeat of the pattern so that they are a little bit longer, depending on how much of a gauge difference I get.

Closeup:

Isn’t it purty?  It’s very soft, too.  And I think it’s fairly well balanced!  Yay!  It’s drying now after a nice soak in Kookaburra.  There are still some uneven spots, but I still sort of assume those will happen.  I’m hoping I’ll learn to avoid those, but for now… it screams handspun. 

Details – Cloverleaf Farms Merino in “Rose Quartz”, 2 4oz. braids, resulting in 262 yards, 223g/7.875oz. at about 13WPI.  I only lost 1/8 oz!  A record for me!  This is the first official handspun from poor neglected Zaphod, and I’m really happy with it.  I did have to use Elphaba to ply it, because I wanted to use the jumbo flyer, which I don’t have for Zaphod yet (although Dave does make them now…).

That’s somewhere around 85% complete.  I’m hoping to have it done in the next couple of days, because I’m itching to start my next project.  I got a PM on the Knittyboards with a question and a link to a pattern.  (For you non-Ravelers, the pattern is for a pair of stranded mittens with dragonflies up the back of them)  I’ve got some solid Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn that I think I’ll use, as soon as I determine what color combo I want to go with.

Saturday night, Kris and I met Carrie, Alex, his brother Eric, and his friend Tim at our favorite sushi place for dinner, after which the boys went off to shoot at each other (AirSoft is now a bi-monthly thing), and Carrie came back here for a girls’ night.  We watched movies (Benny and Joon, Grease, The Road to El Dorado, and The Muppet Movie), spun, and knit.

I broke out Zaphod for the first time in ages, and I filled an entire bobbin with most of the second braid of some merino I bought last year at… um… I think Maryland Sheep and Wool.  I’m 99% sure that it was there – it’s from Cloverleaf Farms, and the color is Rose Quartz.

I’ve got another bobbin that I filled last year (I started it at SAFF ’07, if I remember right), and I’ve got a little bit of the roving left.  I’m trying to decide if I want to ply it or what.  If I do, I think I’ll run the first bobbin back through to even out the twist a little, AND to revive it, since it’s been on that bobbin for a year now.  I might leave it as a single, though – it’s pretty the way it is, and I’d (obviously) have more yardage that way.

(New bobbin on left, old one on right)

The good thing is that I’ve gotten bitten by the spinning bug again – maybe I’ll start making an actual dent in the two cubbies full of roving that are threatening to take over the craft room…

Also, Carrie told me something interesting Friday night (actually, a couple of something interestings, but only one of which applies here) – Dave at the Merlin Tree has developed a conversion kit to make a Hitchhiker into a double-treadle wheel.  I’m going to have to investigate this, because I definitely find Elphaba easier to use now that she’s a double.  I’m betting Zaphod would be the same way.

*ETA:  You people have seriously smutty minds.  That’s my copy of freaking Entertainment Weekly!  The cover article is on the “50 Sexiest Movies Ever.”  Sheesh. 

(Dammit… blurry again. Sorry!)

I ended up with about 18 wpi, so we’re looking at a fingering/sport weight on average. There are thicker and thinner spots, but that’s a pretty good estimate.

This hank is 48g, so it’s about 40% of the hankies. It came to about 114 yards of three-ply, so I’m hoping that if I can continue at this weight I will end up with about 250-260 yards total. Not exactly enough for Tuscany, which was my dream for this, but realistically, I didn’t have anywhere near enough weight to start with to even attempt that.

I’m really pretty thrilled with it, though – it will end up being something lacy and lovely, even if I don’t know what just yet.

A few people asked me how you turn silk hankies into yarn, and I’ll be happy to have Kris take some pictures if you’d like, but I learned from Amyknitty’s article. The only difference is that she’s clearly more patient than I am and uses a drop spindle, where I’m spinning them on a wheel.

And once again, I am going to demonstrate my adoration of the lovely Penny Karma. She recently posted about doing some retail therapy, and that her usual purchase in those times of need is lip gloss. She felt that the 17 glosses in her purse perhaps meant that she needed to branch out. I felt that 17 was a perfectly reasonable number to carry in one’s purse, and I now endeavor to show her what TRUE lip gloss junkiehood looks like.

This is what’s in my purse right now:

There are 16 of them (16 if you count the double-ended one as two, but we won’t go there), including what I think is every available color of Burt’s Bees Lip Shimmer (Thank you Cristi, Ali, and Roxy for causing that particular addiction). The two Clinique ones on the right? Are the same color – Black Honey. One is a sample (Thank you, Sephora), and then I bought the full-sized one and put it in there, forgetting that the sample was already in there.

Next, let’s look at my dresser.

Here, we have an in-the-wild sighting of some Bath & Body Works “Wet Your Whistle”. This is my daily lip moisturizer – it goes on at the same time as the divine nectar in the jars behind it – Philosophy’s Hope in a Jar. Hands down the best facial moisturizer I’ve EVER used, and now it has SPF 20 in it! Yay! (This brings the count up to 17, btw.)

Inside the makeup drawer (Yes, I have a makeup drawer. Don’t judge me.), we have these lovely little organizers from Ikea. This one has the more color-based lip stuff, and the stuff I use most often (Some of these are lipsticks or liners, not glosses, so they don’t count)…

And this one is the more “pure flavor” or “pure shine” bin.

And because I KNOW you want to get a better look at what’s in them…

From the top left, we have the one and only Dior thing I will EVER own, two tins of three each flavored glosses from on10, another two-ended gloss from Bath & Body Works with one from Tarte, three Urban Decay Lip Gunks (sadly, the don’t make it like this any more) one tube of UD Ultraglide (which replaced the Lip Gunk but isn’t quite the same), an UD XXX Shine, three tubes of DuWop Lip Venom (The pink shimmery one in the little case was a giftie from Roxy). In the second row, we have 4 full-sized and 7 mini Buxom Lips glosses from Bare Escentuals, three full-sized and one mini BE lip glosses, and one BE Lip Guard for a total of 33 in that bin, and a grand total of 50 thus far. The sad thing? The one thing I am wondering is where the silver shimmer Lip Venom is, since the regular and the gold and pink shimmers are here, but I didn’t find the silver…

Again, starting top left, a Sephora Round-A-Pout, some incredibly ancient flavored glosses, a couple of random freebie samples of various and sundry, and 7 flavored glosses from Bath & Body Works. Next, 4 different flavors of BB&W Liplicious, 8 mini and 2 full-sized Urban Decay XXX Shines, and 11 flavored glosses from The Body Shop. That’s another 44, for a total of NINETY-FOUR different lip glosses. And I know for a fact that there is at least one other roaming around here, because my B&BW Mentha Lip Shine is in my knitting bag.

Yeah, I think there may be some level of obsession going on around here. I should really probably clean out those bins…