Ten on Tuesday

I saw this “Ten on Tuesday” on somebody’s blog and thougt I would give it a try. I’ll probably get bored of it after awhile but for now it was kind of fun to make my ten list. And since it feels funny to do a post wihtout a picture, I included a few pictures taken from the butterfly exhibit at Epcot's flower festival. You can click on pictures to biggify.

This week is 10 Favorite Time Wasters.

1. Blog Reading- I spend a lot of time reading blogs. I do love reading blogs but I really lose concept of time when I’m clicking around through them. Sadly only a very small percentage of them do I actually leave comments on but yes I spend a lot of time lurking in blog land.

2. Blog Posting- I also spend a good bit of time making posts for my own blog. It’s funny because I don’t post most of them. My issue is that I know that a lot of my family who are spread out all over the place read my blog for family updates but then I feel uncomfortable sometimes posting too much information especially about Tyde and Dax so they never make it on the blog.



3. Ravelry- What can I say, if you decide to just log in to ravelry to check that one thing, don’t be surprised if an hour later you find out you’ve been side tracked and still haven’t checked that one thing you were originally going to check on.

4. Online Yarn shops- I will visit online yarn shops and play around with the numbers of, if I used this yarn for this project how much would it cost me, then I will go to another yarn and do the same thing. After spending a lot of my time trying to figure out which yarn would be the best deal I end up getting nothing because I realize that I already have a good bit of yarn and I shouldn’t be buying more. Please tell me I'm not the only person who does this.

5. TV -I’m really not much of a TV watcher. I don’t have regular shows that I watch each week but I do get sucked into shows all the time.

6. Baths

7. Book Stores- I love going to a book store but don’t usually do it if I have other things I need to get done. There is no way I can just run in and out of a book store.

8. Library- It’s funny because I work in a library, you would think I wouldn’t want to spend free time in a library but I do. It’s very similar to the book store affect.


9. Going through the yarn stash- I like to look at my yarn stash but it’s best done when I have time to really enjoy it. I usually do it whenever I'm close to finishing a project.

10. Magazines- Another part of my book issue. I love looking through magazines. Even if they aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know, I will still spend the time to read it again.

Nifty Thing

Sorry I had to repost this one. I was playing with the font size and it got way out of hand :).

Have you guys seen one of these nifty things before?

I first saw this little heaven sent item in January when my sister showed me hers. When she first showed it to me I thought, “oh, yet another gadget for knitting.” I have several gadgets already and I really need to cut back on spending money on gadgets so I just gave it a “hmmm.” Well that came back to haunt me.

You see, I almost always have some kind of knitting project with me. You never know when you’re going to be stuck somewhere with nothing to do. And every knitter knows that yucky feeling of having to wait for something or somebody and not have something to knit while you wait, so to avoid that I usually always have some kind of work in progress with me. My choice is a sock and it is usually in my bag with a gazillion other things. And yes occasionally I will lose some stitches because the yarn has slipped off the needles. This can be annoying at times but I’m ok with it. Normally I just slip the stitches back on and off I go again. But then there are projects like the Bayerische socks. Believe me you do not want to lose a stitch, not even a little one on those socks. After losing stitches way to many times I decided that I really need one of those little nifty gadgets. It would save my sanity.

Soooo, when we were at the sheep and wool festival, I reminded my sister several times that if she sees one of those nifty little things that she showed me back in January buy it asap and I would pay her back. We never did see one but she must have got the hint that I really, really wanted one of those nifty little things because I received a wonderful package this week that had not one but two in it. I am so so happy with this little gadget.
Yeah, no more dropped stitches!


The packaging says “DP Wip Tubes”. I guess that is what it’s called. It’s made of a thick cardboard tube that has a slit in it that you slide your project into. It has another tube that is slightly bigger to slip over the original tube. Everything is held in place and I love it.

The grey sock in these pictures is the second sock of bayerische. I’m about to start the heel, finally. The purple one is Dax’s. She is using a pattern called the mystic sea and I’m not sure what the yarn is called except I do know it is superwash.

Stash Enhancement

This is most of the fiber that Dax and I brought home from the MS&W Festival.

Merino Top from Ohio Valley Natural Fibers. I got 3 lbs of this. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I made this purchase. Actually I know what I was thinking, I wanted to make sure I had enough roving to make a sweater. Have any of you heard of a 3 lb sweater before? I'm not sure why I didn't think about what a sweater actually might weigh before I bought all this. Turns out I was told later that it takes about 1 lb of roving to make a sweater. I have enough here for 3 sweaters. Yikes.


Merino from Spinners Hill. I absolutely loved this booth. They had so many nice colors of roving. I had such a hard time deciding on which roving to chose. I bought 1 lb of the blue roving first. I managed to make it back to the booth later on Sunday and most of the rovings were gone, which was just as well, I didn't need to spend more money on rovings. And then I saw the autumn colored roving and bought it to.


Gale's Art Merino 8oz

Pencil Roving: Sorry, Don't Remember This Vendor's Name

Angora/Alpaca/Wool blend 2oz from Wild Meadow Angora


Socks That Rock, and Sheep to Shoe Kit from The Fold.We avoided The Fold on Saturday because they had such a huge line but on Sunday we visited them. They had been picked over but Dax found a skein of STR that she really liked and I went ahead and got the Sheep to Shoe kit.


Cormo Fleece 5.5 lbs This stuff is so nice and clean. Oh my, it has to be the cleanest fleece I have ever gotten, very very nice. I keep taking this fleece out just so I can admire it. Rohan really likes it to.


This is the only yarn I got. The yarn to the left is sock yarn from Misty Mountain Farm. They also had some lovely baby alpaca roving that I almost got but decided that I have more than enough to keep me busy for ahmmm, a while. The yarn on the right is from Brooks Farm. It was on sale. Not to mention it is oh so soft and just lovely yarn.


Tess Silk Yarn and Tess Ribbon Yarn from TessThese are Dax's purchases from the Festival. She had saved money that she got from Christmas and her birthday to spend at the festival and this is what she got. The ribbon yarn is for a cabled tank top and the silk is for a shawl.


Mini Relic Purse from the Renaissance Booth. My reciept says the vendor for this is White Wolf and Phoenix. The green one is Dax's the blue one is mine.


Pencil Roving: Don't Remember the name of this one either.Dax wanted this and it was very reasonable priced. She has been spinning it on my drop spindle. She has been enjoying playing with it, there is no drafting involved.

Maryland

These last couple of weeks have been hectic for me. I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel though and things should start slowing down after this weekend (I hope).

I was getting pretty excited about our trip to Maryland and then caught something with a nasty cough. For about a week I tried everything to get rid of that cough and finally decided it was time to go to the Dr. He gave me some antibiotics and cough medicine. All I can say is antibiotics rule. I felt so much better after taking them.

As for the Festival it went by way to fast. This was my fourth time to go to this festival and I have to say it is still overwhelming. There is just so much to see and do there. This year there were five in our group. Dax and I met up with my sister and her daughter and a friend of my sister also joined us. We camped out at Patapsco State Park. I did take a lot of pictures but wished I had taken more.

Some highlights from the trip:

-The dogwood trees were in bloom at the State Park, very pretty.

-I enjoyed meeting the couple who camped beside us. The lady was nice enough to show us some of her spindles that she collected from the festival and we got a bonus of entertainment when we heard harp music being played from their campsite. We looked over and saw the gentleman with her playing a harp.

-I really liked the Guest booth this year. It was a booth representing Medieval and Renaissance Textiles.
Bobbin lace that was being displayed at the Medieval and Renaissance Textiles booth.

Same booth, tablet weaving display. My sister calls this card weaving.

-I loved seeing all the hand knit items people who were visiting the festival were wearing.

-I also enjoyed seeing all the animals.
Checking out the alpaca or maybe I should say alpaca checking out Dax.

She must have met the alpaca's approval. She let Dax pet her.

-I have a lot, I mean A LOT of pictures of sheep from this trip. Dax took my camera to the barn with sheep in it and came back with pictures of nothing but sheep.
This must have been one of her favorites because there was several pictures of this one in the camera. She told me his/her hair reminded her of Tyde.

I however thought this one had more of the Tyde look.

The girls taking a break.

We kept to the tradition of peanut butter and jelly sandwich picnic style lunches while we were there but decided to treat ourselves to some “fair” food before we left on Sunday.

-A big thank you to my sister's friend Beth for showing us how to do Kumihimo.

-I can now say I have more roving/fleece in my stash then yarn. I think I better get off the computer and start spinning.

I hope everybody has a great week.