Brothers

So tomorrow my handsome bro Ted is coming all the way from OH to spend a long weekend. I'm very excited, it's the first time family will be coming for a visit since we left the mennonite type church we were in and they still are. He'll be meeting our pastor so pray for us. I will also be knitting my first pair of monkey socks in the Smooshy I bought. I finished 2 pairs of socks in the last 2 days, including one long lonely ss in Rivendell. So all in all it promises to be a busy and good weekend.

Smooshy

I got 1 skein of Dream in Color Smooshy in Deep Seaflower,whew, that's a long name, in the mail today and I am contemplating what to do with it. I HAD to have it, so here it is in all it's bluey squishiness and I feel inadequate.
It's a fingering yarn so I have a lot of options and I am queing up projects on Ravelry to consider. I shall meditate on the issue and let you know when Smooshy's fate is decided.

I'm being picked on.....pout

I am a yarn snob, I do not apologize. Apparently this offends some people, they can feel free not read what I write or post. Snob usually gives the impression that one is determined and could be rude on occasion. This is not my intent but I don't want to be slammed for preferring Cashmere to Acrylic. I do not have gobs of money but I save for what's worth my time to spend knitting. So as my blog is called I AM A YARN SNOB!!!!!!! Don't come if your knitterly life revolves around Red Heart's newest yarn line, you will not be happy. I refer to yarns such as these as NOC(Nails on Chalkboard), vile string posing as yarn that I will not allow to contaminate my stash. So there!

Sea Silk

Aah, Sea Silk. Doesn't sound like something from a fairy tale, or the name of a sea nymph? I just ordered 2 skeins of HandMaiden Sea Silk in Moss and 1 in Rose Garden, laceweight and I can't wait till it comes in. I've heard a lot about it from fellow snobs and I also ordered a book called "Knitting Traditional Lace Shawls " by Martha Waterman. I had a copy but I can't find it anywhere for the last 8 months. Since I have this amazing yarn coming I want to have an amazing set of patterns to choose from. If you're looking for an incredible book of lace patterns I've never seen a book that equals it.
Soon those shimmering strands will be slipping through my fingers and I think I'll finally have a lace project that will hold my attention long enough to finish. Be assured that lifelines will be a staple part of this project. :)

Floaters

So yesterday I began having a weird vision thing going on. I was happily knitting a baby blanket for a friend when I saw a pencil eraser sized orange stain on my blanket. Panicked I looked more closely at it and it was gone! This orange spot has come back every few minutes, sometimes several times a minute for 2 days now. I thought it was eye strain but the eye doctor I talked to said that eye strain doesn't cause colored spots, especially in the same eye.
I've never needed them but maybe I need glasses now although I'll go with contacts myself. I've been having horrible migraines for 5 weeks now, even Tylenol #3's don't work! So, maybe it's my eyes. Keep me in your thoughts.

RAK

So, I've set up on the RAK group on Ravelry today. I've RAK'd once already and I thought it'd be fun to do again. I've already found two people that will love stuff I have. It's a lot of fun to know that you are causing joy in other knitterly hearts.

Right now my camera is not operational due to my 2 y.o. pouring chocolate sauce on it. I'm not lying. But I am working on 3 projects. First is a pair of Embossed Leaves Socks out of Louet Gems in teal, going great. Second is a spiral baby blanket out of light blue Lily Chin Gramercy, and lastly the Abotanicity sweater in Aracanuia Ranco Multi. Whew, I'm busy.
I am waiting for a back order on WEBS to come in, sock yarn. Has anyone else gone online and bought yarn when they're down???
My LYS is 1 hr away so WEBS gets a lot of my business. Although my LYS definitly does well when I'm there.

Did you know that Ravelry has a group jusr for Yarn Snobs like me!! Yea! No recounting the charms of....eww...Red Heart....Caron...Hobby Lobby..or ee gads, Walmart!!

If you're offended you were forewarned, I am a yarn snob.

The luck of the knitter

Well the Karabella Zodiac yarn I ordered to complete the amount of yarn I needed came in yesterday! I apprehensively opened the package hoping against hope that it would match or at least be close enough to be practically un-noticeable. It was perfect, I was very relieved to say the least, just for the anyhow of it I checked the lot number. IT WAS THE SAME LOT........WHAT ARE THE CHANCES!!!!!I ordered off the internet from a random sight and got the same lot! I think my friends in the knitting realm will rejoice with me.

I feel like getting slightly pentacostal about this. Excuse me while I go gaze in amazement and awe at that yarn.

Miss me?

Well, I have been on a spiritual journey, a trek if you will, for enlightenment about the meaning of life..............................nah, I'm not buying it either. Actually I'm just lazy.

Enough about me, I have been knitting but not anything I really felt like posting.

So now though I feel like seriously b......g bout,dye lots. I was dying for this Karabella Zodiac, 100%
mercerized, soft pink, slight sheen.Didn't buy enough, am finding that no one in the world carries this yarn. Actually I have finally found some but not until I almost lost my mind. Obviously it will not be the same lot but I am hoping for a decent match. Why can't just dye millions in the same lot and be done with it?
I have also been wanting to make the "Nothing But A T-shirt" pattern. Who could possibly mess that up? Me that's who. Although my LYS owner assure me that row guage didn't really matter as long as I had stitch gauge. When it came time to start the armholes the poor shirt was around the area of my nursing apparataus(however you spell it). The armholes would have enveloped my shoulders. I a retiring to nurse my wounds..hopefully I'll be back before I lose my mind entirely.

Guilt trips and knitting for babies.

Short and sweet, not me my fans but newborn babies. Babies are sweet and cute and adorable, and frustrating to knit for. You can make a 0-3m sweater and have the new baby come out at 9lbs. Or knit a complicated victorian lace cap that cannot fit the cone-headed munchkin that's supposed to have worn it.
Buuuut, what if you are knitting for the baby because it's family but the father hates you. This coming blessing is a boy and his father has tried to get our family kicked out of our extended family because of religious differences. He still won't speak to us 2yrs. later. His wife is alright(she's James' sis) and since the baby will be my nephew he will be knitted for just like anyone else's baby.
So, is it o.k. to knit a complicated, beautiful cabled baby pullover to......impress and guilt trip dad for being such a jerk ?
I have forgiven him but he's still a jerk. I'm not mad at him anymore, just acknowledging facts.

Hoarding...otherwise known as inexplcable knitter behaviour.

Just thought I would gloat and show off my treasure's from Atlanta. Don't asked how much it cost,I had an accident where yarn jumped into my basket...so did patterns,books and needles but that is beside the point.
The accident further involved my credit card being swiped(not stolen, but used). Since I endured this most beneficial of accidents I'll share my profits thereof.

Firstly, a Numma Numma yarn called Toasty Boo. Aren't those great names? How on earth to people come up with this stuff? The color is called "presto", also very cool.
This fingering yarn is destined to become the Rivendell socks, it's not nearly so spinachy looking in person.

Nextly, a 100% silk laceweight, the yarn is

Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Silk Lace in "honey"

This delectable yarn is going to be a gift shawl for my BF's bun in the oven.

And lastly...I have no idea what this is for, so far nothing is worthy of it, but I had to have it. I'm pretty sure it'll be something for me,(I need this yarn!).

It is Araucania Ranco Multi, isn't it breathtaking? I bought 6 skeins,well...I had to have enough for, whatever and since there are no dye lots one has to be careful to pick resembling skeins to have a decent piece of knitwear.
I have yet to wind this yarn, it is so Monet-esque that I am waiting for the perfect moment.
Perhaps a beach sunset with my winder and swift attached to the dock....................it'll be my kitchen table but at least I can look at a postcard or something.

Happy Winding,
~Meredith

Celebrity..with half my face.

Just a short note. Whilst standing in line with a fellow knitter whom I did not know but was immediatly able to begin a meaningful discussion (you know how it is knitters), a reporter from the Atlanta Journal with a huge honking camera suddenly appeared behind amy right shoulder.
I almost lost a stitch on my sock, which would have ruined my attitude right away.
She asked our names and where we lived and if we knew each other.
The reporter then walked around us in a circle and took about 10 pictures, it was weird,she was circling around us and crouching like we were a strange new species of human. But it was nice too, finally someone who seemed interested without saying insulting things.
We almost lost our place in line because we were standing still for her. I was trying to look serious, impervious to constant flashes and the crouching reporter, and so, my sister says, I look obsessive over finishing my sock.
We are in the paper (wow) and the online version too. You can see us at

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/living/stories/2008/04/06/knit_0407.html

If you enlarge the picture you can see it better.

So many things happened that day, I may scrapbook over it, then again, I hate scrapbooking.

I'll just rattle on here.

There she is...Ms.Yarn Harlot

Jeez, where do I begin. O.k., so like a month and a half ago I signed up to go a speech/book-signing in Atlanta. Mrs. Stephanie Pearl Mc-Phee, which,no, I do not think is a cursedly long name, was there courtesy of Knitch one of the best yarn stores I have ever been in.
I was meeting a friend from the same geological area even though we had never met. Such was our determination to have a friend and make sure we fought off others to get good seats. BTW, it was Penny who actually did the seat getting/claiming/fighting, I shopped till almost the last minute,thanks Penny.
We got friggen good seats! Second row almost directly in front of the podium! A hallowed place. There were, they told us, 700 knitters there!! You could believe it when standing in line at Knitch or on the street waiting to get into the theater, which BTW was located behind a Ben and Jerry's you actually had to go through the store to the back where the theater entrance was. Somebody smell conspiracy here?


Here is Penny and I, or is it me and Penny, or perhaps Penny and me..oh crap who cares.I hate self-taken pictures, I have a face that looks like a squashed pancake, oh well, I was a very happy pancake. I tried to take a picture of Stephanie holding her sock and taking a picture of all of us but I couldn't quite get it.And you can't really see the sock, it's behind the microphone. Here's my sock staring adoringly at Stephanie's sock and wishing she could trade places.


Stephanie's voice is lower than I thought it would, which sounds stupid, I don't know what I expected her to sound like. She did say arse a couple of times, which really was great:)
I can't really tell too much of the talk because I could never be as funny and meaningful as she was but also because I don't want to ruin anyone else's time.

Here's a pic of Stephanie signing books.


Now this my personal favorite picture. Me and the YH herself holding one another's socks. The best thing about this is when as we were posing and shifting around Stephanie sqeezed the yarn and looked down at the sock and asked me what yarn it was and......said that she liked it, it's pretty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG, I nearly fainted from joy. I lowly knitter that I am had picked a yarn that she liked! She hadn't, as far as I heard asked about anyone else's yarn but she liked mine!
I know this makes me insufferable or mildly insane but it was a 'flappy-hands, fan girl' moment that will probably never happen again. Not for lack of trying though :)
I had books signed and it the trip was definitely worth the 3.5 hours drive. I'll post about my yarn aquisitions later.

2 for the road

Well, here is my first ever, really truly blog post. I have a Xanga sight but my poor friends are all non-knitters and cannot comprehend why I post ravings about the latest cashmere or Kauni yarn that came in the mail.
So I decided to begin my own knitting/crocheting blog where I can blah,blah,blah all I want.
Thanks for stopping by.