Not Peru

But still a pretty good post. I will get around to Peru but I just finished putting 125 pictures on Facebook so now I have to get motivated to pick out 10 or so to go here on the blog. Today I'm placating you with pictures of yarn and knitting.

Saturday I dyed almost 5 pounds of yarn. I just finished reskeining the 6 new colorways tonight.
I really like this color, Double Split.
When my yarn supplier gets bulky yarn back in stock I'm thinking I'll dye some bulky in this color and use it to make a sweater for Warm Woolies.

This is another color I really like, Building Blocks.
This is a repeat color and it seems to have come out pretty true to the first batch. I'll be selling these (plus about 6 other colorways) at the August Atlanta Knitting Guild meeting next week and also in my online store. Plus, a whole whack of yarn will be going to my LYS, Rare Purls!

I forgot to take a picture of the color I decided to keep for myself (though I almost stole 2 or 3 other skeins). I think I'll wait to show you until I've picked an appropriate pattern. Something sophisticated...

I started working on a Mystery Sweater (#3) for Warm Woolies. There was a knit along for this that took place earlier this month but I got a late start. The pattern is interesting but also simple enough that I've made a decent amount of progress in a little less than a week (I'm working on clue 3 of 5 at the moment).
Penelope came to "help" me take a picture.

Here she is "helping" me with the skeiner earlier this evening.

Welcome!

Welcome to the world Britt Douglas!
Sitting on Paw Paw's lap.

My new cousin arrived on July 22 at 5:23 p.m. He's a whooping 9 lbs. 7 oz. and 21" long. We're all very glad that he arrived safely and quickly.
The oldest grandchild and the youngest; 26 years old and 26 minutes old.

Hi My Name is Melissa

...and I have a half finished sock in my purse.

So, I'm back safe and sound from Peru! We had an amazing time and there were so many great moments. I took over 500 pictures. Once I have the chance to sort through all them I'll try and post a little recap here on my blog. I did come back with some goodies that I just had to share with you...

Baby alpaca yarn. 20 skeins. For $30. US dollars. Normal retail value here in the states: $7. A skein. Pretty much the best deal of my life. And it's all thanks to my friend J.M. who spotted the little yarn shop at the market. He's pretty much one of my favorite people now.

Now that I'm back I need to do a little inventory of the projects I have going on.

Finished:
The Oat Couture Prairie blanket for my (soon to arrive) cousin Britt. I finished this up early Sunday morning. I was feeling a little bad, like maybe because I hadn't finished the blanket Britt was just hanging out until I got done. Now that I'm done, it's on! I used 4 skeins plus a tiny little bit of a 5th skein of some acrylic yarn that was gifted to me. It's antique yarn (Caron Wintuk4) but it softened up nicely in the dryer. Plus it held up nicely in the washer.

Unfinished:
A rather large pair of socks. I started these some time ago for Warm Woolies. This is the infamous "stabbing sock." Before I can finish these I have to find the notepad that I was keeping track of the rows and measurements. I think it might be in my car. At least I'm hoping that's where it is.

Rivulets socks that have been on hold since I had to finish the test knit sweater and the aforementioned baby blanket. these see occasional action when I'm not working on other large projects.

Next up in the queue is to begin the third mystery sweater KAL for Warm Woolies. It's been going for about 3 or 4 months but I haven't so much as picked out yarn. That will be for tomorrow. Along with laundry.

Slow Going

That seems to be the theme around here tonight. Penelope got her teeth cleaned today. They had to give her pain meds in addition to the anesthesia because they had to remove a rotten root (the tooth had already fallen out...on a side note she was already missing several random teeth, unbeknown to me). She's been falling around all night and looking dazed. She was able to eat her dinner though, which is a good sign. Just a little update, she's walking around a lot better now but she's still pretty sleepy looking.

I've been working on a never ending baby blanket. I'm on the last skein (in the correct dye lot) but I think I will have to dip into the 5th skein (in a different dye lot, yet it looks exactly the same to (my) naked eye). The pattern is the Oat Couture Prairie Blanket and I'm officially over halfway through. It needs to be done before the intended baby arrives (ETA: July 17). However...

I'm leaving to go on a mission trip to Peru tomorrow! I'm debating taking the blanket in my carry-on and finishing it while I'm down there. I'm going to take my Rivulets socks in my carry on. Gah! I'm so close to being finished with this blanket, and yet, so far. I guess we'll see. I will be sure to take lots of pictures while I'm gone and post a few here when I get back.

In the meantime, if all the great bloggers I read could hold off on blogging and if everyone could just not email me for about a week that would be great. Otherwise I'll have to spend the rest of my short summer catching up.

Belated Birthday and FO

Happy (Late) Birthday America!

Saturday morning (after driving back from New Orleans all day Friday) I woke up very early (after, unfortunately, not getting much sleep due to a hot room) and walked the Peachtree Road Race. I finished in about an hour and 40 minutes which I think was pretty good considering that the most I "trained" was about 2 miles. I got a t-shirt (in my size) so I was very happy.
Afterwards I went home and "grilled out" on my George Foreman so I observed the time honored traditions of July 4th.
Yesterday I was finally able to finish the test knit sweater.
I'm so glad that I finished this sweater. Unfortunately, I finished it the day after my brother left town so I couldn't get him to try it on and model it. It looks really good though. I need to get some pictures in better light and send them in to the lady I'm test knitting for. I may also try and wrangle one of my friends into trying this on for a few pictures...

Penelope was very interested in the picture taking.
She looks pretty evil in this picture. She's slightly nicer in person, I assure you.

A Birthday and More

I know I've been tardy in posting to the blog so I'm going to give a quick update on what's been happening. A Cliff's Note version if you will. I'll try and throw in all the good bits.

Last Friday I celebrated my 26th birthday with a large group of my friends at a pub in Atlanta. I was really pleased that so many people were able to make it. There were lots of pictures by my friend Nick (who labeled himself "photographer" for the evening) but many of them were blurry and some were incriminating so I've posted a nice tame one from the beginning of the evening.
My friend Tracy, me and my friend Hannah. Overall I had about 15 people show up which was nice. We had a really fun time and it was a nice way for me to celebrate.

This week I'm in New Orleans again with my future SIL, Brandi, visiting my brother. Have I taken any pictures from earlier in the week? Of course not. The first ones I took were today in the Pontchartrain Avenue cemetery.


I have a morbid fascination with cemeteries. They are incredibly beautiful to me and I always get great pictures.

Other than traipsing around burial grounds, Brandi and I have been sleeping in, eating lunch with my brother, and seeing the town. On Wednesday I roped her into finding a yarn shop. I used Knit Map to pinpoint 4 yarn shops in New Orleans which seems like slim pickin's for such a large city. Though, I think it might be too hot to knit here. Yeah, I really just said that. The heat index has been over 100 for the whole week so I can almost see how that's possible. Anyways, I found 2 that seemed to be fairly close to where we were, Quarter Stitch and the Garden District Needleworks store. Quarter Stitch looked to be the more frequented of the 2 so I talked Brandi into riding down to the store with me. Little did I know that the Quarter Stitch was located not just in the French Quarter (I guess the name should have tipped me off) but in the heart of the French Quarter. Needless to say we got to see Bourbon, Decatur, and Dauphine Streets all in the middle of the day. And I got to pay $10 to park for 45 minutes. I did find some nice yarn though.
The packaging was too pretty to open and show you so I'll get pictures later. There's 2 skeins of Malabrigo worsted and a skein of Ella Rae sock yarn. The lady at the counter was very nice and the shop, while small, made the most of the their space. Plus they had a luscious pick of Mal that would rival a much bigger store.

Today (Thursday) I wanted to check out the other store, Garden District Needleworks. It was only about a mile from my brother's apartment so Brandi and I thought we'd walk. This proved to be a not so great decision when about half a mile later I'd sweated through all my clothes and developed a terrible headache from the heat. We pushed on though and made good time to the store. I was ready to enter into the air conditioning and spend some time looking at yarn when I noticed that the store was closed. Now, I normally do not say unkind things about yarn stores, even if they aren't really my taste, but I was pretty ticked about this particular store being closed. Why? Because they are normally closed Sun-Wed. And this week they weren't open a single day. Why? The 4th of July. Not Christmas, not New Years, not Easter. The 4th of July. I'm as patriotic as the next person but seriously?!?! I would say 90% of businesses are having a normal work week this week because the 4th falls on Saturday. I could even understand being closed on Friday. But all week?!?! How this place makes enough money to even stay open is beyond me. Especially since they are only open 4 days a week to begin with. I would think during the summer they would be open more because of people vacationing. And the worst part was that they looked like they had some nice yarns I would have happily purchased. Oh well. Their loss. Unfortunately, by this point I was really hot, really tired, and my head really hurt. And we still had a mile to walk back. About a block from the apartment I spotted a gelato place though and remedied my pains with my favorite treat.

My brother and Brandi also helped me celebrate my birthday while I've been down here. Monday (I know, I'm going backwards, so sue me) we went to Superior Grill which has excellent Mexican cuisine. They gave me a Vera Bradley bag that matches my purse they gave me for Christmas and a knitting book.
It has some really cute stuff in it! There's some socks that I can't wait to try for charity as well as an afghan and some baby stuff and a scarf...ok, so there's a lot I want to knit from this book.

Right now I'm going to work on the test knit sweater (see previous blog posts) and watch some T.V. After having to reknit parts of the first sleeve several times I'm breezing through the second sleeve and I'm hoping to have the sweater finished and photographed by this weekend.