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.

I Spoke Too Soon

After raving yesterday about how great things were going, this morning it all came back to bite me in the butt. It wasn't any one thing, just a bunch of little things. Let's start from the beginning shall we.

7:30 Cat wants me to feed her so she steps on my face to wake me up. (In retrospect this kind of makes me laugh.) Feed cat, go back to bed.

8:00 Wake up to see if I got an email from my private lesson student who was sick on Monday and may have to cancel today. No email.

9:15 Drag self out of bed. Check email. A response. He is coming today. Decide to stay up because I need to reskein and label yarn before going to see my mom.

9:30 Begin redesigning all labels.

10:00 Finish labels. Put skein of yarn on PVC swift to be wound into a ball. Once it's in ball form I will rewind it onto the swift then twist and label it.

10:05 Realize I began pulling from the wrong end of the yarn. And that the PVC pipe swift sucks at being a swift. It won't turn fast enough and is pulling the yarn.

10:10 Start trying to wind from other end. Realize you had the right end the first time. Yarn begins to tangle.

10:30 * Wind a little yarn onto ball winder, take ball of yarn off the winder, wind by hand through the tangled parts, re-wind onto the ball winder, repeat from * 3-5 times. Decide to finish winding mass o' tangled yarn by hand.

11:00 Take a break to make reservations for birthday dinner with friends on Friday. Find out that there are 5 other large parties there so can't make reservations. They will have to make room for us when we come. Fantastic. (Please note sarcasm.)

11:05 Continue hand winding yarn.

11:30 Teach private percussion lesson.

12:30 Eat lunch.

1:00 Call mom and tell her you got tangled up (literally) this morning and are running late to hang out with her. She tells me not to worry about coming over. She's had a rough morning too. Her inside kitty's heart murmur is worse and a friend's baby boy died of some as yet unknown genetic disease that almost killed his big sister 2 years earlier.

1:15 Finish hand winding 1st skein of yarn. Pull out old, wooden, hand made swift to finish making other balls of yarn. Will use PVC swift (now PVC skeiner only) to make hanks.

1:30-3:30 Finish winding other sock yarn into neat hanks for selling.

3:35 Decide to re-skein lace weight.

3:37 After winding a tiny bit of the lace weight into a ball realize this is going to take a long time and contemplate scrapping the idea. Realize it might be easier to wind yarn from old, wooden swift onto PVC skeiner.

3:38-4:00 Tinker with getting the set up between the swift and skeiner right so that the swift will turn smoothly and the skeiner will catch the yarn correctly.

4:00 Handle on skeiner breaks. Wonder if the screw has been stripped. Realize the screw is fine, it's just been turned so many times in the PVC pipe it's made a bigger hole and now just turns and turns in the little hole without being grippy. This happens, of course, after you already have several, several yards of yarn wound and cannot take the arms of the windmill off to remove the broken handle.
Picture of broke a$$ handle.

4:02-5:15 Continue to mollycoddle yarn onto skeiner. Handle flops in the way. Turn the windmill by hand. Yarn snags on old, wooden swift. Pieces of swift are literally flying off. Stop and stoop to fix swift, then yarn, then start turning skeiner again. Yarn begins to fly off skeiner in loops because it's too tight and is pushing the first few rows over the caps and off into mid-air. Pray that this will just work long enough to finish this one skein. Also, say a lot of words that are unbecoming of a lady.

5:16 Decide never to reskein lace again (unless there is machinery involved).

5:17 Remember that sometimes, when your life is moving in the right direction, Satan will try and attack you the hardest. Feel bad about the curse words. Pray for forgiveness and some relief from horrible, broken equipment. (Not that I feel like some spiritual vigilante armed with dye, yarn, and set of needles but I have prayed a lot about my little business and seen some wonderful results. So maybe I am a spiritual warrior of the yarn-y persuasion.)

5:18-5:35 Picture and label all yarn. (I'd post a picture off all the new colors I dyed, which were really lovely, btw, but the light was terrible and I need to fix them.)

5:37 Feed screaming cat.

5:43 Rush to knit night.

6:00-8:15 Sell lots of yarn, hang out with friends, finish left front of test knit sweater (see below), chat, drink frappacino, have a good time, make up for most of the crappy morning.
8:30 Drive through Wendy's and get Caesar salad for dinner.

8:45 Eat.

9:05-9:45 Upload pictures, cuddle with cat, write blog post.

Life in Fast Forward

Have you ever felt like the foot of your life has hit the gas pedal and you're just along for the ride? Yeah, that's me right now. For the past few weeks I've done nothing but try and stay afloat with the demands I'm trying to meet. But it's good. Really, better than I could have hoped for. More on that in a bit. Let's back up a little shall we?

I spent several days with my parents over the last week just hanging out. I was at my former high school for a workshop for school so I stayed with them for a few nights. I love my parents and I love being at their house. It's a relaxing experience for me and I'm glad I live only 45 minutes away so I can visit often.

My parent's dog, Luke, is a huge baby. He's 53 pounds and thinks he's a lap dog.
He'll start by putting his paws on your leg and then, one foot at a time, push himself all the way into your lap. Very sneaky. Except that it's really hard for 53 pounds of fur to be sneaky.

During the morning sessions at the workshop I knit. Usually for about 2 hours while I listened to speakers talk about reading and writing. One morning I was sitting next to a very nice woman who commented that I was smart for bringing my knitting with me. I asked her if she knit and she said that she had in the past and that she was planning on taking it back up when the weather got cooler. We didn't really talk much but as the speaker was wrapping up she accidentally knocked into my binder. Unfortunately my knitting notes and pencil were sitting on top. I grabbed for them and, in the process, stabbed myself with my metal DPN I was using to knit a sock with. For a split second I thought, I've impaled myself with a needle. When I glanced and saw I'd just scrapped the surface pretty deeply my next thought was, I hope I didn't bleed on my knitting.
Thankfully I had neither impaled myself nor bleed on my knitting. But a needle injury on the web of your finger doesn't feel too good. It's all healed now though and, thankfully, it didn't affect my knitting.

I got to test my PVC swift and...
it works! I tried to skein 4 balls at once but the skeins wouldn't stay separated enough so I had to unwind, untangle, and individually skein each ball. I don't mind though because it still goes *so* much faster than my old method. And the skeins come out much more uniform. I had to glue the back leg of the stand to the base since the windmill gets front heavy and was pulling the leg out of the base. It didn't help that the connecting pieces on the base aren't 100 flat and even with one another. I had already thrown out the PVC glue so I just used my Gorilla wood glue. Gorilla can fix anything.

I got to try it out yesterday when I dyed late into the evening.
I've got these in my bedroom with a little fan on them trying to get them dried before tomorrow night. I'm taking them to knit night tomorrow. The ladies wanted to see some of my goodies since I'm running a 26% off sale at my shop this week in honor of my 26th birthday. If you order online just use the code "birthday" when you check out.

My dyeing has really taken off lately. This the area that I feel like has been put on fast forward. Every month I sell a bunch of sock yarn at guild. This past weekend I meet with a woman who is designing a pattern for my yarn. Today I walked into my LYS, Rare Purls, and my friend who owns the store immediatley asked me for some sock yarn to sell. At last count I have only 5 or 6 new skeins of sock yarn. I need to pump up production! It's great, lots of work, but great.

As for knitting, there was the sock I started last week during my workshop.
It's, um, very colorful. I'm making it out of odd little balls of yarn I have sitting around so it's gotten kind of wacky.

Most of efforts have been placed in finishing the test knit sweater.
Sorry, really crappy sideways picture. I've got the body and back finished and the right front started. I think the fronts will go fast. Then I have sleeves and a collar to do. Will I have it done by the end of the month? Um, no comment at this time. I've pretty much stopped sleeping though so we'll see.

Today I caught Penelope sleeping sitting on the edge of the chair.
Just a little cuteness for you :)

WWKiP Day

Saturday and Sunday were World Wide Knit in Public Days. Our regular group of Noble Knitters who usually meet at Barnes and Noble on Wednesday met up at California Pizza Kitchen for lunch and then gathered in the little bit of shade around the fountain near B and N for some knitting in public.
Please do not provoke the knitters.
Keep hands and arms 20 feet away at all times.

We had a great time hanging out, knitting, and talking.

On Saturday I also started work on a PVC pipe swift. The swift I had been using was just not holding up like I had hoped. This model is a combination swift and skeiner.
I finished it tonight but I'm waiting for a bolt that I had to glue down to dry. It kept loosening whenever I turned the windmill. It's not totally professional but I think it will work better for me. I can't wait to try it out and I just got in an order of yarn that needs to be dyed so I can try it out by the end of the week. I also ordered some new dyes that should be here by Wednesday. Exciting stuff!

My knitting is still going, though slowly. I've had to throw all my efforts into getting the test knit sweater done by the end of the month (speaking of...where did this month go?!? It's already half way through!). I did start a new sock though. I'm in professional learning all this week and I needed something to work quietly on before (and maybe during) some of the larger meetings (I don't knit during our smaller breakout sessions though it would have kept me awake better this afternoon I'm sure).

I thought I'd stick in a picture of Penelope since she hasn't been seen lately.
She got groomed last week so she's looking tiny. Here she is curling up on her blanket one night trying to sleep. It looks like she's sucking her thumb. Currently she is yelling at me to get her treats so I guess I better give in or I won't be able to even edit this post.