Purl, Interrupted

busy day!

a busy day for the fiber arts here in the great north! first, i went to the yarn expo with a friend this afternoon. definitely a little underwhelming after going to stitches last year (er, 14 vendors instead of 2 million), but nice to see so many fiber folks (including a bunch who I've met before), and i got hooked up with some things i wasn't aware of. i joined the anchorage spinners and weavers guild -- they were there doing spinning demos, which really made me want to go home and spin. and while i resisted the urge to buy any more yarn, i did buy some merino-silk blend roving to spin and dye.

when i got home, i had a surprise letter from karrie, who responded to my blog post about vest patterns by sending me a vest pattern! hooray! thanks, karrie. i have something funny to send her back. was going to wait til xmas, but i think i will send it now.

anyway, all this fiber excitement prompted me to pull out suzie for the first time since my surgery. i spent about an hour spinning before we went out for the evening. i'm slowly spinning a bobbin full of one of the fleeces i bought this summer. it's a black shetland fleece that was really well skirted so i'm spinning it "in the grease," which is going well. but slowly. i still only have about 1/3 of a bobbin full. but i'm so tempted to wind it into a skein and wash it to see how it comes out.

i should probably set it aside and spin some of the light-colored fleece or white roving i have, because i'm really feeling like it's time to do some dyeing! so many cool dyed things at the yarn expo -- very inspiring.

it was nice to get back onto the wheel again. i really wanted to try drafting with my right hand (to give my post-surgical left shoulder a break), but i couldn't get the hang of it and kept switching back. nonetheless, i was really glad to be spinning again, and really felt like just staying in tonight continuing to play.

instead, however, we went to a friend's 30th birthday party. it was a spy-themed party, and was a lot of fun. lots of guys got really dressed up 007-style, and several girls went very alias. there were also misc. bond characters ... Odd-Job, Jaws, the girl who died in Goldfinger. and some clever ninjas. Mr. Purl,Interrupted went as Dr. Evil -- with shaved head and my cat purse as Mr. Biggelsworth. As for me, I wore a name tag that said "hello, my name is ... Valerie Plame." Which I thought was a stroke of genius, personally. I completed the outfit with a fake knife stuck in my back that said "Karl" on one side and "Scooter on the other. It made me really sad that I had to explain to several people what my costume meant. Doesn't anyone read the news anymore?

anyway, that's the news on the home front. it's chilly here, by the way. the car's thermometer said it was 31 degrees when we got back in the car after the party tonight. brrrr. knit faster.

this vest might save your life

Is this vest too boring? Actually I guess boring isn't even it -- maybe I just think the armholes are a little wierd.

Anyway, I'm thinking about making myself a vest. Why?, you ask. Because it's damn cold here in the far north. And I need warm things to wear to work. And everywhere else. To stay alive.

It does not help matters that Mr. Purl,Interrupted and I had a cozy Friday night watching the Discovery Science Channel, which featured a show called "Extreme Survival: Cold," in which a very crazy Dutch man undergoes all manner of bizarre human experimentation to study the effects of hypothermia. What a nut. Most of these experiments involved having to do mindless motor-skill tasks (putting little pegs in little holes) while sitting shirtless in a cold and windy room. But they did have him try this experimental heated vest (see -- if you read this far, you get rewarded by seeing the theme here!) and when the vest was on his hands stayed warm even without gloves.

So what I learned from the Science Channel is that I need to knit myself a nice warm vest!

kill me now

too bad "flu season" seems to have arrived several weeks before "free flu shot day" at work. please kill me now. i stayed home from work today after learning last night that NyQuil doesn't always live up to its fever-reducing promises. too sick to do anything, include knit. what the hell kind of "day off" is that?

it looks like the fever's on its way out, and i have to go in to work tomorrow. hopefully i'll be all better in time for saturday's knitting guild meeting!

one last set of photos

Okay, and since you've been ever-so-patient with me while I got my computer up and running post-move, here's an added bonus -- some finally-downloaded pics from our big drive to alaska. At about day 7 of our trip, we stopped for a snack in the middle of the Yukon at Mag & Mel's Sasquatch Crossing Lodge, proudly billed as "the only 24-hour restaurant between Fort St. John and Whitehorse."

Although we didn't personally have a Sasquatch sighting, we did manage to take a few photos:

As you can see, Mr. Purl,Interrupted was quite amazed by the Sasquatch footprint in the parking lot.

where the magic happens

finally, time for some pics of my new fiber workshop....

First, here's the so-called fiber workshop. Actually it was supposed to be my "office", although (1) the desk is way too big for the tiny half-room and (2) there's no cable jack in there so the computer can't be hooked up to the web. So for now it's the sewing and fiber storage room.

Note my new sewing machine looking like it's in the midst of a quilting project. Don't be fooled. I'm still too gimpy for rotary cutting. but it's true that i'm trying to make a quilt. this one, in fact.

Next, ... are you prepared for this? Hide the children and steel yourself. Here's a photo of the aftermath of my fleece-farm-shopping-spree in July:

That sure is a LOT of fleece. Boy do I have a ton of cleaning and carding to do....

goodies from mom!

I was on a photo-uploading kick this afternoon. Here are the goodies my mom sent me earlier this week.

First, a sweater's worth of a black boucle. I'm generally not really a boucle kind of girl, but this stuff is really nice. And it's damn cold here, so I'm in a sweater-y kind of mood....

And ... how cool is this! What's in that handsome binder?

Why, it's a Boye interchangeable needle set, circa godknowswhen.

Pretty snazzy, eh? Mom rocks, too!

photos galore!

You have been exceedingly patient. My blog has been photo-poor since we left the Bay Area in June. It's time to make up for all that. I hope you're ready.

First of all, here is the greatest "thanks-for-being-in-my-wedding" gift ever. It's alpaca, and although it's hard to tell, it's that perfect green color that I'm obsessed with.

Dreamy, eh? And it's so soft -- I can't wait to make something out of it! I guess I'll make a scarf. But I should try to find a nice pattern to make it special. Any suggestions?

My friend Lauri rocks. Even though she never reads my blog. She just rocks.