That was fun!

I flew out to LA last Thursday to visit a friend. I won't say to meet her, because I've known her for several years, but we hadn't actually ever seen each other in the flesh before. I had no trouble recognizing her at the airport, though.

We spent a large portion of our time playing with fiber - she spun roving, which fascinated me, and I worked on Mom's clapotis. I also had some animal time, since she has 4 cats and a dog. I don't get any animal time at home, since Dan's allergic to pet dander, so I take advantage of friends' pets whenever I can. I was warned that the 2 kittens really like fiber a lot, so I took a zippered bag to hold my project bags.

I needed help with an increase technique that I hadn't done before - it wasn't hard, but I wanted to see someone do it, and the video on Knittinghelp didn't help a lot. And I watched her spin and asked inane questions as she made a gorgeous yarn from some red/pink/black roving.

And Rainy introduced me to Deadwood. Yummmmm. And took me shopping at her LYS, A Mano Yarn Center, where she forced me to buy TOFUutsies and Trekking. You would not believe the arm twisting that took! Really!! When I have some time I'll take pictures of the pretty pretty sock yarn I bought.

It was a very fun and relaxing visit.

I'm bad

See, there is a sock designer whose patterns I really like. They're available at The Loopy Ewe, and since you get free shipping at the Loopy Ewe when you buy enough of course I couldn't just get those patterns, I need to get some yarn too.

Then I realized that I don't have the needles I need to make the socks - I don't have any 0s or 1s, and I prefer circs since Magic Loop rocks my world. And, of course, the cords on the circs at Knit Picks are wonderful for Magic Loop, so I had to order from there (and again there's free shipping when you buy enough) and they added cool wooden circs recently so of course I had to get some of them, too.

*sigh*

Then Sheri had to add more of Wendy's patters to the Ewe. And there's one pattern that is just *perfect* for a surprise I want to make a friend. Perfect. Really. And, again, I had to get enough to make free shipping....

I'm really glad I have a job again.

Whoo-hoo!

I've been slacking about posting lately, but it's for a good reason - I have a new job! I didn't talk about it up here much, but I unexpectedly found myself in need of a new position back in July, and from that disaster I found something that is going to work out so well in many ways.

One of the really good things is that I'm working from home on a regular basis. I will be traveling to 3 different data centers occasionally, but for the most part I will be in my home office.

The other really good thing is that Dan and I can relocate to Lafayette, which will make his school commute a lot better. Right now he's driving about 2.5 hours a day back and forth. Cutting that out of the day will give him so much more time for other things, including sleep :-)

But on to the fibery goodness!

I've been working steadily on the hoodie. The back is complete, I'm working on the front now:




Switching to the Shine yarn has made a HUGE difference and it's working up very nicely.

I've also been working on the girls' armwarmers. I've switched which set is going to which girl, after getting Mom's input. I had to frog one that I'd bound off when I realized that I'd left out a HUGE section during the increases. D'oh!

I was going to post more, but apparently I have a migraine coming on, so more later.