For my birthday, I was given 4 oz of gorgeous roving from Spritely Goods.

I spun it up months ago and it sat on the bobbins waiting it’s turn to be plyed.

Since MDS&W I have been doing a lot of spinning (so you will have AT LEAST one more week of handspun in your future!) and so I plyed this up!

I decided that I needed to call this strawberry shortcake instead of the colorway name of Manzanita because the pinks and browns really reminded me more of dessert than anything else. It is gorgeous.

As I said, this was 4 oz - which yielded 322 yards at 17 wpi. It is very even, couple of overspun spots, but really that evens out in the plying so what was overspun relaxed with time and then was nice enough to be happy!

I bought this a few weeks ago when it came into Charlotte Yarn - I had to have it.

I thought about knitting a sweater out of the Elsbeth Lavold Viking Knits II collection, but I don’t know.

Maybe the Eiffel from Knitty…

I do have a sweaters worth…

Thoughts? Cause this stuff is calling out to be knit!

In my post about MDS&W I mentioned that we all knit squares for Suzanne’s birthday blanket - a little piece of each of us. Here is mine.

Pattern: uh - I made it up - couple rows of seed stitch, a lace pattern and some more seed stitch and viola!
Needles: Denise Size 7
Yarn: Cascade 220 Superwash
Time: A couple hours, but only because I ripped it back a couple times

I have some FOs and a sweater that I started and am going to frog…but this is what I took with me to MDS&W to work on - it is very portable right now.

It is my leftover sock yarn blanket made of twee little mitered squares. Look- there are 14 and a half of them right there since last Friday! when I get to 16 I will start attaching them with more little twee squares! I am a bit obsessed with this at the moment, but it will be a loooooong term project.

Many of you probably know someone who has had or been touched by breast cancer. Why not do something to help out?

Knitters for Knockers is nearing the end of it’s fundraising period and they have blown away their original goal of $1000!! And then their goal of $5000 - now they are trying for $6000!! For every $5 you donate, you will receive a chance to win a prize - that is a cup of Starbucks - for Kellie in New Zealand, that is LESS THAN a Mocha at Starbucks.

There is a great list of prizes over at their site so take a moment to check it out.

This past weekend I was lucky enough to go to Maryland Sheep and Wool - what a fun time! I headed out on Friday morning at the ass crack of dawn and picked up Gannet around 9 in Durham. From there, we headed up to Baltimore where we were meeting up with Team Rav! We got to Suzanne’s house about 2 and hung out with the crew - Kim, Courtney, Kate and Suzanne - more would come later…

About 5:30, Kim and I headed over to MamaE’s C*Eye*ber Fiber Open House! The first person I saw was Michelle of The Sweet Sheep!

Jess, Jen and the lot of us had a great time looking at yarns - the building where the studio is can be deceiving - it looks abandoned from the outside, but it is a really cool converted warehouse - I would love to have a studio there!

Coming back we saw this gem…

I don’t think that I need to comment on it any further, but I have to say that there were some great signs around Baltimore.

Suzanne made a fantastic spaghettie dinner for us - then Jess, Casey and Mary-Heather arrived with Frecklemom.

We finally got the rest of Jess and Casey’s christmas present to them.
(Suzanne is in the foreground, and that is Courtney hiding in the back!)

Here we have Kim, Jess and Kate - Naomi is laying down in the background.
We hung out, chilled and knit a little until time to sleep - oh there was some wine, but we aren’t talking about that…

Saturday we headed over to the festival.

We ate some lamb - I had the lamb sausage. It was YUM!

Erin and her boyfriend had the Lamb burgers. They came in late late Friday night.

I met Jethro the 7 mo old Alpaca

and some very sweet kids

I ran into Carmen who lives in Kansas City!
(What the hell kind of smile is that on my face???) Also got to hang out with Sara and Lynda who I just saw last week at the Fling.

I got no pics at the Ravelry Meetup on Saturday because we were THAT busy handing things out! I did some shopping - most of it was gifts, so I can’t show it, but this little gift for Leslie I can show since I sent her pics already.

She actually asked for a pound of roving and I said I would be happy to pick something out and send it on!

Then we went to the Sheraton to chill and get ready for the Ravelry Party. While there we gave Suzanne her birthday present because, well, it was her birthday!

We each knit her a square and it is being seamed up for her - it turned out really well! Suzanne cried. It was a good cry, we loves her.

The Boy played with some cards.

Then he went for a roll down the hill - sadly I got him as he was getting up - Erin and I were cracking up!

Next it was time for the Ravelry Party!

The sponsors were AWESOME and had a lot of prizes for us!

There are more photos of the prize table in my photostream on flickr if you want to see them!

It rained, so we moved everything inside and got on with the festivities!



We sang Suzanne Happy Birthday!

And Casey had a good time!

He deserved it!!!

Sunday I got up early and had breakfast with my college roommate, Cara, her husband and 6 month old little girl. Yeah - bad blogger, no pictures, but it was good to see Cara and to meet Dave and Mallory!

Then I headed over to the festival. This time I brought my wheel - on friday I pulled it out and there was a little screw thing that popped out. I stopped at The Yarn Barn and asked about getting it fixed - turns out Gord Lendrum was there and willing to fix my wheel!

I am pretty sure he thought I was crazy for getting a picture with him - he was gracious enough to allow it - but he doesn’t do autographs (don’t worry, I didn’t ask!) He is fantasticly funny and Erin, the boy and I talked to him for about an hour - the wheel fix took about 3 seconds for him to do! Thank you, Gord!!!!

Mary-Heather was sweet enough to do a podcast interview with me - so look for that coming up!

I didn’t buy much for me - just two little things. I will put those up in time. This post is already very long. I would like to say thank you to everyone for a wonderful weekend - I had a FANTASTIC time! And I can’t wait until I see everyone again!

Oh, the Spring Fling would have been totally worth it even if I hadn’t gotten a goodie bag, but OMG the goodie bag ROCKED!!!!

First there was a super awesome bag. When they said goodie bag, I thought it would be like a plastic shopping bag with stuff in it - uh NO! This thing rocks!!! It has cool pockets and zippers and a shoulder strap!

In the bag was a great page holder with 2 patterns - one from Wendy and one from Cookie - each available to those of us at the fling first! I hear they will be available for sale soon, so you won’t miss out!

A jar of Everything Balm from Goodies Unlimited - and when they say everything, they aren’t kidding!!! I will be ordering some more of her stuff soon!

While I own the water bottle and the coffee travel mug, the actual coffee mug came in the bag! This is so awesome esp. since they aren’t available at The Loopy Ewe - they are just too hard to ship - sad, but true - the inside is black!!

There was a bag of Loopy Kisses - we love Loopy Kisses!!

There was a pattern and super swag from Cherry Tree Hill!

This gorgous teal

and a pretty lilac!

And this beauty from Claudia Handpaints!

But I am pretty sure you don’t care about any of that, you want the good stuff!

Die Auster - Spring Fling - dyed by the amazing Claudia of wollmeise just for those of us there!

I talked to her for a moment about the colorway and she said this is her first “soft” colorway - I see many in her future - this is just beautiful!

More than the yarn, though, Claudia is a joy to be around and I feel so lucky to have had time to get to know her for her and not just for her yarn!

I mean how can you not love a fun lady who flies all the way here to hang out with us? She was fantastic - her yarn was an unexpected bonus!

This is not a knitting related post…sorry!

I just got a call about a new job opportunity. This would be a totally new job function in HR - I would still have some of my programs, but not all of them - just the big high profile ones.

I don’t want to talk much about it now and I don’t have to give my answer until after I get back from MDS&W, but this is a big deal. Like a HUGE deal! This is on the tail of being summoned to France for the first week of June for something else.

wow.

I know I am being vague about the whole thing, but seriously. WOW.

Oh, what a great time Sheri put on at The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling!!!

The first person I met when I arrived? Who KNEW WHO I WAS AND RAN OVER TO ME FOR A HUG????? CLAUDIA THE WOLLMEISE!!! (OK - I met Michele on the plane first!) and then WendyKnits greeted me. And it was all over from there!

(OK - those are really from the end of the weekend, but I was so busy I didn’t take any when I got there!!)

I took a class from Wendy! An interview with her is coming to the podcast!

My roomie, Michele (ravelry) and Kristi (ravelry) enjoyed the class as much as I did!

I made a heel and toe in Cascade 220 that I had sitting around the house!

Later we went to dinner at Trainwreck.

Apparently we are not ladies - right Keri (ravelry)? And doesn’t Leslie (ravelry) look amused at all that (much more so than in the OTHER pic I have of her, let me tell you!) We were getting strange looks from the other diners since we were knitting at the table, but screw it, it was raining out and we were not walking back until we were ready!

I took Cookie’s class on Saturday.

Timmie (ravelry) liked it
Wow - Cookie’s brain is crazy and I LOVED every minute of it!!!!

Not to be outdone by a bunch of knitters, the Fabulous Faces State Finals were in town - complete with a door decorating competition.

Yeah - I was afeared for my life. There was a nasty incident involving a VERY LARGE BUTT getting out of the hot tub which I was pretty sure was going to take Keri out.

Everything was pretty low key for the weekend. I didn’t take a lot of pics, but we did manage to knit all over. Including Starbucks.

Keri and Kellie (ravelry) had a nice couch seat, while Laura (ravelry) and I were in the chairs. I was being nice to Leslie and didn’t get her in these pics. Oh - you can find Lala’s yarns online soon (hint hint). And Kellie made it from New Zealand!!!

Leaving was hard, but I had company on the ride back to the airport!


Karen and Kristin (ravelry links).

I can’t wait to do this again! I met so may cool people who I don’t have pics of including some Kansas City Knitters!!! WOOHOO!! Sara will even be in MD with me this weekend!!!

Coming on Friday - the Spring Fling goodie bag (I will give you a hint - there was yarn from Germany in it!)

Sorry that we are a day late with the YPF post, but I have a really good reason. Maybe. I got busy and didn’t have time to pre-write the entry which I do sometimes if I know that I am going to be gone.

To make up for this, I will give you two yarns today (ok, I was going to do that anyway!)

So why am I late? Well since Wednesday morning I have been in Charlotte, Atlanta, Chicago, St Louis, Kansas City and back to St Louis. I am attending The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling you see, but I made a side trip to see Olivia (and fly out of Atl for WAY cheaper) and then another side trip to see Tattoo Boyfriend (he would say hi if he knew I was talking about him, I’m sure).

While here I am attending a class with Cookie A. This is the yarn I will be working with - Shaeffer Anne. It is a lovely pink and I adore it. When I write up this weekend I will show you the swatch so you can see how it knits up!

I attended a class with Wendy yesterday.

My Fiesta Boomerang in the Stargazer colorway made an appearance - though I didn’t CO anything with it yet, I was working with scrap yarn for the class.

This is a gorgeous colorway and a fantastic yarn. I have a deep love for both the Boomerang and the Baby Boom.

It is technically a worsted weight yarn, but I am going to knit it into socks anyway.

And now I am off to get ready for my day. I can tell you that I have some exciting things coming up in the podcast from this weekend!!!