I get them, and they get me.

This morning I staggered out of my house in the chilly pre-dawn (okay, 8:04 AM, technically) to meet Brenda and Margaret for a little road-trip to the Cowichan Fleece & Fibre Fair. I'm not used to being up so early so I was disoriented and wild-eyed, and I thought I should take a picture of myself against the morning sky, just for the novelty of it and also to show Lizbon what the morning sky looks like.


Mascara, this time.


Then I looked at this for the next three hours or so.

I was in the back seat, working on the crazy Malabrigo shrug. Finished one sleeve.


There was a lot going on at the Fibre Fair today. I had my first look at silk cocoons, for sale and also being prepped and....what, wound? plied? Not spun, at any rate, though at first I thought it was.


The upright swift in the background is winding FIFTEEN strands of silk as they unravel from 15 cocoons bobbing in hot water in a crock pot across the table. Fifteen strands, together, looked something like the thickness of a human hair. The spinning wheel in the foreground is plying the silk, two bobbins' worth, into a cobweb-weight.


By the way, it was hard to get good pictures in the old, poorly lit hall with crappy fluorescents or what have you, but I did my best.


I love this label so, so very much.



Maybe my favourite part (well, non-fibre part) of the event were these magnets.


I wanted to buy the "bi-craftual" one (bottom right) but by that time I had given Erynn all my money. Happily she had given me some roving and top in return, but I still had to come away magnetless. I'll show you the roving and top when I can get a good photo of it - I took some but they look so, so unattractive. I need natural light.


There was a lot of cool art there. This basket was great, if very ominous feng shui:



Look at the poison arrows flying off that thing!


And these rendered me speechless with amazement. The little people were maybe four inches high. Again, excuse the poor lighting.








It was so great to be with people who were obsessed with textiles just as much as - or more so than - I am. I saw marvellous garments everywhere. People walked around in handspun, handknit lace shawls, sweaters, huge chunky socks, you name it. It was fantastic. There was even this woman with awesome felted HAIR - massive serpentine dreadlocks dyed screaming orange. I wanted to kinnear her but never got around to it.


There were lots of things I would have loved to own, especially an Ashford Joy for $774 (!!!!!), but there is really only one thing I truly wished I had bought and didn't. It's a wrist-distaff for drop spinning, and is just such a pretty piece of useable art that it deserved a home with me. I didn't have the $20 for it this time, though, so maybe I'll keep it in mind for next.





Lastly, a little glimpse of what I will have for you next time, provided I get some of that natural light I've been talking about:

Insert Loot at Top

So this is the OTHER thing on my needles. It's a Christmas stocking made from Kauni Effektgarn 8/2. The pattern and the yarn are both from Fun Knits - Shelley designed the pattern and it's available from her website.

I've never knit with this yarn before and I wasn't too sure about it when I first cast on. It's very rough - scratchy and traditional. It's also a little fragile - I pulled the centre out of it, looking for the end, and a tight plug came out, in the process snapping the yarn in two places. It spit-spliced easily, though, so no real harm was done.

I love the pattern - the photo really doesn't do justice to it. Despite the scratchiness of the yarn, the knitted fabric is surprisingly nice. It's warm, drapey, and comforting. The colours are very much at home in my living room, so I think I'll keep this one as a decoration. I should have enough yarn to knit another, and I've got about 5 different recipients in mind for that one.

Anyone interested in a little casual knitalong? Comment if so - we can start one on Ravelry, or just blog-based, whichever. If you do want to join me, the pattern is available for $4.00 here, and the yarn is available here. You could probably use almost any Kauni yarn with beautiful results - Shelley suggests using one ball of EQ but starting at two different colour repeats. It would be lovely.

The New Yahoo

I'm talking Jonathan Swift here, not internet-mega-corporation.

I feel oddly disoriented. I've been off the internet for a week, except to post about Jenny and to spend exactly 135 seconds on Ravelry, checking for updates on the knitting group meeting, and now that I'm back on, it's a little weird.

Jeez, people, there is a lot of utter dross on the internet.

I had a bunch of wisdom all lined up to deliver today, but then things kind of fell apart earlier this week and pushed the 'net out of my mind. Now that I come back, it all seems a little no-pointish.

I do have one observation though - I follow way too many blogs. I've got upwards of 60 on Bloglines alone, plus more that I take the time to click to, without subscribing to the feed. So I'm going to drop some of them.

No, don't worry - not yours.

I am going to slow down on the comments, though. I leave about 15 comments per day and I'd just like to give myself a break from that obligation, unless I have something specific to say.

Now, the important stuff - the knitting.

As suspected, I did have more time to knit this week, but not a lot more. I filled up my 'net-free hours with school and the odd basket of laundry. I still had time for some, though:

Odessa, at last, a mere 9 months after I bought the yarn for it:

mental note: makeup next time.

But it's just a wee bit too big so I think I'll rip it back and do it over, using magic loop this time instead of DPNs. I don't like the droopy crown decreases.

It feels pretty good to have a hat though, since everyone else in the family keeps getting showered with knitwear while my ears remain cold.

So do my arms, and my neck. Hence, Teva Durham's Turtleneck Shrug, long-coveted. This is the book photo:

I'm sure this won't be the most flattering garment I've ever worn but at this point, with the thermometer down around 2 degrees, I'm flipping the bird to fashion.

I'm knitting this in Malabrigo Merino Worsted, colourway "Hollyhock". I got the yarn ages ago from Fun Knits and was saving it. Hoarding it, actually. I couldn't afford enough of it to make myself a sweater, and I figured a sweater would be too chunky for me anyway, so when I was hunting around for yarn for this shrug I threw caution to the winds and seized the Malabrigo. Carpe lanem, as David Reidy says.

I actually took a picture of my hand literally flipping the bird to fashion, but it was a bit blurry so I used the demure disembodied arm instead.

There's one more project I have on the needles at the moment, but I'll get to that tomorrow. For now, I've got stuff to do around the house. Having learned my lesson about clicking myself into a black hole where all time and space gets sucked inexorably into a lightless, sensory-deprived vacuum, I'm sure I'll do better from now on.

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I'll post updates on Jenny's condition as I receive them. I haven't heard of any change yet.

Knitter down. Send help.

Jenny opened her eyes today. She was not conscious or responsive, but her eyes opened briefly. We hope this means that she will wake up in the next day or two. Her arm has been repaired and is in a cast. Her CT scans haven't changed - that is, they are no worse, there was no additional bleeding - so she hasn't needed surgery on her head. There was concern that she would lose one of her eyes, due to the severity of bleeding/bruising in her head and face, but this won't have to happen after all, thank God.

I'm breaking my internet fast to ask for prayer for one of my knitters, the lovely Jen who modelled the Cap Shawl for me. She was in a terrible car accident last Friday night, the 17th. It seems she went off the road on a winding highway and hit something...a fire hydrant, or a telephone pole, or maybe both.

She was airlifted to a larger centre early Saturday morning. Her right arm and hand were seriously damaged. She has broken ribs and a collapsed lung. She has a fractured skull...the extent of damage to her brain is unknown as of yet. Doctors have kept her unconscious although she has been upgraded from critical to stable condition.

She is the partner of Karen-of-the-comments' son Bjorn. Karen's family has been in Victoria since Saturday.

Everyone needs to pray for Jen, okay? The above information is all from Karen, but I have heard rumours from other people in town, which I won't repeat but which, if true, indicate that the outlook is very poor. These people need help - Karen and her family, especially Bjorn, and most importantly Jenny. She is only 20 years old and her life has not been easy. She has no family and has had some very poor cards dealt her. She deserves better than this.

But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand...you are the helper of the fatherless.

Well Begun is Half Done

We Westerners tend to live about, what, 70 years? Well tomorrow I am officially half done. I am thirty-five, folks, and All That.

I spent this afternoon making myself a cake. It's lovely, my favourite cake recipe. You make a more-or-less standard white, butter-based cake, only without the eggs and with a teaspoon of almond extract. Then you beat four egg whites to soft peaks and then beat them into the cake batter. It makes a deliciously smooth and tender cake, delicately scented and so very moreish.


Meringue

In addition to the cake, I'm giving myself a present. It's a good one - I have decided on one internet-free week. The week starts tomorrow night, the night of my birthday. I'll wait until the experiment is over before I explain the thought behind it - although I'm sure you know exactly what it is, because you are probably also telling yourself, "I spend way too much time on the damned Internet".

And one more bit of business before I bid you farewell - I am having a birthday bash on Saturday night at my house. Women only. You're invited - I will be providing the drink but I don't want to have to cook so bring appetizers if you can, girls, unless you are also stressed and busy, in which case skip it and just show up. Mr Half Soled and the little Half Soleds (Quarter-Soleds?) will be out of the house all night, too, so if you find yourself a little more well-to-go than you expected, you can crash here.

And for all of you who will be sadly unable to get flights in time to come to my birthday party, I'll see YOU next Friday.

Ta ta!

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Edit: By request of my knitting group, I am posting the rules for my upcoming unplug. I won't be using a web browser at all for a week. No blog posting, no blog reading, no Facebook, no Google, no Yahoo. (So don't write to that sidebar address unless it's profoundly non-urgent.) I will be checking my regular email, though, because people LEGITIMATELY communicate with me that way, and if I didn't open Outlook I would have no idea when my library books are due.

At the end of the week I hope to have a deep, thoughtful post full of inner peace and tranquillity, and observations about abundance of spare time. This peace and tranquillity will have come out of my hermit-like separation from the outer world. A hermit with email, that is.

Call yourself a Canadian?

Did you vote? I'm not talking about that election, nor that one. I'm talking about this one.

The End is Nigh.

So I've finished Ruby's Basket & Bobbles sweater - all but the zipper and front bands. I haven't attached the sleeves or woven in the ends yet, because I want to wet-block it first. But I wanted to show it to you today anyway, in its unblocked state. Also it's on a 4.5 year old, instead of a newly-three, so take that into account.

It turned out pretty cute, see?

Pompom forthcoming.

"Hey Em, model this for me, would you?"

"No Mummy, I hate modelling."

"Hmm. Too bad. Well, you have to or you can't have any Hokey Pokey ice cream later."

"That's the spirit!"

After a few minutes she cheered up...until I reminded her that she wasn't supposed to be having any fun.

This will be all finished by the end of next week. I think I've got just enough of the coloured yarns left over to make some small pompoms for the zipper pull, as well as for the end of the hat. Then I'll be able to label it, mail it to Ontario, and turn my attention to the rest of the Christmas projects...how exciting!