T minus 1 and counting

Today we took it easy and wandered around Maryland's antique shops. We stopped in a little town called Mt. Airy and while we didn't actually go into any antique shops, we did find this:



I spotted the sign from the road and screeched, "Yarn Shoooop." We made a bee-line for the parking lot. Inside was a tiny 2-room shop, but what this woman had in there!!



Of course I bought yarn - I dare you not to. I know, I made a point of saying, "I really don't need this, but...." So here's the rundown starting at the 9:00 position in the photo. This single ball of lushness is Knit One Crochet Two's Paintbox in the Thistle colorway. It's 100% wool. What you can't see in the photo is the incredibly subtle colors - it's sort of a periwinkle/lavender/sage green. Dahlia (yes, we're on a first name basis) assures me it is self striping in the most wonderful way. Two balls will make an adult sized hat. I just wanted to play with it, but Nancy bought 2 balls of a different colorway for the hat.

Next up (going clockwise) is Elsebeth Lavold's Chunky Al. It is 50% alpaca/50% wool. Long time readers know that I feel the love for Elsebeth's yarns. This is softer than soft with a light alpaca halo. These 4 balls will be a scarf - I'm thinking yellow cable up the middle surrounded by the sage. Fabulous!

At 3:00 is Louisa Harding's Sari Ribbon - 90% nylon/10% metallic (that's what the label says). It's a gorgeous 3/4 inch wide ribbon that doesn't feel like it will be too hard on the hands. J - you up for some of this?

The last of the batch is what I blogged about the other day. It's Nashua's Creative Focus Chunky. Isn't it the most lovely shade of blue? It's 75% wool/25% alpaca (notice a trend here?). Again, I'm going for a scarf - can't resist that softness against the neck. The shop is called Eleganza and is in Frederick, Maryland - just up the road from where we're staying. The owner was very friendly and gave us a tip on how to get into the Howard County Fairgrounds to avoid the traffic.


One more thing, please say hello to my newest friend, Lily June. She was born on Wednesday around 7:00 am. Isn't she gorgeous?

What did we see today?

Amazing things:

We started the day off at the Textile Museum. It's the most amazing place!! You can't take pictures of the textiles, so you'll have to take my word for it that it was way cool. If you haven't been - go.











Then we went over to the National Zoo. Here are my new friends, the baby turtles.














and their neighbors, the prairie dogs.
















This young giraffe was desperately trying to reach the leaves on the tree above it. It wandered around and stretched its neck, then stuck out its incredibly long tongue - and the leaves were that far out of reach. Giraffe hell?

















One of the crown jewels of the National Zoo - the mama panda. She was coming out to dine on bamboo for lunch. We could hear the crack of the bamboo stalks as she chomped into each one. Way cool. The baby was hanging out in the tree next to her, but declined to show his face.
















What's this? The National Cathedral - and yes, Jillian, it is still standing even though we went in and had a tour. Even though I'm a heathen, it was an amazing, peaceful place. It's built in the style of a gothic cathedral (shape of a cross) and while it's officially the seat of the DC Episcopalian diocese, it's a non-denominational house of worship.

This is the largest of 4 rose windows in the cathedral (another cornerstone of the European gothic cathedral). I'm not sure if you can see it or not, but in the center is a 6' tall Jesus.
















In the crypt, there is a small prayer room completely done in mosaics. This is the only one that was bright enough to photograph. They were so beautiful, that when we walked in, both of us caught our breath.

We have arrived!

We're in Frederick, Maryland tonight. Just came back from a fabulous Italian dinner. The cabrese salad was so good, I just knew the tiramisu would be out of this world. It was. A crime to leave even a bite on the plate. I thought about taking a picture of it, but realized I had left my camera in the hotel room. What a blogging lame ass I've become!

Found a teeny, tiny yarn shop that I'll tell you about tomorrow. Left the bag in the car - sorry. I will tell you about the yarn I picked up. It's called Nashua - a chunky yarn that's 75% wool and 25% alpaca (100% soft). I picked up 3 balls of it and will whip it into a quick scarf. Yummy stuff.

Here's one picture for you, but back story first. Every year the Hub goes to a fishing tournament. They have a drawing with raffle prizes and every so often I knit him a pair of giant socks to take for the raffle prize table. This year, I realized I was getting low on my favorite yarn for this project (Bryspun Kid-n-Ewe) and went out hunting for it. It's been discontinued! Put out a call to see if anyone had some and this bag is what I found. This will keep them in socks for years!

Two Months??!!!?

Good god, has it been that long? I'm sorry, but it has. Can I blame it on graduate school and the pathological need to do well? I am pleased to announce that grades came through for the term and I have an A-SS on my report card. My mom was very proud.

So to celebrate, I'm going to Maryland! Sheep and Wool Festival that is. Nancy and I are in the wilds of Pennsylvania right now. We don't like to drive until we're falling down dead, so we stop and find a clean place to lie our heads and look at the locals. A place is considered good if there's a bookstore nearby. Barnes and Noble qualifies - ran to the knitting department to look for Big Girl Knits and wasn't disappointed. Okay, I was, but only because they had it faced out on the second tier of a rack. Mmm-hmm, I fixed it. Moved the crappy crochet book from in front and Big Girls is rocking now. It's fabulous - no kidding, and I'm not biased or anything.

I have the camera and we have free wifi in our ultimate destination hotel, so you'll hear more from me in the coming days.

Shopping list?
WoolLee Winder
Golding Spindle
maybe a Hatchtown Spindle

I'm looking at everything and I will take no prisoners. Nothing is safe.

Citrus Festival

My mother sent me an e-mail filled with pictures of things created with lemons, oranges, and grapefruits in a small town in Italy. This one cracked me up.

Could this be truer???

Carla -- [noun]: A hermit living in the big city 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Where's my black arm band?

I was feeling kind of sorry for myself last night. I knew that I was about to finish the book I've been reading for pleasure - A Breath of Snow and Ashes - the last in the Outlander series. I started reading Outlander over Thanksgiving break and loved it so much that I bought the rest and have been racing through them. They're not the greatest books, but I love the characters so much that I had to find out what happened to them. Please tell me I'm not the only one who mourns at the end of a good book!

So I get home to finish the book with a heavy heart and find Hub and Little Big Man with this in the living room.
Hub said, "Well, I'm 40 now and there are things that I want to do and I can't if I'm fat." Cool! We all tried it out and Sassy thinks it's the coolest thing. Hub even got up early this morning and watched bird hunting shows while he was elipting away.

I got into work this morning and there was an envelope in my mailbox and a message on my voice mail. I'm cranky, I'm in mourning - and there's work to do. The envelope was from a friend I haven't seen in a very long time with a note and a picture of this.
The note said, "Saw this and thought of you ... give me a call when you get a minute." Talking to her was the coolest thing. We made plans to meet for lunch when it gets warm and my day is starting to look up.

The voice mail message was Jillian. I'm on spring break next week and wanted to go play. We're going to do lunch and a movie. Woohoo! I'm starting to pull out of my funk a little more.

Then I go online and find Diana Gabaldon's official website. There is at least 1 more book in the series and possibly 2. Some days it does pay to get out of bed.

Dang

Highlights

So, I've been a little busy lately. Even though I dropped microceconomics {spitting over right shoulder} I'm still dealing with statistics. Send me any good number-crunching vibes you have lying around. Would you mind if I just hit the highlights of the last couple of months?

This lovely stuff comes curtesy of the Ann Arbor Knit In. It's a group of knitters who meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays for social knitting and good coffee drinking. We had a gathering at Freddyknits' house back before Christmas, ate good food, and traded gifts. It's Koigu - in my most favoritest color.

This was my Christmas gift from Hub. Lest you think he's that in tune with my hobbies, I opened several websites and told him to pick something off one of them. He chose the Zuni Medicine Woman basket spindle from Gabe Jaramillo. I saw the interview in Spindlicity and then went to his website. It's impossible to tell in the picture how big the spindle is. I guess I should have known because he lists all the weights on the site, but when I opened the box and pulled it out, I realized how big a 4.5 oz spindle is. It is great for plying!

I called Gabe to order it and he couldn't have been nicer. He apologized over and over that he didn't have any spindles in stock at that moment because they bought all the spindles he took to SOAR a couple of weeks before. He seemed a little shocked at that. I laughed and told him that it wouldn't have mattered how many he brought - they would have bought them all!

Lastly, this is my haul from the Fleece Fair:



I wish I had taken my camera to show you how much stuff was in one place. It was almost impossible to choose and I found myself touching, picking up, and putting things back down on tables because I didn't want to go over my budget. I actually came in under my budget - for once!! Here's the run down moving clockwise from that giant green/blue blob in the upper right. The green/blue is 8 oz of a Corriedale/Mohair blend. My friend Edie did this and named the color Midnight Forest - she has the most gorgeous colors!

Next is a 2 oz ball of white Rambouillet combed top. It was so soft and smelled so good, I had to have some. Pauline also had some brown (that Kim picked up) and I wanted some of that too, but decided to spin this up first and then buy some brown.

Then comes 4 oz of wool and angora in that lovely 2-toned green. I have lots of green, but the softness of this cannot be beat. And speaking of softness, that tomato-y red is 4 oz. of alpaca. Jillian practically shoved this in my bag. I didn't resist.

Next is 4 more oz of wool and angora dyed by Jane Purcell - who also did the 2-tone green from above. I can't wait to spin this and may break with the studying to do just that. I'm moving into a blue phase with my spinning and I'm dying to see how this turns out as yarn.

The lovely orange/red/yellow is also from Edie. She had larger balls of this, but I do have lots of red and orange and thought this might make a nice accent yarn for something. It's Corriedale and mohair as well.

Lastly, the first ball that Jillian thrust into my hands when I met her at the tables is alpaca and wool. I don't know that the colors show up well, but they're a lovely black/purple swirl. It's another ball that's so soft I can't wait to spin it.

I have lots of projects lined up for when classes finish (on April 18). I can't wait to finish the schooling and get back to my life. There are too many more interesting things to do!

Hey! I was tagged!

4 Jobs I've had in my life:

* editor
* book store manager
* car crash researcher
* Girl Scout Cookie Mom

4 Movies I can watch over and over:

* Godfather I
* Godfather II
* Pride and Prejudice - the BBC miniseries
* Kindergarten Cop (shut up)

4 TV Shows I love to watch:

* Law and Order - Criminal Intent
* West Wing
* Crossing Jordan
* House


4 Places I have lived:

* Michigan
* Sunny for about 10 minutes Michigan
* Cold Michigan
* Cold, wet, gray Michigan


4 Places I have been on holiday (this was hard to only pick 4!):

* Antarctica
* Moscow and St. Petersburg
* Portugal
* Colorado


4 of my favorite dishes:

* Soup (I could talk about soup forever)
* Delmonico steak
* mashed potatoes
* that spongy Ethiopian bread and some spicy beef or goat


4 Websites I visit daily:

* Pesky Apostrophe
* Snowball in Hell
* Fresh Pepper
* D-listed
* Post Secret (I added this one in because they only post once a week - on Sunday - so I figured I could sneak it in)

4 Places I would rather be right now:

* Antarctica
* Colorado
* Morocco
* my toasty warm bed reading a book for fun


4 Bloggers I am tagging:

* Is there anyone left? Anyone? Bueller?

What's this??

Lance and Sheryl have called it quits.

Oh noooooo!

Woohoo!!

I mentioned to the Hub on Friday last week that I'd really like a laptop. I talked about how in Statistics this term, we have to use a statistical software package and how convenient it would be if I had a laptop to load the program into and work on my homework anywhere. I talked about how I had a couple of big papers to write and how it would be cool to take a laptop with me and work whenever I got a few minutes. What's this?



My new laptop. Now I need a backpack, because carrying this thing around in my messenger bag is making my back hurt. Could I possibly whine anymore because I got what I wanted? Shyeah, like that's going to stop me.

Smells Like Teen Angst

This morning I witnessed a most hysterical display of teenage temper. I was chatting with Sassy who was standing on the landing between the basement and the main floor of our house. Little Big Man, who had been in the basement, was leaping up the stairs with a pile of clothing in his arms when he mis-stepped and fell. {He unfortunately has inherited my sister�s trait of being able to fall up stairs.} I winced and said, �Are you okay?�

He leapt to his feet, pointed his finger at Sassy and screamed, �It�s HER fault!!! Why are you standing at the top of the stairs? I looked up and saw you there and lost my balance! I never would have fallen if you hadn�t been standing there!�

I fixed my face into neutral and said, �Come on, how is it HER fault that YOU fell?�

�If she hadn�t been standing there, I never would have fallen!!� Spittle was flying out of his mouth and he struck a crazy pose � arms akimbo and taking up space. Discretion being the better part of valor, I gave him the Scottish noise and walked away. By the time I reached the other room, I was shaking from laughter.

When Sassy came into my room a few minutes later, I fell dramatically on the bed and said, �Stop it! You just gave me the �fall down eye� and now I can�t get up,� and laughed like a maniac. She looked at me, disgusted, and walked back out.

At the end of the driveway waiting for the bus, Little Big Man said �Be good today Sassy � don�t give anyone the death ray.� Then when he was getting out of the car, he fake stumbled a little and said, �See? She�s dangerous!� I laughed out loud.

She was incensed. �He�s so mean to me!�

�Nope,� I said, �he realized how ridiculous he was being this morning and that was his apology.� Damn, he�s growing up way too fast.

Graduate School Sucks

It's only 3 weeks into the semester and already I'm overwhelmed. I understand this isn't supposed to be a picnic - I'm all set to work hard. What I want from all this hard work is some semblance of understanding. I mean, really, if you read a chapter, is it too much to ask to be able to understand what you've read? I'm not a stupid person, but I have to read my microeconomics text 3 times to just understand what it says. Which is not to say that I understand the concept - just that I understand all the labels on the colorful pictures.

I'm also spending 10 hours sitting in class for 1 measly 3 credit course - and 2 of those hours are on a Sunday! For those of you playing along on the scorecard at home, yes I took Micro last term. This is the cost-benefit analysis part of the course - it only looks the same, it isn't really the same.

So, despite nary an understanding of what a cost-benefit analysis is...I did one and came up with "Drop the fucking class." Dang, that was easy. Now I just have to make it through Statistics and I'm home free.

One more thing, the person who invented Sudoku - truly an evil soul. This is the worst time sucking game ever!

Hooked on a Feeling

I made the mistake of clicking on that awful Hasselhoff video that's making the rounds and haven't been able to get this terrible song out of my head for 2 days. That teaches me to click on something for the morbid curiosity. If you must, go here. Don't say I didn't warn you.

So, I'm back in school. I'm trying to get studying done as well as a bit of spinning and/or knitting every night. I didn't knit at all last semester and almost lost my mind. The needles soothe me and I was crazy to give them up. Send me your good statistics and cost-benefit analysis vibes. I think I'm going to need them.

One more housekeeping detail. Last year around this time lots of people were signing up to read 50 books over the course of 2005. I didn't sign up, but thought "I can do that - I read all the time." I actually read 25 books last year. Not bad considering I was in school, but I'm a little surprised it wasn't more. Anyone else try this? How many books did you read last year? I'm going to keep track again this year and see where I am in December. My 'to read' shelf is huge (Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell, Anthony Bourdain, Amy Tan, Gregory Maguire, Diana Gabaldon). There is no shortage of books in my house!