Oh, That Blows. Oh, Cool. Oh, That Blows.

Bricked.

Yeah, that cold chill you just felt was my laptop tanking. The bad news - yes my hard drive crashed and yes the warranty is up. No telling whether the data will be recoverable. (The iTunes, the photos, the PhotoShop Pro I don't have the discs for because the ex got those...)

The good news? The saintly guy at Apple talked to The Powers and wrangled me a free hard drive. Which is spectacular. Hopefully all will recover from the old drive, but at least I'm not out any money. I like to think it's my sexy voice that won him over, not the fact that I'm a total Mac geek who has gone through multiple laptops, iPods, and iPhones. (Which, incidentally, is the only gadget keeping me sane.) Go Team MacDork!!

I took amazing photos in New Mexico, and if they are recovered, I'll be beyond happy to share them with you. I should be back in business by Saturday. Please send healing thoughts to the old hard drive if you have a minute.... ;-)

And I'm Off!

In a few short hours, I'm hopping a plane to Boulder (well, Denver, then hopping a bus to Boulder, if we're quibbling), where I'll meet up with Kristi for Friday's six hour roadtrip to Taos (note to all of you - say a prayer for Kristi tomorrow and thank some deity that you're not her, because I can get a leeeettle wacky when confined to a small space for many hours. There are frequently showtunes involved.)

The parallel obligatory shop news: Obviously, the shop won't be shipping until I get back (Wednesday). Trust me, you wouldn't want Travis packing up your order - it'd have peanut butter and jelly stains on it. (My husband does not do well fending for himself in the kitchen. It's not that he can't cook - he just doesn't want to.)

Taos Woolgoers: Find me, I have stuff to give away. I'll be wearing a white t-shirt with my shop logo on it. No, seriously. A homemade self-promotion t-shirt. Hot. Want to hear the best part? Unless she balks (and that would be okay too because who would blame her?) Kristi will be wearing one too. So yeah, say a prayer for her on Saturday as well. Poor kid. She's going to regret (n)ever talking to me on the phone.

There's going to be a lot of food and sunsets. I love Taos. I LOVE it.

I've knit! I have so far accomplished two pair of socks and one hat, and I've started a pair of Noro Silk Garden sock yarn socks. I'm doing them largely out of curiosity - everyone loves the yarn even though it, by all accounts, pretty much sucks, by usual standards. (Among other complaints, I've heard scratchy, twisty, tangly, and knotty.) So far I'm okay with the stuff - you do have to knit it right on top of the ball though - pull out more than a foot of yarn and you're on the one-way express to Tanglewood.

I also have two new patterns which are, for now, exclusive only to certain club members. I'll just wait until they're released to the public to post photos and that whole thing here, though. (If you're really dying of curiousity, they're in my Ravelry designer profile.)

And the latest batch of yarn should be arriving at Loopy headquarters any day now. It's my cashmere blend sportweight, and (this sounds obnoxious but here goes because obnoxious is okay as long as you acknowledge it first) I'm REALLY happy with the dyework this time around. I wasn't entirely sure I was happy with the first run I did - some of the colors were too close to solid (rather than shaded solid) for my liking, as I was adjusting to dyeing more skeins at a time than I was used to. I'm getting much more adept at that, and it's definitely smoothing out, as I get the results I'm actually going for. That's a nice thing as an artist, to kind of know what you're doing....

Back to the knitting....there's all this "I have FOs!" rambling I keep doing, with no pictures. I'll show you one of them - I love it! I finished my Habitat hat:

Things I love:
The pattern is amazing
The yarn is amazing
The softness is delicious

Things I'm not so sure about:
The fit. My gauge was iffy, and I made the small, but it's still crazy long - like, it bunches up at the base of my neck, and also resembles a chemo cap. Which, when combined with my freshly shorn hair (not pictured, and oh yeah by the way I cut all my hair off) REALLY resembles a chemo cap when worn. Not that I'm all "Ew, I don't want to look like that!" - if you've experienced this you know - like, you kind of get that eye from people when you wear a hat with your hair tucked up in it, that "Oh no, it must be so awful to....or wait, maybe she's just got her hair tucked up? Am I looking at her like I feel sorry for her? I've been staring for like 30 seconds now - oh crap, look away!" I see that thought process sometimes when I wear long knit hats with my short hair. All this is to basically make the point that when I block this hat (which I'm sure I'll do someday) I'm going to full it just a tiny bit to get it to shrink up and in.


The Pattern:
Jared's Habitat


The Yarn:
My own handspun cormo/angora blend. (To those with allergies: do not touch my head!! Actually, to pretty much anybody: do not touch my head. It's a little weird to go around touching peoples' heads. And it makes you look strange to passersby.) I picked up this fiber at last year's SAFF and it's absolute heaven, smooshy and squishy and soft.

Definitely my favorite hat.

Have a good however-long-it-is-before-I-post-again!!

workworkworkwork

Dudes, I'll post something for real one of these days. I knit this cute hat, and I have a new pattern or two, and so on and so on and I have computer blindness and spend virtually (comparatively) no time online when I'm not at work. Makes me wonder, if a blogger falls in the woods, does she find time to post pictures of it?

Linky Linky!

I have so far blown off posts about our trip to Colorado (and that was in JUNE) and Key West (again, June) and my best friend's wedding and Vegas. But I am diligent about posting my shop updates and my thoughts on political babblings, am I not? Oh well - I promise one of these days I'll post a photo-essay on some of this stuff. And to think I have Taos coming up in a few weeks - I need to stop going out of town!!

Oh, speaking of which - I'm going to Taos in a few weeks! It's been about three years since I've been, and I've never gone at Wool time, so that'll be a nice addition to our usual routines. If anyone's going to Taos Wool, drop me an e-mail or a comment, I like meeting people! I'm flying in to Denver to meet up with Kristi first, and then we'll drive south to Taos. My mom and some of her girlfriends are going too and we're renting a couple of casitas for the week. We're also planning a dinner at Joseph's Table, which is just an amazing place to have a special meal, if you're ever in Taos. (Other planned stops, for anyone who's curious what's available: The Old Blinking Light for burgers, Ogilvies on the Plaza for Tecates and margaritas, Michael's Kitchen for breakfast and cinnamon buns, Overland Sheepskin for that nice leather smell...)

Then I'm going to Rhinebeck (that's about 98% certain right now) and what's even more fun - my mom's decided as of today that she's going to Rhinebeck too!! So I'll probably drag her to as many Ravelry and blogger meet-up things as I can to show her off. I'm so excited!

I should have a finished Habitat by this evening, so I'll have that to show shortly. And hey look, one whole FO! (Yeah, it's just a hat, but so what? It's a FINISHED hat! It's also the first thing I've knit out of my own handspun, which makes it extra-nifty...I kinda figured I'd never knit anything out of it, just let it all sit on a shelf and diligently collect dust.) I also just wrapped up another big ol' batch o' yarn and will be shipping that off in a week or two. I'm hoping to get some good-sized samples (like, half-skeins or something) dyed up and skeined to take with me to Taos and Rhinebeck. (So if you see me, ask me for some yarn - if I have any to give out, I'd love to give it to you!)

For my SAFF friends - sadly, SAFF is off the table this year...I had to choose between Rhinebeck and SAFF and, incredibly enough, Rhinebeck is somehow more cost-effective and requires less time away from work...weird...

HoffPosh For Prez!!

Without firing up a whole huge political debate that's blog-inappropriate, I gotta say it:

I have heard a lot of deluded things in my day - frequently coming out of the big hole in my own face - and while geographical proximity to a foreign country equalling foreign policy experience IS pretty rich (don't you know W. is looking at Texas and Mexico on a map and muttering, "damn, now why didn't I think of that?") this one beats even that. With regard to being ready to take over the presidency:

"I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink..."

Unabashed self-confidence and an inability to blink, really? Fine, then I hereby nominate David Hasselhoff and Victoria Beckham to office! I'm not making fun of the politician or making a statement, please don't tell me what a saint the person is or anything...just, I had to take that opening because, I mean, that's a hell of an interesting qualification. Hence my nomination. I even have the bumper stickers all planned out:

Hoff: Deluded Enough To Lead.

Posh: Botoxed Enough To Take Over.