What a weekend! Yarn crawled, watched some movies, did some spinning, did some laundry, drove south for lunch and The Simpsons with Jessi and Jimmy, did some more spinning...all in all, I have not touched the Mystery Stole in two weeks, I've started another sock (not the one I'm supposed to be finishing for the palooza, but that one's progressing) and I've finished three - count 'em, THREE! - skeins of handspun since Friday. Two are now dry and will be photographed tonight, but another is ready for its close-up:
I am really tremendously proud of this skein. It's a three-ply sock weight, 340 yards, superwash merino dyed by Mama E.
This spin is even, even, even. I can't believe I spun it. It's called "Circus Peanuts" and it's in the shop; I priced it a bit higher than my previous sock yarns because of the three ply (I usually do two-ply)...but not really that much higher. (Pricing is by far the hardest part - after spending seven or eight hours at the wheel for a three-ply sock yarn, you really *want* to sell it for $145.)
The yarn crawl was
I have to assume this fell off of some sort of truck that would haul these sorts of things around - but then they must have just LEFT it there, in an act of infinitely responsible behaviour. Enormous Ford Expedition shown for scale. (Not pictured: the people in the car, who were one-half of the people on the yarn crawl.)
Amazing how I managed to not get a single photo of the Not Your Grandma's Knitting Group knitting group. They were awesome chicks, by the way, and in a piece of irony, there was indeed a grandma there - the founder Megan's mom, actually, and since Megan has kids, that equals a grandma. Although the "Not Your Grandma's" thing still worked, since she wasn't MY grandma...though it amused me that Megan must have had to tell her kids that she was going to meet with the Not-Your-Grandma's-Only-Actually-In-Your-Case-Specifically-It-IS-Your-Grandma's knitting group. (Also, in a turn that will surprise no one, she was cooler than me. Grandmas are almost always cooler than me, like the one who was on the zip line tour with us in Whistler and I swear I caught her rolling her eyes at me when I started panicking about getting on the zip line. Ugh, I'm so old before my time.)
Oh, and there was Travis, too. I wasn't sure if it was okay to bring a boy to the knitting group, but since he knits, he joined us for lunch and Chez Cas. He's the reason for the second skein of Boomerang; I picked up one and told him I wanted to knit a pair of socks for my dad, and he squeezed the skein and made that pitiful face that indicated that he found the omission of socks for him to be a wholly unsatisfactory decision on my part. He sniffed but declared $25 to be too much to spend twice...then I mentioned the 25% off and he declared $18.75 perfectly acceptable to spend twice. Oh, and he's such a cute little newb; someone asked him what yarn he was using and he said "Umm...fingering, I think." Well, baby steps - he didn't know the dyer, but he got the weight right. And I told him it was just as well he didn't know what yarn he was using, since the answer (Sweet Georgia) would have been likely to get him conked on the head and mugged for sock yarn.
More handspun tomorrow...I'm trying to spin as much as I can to stock up the shop and start promoting - we really really need to find another income, so if this isn't working it's going to be back to the ol' waitressing grind for me...gotta do whatcha gotta do! Because as you might have noticed by my brief coverage of the Yarn Crawl, the "I'll just stop spending" approach is experiencing progress akin to that of peace in the Middle East.
Oh! Contest winners - I assigned random numbers to each entry, then put ol' Random.org to work - and came up with Adelle and Turtlegirl! Thanks for all your great entries, and ladies, I will be in touch.
(PS: If anyone wants to know what my Mystery Stole would look like if I wasn't a slacker, you can start tracking Adelle's progress - I must have mine done at least in time for Rhinebeck so we can wear our matching stoles, won't that be precious?)
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