Mail Day From Heaven

Okay, let me warn that this is going to probably end up being a loooong post. I have a LOT of gushing to do.

Remember how the post office lady was all "Oh, so you're the one who gets all the yarn?" Yeah, she must have had a good laugh Saturday while stuffing a package bin full for me. This is what I found when I opened locker number 24:

Holy CRAP! For the record, yes, I did order some of this. Specifically, I was expecting the little brown envelope on top, and the second box from the bottom on the left (the little one). Alll the rest of this is cool stuff from people who rule.

(Er, the stuff I ordered was cool stuff from people who rule, also.)

The white packet there is a surprise. I can't talk about that, sorry. Very exciting stuff, though. (It's not a baby. It may not be necessary to say that to you guys, but it's funny how many things people seem to think is a baby now. I cough? Baby. I have a secretive smile on my face? Baby. I'm tired? Baby. I'm happy? Baby. I'm sad? Baby. There's no baby! We've been married two months!!!! I know it's the South, but damn, give us a minute, wouldja?)

So much great stuff, I don't know where to start, so I'll spin the Wheel o' Cool Stuff and see where it lands......


Aha! Naomi sent me this package of goodies (gummies and chocolate inhaled). She spun up this gorgeous, gorgeous art yarn from Carrie's Vampyr roving, and I was a gushy fan of it in a big way - so she sent me a little skein of my own!


I'm not sure whether to just leave it as is on the coffee table Bowl O' Handspun or knit a little something with it, like an amiguri (is that right?) or something....but I lurve it!!


My best friend sent me presents!!! First, a cow that poops jellybeans. (This is endless hours of entertainment for us - I'm a simple person.) And the other is the COOLEST coffee sleeve ever - handtooled leather from Sunny Rising.


This is so fantastic. And it fits around my Starbucks mug, so as crazy as it may look to wear an insulating sleeve around an insulated cup, I'm gonna do it anyway. Because it rules. (Hot chick knitting in stilletos? Oh, that's SO me.)


My wish came true! My sock palooooza went by the August 2nd date! (I have simple wishes.) I'm operating on the August 7th date; my pal is much more diligent than I am. I started inhaling the cocoa nibs right away. But you're wondering, what the hell - no socks?

Sorry, I had put them on instantly:


These are AWESOME. They fit beautifully! They're knit from Cascade Fixation, which is a yarn I've been wanting to try but haven't - I've never seen this colour! This is gorgeous, I love this green, and I seriously LOVE these socks. I'm not entirely sure about what the pattern is - I'm thinking Crosshatch Lace? Whatever, they fit like little gloves. For feet. Feet gloves. Which I guess would be....well, socks.


My pal, Luanne, is in Lakeland, too, which is only about maybe 40 miles from here. We got married in Auburndale, which is about five miles from Lakeland. Neat - howdy, neighbour!


Also loving the ribbed instep at the arch - perfect for my feeties! Yay, Luanne, thank you so much!!! :-D

Finally, there's this:




My Secret Pal 10 goodies! She pulled out all the stops with this package - there's chocolate covered cranberries, a cute goldfishies-with-names pouch, a gorgeous Split Yarn case (which I love and I think I'll start using for my Moo cards), a small project bag, Girl on the Rocks' Kitchener stitch markers (I love these so much), some really cool yarn (dyed by a woman who uses her grandmother's dyeing recipes, which is just about the coolest thing I've ever heard a dyer do), some super-yum White Peach Sephora body creme, a sheepie mint body wash, and hmmm...there was something else...


OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! This is GORGEOUS! My very own Swallowtail Shawl - she'd mentioned a wedding gift, but DAMN. This is so beautiful.


I knit one of these for my mom but (please don't tell my mom) this is so much more perfect than the one I knit. I feel compelled to knit another one now....


So beautiful...lily of the valley is my birth flower, so it's totally my favourite lace pattern. (I know, I'm all about me.) That's what drew me to knit it for my mom, too.


Look at that halo! I'm not sure what yarn it is, but it's insanely soft. It *feels* like cashmere, but ... surely no way. (edit: Robin, good call - may well be alpaca.) Whatever it is, I love it. I wore this all over the house yesterday until we had to go to the grocery store (and I had wanted to wear it there too, but Travis did make a good point when he noted that it was 97 degrees outside. But that's okay, it's always FREEZING in my office, so it'll be good to wear to work. Hee!)

My SP was completely amazing, and this was just an AWESOME final package. Thank you so, so, so much!!

See?! Was that incredible or what?? YoYo, YOU'RE having the Best Week Ever!! (tm)

(Psst: there are going to be two new skeins in the shop shortly.)

My Bright Ideas (or crazy ramblings)

So I gave myself a bright idea while leaving some stupid sleep-deprived nonsensical comment....I think every time I go to a random place that's not here and managed to make time to hit a yarn shop (which is pretty much everywhere I go that's not here,) I'm going to sneak a little surprise in. Like a scavenger hunt no one knows they're a part of - maybe a little twee handspun skein or something, a sock yarn keychain, a....I don't know, some little something. Maybe it'll catch on and traveling knitters will begin carrying little hide-a-surprises everywhere they go. (Or maybe I'm an idiot. I should go to sleep.)

(Oh, another thing I noticed - in yesterday's post, when writing about the comment whoring thing, I linked to a post on Turtlegirl's blog that discussed the whole whoring-for-comments accusation; I just wanted to clear up, in case you didn't click that link and thought that I was just linking directly to the person who thought requesting comments was whore-y. No - Turtlegirl rules. Woot.)

I got a couple of questions in the comments on the contest announcement post. A few of them had to do with spinning; namely, tips for newbies. Being a relative newbie myself (I learned to spin in October), I can tell you the best thing to do is to practice. And just like knitting, don't be afraid to try stuff and screw up. Every kind of fibre you can get your hands on, give it a shot. Fiber samplers are great for this, or if you happen to know of anyone who sells big bags of little bundles of different kinds of fibers - like, oh say, Funky Carolina (I know, I'm a total stalker) - give that a shot. I took a workshop at SAFF last year to learn the basics of spinning, and I loved the Lendrum wheel I learned to spin on. A good wheel goes a long way; if you can, try as many as you can before settling on one for purchase (said the girl who tried exactly one wheel.) I have the Spinner's Companion, which was great as a learning tool so I understood what I was doing. And the Joy of Handspinning website is great for instructional videos. Sometimes it's helpful to just cruise Etsy or the web looking at various types of handspun and just trying to copy what you've seen. But the most important thing is practice. And speed - I think it's almost always the tendency to treadle a little fast...take your time. And don't spin tired or frustrated - you'll end up with a huge mess.

I had the Greatest Mail Day Of All Time (tm) today, but I'll share photos of that a bit later or tomorrow morning - we have to run off to the grocery store and find ways to feed ourselves on the cheap, since I now owe all my money to Carrie.

Also, due to the Greatest Mail Day Of All Time (tm), I think it's likely there will be more than one winner of the contest. So keep on tossing comments around!

Yarn Porn! (psstcontestshhh)

I made my own yarn porn for today!

It's vaguely obnoxious to be all "I rule, I rule!!" but I'm seriously in love with this skein. It's up for sale in the shop, and it's probably my favourite in there right now. The shimmer, the colour, the squishability, and the fact that I got what I wanted out of it - that's three in a row now! A bulky two-ply (check!), a three-ply sock weight (check!) and a two-ply worsted weight (check!) - I'm becoming a goal-oriented spinner, rather than just a throw-it-on-the-wheel-and-take-what-I-get spinner.


Worsted, for some reason, usually evades me; I either end up on the DK side or the bulky side of it. In this case, I credit the fiber, a stunning merino/bamboo blend that came from Michelle at The Sweet Sheep. It was the final - I think? - installment from her fiber club, and I've been hoarding it for a while because I both loved it and was a little afraid of it (how does bamboo behave with merino? quite well, actually.)


Yep. Love it.


Okay, I won like a ton of stuff this week, and there are contests EVERYWHERE, and I keep entering them, even though I really shouldn't because I've already won two this week...so in order to balance out my debt to the Universe, I figured I should hold YET ANOTHER contest! (Winners of my last contest, your prizes will be along - as soon as the markers come in, I'll ship the goods!)

So I kinda made you work for the last one. This one I'll keep simple - just comment. Yep, any old random comment between now and Wednesday gets you an entry (I'll only enter each individual once, but hey, comment all you want. And if anyone on Ravelry wanted to call this shameless whoring for comments, I suppose they could - but it's really just an excuse for me to give stuff away and who would complain about that?)

I'll draw a winner Thursday morning. Prize? Do you even have to ask? Sock yarn. (Or, if you don't knit socks....I don't know, some other sort of yarn. There's no shortage 'round here.) Feel free to spread the contesty love on your blog, send people here, this ain't no secret.

Have a good weekend!

YEEEAH!!!!

MAN did yesterday rule! I mean, work was work, nothing exceptional there, really, but it was a hell of a day!

I'm going to have to do contests more often, because it would appear that for every prize I give away, I win one elsewhere - I won TWO yesterday, and I never win anything!

The first was from the Ridiculous Obsession blog, and the prize was - dude - Socks that Rock! A colourway I love! (Mmm, semi-solids, my favourite fixation.) And I don't have it, and it's on my list! Yay!! (Yes, I have an actual physical list of the STR colourways I covet.)

And THEN I found out that I won the Loopy Ewe July contest, out of 411 entries! I got a $35 Loopy credit! Yay, bring on the next sneak-up, I can play now! So far, you can see how the day is going - it's awesome! It's awesomely exclamation-pointy awesome!!

Even my spam mail was good! Best Spam Message Subject Line Ever: "boiled cheese wheel". Brilliant - why WOULDN'T I open a spam message if there's a possibility of a boiled cheese wheel at the end of that rainbow??

AND I got these gorgeousstunningamazing things in the mail on Tuesday afternoon, but we'll include these in the What Was Awesome About Wednesday list, since I wore them (ooh, maybe they're lucky!):

Emily sent me this amazing sterling and swarovski crystal set, and I LOVE it. (Lots of 3/4 shots went into this self-shoot. I tried taking a picture of both earrings but for some reason, in every picture I took of myself in full frame, I looked like my own fraternal twin. Strangest thing, but seriously, it looked like half of my face belonged to one person and half to another. I studied myself in the mirror, but didn't see it; so either I'm dealing with a distorted self-image, or something was freaky with the lighting in that room. Nevermind, the earrings match, so just picture the same thing on the other side of my face.)

But that's not all! I just can't wear two pair at once - I also got these:


Emily rocks my face - her stuff is so beautiful, and she's such a great amazing person. Every time I need a gift for someone who might not appreciate handknit socks or handspun yarn - I can't believe I know any of those people - I go straight to Em's shop. And her prices are just silly good - I've seen the Sundance jewelry catalog show less spectacular stuff that costs four times as much! (That catalog, like Anthropologie, is one of my favourite things to look at for eye candy I would NEVER pay that much for.)

And, bonus, it was a pretty good hair day, which is a rare thing in my world (and made up for the crooked face):


I also realized there are five Fridays in August, which means five paydays in August! (For Travis - for me, still just the two.) I love when that happens. Somehow it never amounts to there being a pile of extra money at the end of the month, but it usually means there's not a big crater where our money USED to be.

And I really really should have shared this about a gajillion days ago when I got it:


When Valerie went to Australia, she picked up this wonderful Australian wool top for me - this tickled me to no end, the idea that someone went to Australia and thought about me while there! Awesome! (Actually, I'm thrilled if someone goes to the grocery store and thinks of me, so Australia just totally blows my mind.) Thank you so much Valerie! (And there was also a little brown wool sheep magnet, but I didn't get a picture of him - he's my cubicle mascot now, hanging on the metal cabinet thingie over my desk. I pet him a lot - it soothes me, since there's a severe shortage of wool in the office. One of the shortcomings of the federal government, if you ask me - not nearly enough wool.)

There's ALSO one MORE development that gave me sheer unadulterated joy yesterday, but I'm going to keep that one under my hat for a while - don't want to blow my whole wad in one post! ;-) (Not a baby. Don't look for that for a while.)

Obligatory spinning/knitting content: Finished a skein last night (at 1:00 a.m., as I am nothing if not determined) and I'll hopefully get some pictures of that today after work, if the rain will let up. (Also, still working on the palooza socks; got the heel and foot left, no sweat, definitely going to be finished and blocked by the revised deadline of August 7th.)

How Uncool I Am:

While sitting with someone at the office in order to show her something job-related (which is but a small portion of what I understand my duties to be,) I flipped a page on a packet of papers and let out a soft little yelp. Have you ever tried to stay cool and composed and professional when you have just attached yourself to a packet of papers via loose staple? It SUCKS. Here I am, trying to describe a process to her, and trying not to let on to the fact that I am hopelessly entangled with this staple, which has just begun to fornicate with the fleshy part of my thumb in a very invasive and ouchie way. I eventually had to suck it up and say, "Excuse me, I appear to have stapled myself to this stuff, and I'll just be a moment." My cubicle is small, and the pain was getting worse, so I just kind of half-turned away and tried to maneuver my hand in a way that would give me some kind of view of what had happened - the thing had slipped in kind of sideways, which is why I couldn't extricate myself without drawing attention to the process. I pulled myself free, removed the staple and re-stapled the papers (because now the staple was sullied, I suppose,) doused myself with alcohol-based hand cleaner, and tried to go about my business as if nothing had happened. She was completely mortified. I think I've scarred her for life.

*Sigh* Being career-oriented is difficult when you're klutzy and easily distracted.

I had a go at writing a bio for the SAFF workshops. You ready for this?

Alyson Johnson is a self-taught knitter whose admiration of the fiber arts quickly spiraled into crazed obsession. A prolific knitter, spinner, and designer, she is also one of the legions of knit-bloggers and yarn vendors attempting to convert the Internet into the Interknit. Alyson most recently garnered attention web-wide for a pair of thigh-high lace Bellocq stockings she knit for her wedding. A proud Public Knitter, she often provides impromptu knitting lessons to anyone who expresses the slightest interest, including her husband and any number of waitresses and shop clerks. Never far from the needles, she prides herself on knitting while traversing the streets of downtown Orlando during lunch hour, delighting in the strange looks one gets for dragging a half-knit wool sweater around town in a Florida July. When not knitting or spinning, Alyson can be found talking about knitting or spinning, talking about other things while thinking about knitting or spinning, and engaging in lively debates with her husband as to whether it is sane to pursue the goal of owning all of the sock yarn in the world. (Yes. It is.)

Faced with bios of people who rattle off the 47 different breeds of sheep they raise and the eleventyhundred awards they've earned and organizations they're a part of, I thought it best to take the "vague and kinda funny" approach. It's also way long. (But all or mostly true. I don't actually plan to own ALL the sock yarn in the world - I don't even really like Opal. And yes, I do consider a mention of the stockings by Yarn Harlot to be "web-wide". It doesn't get much wider, really, at least not in my world. I did make sure to include the pattern name for the stockings, lest anyone should think I'm attempting to take credit for the design, which is far more brilliant than anything I've ever come up with.)

OH! Speaking of which, Stitch Diva is having a sale on patterns (you know Stitch Diva...Sahara, Bellocq, Simple Knitted Bodice?) They're giving 25% off and donating the proceeds of the sales to very worthy causes; if you've been thinking about picking up any patterns from them - or even if you haven't - now's the time! The sale runs through today.

And finally, I suck: Jill emailed me about a million years ago about good man sock patterns - she wants to knit a generic sock for her hubby - and I never did compile a proper answer. I'll offer up some suggestions here:

The first ones I knit for Travis were just a simple ribbed-cuff thing, 2x2 rib, plain stockinette foot. The ones I knit for the wedding were based off of the Garter Rib socks in Sensational Knitted Socks, which I would totally recommend as being one of the best books for sock knitting because it covers pretty much every conceivable foot, leg, and ankle measurement, and it has tons of great stitch pattern ideas, a lot of which are good manly ones - I would imagine the same is true of the sequel, but I don't have that one yet. And Nancy Bush's books, particularly Knitting on the Road, have some really great man socks. Oh, and I knit the Boyfriend Socks for my dad ('cuz that's not weird) and they're GREAT.

Anyone else have suggestions for good boy-socks?

Edit: Thanks, Robin, good point! There's also this post of mine from last year where there are tons of awesome sock patterns on the web - I remember thinking the Blueberry Waffle socks would be awesome for a guy, among others.