Hi all!

Hey everyone! I am still lurking about. Just thought I would post a little update about what has been happening in my life.

I am currently taking a night class on getting A+ certified and it is eating my soul. Ok - Maybe not eating my soul, (lol) but it's pretty consuming! I work full time during the week - getting up at 4:30 in the morning everyday to get to work. My class meets twice a week from 6:00 to 10:00 pm. It's exhausting! Add to that - this is a very different area of study for me. I have a B.S. in English with a minor in Philosophy, and before this class had never opened up a computer before. I have to study ALL THE TIME just to get what they are talking about in class. It's really challenging, but I am really liking it.

So that is the really big thing going on that has been taking up most of my days and nights. We did get out and get one camping trip in - which was really fun. I will post pictures when I get a chance. Sadly I broke my camera on the camping trip, so I have been camera-less for about three weeks now. SAD! I take pictures all the time! I have borrowed my hubbies little camera to take a few pictures of projects - but that camera doesn't even have a flash - so it's not real practical. (aka - the photos look pretty bad!)

I haven't been able to get much knitting or hooking done lately as I am really studying all the time. But when my brains burn out I will try and do a little work on something while drooling on the tv. I will try and get some pictures up soon of my latest. (It's raining today - so no natural light and no flash = Bad bad pictures. Maybe it will be sunny tomorrow?)

I had my Birthday on Monday and as I do every year I took the week off of work. It was great timing as I really needed the time for school. I spent my actual Birthday in class ripping all the bits and doohickeys out of a computer and then (lord oh lord) putting them back in CORRECTLY. (It wasn't pretty - but my computer did work when it was all over. Whew!) So a pretty uneventful Birthday.

I will be trying to post more frequently in the future. I was shocked a month had gone by since I posted! WHAT?!?! How does that happen?!?!

Hope everyone is healthy and happy.

XO

Upper Midwest Alpacas 3rd Annual Fiber Festival

Fate was working for me this year and the Upper Midwest Alpacas 3rd Annual Fall Fiber Festival was held on my B-day! So my hubby and I headed out to Hopkins, MN and spent an hour or two looking over local fibers. This is only the second fiber festival I have been to and it was tiny compared to the Shepherd's Harvest Sheep & Wool Festival I went to in May. This festival was held in a school Gym and there were about 50 vendors set up.

I had an interesting talk with the vendor selling corn yarn about the milling process. He said that they had to change mills because of the road construction crews discovering that a biodegradable corn fiber mesh could be used to stop hillside erosion and now the mills are pumping out this corn based mesh like crazy. So the mill that would spin his fiber bumped him to a different mill, (smaller mill) and the fiber he got from this other mill is WAY softer! Interesting! (I found an article about this here if anyone is interested.)

We also had a nice chat with a lady selling Wassail cider and jelly. We picked up some of her spice packets and jelly for gifting this holiday (shhhhh) and she admired my Lucy Bag. She told me that she wanted to knit a bag and felt it and she went to the yarn store and the yarn cost her $200.00! She was horrified. :) I think I have gotten used to the sticker shock of good wool. Also - I thought it funny that she was horrified about the cost of yarn when every booth around her was selling expensive luxury yarn. Hee hee.

There were a lot of chatty people here who would just walk up and start talking to you. It was pretty welcoming and comfortable. I walked the entire circuit and then went back for the yarn I HAD to have. I ended up with four skeins.

This is 7.50 oz (469 Yards) of Black Alpaca from Enchanted Meadows in Wausau, Wisconsin. I believe this is about a Sport Weight (or DK?) and it's just squishy goodness. I new when I touched it that it was coming home with me. So. Awesome!

This Blue Lusciousness is 300 Yards of 100% Suri in Sport Weight from Riverside Alpacas in Lake City, MN. This yarn is so cool in my hands - it's almost silky to the touch. It is fun to just pet it over and over. I had to have this blue - my picture doesn't show the depth of color here - but it's just wonderful.

This skein is an Angora Rabbit and Wool Blend (60/40), it is worsted weight, and it holds 300 yards. This is from Angora Gardens from Clarks Grove, MN. They had really soft samples knit up at their booth and it made me want Angora Yarn in the worst way! This blend was pretty wonderful to touch and a little closer to my price range than the full angora I found sold at another booth. (Boy is it awesome to squish though!) This is the thickest yarn I purchased - which is funny since I am a bulky weight girl in most of my knitting.

And my final purchase was this lovely hand dyed sock yarn from Knit in Class Fiber Studios. The colors of the yarn were so wonderful! And the yarn is just squishy goodness. I try not to buy to much Superwash yarn, but this is a Superwash Sock yarn - in the colorway Smoke. 460 yards of soft yarn. Very lovely. I think it will make a nice shawlette.

I am quite pleased with my Stash Enhancement and have been having fun feeling the yarn and trying to think about what it wants to be knit into. Ravelry here I come! :)

Birthday Girl! Wahooo!

Today is my 40th Birthday.  Naturally I need to start my 40's off with a bang and I woke bright and early at 2:15 this morning and could not get back to sleep. Around 3:30 I got up and came out to my computer and started watching video's on Utube on how to Crochet. I always want to learn how to crochet around my birthday partly because I spent one of my birthdays over at my mom's house and we sat out on the back porch and she tried to teach me how to crochet. It didn't stick. I ended up missing a few steps in the process and the scarf I tried to crochet lost stitches every row (I suspect I forgot to chain one at the end of each row) and I gave up.

This morning I found a really nice tutorial on UTube and started following along. I tried first on my left over Sheep(ish) yarn from my KAL Cowl, but quickly decided it wasn't working and grabbed a ball of Sugar 'n Cream cotton instead. (Probably not the best choice for a beginner in crochet as the yarn is splitty - but I have knit about a bajillion wash clothes in the last 10 years - so I am pretty comfortable with this yarn.) I chained 21 stitches on my Size H hook and started trucking. A few short hours later and I have my very first finished crochet project!

I discovered a few things when I made this:
1. Crochet is soooooo fast! My knit wash clothes take days for me to make. This was my first one and I finished in hours. Wow!
2. Counting is important. I have a tendency toward confusing where the hook should go in, so I sometimes increase or decrease unintentionally. So I methodically counted every row until I had several inches done and that seemed to help.
3. Using variegated yarn is SUCH a great idea! The yarn I was working was always a different color from the stitch I was attaching too. It really helped me keep things straight in my head and I think I will stick to variegated yarns while I learn.
4. Ripping back is easy. I had to get over my "fear of frogging" but once I found out how easy it was to clean up a mistake I was ripping back all the time. It was great!

I am very pleased with my first crochet and I am going to keep working at it. I really want to be both a crocheter and a knitter. I think the two lend well to each other (crochet edges on knit items are awesome. Crocheting my knit squares together rather than hand stitching??? Um. Heck yeah!) and I would love to wear both crowns with pride.

In other knitting news, I was looking at my Caron.com weekly e-mail and saw that Vickie Howell had posted pictures and info about the Knit A Long  that I participated in. When I went to look at her blog I saw that my picture and one of my comments I made in the Ravelry Forums was posted on her Blog! It was strange seeing a photo of myself on someone else's blog! But admittedly pretty cool and probably the closest I will ever come to FAME so it was kind of neat. :) Sadly I am called "Literary Lady" not LiteraryLadybug - but what cha gonna do? It's still me! ;)

Today is Saturday and Yes, even though I was on vacation all week and even thought today is my 40th Birthday, I weighed in. I don't know what diet God or Goddess was watching over me, but I somehow managed to lose weight again this week! I lost 1.8 lbs this week which puts my Weight Watchers total at -18.3 and my overall at -33.3 lbs. I also got the excitement of buying smaller clothes this week! Smaller underwear, smaller jeans, smaller tops. It's so exciting! I feel so good! And to go into a dressing room with jeans a size smaller than I was wearing into the store and have them fit like a dream? Yeah. I almost got emotional in the dressing room. (Meaning - I had a moment of Holy Shit! and then a moment of proud tears and then I threw open the door and strutted around the area to show off my awesomeness to my husband.)

I am so proud of myself for losing this weight. I am excited to continue on my journey, and I can't wait to see where I end up!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Landmarks and Goals

It's Saturday morning and that means it's Weight In day! Today I hit a goal that I have been dreaming of for literally years. When I weighed in on my Wii it told me I was Overweight rather than Obese! I have never had it tell me I was anything other than Obese! Wahoo! I had hoped my little Mii figure would shrink a little in size, but it doesn't look like it. I am pretty sure I just barely crossed the line - but I will take it!

This week I lost -1.1 lbs, my Weight Watchers weight loss is -16.5 lbs, and my total weight loss is -31.5 lbs.

With the hitting of this goal and turning the big Four-Oh a week from today, I find my thoughts are turning to the significance of numbers and goals quite a bit. I told my husband that I wanted to hit 40 like a ton of bricks and not have 40 hit me like a ton of bricks. And I am very pleased with where I am in my health quest and am definitely feeling stronger and more in control of my life than I have previously. I know that the day I turn 40 I will really only be one day older than I was on the day I was 39, but I can't help thinking about the importance that is placed on a number or a date. I think because I am learning on a daily basis that you can erode negative habits just like you can erode positive ones, I am seeing the significance of every single day and how it can really impact your life to work towards something a little at a time but consistently. So I have to wonder, should I place so much weight on a number? My head tells me to celebrate a landmark, do a small victory dance, glance down the hill so I can see how far I have some, and then got back to climbing my mountain.

As for turning 40? It sure beats NOT turning 40!

So as a birthday present to myself I am off on vacation for the next week. I started doing this a couple years back after an unfortunate Birthday spent at work and having to scoop a customers vomit out of the sink in our public restroom. Yeah. Awesome. I vowed I would do my best to NOT have to work on my Birthday again, and so far I have been pretty lucky.

I am already thinking ahead and wondering how I will do on my health quest this week. A little voice in my head, the very one I keep stomping on with my workout sneakers, keeps telling me you only turn 40 once. You should have a slice of birthday cake when you turn 40! You should celebrate your weight loss and put on a fancy dress and go out to eat! Hu. Where does that voice come from? I cannot deny the importance that food has on a celebration. And after my Birthday is Thanksgiving and then on to Christmas. And the family will praise you for getting healthy in the same breath that they cram food down your throat. So I think I will be thinking about this a lot over the next month or two.

In other news, I figured out how to get my WIPS progress meters on my blog - so I have those staring at me now. I really need to get some of those cranked out and over with. My first tread-mill afghan has so little left to do! I would love to have that one completed before I finish knitting the squares for the second one. (And I am getting close so I really need to move my butt here!)

Last night I started my second mitt on my set of Wine about Winter Mitts (free pattern Easy Half Mitten 106 on Ravelry) and because I started it late at night when I was tired I messed up the ribbing and ended up frogging it out.Will start over again when I am NOT exhausted. Better success ratio.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

What up Dog?

It's Thursday and I want to try and talk about Emma On Thursday's. Honestly not much is new in the world of our awesome Dog. We had a storm last night and that always causes worry for miss Emma. She hates the thunder and the lightning and tends to cower and shake when she hears it. Last night Tom came back from his bike ride as the rain was really starting to hit and he reminded me that it was good to close all the curtains and make the house into a Puppy Cave when the weather turns sinister. Sure enough - She settled on the couch and calmed down while I sat on the other couch and watched Hoarders on demand and knit my Malabrigo cowl. She forgot at one point that it was raining like mad out and asked to be let out. When I let her out she took one step out onto the deck and turned around - tail between her legs - and headed right back inside. Memory of a goldfish? Not such a bad thing. I prefer she push her fears away. I think the best thing we can do for our fearful pup is to try and be steady and calm.

This week has been a tough one for that. I went back to work after a pretty blissful week off for my Birthday. After spending one of my Birthdays working at the store and having to scoop vomit out of the sink in the customer bathroom - I vowed to try like mad to never work on my B-day again. Last year I had to work on my Birthday due to staffing issues - but this year I was able to take the whole week off. Awesome! Sadly - my week back has been mighty stressful and I have been tearing my hair out almost everyday. Which leads to me coming home and ranting and stomping about like JenZilla. Not a great way to keep the dog calm and happy. I try on days like that to run with her in the yarn a little more than normal to make up for it.

Hows the weather up there?
We actually had a record warm day yesterday and today has been mighty nice too. They are saying snow for this Sunday - so it's NOT going to last. (Hello - MN and November? Our day's are obviously numbered!) We are putting in new garage doors this weekend which I am really happy about. Our doors are falling apart and we have to stand there and guide the door down when we close it. I can't imagine pushing the button and walking away from the door. It will rock! Also - Our current doors are ugly as all get out - so it will gussy the joint up to have pretty new doors with NO rotten chunks falling off of them. Sweet. I am sure it will make the rest of the place look like hell in comparison - but you got to start somewhere. And since new windows and siding are not in the budget - this is what we get for now.

Stick it & Stuck it

I have finished a few projects since my last blog post. I have been on a cowl frenzy. I love them! I can wear them at work without them getting caught in books and chairs and toilets (Nobody likes a toilet dipped scarf!) and they are really warm. Also - they don't add as much bulk to my ample bust line and equally ample stomach line. I knit the Mochi Plus Cowl out of two skeins of Crystal Palace yarns Mochi Plus from my stash. The pattern is really simple and I loved it enough that I cast on almost immediately for another one out of another ball of yarn in my stash.

This time I knit the cowl out of yummy Malabrigo. I used 1 skein of worsted weight and I named the cowl "Clown Vomit Cowl" because the color is awfully like what I imagine it would look like if a clown horked up a colorful stream of yarn. It turned out great and I wear is just as much as I wear the first one I made. But after making two of the same pattern I started to get a little weary of the pattern - which is pretty much knit knit knit with a little purl purl mixed in. I would love to do this cowl in a softer color variation instead of the crazy colored Yarn I am so drawn to - but I think it would bore the pants right off my bum to knit that. (The picture at the top of the post is the Clown Vomit Cowl - Emma was as usual an awesome model.)

After the cowl madness had released me from it's grip I whipped up a simple hat out of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky that I named "Orange you glad I didn't say Banana?" You would think after knitting on my treadmill afghan for the last two years I would be sick of looking at this yarn - But I am so not sick of this yarn. I love this yarn. It's warm and easy to work and has great colors. And just the right touch of mohair fuzzy goodness. Love that yarn. Don't think I will ever NOT love that yarn. It felt's well. It knits up really nicely. I made a bowl out of it once and it's just the prettiest felted wool bowl. I think if I had to make a list of top ten favorite yarns - I would have to include Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky. It's just that awesome. I know Bulky isn't for everyone - but it's for me!

After the hat I finished a headband/neckwarmer in some left over stash yarn (Sandy's Pallete single worsted yarn). I named it Keep them Ears Warm and it does indeed keep my ears warm. I love this headband. When I finished it I wore it almost all night long. I took it off for a minute or two to see how Emma looked in it - fabulous - and then made Tom try it on as well. It's super awesome. I knit it out of some left over yarn I got at a shop many years ago. I had knit my Sunset Hat out of it a few years back and still had a lot left over. This headband only used up about half a skein - so I still have a little more than one skein left. Perhaps it will be a cowl?

And finally - I finished a One Skein Scarf out of the book One Skein Wonders. It's the Filippi Scarf from the lady who used to own Clickity Sticks - whom I got almost all my yarn bins from when they went out of business. I called this Oooh Baby Baby! because it's knit from Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Grand and it's so soft and yummy! It's black with a bit of silver metallic woven in. The pattern was really easy and I did it MOSTLY right. Sadly I bound off the way I always do rather than with the k2tog method the book called for - which made one of my ruffle d edges more ruffled than the other. But still - it's pretty awesome! I mean seriously - running alpaca yarn through your hands over and over for hours - it's pretty awesome. (Emma Once again modeled for me.)

On my needles right now is (wait for it....) a cowl. I know! It's the very popular Birthday Cowl by Nova Seals on Ravelry made out of yummy Malabrigo worsted yarn I got as a Birthday gift from my friend Abbey. I am calling it "It's my Birthday too!" and I have been working on it pretty hard since I got the yarn on Tuesday. I came home - balled it on my swift and cast on as fast as I could. I love the pattern! It causes the edge to curl in a gentle wave. It's just wonderful - and I have taken it to work with me everyday in hopes of showing Abbey it's awesomeness. She has been out most of this week - so I will try again tomorrow. Love love love it!