Tour-de-Fail

I'll admit: I knew this would happen. Signing up for both Tour-de-Sock and Tour de Fleece which co-occur over June & July... there was no way I'd keep up with both plus regular life. No way, especially since it's summer when I limit my inside-sitting-down-time. My 3rd TdS sock is about where it was on Friday, with some more of the foot done. I've decided not to even cast on the 4th TdS pattern because it involves about a million beads and I'm just not that interested in it. I'd much prefer to finish one of the pretty pairs I've already begun. And my Tour de Fleece spinning? Well...

I forgot. Totally. In my mind, the thing started July 1st. Nope! I'm 2 days behind before I've even started! To make it worse, the last half of June was so rainy I have yet to get around to washing my first fleece, which consitutes a portion of my TdF goals. Since it's my blog, I reserve the right to amend my goals:

1. Spin for at least 15 minutes every day (which I will begin tonight!).
2. Finish two skeins (8 oz) of gradient-dyed BFL from June Pryce Fiber Arts on my wheel.
3. Extra-special-gold-star-challenge: Wash, process, and spin 1 oz of wool from my first fleece.

That's still a hefty 9 oz of spinning to finish over the next 3 weeks so I'll be very happy if I complete it.

Would you like to see why I totally forgot about the TdF this past weekend?

Love. That. Shirt.

I was too busy fawning over spending quality time with my nephews, Liam and Logan, 2.5 years and 2 weeks old, respectively. And with those adorable faces, can you blame me for forgetting to spin?

The teasing can never start too early.

:-D I miss the little boogers already!

Happy, Happy Monday!

Three things that made me happy this Monday:

1) Discovering that people still liked me! All last week I thought I had received zero comments on any of my blog posts because I stopped receiving emails and because blogger said '0 comments', which made me sad. Not like I expect a ton of responses but I usually have a few on each post (and what blogger doesn't love comments?). But I was happy to discover today that if I actually clicked on the '0 comments', a whole bunch of Google+ comments showed up! Yay! :) Now please give me your honest thoughts on the Google+ comments, I don't think I like them (mostly because of the weird disconnect with Blogger) and I don't really see the advantage of using them. Any thoughts?

2) Residual soreness.

The Fiasco and I spent Sunday traipsing about Beavertail Park and Watson Farm in Jamestown, RI and it was a lovely day. Sun, wind, mud, water, and green green everywhere. And finally (saved the best for last)...

 3) My new nephew arrived today!

In the middle there is all 8.7 lbs of Logan, with his little grumpy gnome face and oversized hat. I wish I could've been there to squish those itty bitty cheeks! Top left are the beaming mom and dad, below is the happy big brother Liam, top right is a totally engrossed grandma, and bottom right is an already smitten grandpa. These pictures make me happier than I can say. :)

Hope your weeks are off to a good start, too! I am now overwhelmed with the urge to knit some tiny human things.

Planning Is Just As Good, Right?

No. Not right. Planning what to knit might be pretty fun, but it is still not just as good as actually knitting. Unfortunately, planning is all I've had time for this week. Still, I think it's a pretty good plan.

L to R: Sock A, Sock B, Sock C plans

The patterns for the Tour-de-Sock are still a mystery (JUST TWO MORE DAYS, YAY!) but they did give some hints of what supplies would be needed to achieve each challenge so we intrepid knitters could prepare. Being probably 70% composed of BMFA Socks That Rock, my sock stash is pretty wild color-wise and many of the patterns suggested semi-solid or tonal skeins, so choosing was actually pretty tough. Sock A suggested a semi-solid with 15 grams of contrast color (uh-oh, colorwork) and I'll decide which accent to use when I see the pattern. The yarn is STR Lightweight in Melusine and the contrasts are Bugga leftovers. Sock B suggested semi-solid or tonal with about 500 beads of 2 different colors (YES, 500). I have no idea if I have 500 beads there but they'll have to do. The yarn for this is STR LW Rare Gem Water. Sock C suggests yarn with stripes or a long color change/gradient, so I thought my new BMFA BFL Fingering in SasSwatch might work nicely (and I'm itching to try the new base).

L to R: Sock D, Sock E, and Sock F plans

Sock D just required solid or semi-solid yarn and I couldn't decide between these skeins. I'll probably end up going with on that has already been wound but these are Bugga in Northern Purple Gold Beetle, STR LW in Tempest, and the full skein is Bugga in Ruby-Tailed Wasp. Sock E required solid yarn and about 50 matching beads, for which I will use STR LW in Bleck and some gunmetal-colored beads which don't quite match but look great with the yarn. Finally, Sock F requires 50 grams of one color, 50 of another, and 15 of a third (more colorwork!!). These little bits of Skinny Bugga in natural, Blue Ringed Octopus, and Ghost Moth should do nicely! We've been informed that Sock E will be the first challenge, which is sweet because it's already wound (lazy much?) and I'm excited to see what's going on with the beads.

Thanks for the lovely wishes about my new nephew... but he's still forthcoming so I didn't get to meet him on my trip back home. Poor SIL was in the hospital for 2 days and has been contracting for over a week but the little tyke just doesn't seem ready to come out yet. Hopefully soon! In the meantime, here's a happy photo I wasn't sure I'd ever get to see happen. That's my current nephew in the middle and my pending nephew in the belly on the right:

Isn't he a cutie? Now back to life so that eventually I can get back to knitting!

All Caught Up!

Alrighty, I've already shown you some photos from Cheekwood Gardens as well as photos of my totally-necessary-and-wonderful-sourvenir yarn and the Nashville Zoo. Here are just a few remnants from last week's vacation (two weeks ago already?) to round out your vicarious adventures.

There were some neat sculptures along a wooded path in Cheekwood Gardens. Here you see my Fiasco befriending a tortoise sculpture, my mom demonstrating the power of another sculpture, my favorite sculpture showing a body/tree trunk, and my Fiasco and Dad trapped with T-rex arms in chairs too small for their shoulders (just because it's adorable).

By the end of a week in Nashville I was more than a little sick of country music but here are photos of the outside of the Grand Ol' Opry, a stylin' dress from within the Country Music Hall of Fame, and Elvis's totally reasonable gold-plated, diamond-dusted vehicle.

I lived in Florida for a year in between my undergrad and grad school days, during which time I made a very dear friend Candice, shown here with her fiance, Greg. I had only been able to see her once in the past 5 years so it was awesome to get to see her again, however briefly! We headed to the woods for a hike where we saw rivers, old Native American forts, and idyllic farmhouses.

The Fiasco and I took advantage of our time alone on the trip to see more streams, happy smiles, neat water-carved rocks, and big ol' trees with gnarly roots.

Finally, for no reason whatsoever other than it seemed A Thing To Do In Tennessee, we visited the Jack Daniel's whiskey distillery. The Fiasco dislikes whiskey and I only vaguely remember drinking some that was passed around at a party once so it's not like we were big fans but now I'm curious. We couldn't taste any at the distillery because it's located in a dry county (ironically hilarious!) but the tour was still pretty interesting and it was free so I'd recommend it if you have an hour. I couldn't take photos of inside the main parts but shown above is the visitor center, the Fiasco sniffin' some filtered whiskey, the place where they burn sugar maple wood to make their filtering charcoal, our tour guide Dusty sitting in front of the water that is used to make the corn mash whiskey is distilled from, a cool chair made of old whiskey barrels, a bald cypress tree because I LOVE cypress trees and I miss them (they don't grow in the north but I did my undergrad thesis on them and think they're awesome, and yes I go to a distillery and take photos of the trees), and finally, a photo of the barrel house which was pretty impressive inside. Did you know that whiskey has to age 4-6 years before it's ready? Now you do!

Phew! That got a little rambly towards the end there, didn't it? Hope you enjoyed it anyway and are having a fabulous holiday weekend!

You Animal!

It's either the biologist or the child in me (most likely both) that makes me really love zoos. I feel like I should hate zoos or feel more guilty about these wonderful "wild" animals being held captive for our viewing pleasure. However, zoos have played important roles in conservation and in many cases if the animal wasn't in a zoo, it would be in danger of poaching or extinction through more widespread, long-term, and very real threats like climate change and habitat loss. So really, in light of how the planet is pretty much going to break down and go haywire someday, keeping a few well-cared-for gibbons in an enclosure designed specifically for their needs doesn't seem so bad.

Man, that got dark (I should probably lay off the dystopian novels). Here are some animal photos from the Nashville Zoo to cheer you up!

We saw very athletic gibbons, playful cloud leapords, the rare and unusual ostrich flower, and the original angry bird.

 

We saw a pair of supremely happy tortoises, a curious porcupine, swift-footed meerkats, and graceful flamingos.

And there were domestic animals! A dead sunbathing alpaca, goats-in-a-bucket, goats-about-to-headbutt-overeager-little-ones, and the rare conservation breed of sheep, Cotswold.

They had one of those enclosures where you can go in and feed I-totally-forgot-what-kind-of-bird some nectar, I love those things. This photo shows me, my little-cousins-who-feel-like-siblings Megan and Austin, my kinda-freaked-out-Dad, and my dear Fiasco.

And some final photos, on top is my aunt and cousin Austin with their buddy the giraffe and a photo observing my family observing the giraffes. Bottom left is my Fiasco attempting to convince Austin to eat a bacon-cheddar-flavored cricket (yes, cricket). Bottom right is the Fiasco's face after Austin wisely refused and he ate the cricket himself. Mwahahaha oh man, it cracks me up every time.

I hope you enjoyed our little trip to the zoo! What's your favorite zoo animal?

Visits and Yarn

Thanks for all the lovely comments on the quilt my Fiasco made, your kind words made him very happy. :) I hope you all had a lovely weekend. My parents were visiting so mine was really nice! It's awesome finally living in an apartment that is large enough to have visitors. We did quite a bit of shopping and now that my mom is big on crocheting, that shopping involved yarn! The highlight was when we went to Slater Mill to visit the market for the knitting weekend event they were hosting. It was basically a mini fiber festival with just a handful of vendors held within an historic cotton mill.

How I love these yarn wreaths!

Colorful rope

Rope spinning contraption

Loom

Big ol' bale of cotton

Cotton carding

Lots of bobbins!

Spun cotton

North Light Fibers

North Light Fibers is a yarn company on Block Island, an actual island off the coast of Rhode Island (not an actual island). They sell handwoven garments as well as luxury yarn and spinning fiber. My mom generously purchased me a tiny bit of brown, fluffy gold:

This stuff is unbelievably soft!

While crazy expensive, I've been wanting to work with quiviut fiber for a very long time. Softer and warmer than cashmere, it comes from the undercoat of the muskox and has an incredibly short staple length. This is only a tiny bit but I am going to blend it with some merino/silk and try to spin it finely to stretch it a bit. It is going to be glorious! 

Since it was my birthday weekend, I also splurged on a little bit of pretty, pretty yarn:

from Play At Life Fiber Arts

These yarns are both made from Blue Faced Leicester wool. The top skein is a 3-ply DK weight and the bottom is a 2-ply fingering weight dyed in a gorgeous dark teal to bright blue gradient (check out her website, she'll dye to order!). I've been wanting to work with a gradient dyed skein for a while and I have yet to knit with such thin BFL wool so I'm really excited to give this one a try. In fact, I think I might need to cast on right away. This little gem is going to become a Harmony Shawl, I just need to decide whether to start the shawl with the bright part and end with the dark or vice versa... I think I know which I'm going to do but how would you knit this skein?