Yarn disaster and 4 hour relief program

We got a package from my mom all the way from Iceland. It had Easter candy and yarn :) What a treat! The candy is all gone but the yarn (and Lopi 27) is left.



The yarn was 7 cakes of this beautiful yellow orangish heatherish plötulopi (Icelandic unspun yarn). It is beautiful and it smells like sheep. What more can you ask for?

Yesterday (Saturday) I went on a yarn crawl with 6 of my knitting friends to Williamstown and Parkersburg, West Virginia. That is a story in itself. We found this cute quilting/yarn shop in Williamstown, WV. Williamstown is just across the river from Marietta, OH and both are fairly close to Parkersburg. In Parkersburg we went to a Chinese buffet (I was full for the rest of the day), to Crafts2000 (similar to Joanns and Michaels) and to the Main Street yarn shop.

This took all day and when I came home at 4 pm and looked in my bedroom the kids had gotten into the bag with the plötulopi. They had put their hands through the cakes and they where all tangled up and the middle of all of them had tangled up :(

This yarn sticks together like velcro and it was all but impossible to untangle it. Thankfully that property makes it super easy to pull it apart and splice it back together. I spent the next 4 hours winding the yarn (thank god for my ball winder) and amazingly I got most of the yarn. There is only the mess in the middle left and I think I´m going to leave it for now. It kind of looks felted, I can swear.

At 8 pm it was the girls bedtime and I passed out after they got to bed and probably fell asleep before them. Yarn trip + yarn distaster = exhaustion.

I took a lot of pictures of my WIPs and my yarns and they can be found on flickr. Here are some examples.



The organic cotton I bought in New Orleans. Yummie.



The sweater I'm knitting for Ása Sóley. I was up to the yoke part and was stuck. Then I got Lopi 27 in the mail from my mom and found the perfect yoke pattern in design nr. 17, Él.

Back from the Big Easy

I'm back. New Orleans was a lot more fun city than I had thought. There was music in the streets, there were people throwing pearls, etc. There was also the combination of spring break and St. Patrick's day.

I didn´t do much sightseeing but our hotel was close to the French Quarter, so I got to see that a little bit. I did see Cafe Du Monde, but they had a line and I don't do lines. So instead we (me and couple of guys I work with) walked around trying to find another cafe. In doing so one of the guys pointed out to me a sign that said needlework on it. Lo and behold, that was the yarn shop! I went in there to look at the goodies while the guys got some coffee next doors. I ended up buying 2 skeins of white organic cotton. Man, that yarn is so soft. I can't believe it's cotton.

This was on the last day, Thursday. The conference was over for me at lunch and my flight wasn't until 7 PM. The trip home went fine, even if it was late and I wasn't feeling 100%. Clint and Ása were sick and I got it too, in somewhat milder form. I was able to attend the conference, but not to do much in the evenings. Plus I didn't have much appertite and normally I have a very healthy appertite. One evening my 'dinner' consisted of an orange and some candy.

Yesterday, Friday, I felt like a wound rag (Icelandic expression for feeling crappy). I had no energy whatsoever. Today I feel much better. Just typing on the computer was to much for me yesterday. I knew I was in trouble when I couldn't even browse Ravelry :)

Knitting wise, I made one sock during the trip and started his twin brother. It's a quick, easy and fun pattern called the International Sock of Doom, and was used in the Sock Wars. It's the perfect pattern for gifted socks because it uses size 4 (3.5 mm) needles, sport weight yarn and super stretchy ribbing. So it is both quick, will fit well and looks good too.

Post knitting camp

I know I should have wrote about this a week ago, but I was consumed by lace knitting and a bad knee.

See, what happened was this. When I stepped into the car going home from the cabin my knee got hurt somehow. Just a wrong tension or something. Whatever it was, it hurt. But since we were still at the Cabin I had to sit with my knee bent all the way to Athens to drop of couple of people and then to Albany. I think it took just over an hour, maybe hour and a half before I could finally stretch out the knee. By then it had swollen up and I had trouble bending it. The hardest thing was to get out of the car and to stretch the knee out to begin with. After that I was much better. I had no trouble putting my weight on my knee, but I couldn't bend it.



I ended up staying home on Monday, sitting in bed, trying not to move or use my foot too much and KNITTING. I started Hyrna Herborgar and it was a total social pressure. Cassie was knitting it and Sigga Sif too. Last time (and the only) I knit an Icelandic shawl, Cassie knit one too.

On her blog, Cassie´s been talking about how tedious the ever longer rows of the shawl can be. Especially the spider lace in the middle. I wouldn´t mind the shawl being tedious, I made a silly mistake yesterday and spend the whole evening fixing it, just to mess up some more stitches right next to the first mistake :(

My knee is much better now and hopefully Hyrna Herborgar will be too.

Knitting retreat recap

I wrote this a few days ago, until I got interrupted. My computer has mainly been used in the evenings to watch DVDs or videos online, which doesn't give much time for blogging.

The knitting retreat was great. We had a lot of fun. There were 7 of us in a small little cabin by Lake Hope. Lake Hope is right outside of town. It´s easy to get there and the cabins are inexpensive, especially compared to more touristic locations like Hocking Hills that are a little further North of us.

We had good food and I had them watching the first shows of Arrested Developement. We ended up watching the whole first DVD. I don´t think they wanted to watch more than couple of shows but these shows are just too funny.

On the Friday night we played Wii. Everybody tried it. The oldest of us is over 60 and she did better than most of us. This game console is one of the best inventions of the 21st Century so far. My 4 year old plays it and I´ve heard of 100 year olds playing it too. We don't have one for ourselve and we only have a tiny 14" TV so I don´t think we´re getting one any time soon.

I knit on this and that during the weekend. I knit on my traveling socks, the one I started on the way to Boston last month. I knit on a sweater I´m making for my daughter. I made a secret knit. I don´t want to spoil the suprise. I was going to finish that particular item last night but couldn't find the pipe cleaners!

I was really proud of one of us. Nancy B. tried 3 new techniques over the weekend. She tried intarsia, lace and cables. She like the cables the best and she designed her first cabled knit by herself (with a little help from Abbie and me). We called the design 'SAN of Green Cables'

p.s. I went to Walmart today to get couple of things, one of them being pipecleaners, but I forgot to pick them up. So the surprise stays that way for a while :o I hope I can finish the surprise knitting before I leave for New Orleans on Sunday. I have a conference there.