A Hell of a Town

Wow...I just got back from a whirlwind yarn crawl weekend in NYC. I have to thank Karen for being a tour guide extraordinaire and Amy for being a fabulous roommate (how else could I afford a midtown Manhattan hotel room?). Saturday we walked our legs off from Soho to the Upper West Side (OK, OK, we didn't walk the whole way, we aren't *that* crazy) - we hit The Point, Purl Soho and Purl Patchwork, The City Quilter, School Products, Toho Shoji (beads), M&J Trimming, and Knitty City. Sunday we met up with Druanna (Rav link) and went back to The Point and Purl Soho, then tried out Knit New York and Gotta Knit. There was also much fabulous food and lots of laughter. Karen has some great pictures on her blog. The only pics I have are of my haul from the weekend:



And as if that weren't enough, I came home to find my Wicked Witch of the West sock kit from Woolgirl had come in the mail, full of fun green and witchy things:


I've been working on my Nanner socks, I'll post later this week with some pics...

it sucks to be me

Just kidding! We went to see Avenue Q yesterday and I nearly fell out of my seat laughing - it was so great. I am so glad that we were able to get tickets on the last day the show was in town. We'd been wanting to go see it in Las Vegas, but the travel budget won't allow for that for a while - I think it will be short trips close to home for us this year.

We also went to the first game in a 5-game package that we bought for Portland Beavers baseball games, on Saturday night. It was a good time, but since the high Saturday was 98 degrees, the first couple of innings we were melting - I took along a scarf to knit on, but it was just too hot. The next game is Friday night, complete with fireworks afterward. I hope it's not quite so hot...

We were too busy *doing* this weekend for me to take pictures of anything, and the weekend just flew by (don't they always?). I am still waiting for my new Bernina to arrive, even though when I was trying to decide whether to buy it, they said "you could have it in one week." I guess "could" was the operative word in that sentence. Oh well, I continue clearing the junk out of the craft room in anticipation of spending many evenings in there once I finally get it.

Other than waiting for the new sewing machine and planning the bags I'm going to make when I get it, I've been working on WendyKnits' Nanner Socks (although I've had to rip and start over, boo), and cross-stitching on my Quaker Turtles, for a class at Acorns & Threads. I'll post some pics when any of those projects gets interesting. Although at some point I'm going to have to stop all this stitching and start cleaning the house, since Megann will be arriving to visit in less than a month!

She lives! (She Plurks!)

Blogging - not my strong suit. I can admit it, let's move on...

Megann tagged me for this meme forever ago, so let's do it:

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was going to grad school (M.S. in Computer Science) at Clemson full-time, while being financially supported by my ever-patient husband.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?
- Generate a list of items for the Scrum feature backlog for my current project
(OK, back to English)
- Write a monthly status report
- Figure out what to do for dinner
- Work on a cross-stitch project for a class at Acorns & Threads
- Go to bed early

3. Snacks I enjoy:
- popcorn (preferably with loads of butter, mmm)
- really good tortilla chips (thin & crispy) with peach or pineapple salsa
- fresh local Oregon strawberries (in season for a little while longer, I hope...)
- pretty much any version of fried dough with sugar on it (elephant ears, funnel cake, beignets, I could go on and on...)

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
First, quit my job. Then, go into hiding. Build a house on a lot of really green Oregon land, not too far from PDX. Enjoy giving some money away to worthy causes. Travel. Install a Slurpee(R) machine. Buy a certain someone the Mini he's always wanted.

5. Places I have lived:
- Pensacola, FL
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Houston, TX
- Olathe, KS (Kansas City suburb)
- Farmington Hills, MI (Detroit suburb)
- Allentown, PA (just like the song...)
- Greenville, SC
- Beaverton, OR (Portland suburb)

6. Jobs I've had:
- receptionist at a cheapo haircut place
- hostess at a local chain restaurant
- temp receptionist/secretary (lots of summers in HS and college)
- line worker at a chlorine bottling plant
- assistant manager at a bookstore
- software quality engineer at a "major computer manufacturer"

7. Peeps I want to know more about:
I am sure that by now everyone has been there, done that, so I'll let it die...

Perhaps I don't blog often because my life seems like a whole lot of boring same-old, punctuated by moments of excitement... One of those moments was when the aforementioned Megann visited PDX and took John and I out for a fabulous dinner at Ringside. Great food and great conversation (can't wait to see her again in July!).

The only other item of interest is that I'm now Plurk-ing, with some regularity (it's only been a few days, we'll see how long I hold up).

I went, I flung, I'm looped

I'm still recovering from The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling in St. Louis. So glad I decided to step out of my little introvert box and sign up to fly across the country for classes and yarn shopping with a bunch of total strangers. It was an amazing time, and I met so many great women, not the least of whom was Sheri herself - she is even nicer in person than she seems in her wonderful notes-on-packing-lists. I made some new friends, too - it was like a 3 day long "first date", where you keep having those "really? you like that, too?" moments in your conversations. I took both classes (in one day!): Wendy's Toe-Up Socks class was so much fun - she is just hilarious in person; and Cookie A is a sock genius - I learned so much in her class that I'll be able to apply to modifying stitch patterns for socks. The only negative about the whole weekend was the kiddie beauty pageant going on at the same hotel. All I have to say is "ewwwww!"

Here's the loot (minus the Wendy and Cookie patterns I got in the goody bag and bought at TLE):


Yep, there are not one but two skeins of Wollmeise in there! Claudia (another one who is hilarious in person...) dyed a special colorway for our goody bags, and then Janice gave me another skein for winning the pre-Fling "Fling". I can't wait to knit with it, but since I'm headed to Orlando on a redeye tomorrow night, I don't think I'll get to it until I get back.

More pics of the Fling on Flickr.

Test post from my iPhone

This is only a test.

Sent from my iPhone

Books, BBQ, and Knitting - Life is Good

John and I went to Wordstock with a friend on Sunday. We brought home way too many books. I'm even worse with books than I am with yarn, probably because I've been in love with them for much longer. Mostly we just wandered the booths and bought books, but we did sit down for Katha Pollitt's reading from her new book Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories. One of my favorites out of what I bought is Animus. I just love Seonna Hong's artwork, and the story has such a unique twist (which the Powell's summary explains).

After Wordstock we got lunch at Russell St. Bar-B-Que. I just love that place - it's the closest I have found in PDX to all the wonderful BBQ that we left behind in the Southeast. I love me some pulled pork smothered in a good sauce...

When we got home we settled in to catch up on the last 4 episodes of Journeyman. I like the show, but a lot of it seems to be ripped off from The Time Traveler's Wife, which I loved. I started on a new sock from the New Pathways... book while we watched TV. I modified the "Woven Ridge Sock" pattern to fit my gauge and my fat feet.


With my *&$% tight knitting, the linen stitch is really pulling down my row gauge in that middle section. I'm a little farther now than I was when I took the pic above, and I've tried it on and it seems OK so far, but I sure hope I don't have to rip this all out later....