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....

Let's try this again...

After a great start as world's most sporadic blog, I finally have something interesting to say. Went to the BMFA (Blue Moon Fiber Arts) stash sale this morning - it was so cool. Grab bags and mill ends and cones of yarn, oh my! I was on a path to spend about $400, but I managed to pare down and part with over half of it. The sock yarn has been entering the stash at a rate about 10,000% faster than it has been leaving lately, so I tried to be good.

John was sweet enough to come along as my personal photographer, so here are a couple of shots of the event and my loot.


I got: 1 skein Bambu, 1 STR medium, 5 STR light, and 1 non-superwash skein of STR light (for felting).

You might be thinking that doesn't seem like much, but check out my haul from Emily Parson's Etsy update on Monday:

That's 6 skeins of Sophie's Toes sock yarn and one "Magic Ball" for making a patchwork scarf.

But wait, that's not all... I had to get 2 of the new BMFA "Raven" series, too:

One each of Ravenscroft and Grawk in lightweight.

So you can see why I need to be on a yarn diet. We'll see how long I can hold out.

Hello, World!

Hi there... Don't know if anyone other than my sister will ever read this thing, but I finally decided it's time to jump on the blogwagon, if for no other reason than to keep track of the....um....rather *large* number of knitting projects I have on the needles. I'll try to get around to doing a photo shoot this weekend, but I can't guarantee that I won't pass out when I realize how many projects I've actually started.

In case anyone who doesn't already know me in the real world happens to stop by, I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I live in the 'burbs of Portland, Oregon, and I work at a "large computer manufacturing company" (that's the TV game show version). I'm married (15 years!) and live with my husband, John, 4 cats, and lots and lots of yarn.