This lovely new yarn is so new that I couldn’t find a picture of it on the web. So, I took my own. Frog Tree Yarns imports alpaca from a co-op in Bolivia. I’ve played with their worsted weight Merino–lovely, extra soft, single-ply Merino in lovely, bright colors–and their fingering weight alpaca–soft, two-ply alpaca in many yummy colors. And, this week we got in a brand new yarn: fingering weight alpaca, hand-dyed in fabulous colors.

(colors: Poppy, Cactus rose, Cabo sunrise, Tide pool and Zen garden–click on the pic to get a closeup of the yummy yarn!)
I love this yarn. It’s expensive, almost $40, but you get 420 yards of yarn, enough for a small shawl or a pair of socks. Or, a warm head snood-like creature. It’s really a big tube. I thought it would show off the color of the hand-dyed yarn. I’m enjoying knitting this yarn. It’s like the solid fingering weight alpaca, but the colors change with almost every stitch.

I’m knitting this for the store. It going to be a cowl (pattern: Head Huggers by Nancy Lindberg). If you stop by (after I’m finished, of course) you’ll be able to touch and feel this sample. The yarn is not listed on the store website, but give the shop a call and it can be shipped to you.

For those of you who know me, you know how much I love to eat. (It shows in my waistline ;-). I’ve been on the road for two days and done absolutely no knitting. But, I have done a significant amount of eating.

As you know, I live on the coast of Maine, about two hours north of Portland. There are many restaurants here, many of which are good, but not much good ethnic food. For a person raised in California, who spent a great deal of her adult life in Los Angeles and Berkeley, the lack of ethnic food is difficult to live with.

In Boston we went to eat dim sum at China Pearl, in Providence, RI we ate Indian food at Not Just Snacks, had heavenly bread and pastries at Seven Stars Bakery and Mongolian-BBQ style food at Fire + Ice.

I’m home now and still stuffed to the gills. In addition to dark chocolate and hazelnut biscotti and pecan sticky buns at Seven Stars, I brought spinach and gruyere chese calzones for dinner. There were also two sourdough batards and some kalamata olive buns hidden the bag. I’m having French toast for breakfast tomorrow!

So the kids wouldn’t feel left out I brought home two dozen baked char sui bao and a dozen steamed bao. These are what my mom used to call Chinese hamburgers. They are wonderful buns filled with Chinese BBQ pork (sweet and salty). Some are baked and some are steamed. My children like both.

In chocolate news, I bought this, this, and this. I might share if certain people are nice to me. I obviously have an addiction to dark chocolate!

I had a meeting that went on until 11 last night; then I came home and couldn’t sleep.

So, I slept in, the 3Ts made me breakfast (without me asking!), and then I got up and took a bunch of pictures. It’s been a good morning!

I’ve been spinning for about five years now. Spinning led to dyeing. I’ve done a lot of both. I’ve done so much that I’ve taken to teaching dyeing classes (upcoming class on 4/21–join me, it’ll be fun!).

For a taste of my taste in handspun, handdyed yarns, check out the “Handspun Yarn Gallery” at the top of the sidebar (to the right of this column). It’s just a sample of the dozens of skeins in big boxes in my fiber room (and the living room, and sometimes the bedroom). I’ve literally spun 20+ lbs of fiber and most of it’s in bags and boxes. Perhaps I need a “completed bar” for the handspun projects I should be working on.

Make sure you scroll down to the last picture. It has the companions to the skein in this post. That’s where the picture of My Favorite Skein is. Check it out!

This is decidedly not fiber-related, but very interesting anyway. This morning T2 (my middle child) asked me to come see the owl. What owl? The one outside his window!

It was waaaaay too far up the tree to get a better picture.

I also couldn’t get it to look my direction. I wanted to see its face. A few minutes after this picture was taken a pair of crows chased it out of the trees. We couldn’t find our bird ID books this morning. Does anyone know what kind of owl this is?

First we were snowed in (not, really, but school was canceled on Wed and Thurs). Then I worked Fri, Sat, Sun (and Mon) because the Unique One crew was down at the SPA weekend in Portland. Even more fun: we’re having a huge sweater sale at the store, so we’ve been super busy.

I’ve barely had time to work on socks. I’ve gotten about 3 inches done on the second sock of Great Adirondack Silky sock yarn. Check out how the handpainted stripes worked out:

You notice that the legs have different stripes–the first sock is K1,P1 ribbing, the second (not finished sock) is K3, P1 ribbing; both feet will be stockinette. Ribbing takes up more yarn than stockinette.

And, in a fit of madness, I bought two more skeins of the yarn in different colorways. Honestly, I love the feel of this yarn. It’s 70% superwash Merino, 20% silk, and 10% nylon. The incredible luster is the silk. Here are the new skeins:

And, I’ve love these so much I’ve already decided I’ll do some sort of stripes/slip-stitch/colorwork using Regia Silk Sock yarn–probably in black. Who’s got a great pattern for that?

For those of you who haven’t figured it out, I’m a geek at heart. I play in code, dream in code, and occasionally speak in code. So, in honor of that I share with you my Knitter’s Geek Code (from Knitty).

-----BEGIN KNITTER'S GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

------END KNITTER'S GEEK CODE BLOCK------

I haven’t figured out how to add: I mostly knit socks, and I’ve got a Evil Knitting Machine that calls to me, trying to get me to knit on it.

So, what’s your knitter’s geek code?

Well, I’ve finally got the side bar almost the way I want it. The completion bars are up (to nag me into completing projects), and I made a little needles icon to put next to it. That was new for me. I’m proud of that little 16×16 pixel artwork. I got the programming to work, too (that is a new skill as well).

It’s finally winter in Maine. This morning we’ve had over four inches of snow and there’s up to a foot more coming. The kids are home from school, knitting circle and Planning Board are both canceled for this evening. The forecast calls for blizzard conditions this afternoon, with winds up to 45 mph. It’s the perfect day to sit and knit, which I will when this post is complete.

Since I haven’t done much writing for my blog this week, here’s your dose of me (and, yes, I’ve combed my hair since this picture was taken):

You’ll have to buy the magazine, as content doesn’t appear on the web. You can get your very own subscription here. You’ll find the photographs to be spectacular and the articles fascinating. I’m the Spindelicious columnist. This month I have an article on how not to dye. The humor will kill you.

Stay warm!

Please look at my sidebar and admire my lovely “works in progress” bars. It took a few explosions, reloading archived files, and much trial and error, but it works! I’m proud of myself.

For this reason I’ve done zero knitting in the last day and a half.

I worked at the shop today, but there’s still a chance I won’t get called in to substitute teach tomorrow. That would be lovely. I can sit and knit. And, prepare for the winter storm anticipated Wed. and Thurs. I haven’t had a day off in 10 days (and I’m already booked for Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun, and Mon).

I need sleep!

I’ve been up playing with the website. Fortunately my DH set up an alternate site for me to muck with as I’ve really mucked that one up. This one seems to still be happy though.

I’m trying to add a Works In Progress list to my sidebar. But not just a simple list; I want a little bar that graphically shows where I am in the project. Oh, and I want the input to be through the existing interface, not playing with the code each time. Yes, I ask for too much.

Given that it’s 1 am and that I can’t make it work, I may go to the fallback: code it by hand. But, that wouldn’t be so much fun.

So, on knitting: Saturday I taught a knitting class. It was supposed to be for teenagers. The first class was five third graders, one teenager and a parent. The second class was two adults. Go figure. Well, one of the adults picked up the sticks and really went to it! In the 1.5 hours we were working, she knit at least eight inches on her scarf. Eight perfect inches–no dropped stitches, no extra stitches, no mistakes at all. Mel also owns Tamarind Restaurant in Rockland and I plan to have a great meal with her soon!

I promise not to do any more knitting or programming until I’ve had some sleep.

Here’s another “blog-along” like the Knit from Your Stash site I wrote about last week. This one has its own rules, including one day “off” (where you can add to your stash) every month. It does require you to inventory your stash before starting–which is what will prevent me from participating. I’m not going through all those boxes!

Honestly, the “stash” shown in the blog seems wimpy compared to mine, and I don’t think mine is all that huge.

Perhaps I’ll have to make up my own “stashbuster” event that accounts for fleeces, roving, and handspun.