New York City?!

Late last week, I read that Steph Gorin of LOOP (I mentioned her in my last blog post) was having a spin in on Sunday. Sunday?! Hmm. I wondered...

After much last minute planning, I was able to book a round trip Megabus ticket from Baltimore to New York, arranged to stay with my cousin Hillary who lives in Hell's Kitchen, AND planned to hitch a ride with a lovely gal named Jenny who was also going to Steph's for the spin in! I feel pretty fortunate to 1) live in a time where internet makes pretty much anything possible and 2) to know and be meeting such great people.

The ride up to New York was great. I sat next to this dude named Seth who was preparing for a music performance in Hartford. We chatted about life, ate chocolate, and he gave me some suggestions for nice, free things to do in New York. I didn't get to the museums he suggested or to this, but I will definitely be looking into those for my next visit.

Hilary and I had a nice evening together. We went to Empanada Mama for dinner. Mmm. Did a bit of shopping. Then we went to Rice to Riches where we delighted in some flavored rice pudding. Brilliant! We walked off our gluttony through Little Italy and Chinatown before heading home to watch Monster in Law (starring Jennifer Lopez and that very attractive dude from Never Been Kissed) and calling it a night.

Oh, is that what I've been missing?

Pina Colada rice pudding with buttery graham topping and french vanilla rice pudding with dried cherries.

Sunday, I walked about a mile with my spinning wheel and belongings in tow. My biceps were pretty spent after walking about a mile the day before from the bus stop to my cousins place, but I made it!


After purchasing a sausage biscuit from McDonald's (guilty pleasure) I hopped on the Metro North train from Grand Central Station to Tarrytown where I met Jenny and her red Honda Fit. The views of the Hudson were great, but unfortunately the windows on the train were pretty grimey. This one came out alright...


Jenny and I stopped at Rockland Bakery on our way to Steph's studio. Oh. My. Breadiness! It was insane. We could smell the gluteny goodness as we pulled into the parking lot. Jenny tried to prepare me for the experience, but woah! You walk in, and there's a crap-ton of pastery treats (cookies, cakes, cannolies) in the front room, but then there's the back room...where they make all the breads. Donning plastic gloves on our right hands and paper bags in our left, we ventured into the wild bread yonder and found this...

Weeeeeee!


Jenny filling her bag with HOT bagels.


I'll have one of each, please.

After purchasing some bagels ($0.45 ea) and a dozen dozen cupcakes ($0.70 ea) we were on our merry way to Loop.

I brought a couple of batts that I had bought from Steph at MD Sheep & Wool. They were totally blingged out with angelina and in the 6 hours that we were there, I was able to spin a total of 5.7 ounce/200 yards of fabulous sparkliness! I believe it will become a mobius cowl...we shall see.

Bling bling!

Hooray!

The highlight of the afternoon, aside from the great company, the spinning, the cupcakes, the bagels, the bling fiber...there was a woman who came to the spin in who was visiting from Kenya. She has pet lions (I'm not even kidding) and brought in some lion mane to card! AHH! Steph picked out some other fibers to blend the mane with as it was pretty wiry stuff. The finished product was quite lovely.

Adding the lion mane to the carding machine. (Ticks?!)


Weighing the final product.

Those scraggly pieces are the lion mane.


The ingredients.

Very neat. I'm pretty sure I want to be Steph... Her studio is so cool! And she gets to play with fiber all day. Although, I do not envy her lack of sleep!

Jenny and I left around 6:30, after purchasing some more fiber for the road! She dropped me at the red line, which I took to Penn Station and was on the Megabus by 9:30pm. The guy sitting next to me on the bus wasn't nearly as cool as Seth. He had one of those phone thingies in his ear and would occasionally mumble aloud, though it appeared that he was sleeping. Maybe he was. Either way, I was happy to arrive in Baltimore around 12:45am and rolled into my driveway around 1:30 where I promptly drug myself up to my room and fell into my bed.

What a great weekend!

In Dire Need of a Blog Update

Woah. It has been WAY too long since my last blog post. Man! Not even one post in April? What the heck was I doing in April? Oh yeah...

I was in Florida for April vacation for 10 days visiting my grandparents in Englewood. I decided not to take my laptop with me, which was a really good decision. I made it to the beach almost every day, visited the Ringling home and museum in Sarasota with my grandmother, and read four books! It was really quite lovely. Here's a pic of me and my mem (meme, memere...French...ish for grandmother) watching the sun set. It was a bit windy. Oh, did I mention they live on a key? So nice.


Being without a computer for 10 days made me realize I need to make an effort to spend less time on my computer, especially since I work on it all day, and more time being outside, reading, and knitting! Speaking of knitting, I did manage to get a bit more of my mother's socks knit. They were supposed to be done for her birthday on February 11. D'oh! I don't even know if I'll get them finished for Mother's Day!


The weekend following my return from Florida, I had an ultimate frisbee tournament in Lewes, Delaware. The team that I play with in Maine, Mogwai, drove down for the weekend and we stayed in Ocean City. It was really great to play outdoors with the people I've spent most of my ultimate "career" playing with. And it was nice to see everyone, too. We played well and came in 3rd overall...maybe out of 16ish teams? I also got to see Theresa Applegate, which was a nice surprise.

The weekend after that...two weekends ago, I took the Mega Bus up to Maine to play in ANOTHER tourney with Mogwai. Let me just say a little sumpin sumpin about Mega Bus. It is freaking awesome! First of all, it is a double decker. And you better believe I rode on the the 2nd level. Second, it's mega cheap. I bought a ticket from Baltimore to NYC for $1. I'm not even kidding. And I got a ticket from NYC to Boston for $9. It's insane. I know. AND! There's free wi-fi! I watched The Office on Hulu. AND! Even though the bus in NY was an hour late, I met a really cool couple, Joe and Patricia (Joey & Patty) who were on their way to visit Joey's 90-something year old mother in Boston. We chatted about the city, ultimate, how Joey new Casey Affleck. Good times.

We kicked some major booty at the tourney! Came in second out of twenty teams. And the team we played in the finals is going to an ultimate WORLD tourney! We scored 9 points to their 13 and at one point, the one female sub we did have was injured and we had to play IRONWOMAN (that means...no subs). It was painful. Ha. But, I'm pretty impressed with our team. Looking forward to the upcoming season. I didn't get any ultimate pictures, but check out this pic I took on the side of route 17 in mid-coast Maine.

I drive by this every time I drive to Medomak and I've always wanted to take a picture.

Now I shall talk about the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival, which was this past weekend. I have been hearing how crazy this festival is since I moved down to Maryland last November. A crapton of vendors, crazy amounts of animals, lots of tasty food (mmm...lamb kabobs), and an almost guaranteed chance that I would spend a fortune on bags and bags of yarn. Also, I was warned about the crowds...

I'm not great with crowds. I'm not claustrophobic. I don't mind being in close proximity to other people; however, I really despise not being able to get to where I want to get to in the time that it would normally take were there not 1,000 people in my way. Because the crowds were so nutso on Saturday, I spent most of my time in Demetrio's vending area, spinning some Cormo that I bought from Apple Rose Fibers and sharing info about the Medomak Fiber Arts Retreat with interested fiber-fans. And I didn't buy ANYTHING! Gasp! Also, it was about a bajillion degrees outside and wicked humid so any motion past treadling my spinning wheel was completely out of the question.

Sunday was much better. It was still a pretty warm day, but there were significantly less people to get in my way...heh. So I returned to some of the vendors I had scoped out on Saturday to talk to them about the retreat. And made a new friend in the process! Steph, or Loop on Etsy, is a fiber artist who specializes in hand-carded batts and machine-carded "clouds." The stuff she creates is magnificent. And I'm fairly certain she'll be coming on the retreat this year!! Woohoo! One of the first things she said to me? ..."Hey you're taller than me." After chatting about where to buy long pants, the annoyance of having wide shoulders, and sharing in our giddiness for the fiber art retreat, we parted ways, me to visit other vendors and her to buy some tasty refreshments :) But I didn't leave empty handed. I bought four delicious batts from her. And I'm hoping to visit her studio in the Lower Hudson Valley somewhere in the near future. Man! I love my job.

This one's called "Solitude."


And this one's "Pot of Gold." I think I'll end up plying those two together.

And this is "Purple Heart."

And here's "Tsunami." I bought the purple and black thinking I'd make a Mogwai hat. Those are our team colors. I don't know if I'll ply the colors together or keep them separate...?

So there you have it folks! I've got one more month of working in the office down here in Maryland and then I'll be on my way back to Maine for the summer! I'm so excited!

I'll end this post with this picture of me and Holly. She taught me how to make butter from cream...from the Stone's dairy cow. Mmmm. We look a little crazed...

Finished Shawls

Just thought I'd do a bit of an update with some silly finished shawl pictures. I'm hoping the friends that I made these for haven't discovered my blog yet...ha.

Here's my most recent finished product. I used a little less than one skein of Araucania Ulmo, which is a cotton yarn that I purchased at the Blacksheep Yarn Shop in Cockeysville, MD. The owners, Tracy & Joyce, are quite lovely ladies and their shop is equal in loveliness. They have a decent amount of finished garment examples, which I really like in a yarn shop. While checking out, I noticed this wrap, designed by CocoKnits. I favorited it on Ravelry as soon as I got home! The construction is really interesting. Tracy explained that she and Julie/"Coco" were college friends...maybe she said roommates? Anyhoo! I was a little nervous when I started weaving this because the weave was very holey... But it works! And what a cute dog, eh? Her name's Moxie.

Here's a black & white nostril shot:

And here is the first shawl that I wove, pictured in my previous blog post, modeled by the lovely Elianna. I especially love the babushka picture. After I took that one, my camera lost it's battery power.

Babushka!

And to switch gears a bit, I wanted to put in this link to a youtube video that was in my inbox this morning. It's from Knitting Daily and shows a pretty nifty technique for weaving in ends for fair-isle knitting WHILE you're knitting. So when you're done, you don't have to go back and take hours to weave in all of those ends! Brilliant! The video is also demonstrating how to knit a mitered scarf, which is kinda nifty, too.

And speaking of youtube videos, here is another one that I caught wind of through Purl Diva's blog. It is SO FREAKING COOL! There is a link from the youtube video to the making of the video. I think my favorite part is when the camera scans up the stairs. Pay close attention to what's happening on the wall. CRAZY!

Finally, I will close with some pictures of my new haircut! I cut off a little more than a foot! Feels good :)

Me and Turget. This is the first haircut I've had that was cut by someone other than my mother or my aunt.

Lots of hair.

There it goes!

Double the blow driers, double the fun!

Tah-dah!

Tri-Loomerific!

I arrived home from my New England travels a couple of weeks ago, and after recovering from the flu, was super pumped about the triangular package that had arrived for me. A while back, I took a tri-loom weaving course at the Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival from a woman named Pam Kelley. Pam owns and runs Sunflower Fibers and her husband Jim makes their tri-looms. After taking the class, I thought, "Hey! I think I want to buy one of these thangs." So I did! Hence the triangular package patiently awaiting my return.

This past weekend was absolutely gorgeous here in Maryland and I decided to spend it outside, weaving my first project on my new loom. The yarn I used was Classic Elite Firefly (75% viscose/25% linen), which I bought at The Yarn Spot in Silver Spring. (The Yarn Spot recently opened last November and it's a really lovely shop.) The yarn was a bit too thin used as is, so, at the suggestion of a fellow spinner and knitter, I plied the two skeins together. And voila! I'm quite pleased with the finished product, especially the fringe :)

Ready for its closeup.

"You can learn a lot of things from the flowers..."

Fringifying!

I Could Be Famous

I was in a bit of a rush to finish yesterday's blog post and failed to mention something really cool about my trip through New England. Although I wasn't feeling in the best of health while in NYC, I did get to hang out with Daniel Yuhas AND do a photo shoot with him! You might think that, being 6'2, I may be a good candidate for modeling. And you could be correct, except for the fact that I'm just too darn goofy! I can't really get that "serious model look" down or the whole "smising" thing, as Tyra might say. (America's Next Top Model, anyone...anyone?) And my posture is pretty horrid, too. Anyway, I'm cracking up in basically all of the photos, which makes them rather candid I suppose. I can't post any of the photos because Daniel will be submitting the pictures and pattern to various knit-centered publications, one of which stipulates that the photo may not be published in any other way for a certain amount of time...yadda, yadda, legal jargon, etc. etc. But I'm pretty excited! I'll be sure to share a link to any online publications his pattern is chosen for. In the meantime, you should check out his website (linked above) and his patterns on Ravelry.

Connecticut's Not So Bad After All

I had a great time traveling home to Maine at the beginning of the month. I devised a business trip of sorts around an indoor ultimate frisbee tourney in Orono, Maine. I've been playing ultimate for the past five years and I'm on a co-ed team based out of Portland, Maine called Mogwai. Living in Maryland hasn't really gotten in the way of this yet as our season doesn't really start til, well around now. (I actually joined a winter league in DC. Our team came in 3rd out of 6.) So! It was REALLY nice to be home in Maine and playing with people that I am familiar with. Things seem to click a lot better than when playing with complete strangers! And...my team won the tourney! Here's a pick of all of us.

So the business part of my trip was to stop at yarn shops along the way in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. I was fortunate enough to stay with some families I met while working at the Medomak Family Camp as a lifeguard and counselor. Staying with these people helped me realize and reflect on how blessed I really am. I'm lucky to know and be welcomed by such kind, generous people.

I wasn't able to make it to all of the shops that I wanted to get to; however the ones I did visit were quite lovely. It is rare (although it does happen) to walk into a yarn shop and have a bad experience. A couple of my favorite shops in Connecticut included Yarn LLC in New Haven, which was kind of like a small co-op for fiber artists, and Madison Wool in Madison. The owner there was actually familiar with the little town of Washington, Maine--the town where Medomak is located! She has family there. Weird. It's a small world after all. "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears..." I also really loved The Yarn & Fiber Company in Derry, NH. They've got quite a large shop with some really great yarns and locally dyed fiber. Between my trip north, and my trip back south, I visited 16 shops, made it to a knitting meetup in Boston, and visited the Nature Conservancy in Rhode Island (to chat with a woman about an ecology retreat that Medomak hosts). I'd say it was a success.

And I learned that Connecticut isn't such a bad state to drive through when you're stopping at fibery shops along the way. I also managed to get a quick stop in at the beach in Madison, CT and took some pictures of the sweater I'm working on...

And here's another...

The only hitch in my trip was catching a flu-like thing from an adorable child named Natalie. Unfortunately I was ill while staying with my last family in New York City. So very sad. Ha. I made it back to Maryland though! And have recovered nicely.

On the Eve of Great Adventures

Tomorrow I shall set out on the road to yarn shops not yet explored! First stop? Connecticut! Whenever I drive through Connecticut on my way home, I have to call my friend Kristen and vent to her about how much I hate Connecticut and how I want to "punch it in the face." It's just that there's a lot of road between New York and Massachusetts and I have never simply cruised through it like I do through, say...New Jersey. (New Jersey is a mother to drive through, too, but you can go around 75mph and don't really hit much traffic.) It is pretty much an impossibility to fly through cities like Hartford, but! I think I will rather enjoy my travels through Connecticut this time around. I've got 10 CT shops to get to on my way north! Yeehaw!

Then on to some Massachusetts shops and a knittery meetup with the South End Knitters of Boston at "The Pru" on Thursday night. Friday I'll be continuing my travels toward home as I hit up a few shops in New Hampshire and finally...Portland, Maine! Ah Portland.

I've conveniently scheduled this work trip to coincide with an ultimate tourney this weekend in Orono, Maine. Sneaky sneaky :) So I'm looking forward to running around (indoors) after a plastic disc with some familiar faces and some much missed friends. It'll be good to be home. And to see family, too.

Then Monday, I'll be making my way back down south, of course stopping at shops along the way. I'm looking forward to being in NYC next Tuesday night and all day Wednesday! Will revisit some shops, eat some tasty food for sure, and hang out with Daniel Yuhas! Woohoo! And I must say, I am very fortunate to be staying with some lovely people along the way.

Now, to make my post complete, I will include this picture of the progress of my first ever sweater!
Woops! That's not it. Let's try this again...
Ah. There we go. I had intended this to be my Ravelympics project, but I didn't finish in time. I'm hoping to get it finished by the time I get back to Maryland next week. But that's probably wishful thinking.