Link O Rama

Just a few links to share.

I found this link for a ton of shawl patterns over at affiknitty. I've been looking for a pattern for Sir Gawain.

Feather and Fan and Falling Water are currently at the top of the list thanks to JennyRaye and that fabulous shawl pattern list.

This rag rug tutorial looks fun. It is crochet. Good way to use up fabric.

Knitted Beer. Who knew?

Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

We end this link o rama with STAR WARS KNITTING GOODNESS TO AMAZING TO BE IGNORED. Sorry about the yelling there. Got a little overzealous fan girl there.

Seriously everyone must have an R2D2 hat. Check out the pattern. Thank you Megan!

Link O Rama

Time for some linky love.

Alison posted a super cute hat from Hello Yarn today that uses a figure eight cast on. Oh boy that's nifty.

The Hello Yarn Blog has a post on the Yarn Cake Portrait Flickr Pool. Oh to have a swift and ball winder. I've even got a spiffy new desktop image thanks to Hello Yarn. Thanks a bunch!

Want to knit a Penguin Jumper? Here's a pattern.

Thanks for the kind comments on the blanket yarn and Sheldon. E finally noticed Sheldon today perched up on the mantle. She immediately took off his shell declaring him a naked turtle.

I cast on a Sheldon inspired bowl last night and finished knitting it tonight. The plan is to get before pictures and felt it tomorrow. The cells look very cool. We shall see how it felts up.

So the bowl is ready for the washing machine. The #8 Hedgie has his tummy and paws finished and is waiting for me to pick up the stitches around the tummy panel. The Storm Blanket yarn is in balls and ready to cast on for H's blanket.

Easter Saturday Link O Ramma

We had blustering snow earlier today. It did not stick for long but it still snowed. Ohio weather is crazy.

I felted the princess hat, basket and Hedgie today. I'll post the Easter Felted Goodness tomorrow. The Hedgie is super cute.

Have not done a Link O Ramma in awhile. I found several new blogs and possible projects I want to share so here we go.

• Felted Snug Boots over at Good to be Girl. I know not everyone likes real Uggs but felted Snugs look, well, snuggy. I like snuggy.
• I somehow found myself over at Domesticat checking out a Chevron Scarf. The Chevron Scarf Flickr pool has me thinking about getting a copy of Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Mind of Winters has a pretty detailed post on Chevron Scarf mods.
• ...and knitting has a fun post on penguins, oh how I love penguins. Check out the French March of The Penguins commercial over on youtube.
• While I'm linking to youtube have you seen the Minneapolis Knitters serenade the Harlot with O Canada?
• Did you know that going a google search for 'the harlot' will give you The Yarn Harlot first off? That rocks.
• I'd not heard of Swatchy McPhee over at Travels with Swatchy. Rebecca has really good report of the Minneapolis Harlot stop.
  

Well that's enough links for today. I have a Hedgehog to finish.

Still Spinning Down

Still spinning down from the Harlot inspired knitting euphoria. Did not get to knit yet today. Hoping to finish the latest Hedgie tonight. He is going to be Technicolor!

We have a new roof on the house. The roofers were here today, all day, banging away at the roof. I'm grateful to have a new roof. Thank you Hail Damage! Thank you home owners insurance. Weather permitting new siding is going on this Wednesday.

I found Hippy the Hippo over at Kim-Chi Crafts. Oh is Hippy cute.

After all of the roof noise I'm ready for some quiet time knitting tonight.

The Yarn Harlot Represents in Cleveland

Oh boy where to begin? This weekend was off the hook. As my regular readers know my hubby Dave and I have a four year old little girl named Evelyn and a four month old little boy named Henry. We live in Central Ohio while 95% of our immediate family live up north in the greater Cleveland area.

We know I-71 really well.

I'd not been up north to see any friends and family for over nine months. I was so not up for the trip while I was pregnant with Henry and once the H Man arrived the thought of making the trip just freaked me out.

Time passed, Henry turned four months old and I started to feel ready to travel. But I hemmed and hawed about it. Kept making excuses to not travel.

Then Stephanie announced the book tour. No stops close by. Oh well. Then she added a stop on the East side of Cleveland. Ok, that's doable. But was I ready to travel?

I continued to debate going.

We made some phone calls to make tentative plans. I continued to waffle. Dave called his Paternal Grandmother and made plans. She'd not seen Henry yet. Henry's the only boy Great Grand baby with her last name. Great Grandma was itching to see the H Man. Ok, we had to go.

But I still worried.

I pretty much vacillated between going and not going right up until the night before we left. Henry had a little cough. Should we still go? Will he sleep ok?

Friday I got the house in order, love coming home to a tidy house, started packing and mentally preparing myself for the trip. Preparations went well.

Saturday morning we got up at what my sister likes to call the 'buttcrack of dawn' around 5:30AM to get the car packed and the kids ready. The morning went great. We got everything ready and were out the door by 7:45AM. No issues.



We arrived at Great Grandma's early and had a lovely visit. Henry smiled and gurgled much to Great Grandma's delight. Evelyn wowed Great Grandma with her singing and dancing. We had a great lunch then headed to Legacy Village to scope out The Yarn Harlot at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.

We've visited Crocker Park before while visiting family and we frequent Easton Town Center but this was our first visit to Legacy Village. We found the bookstore, parked and checked out the turnout. We first arrived around 1PM. There was a nice sized crowd, not too shabby, but not overwhelming. We decided to stroll Legacy Village a bit. That took about 20 minutes. Legacy Village is not very large. We checked out the Viking store and found Giant Eagle.

As it got closer to 1:30-1:45PM we parted ways. Dave and the kids headed back to the car to drive over to Giant Eagle. Giant Eagle has a play area. E went to play and Dave hung out with Henry while I headed back to the bookstore.

Back at the bookstore the crowd had grown considerably. I noticed a few knitters camped out on the floor stage right. No more room there so I headed stage left and settled down on the floor in front of some lovely ladies who were more then happy to chat a bit. We joked that it took The Yarn Harlot to get West Siders over to the East Side.

Those familiar with Cleveland know about the East Side/West Side thing. I have no clue how it started or exactly why it is this way but there is this imaginary barrier between the East and West sides of Cleveland. There is not a ton of mixing between the two. It's not openly hostile but it's there. Maybe Jeanne over at Life in Cleveland can explain it better.

Anyway. Back to the story.

A few minutes to 2:00PM I got up to take a few crowd pictures. This took three shots.






Of course I had knitting with me. The seventh Hedgie, the Grandma Janette needle stash dpns, and some food coloring dyed yarn. I started a Nantasket basket for Henry's room with the dpns and the self dyed yarn while we waited for the show to get on the road.





I'm going to try to not get too fan girl here. It was so exciting to find myself suddenly mere feet from The Yarn Harlot.

Stephanie came across much like she does on her blog, friendly, verbose, funny, and a bit snarky. The good snarky, not the cruel kind of snarky.




Stephanie took the obligatory sock pictures with the crowd.





Stephanie 'petting' her yarn during her talk. 'Yarn, what yarn, these are my kittens.' This was one of her suggested replies for when you are asked about your stash. Brilliant!

I'd love to give a quip by quip, story but story recap of the entire talk. But I did not take notes. I thought about it but decided to just knit and soak in the experience.

I really should have brain dumped this right when I got home but that was not an option so here are a few thoughts.

• Knitters give and give big because they know the power of small actions multiplied over and over.
• It's ok, and quite normal, to have a large yarn/needle stash.
• Here's an idea for you. It used to be considered wasteful to go buy a hat when you could make one yourself. Now it's considered wasteful to make a hat when you can go buy one.

Of course there was more, much more. There was complex mother/daughter dynamics, a visual exercise to envision all of the yarn, everywhere, etc.

Then came time for questions and answers. How to avoid knitting related injury? Have three different projects going at a time, one small, one medium and one large, then you are using different muscle groups for each project. There were others that are just not coming forward in my brain at the moment.

Then came time for the book signing part. Here is where I want to publicly thank everyone in the line behind me for waiting. Stephanie has this book signing policy that basically says if you are pregnant, nursing, have little ones, are older, are physically impaired etc, etc, etc and feel the need to go toward the head of the line then go ahead. I knew that Dave was out there somewhere with both kids. Henry is a boob man and does not like a bottle. I knew that Henry would want to eat soon. So I headed towards the front part of the line. Had I been exclusively breastfed baby free that afternoon I would have gladly waited indefinitely.

So I'm waiting to meet Stephanie. I seriously did not want to come off as some blithering fan girl idiot. I knew what I wanted to say, sort of. I knew I don't want to start blubbering and crying over it. It was why I drug my husband and two kids 2.5+ hours to the East side of Cleveland to hear a person speak who's blog I read on the Internet.

It was my turn.

(be calm)

I basically told Stephanie that I wanted to thank her for hosting the Knitting Olympics. I knitted Shedir for my girlfriend Tracy who has Colon Cancer.

(do not cry, do not cry, get this out)

It is my hope to knit something for her again during the next Knitting/Winter Olympics.

(hold yourself together)

At this point Stephanie took my hands in her's, or was it the other way around? She looked me in the eye and said thank you for sharing this with me. These stories are important. Please say hello to my friend for her.

(oh my goodness I'm touching the hands that knit Bohus!)


'How about a picture? You need a prop! How about the sock?'

(the sock? The Sock? THE SOCK!)




Suddenly I'm holding THE SOCK, which is so incredibly soft and amazing and having my picture taken with Stephanie.

Most importantly I got to say thank you, in person to the woman who had no idea what she was getting herself into when she decided to Host The Knitting Olympics. The Knitting Olympics was really special to me. I got to knit a special hat for a special friend along with thousands of other knitters.

After my fabulous little bit of time with Stephanie and The Sock I headed outside in a bit of a wool induced daze to text Dave that I was ready to meet back up. We met up and headed to Grandma Madaline's house, much to Evelyn's delight and Henry got to eat.

We visited with Grandma Madaline and Aunt Katie. Spent the night. Henry slept well despite his little cough. The trip was going so well we decided to try to see Tracy and her family. I called to see if we would swing by while Madaline and Katie attended Mass. Jackpot! They were home and we were more then welcome to visit. We had a wonderful time at Tracy's. We got to see everyone and check out her sister and brother in law's new house.




Tracy's hair has grown back a bit darker and curly. I think she looks fabulous. She is tolerating chemo well but will more then likely loose her hair again. We shall see.

Then we headed back to Grandma's for dinner and finally home. Oh to be home! The house was inviting. Evelyn was very helpful unloading the car. We had everything unpacked and put away in less then 30 minutes. Bliss!

I'm incredibly glad I faced my fears to travel with both of the kids to see our friends, family, The Yarn Harlot, and of course, The Sock.

Harlot Bound

Heading north tomorrow to see The Yarn Harlot. At least that's the plan. It's our first trip north with two kids. Please think of us tomorrow.

I found Yarn Rescue off of a link on Craft today. The link was for the Monster needles, but what really caught my eye was Lynnel's handspun art yarn. Oh my. I have three sets of huge needles from the Grandma Janette Needle stash that are openly weeping in want of a hank of that handspun yarn. It's the really funky, filled with lots of stuff and slubs handspun that makes me want to learn how to spin.

I think I want to knit the H Man his own H emblazoned Weasley Sweater. H works for Harry and Henry! Now its a matter of figuring out what yarn to use. The gold Rowan Felted Tweed for the H is discontinued. I'm wondering what other knitters are using?

Skully

Must not let the Husband see these Skull Stockings first found over on Craft. Or you might just want the lace pattern for the skulls.

Making nice progress on Mocha Love Hedgie. Thinking about a second HP Hedgie. I might have enough yarn. We shall see.

Happy First Day of Spring!

Is it wrong that I want a Knitphomaniac t-shirt?

Is it wrong that I want to play the Knit Blog Drinking Game?

I've added a few more knit blogs to my ever growing list. I was surprised to find that I did not have The Knitting Mama on the list. She also has a little girl named Evelyn!

I officially finished the Log Cabin blanket today. Time to go to the PO. So Crumpets needs ribbon and the Princess Hat is the only project on the sticks.

Can't have only one project on the sticks.

So.....

Cast on a Weasley Cell Phone Cozy for my sister. So far it's a fun, fast little knit. It's my kind of sweater. Small and easy.

Links

Had a chance to surf a bit today. I found the following pages that I want to link here.

How to make a felt stuffed animal. Penguin!

Who knew there was a Penguin Awareness Day. The Felt Mouse celebrated on January 21st. Jennifer links some more penguin love at the end of the post. I think I found my birthday cake for this year.

What about some cream cheese penguins?

But what about Hedgehogs? We can't just have penguin love, we need hedgehog love!

Kelpkim of Kim-Chi Knits knitted an under the sea Hedgehog! Oh he is cute. The more natural colored ones are cute but the green is just too fun.

Then I found Erika's post on her Hedgehog knitting adventure over @redshirt knitting.

We can't have the penguins feeling left out of all of this felted toy fun.

I had no idea it was International Pajama Day tomorrow. Hang out in your pjs!

I don't have one of these Nike i-pod shoe hack things but I think I might know someone who does.