Today I finished making a scarf out of my new Prism "Stuff". It is all blues and greens and purples and looks really cool. Now the question is whether to keep it or give it away? My Secret Pal-ee V received the package I sent her and posted a lovely message on her blog. With the heat wave we had last week, I bet that the chocolate has melted into an indistinguishable mass.

When will I ever post pictures to this blog? I have to figure out way to expedite the picture posting process. Guess it would also help if I remembered to take more progress photos.

Jean Miles (http://www.jeanmiles.blogspot.com/) has been posting progresss shots of her Princess Shawl edging and it looks exquisite. When she restarts the shawl using new gossamer weight thread from none other than Sharon Miller, will it make the previous lace weight merino look like bulk Lopi? Can't wait for future installments to find out!

Good things come...

OK, I'll be honest. I didn't wait at all. I rushed out the first day of the sale....but I did wait until the afternoon! Later I learned that there was a line out the door and all the way down the street when the shop opened. In looking back over my previous post, it appears I omitted one critical and delicious detail about this particular sale. All yarn and needlepoint canvasses were 50% off. Yes, you read that right. ALL. FIFTY PERCENT.

Anyway, I indulged in a modest way. Some stuff was added to my stash, literally! I bought some Prism "Stuff" to make a stole. I can't resist how wild and funky "Stuff" is. Even though I haven't done any needlepoint for ages, I got 2 very small canvasses. The shop owner made me feel much better when she told me that earlier in the day a customer had purchased $3000.00 dollars worth of merchandise....and that was the sale price (in other words $6000.00 worth of merchandise at retail prices...now that is some serious stash enhancement).

The posts to the blog have been a bit few and far between lately and I hope to be more diligent in days to come. I have been assembling a package to send to my Secret Pal Five blogger. What to do about the chocolate though? Can it survive this heatwave?

Cruel taunts

Today I received a postcard from a LYS (not the most LYS but in the next town over) notifying me of a 10 day sale on ALL knitting yarns and needlepoint canvasses. The special anniversary sale begins on Tuesday. Now how is a troubled yarn addict such as myself supposed to resist that kind of temptation? My mind has been conducting a presale inventory of all of the yarns that this shop had in stock when I lasted visited them about 3 weeks ago. In my mind's ear (the hearing aid to my mind's eye) I hear skeins of "Prism Stuff" calling me and telling me to come and get them. OK, now if my mind's nose kicks in we will know I am in very bad trouble indeed as I learned in grad school courses in psychology that olfactory hallucinations are a poor prognostic indicator. Stay tuned to learn how much I succumb to temptation (oh yes, the question is not whether or not....just HOW MUCH?).

In nonknitting news, I have to vote myself an unfit mother. We took our daughter for her first ever glimpse of the ocean and I forgot to bring my camera to capture this precious moment. Other than that, she loved seeing the ocean. In fact, she loved it so much that she was speechless (this from an almost 18 month old baby girl who chatters away from the moment she wakes up until she goes to bed!)

Here is a sample of the squares that I am crocheting to make an afghan. The pattern is one of the squares in "200 crochet blocks" by Jan Eaton. It is alot of fun to try out the various blocks and it is good for using up scraps. Maybe I should try making a sampler afghan. Actually, the book has over 200 different blocks so you can make a very large afghan indeed. However, for several designs there are alternate colorways suggested and those colorways count as a separate block number which is fudging a bit, don't you think?

Dry goods

In researching some lovely lace weight yarns that might possibly be suitable for knitting one of Sharon Miller's heirloom shawls, I came across this nice website that has many different fiber laceweights
http://www.dimitysdrygoods.com/

The cotton/silk and cashmere/silk blends look particularly tempting. Blogosphere friend Jean http://www.jeanmiles.blogspot.com/ is contemplating knitting the Sharon Miller "Princess Shawl" as an heirloom family wedding veil (for future use by her granddaughter). We may even have a go at a knitalong!

Here is the multidirectional diagonal scarf made from 3 skeins of Noro Silk Garden that refused to become a Clapotis.

And stepping back a bit... 

This is a closeup of the blanket. 

This is the blanket that I am crocheting for my daughter using odd skeins of Koigu. I made a similar one for my nephew and he apparently loved it and it is now in use by his baby sister. It is essentially a gigantic granny square.  

Branching out

I think that I will knit a few bars of the "branching out" scarf with my lovely mohair to see if it looks lovely in the Feza Kid Mohair (www.fezaiplik.com) that I have. It is surprisingly soft and silky, perhaps even more than Rowan Kidsilk Haze which it resembles.
knitty.com

Saving grace, redeeming value...

Just had the mega marathon all day visit to the in-laws so they could visit with their granddaughter. She called both of them "Grandpa" during the visit. I will have to explain that just like our two sweet doggies who each have their own name, the grands (who are not that grand in my book) each have their own designation.

For the first part of the visit, after feeding and changing DD, I plowed through 2 and a half crochet afghan squares. They are pretty fun to make and I won't get too tired of making them because it is relaxing. But I was running out of steam on hanging out and crocheting at the in-laws house....it was wearing thin. Thank heavens I remembered that there was a Trader Joe's nearby.

I managed to salvage something out of the day by escaping to the nearby Trader Joe's for an hour. We don't have a Trader Joe's even remotely near our house so I just had to go. There really isn't anything that you could describe as "needing to have". But it is so much fun to go there because almost anything in the store could instantly have a place at the top of your "want to have" or "want to try" list. I managed to escape without too much damage. My SP5 will be getting a goody or two from TJs too. They were giving away samples of their Triple Ginger Gingersnaps and they are sooodelicious! I've already eaten 4 of them! They are slightly addictive. Their samples are really too enticing. On the way out, I tried out the "Kiss my face, lavendar and shea butter lotion" It smelled so nice I just had to go back and get a bottle. I also got some almond flour (for making a decadent chocolate cake from the Alice Medrich cookbook "Cocolot" which I "like-a-lot". Some teeny tiny Italian hard candies called "Confetti candies" because they are individually wrapped in bright shiny wrapping and could probably thrown as confetti without hurting anyone. I think that is a full confession unless there is some chocolate that jumped in the bag....yes, in fact, I think that there is some chocolate in there.

Thank heavens for Trader Joe's. Now that the not so D, GM and GF are getting on in years, we will probably be making the trip with discouraging regularity and frequency. I have a feeling that Trader Joe and I will be spending some time together.