Swap

Thanks to the coolness of Ravelry, I joined a yarn swap with other knitting grad students. They called it a dissertation-a-long rather than the more typical knit-a-long. This is my first ever yarn swap, and was a lot of fun. I set goals for things to get done by the end of February, and my reward for getting at least one of those things done was this cool package full of stuff to help me get more work done and stuff to distract me from getting work done :)
Of course, I also had to put together a package to send to someone else who completed a goal.

Now I have a stash of yarn sitting in a drawer next to the couch in our little condo. Any ideas on what I should make with it? I'm thinking about making leg warmers for cold-morning commutes next winter.

Saturday

Rocky Mountain Natl Park gives free Ranger-guided snow-shoe tours on the weekends, so we signed up for one last Saturday. The famous High Ridge Road that connects the east side of the park to the west side is closed in the winter, so the two sides are almost like separate parks. Touring the place on a snowy winter day felt like trying to spy on a wilderness in hiding... it's not easy to get to and then it's covered in several feet of snow. All interpretive signs are buried, only a few parking areas are plowed out and the road only goes 10 miles. Trails are only accessible by ski or snowshoe. (No photos, since it was just snow and trees covered in snow). On our tour, Hubbers and I were the token tourists... the rest were locals, which seems rather odd for a national park.

Our guide was a wildlife biologist. I learned that black bears weigh a mere 12oz at birth, and they're born in the middle of mom's winter hibernation so they have time to eat and grow before going out into the bigger world. I also learned about subnivean habitat - that's where all those little ground animals like mice go in the winter.

On our way to the park, we stopped at Lonesome Stone Natural Fiber Mill which is just around the corner from us. They have quite a few alpacas plus a few llamas and goats. They breed and raise the animals, as well as process fleece into fiber. And they do absolutely gorgeous hand-dyeing. After meeting the alpacas and watching the machinery work the fiber, I picked out some new yarn to go with the yarn I already have from them. The top greenish yarn is wool in a complimentary colorway as this hat I made. The brown is alpaca, and I think it goes very well with the yarn of that hat, so I'll use it to make a matching scarf (I'll explain that better once I start the project). The bottom is an odd-lot washable merino sock yarn. I don't know why I always feel compelled to buy sock yarn when I find it on sale.

Like I don't have enough to do already

It seems that whenever I have too much to get done, I find something else that suddenly becomes urgent. Like last weekend when I made several pints of salsa. This weekend, I suddenly found it necessary to cook wool yarn in hot Kool-aid. I blame SavingNine and KBomb for this. They always give me knitting advice that I don't want to follow... but eventually I do. I used the microwave instructions given here and was amazed when I was done with the whole process in less than an hour (except that it's still hanging to dry). I didn't check the time at all, but I was afraid that yarn dyeing could take up half a day. For those who want to know these colors are grape and ice blue raspberry lemonade. My camera really didn't know what to make of that ice blue color.

Taos Wool Festival

I went to the Taos Wool Festival last weekend and this is all I have to show for it:
I didn't take any photos during the weekend, so all you get to see is the stuff that I brought back with me. It was a beautiful fall weekend in Taos. It was chilly. It was wet. The leaves were turning golden. The sky was gray. Absolutely perfect!

Hubbers and I drove up with the two dogs and camped out on Saturday with a friend and her son. We went for a couple of short hikes and spent the rest of the time at the festival and the park.

The festival is really all about the wool... You can get beautifully dyed wool yarn, or wool for felting, or undyed yarn, or a whole fleece or even a living, breathing angora rabbit. I already had enough yarn at home to keep me busy for another year. So I bought yarn for the three months after that. Which means I won't need to buy any more until next year's festival.

Loveland

Chapter 3 of the Colorado trip: Wedding in Loveland. It seems I attend a wedding a year. This year it was time for Troy's college roommate to get married. Coincidentally the friend now teaches at the very same school they attended as undergrads. On Saturday morning, I got up early enough to do my running workout on a high school track in Denver, then got ready for the wedding and drove on up to Loveland.

Thanks to my knitting group, I was told that there is a great yarn shop in Loveland called Woolen Treasures that I just had to go to. Only problem: the shop is open 10am - 5pm on Saturday and not at all on Sunday. The wedding was at 10:30 am and the reception was scheduled to end at 5pm. Well, it turns out that the yarn shop was nearly across the street from the wedding, so I did find time to go to it.
Of course, I don't actually need any new yarn, but I wanted to see what was so cool about this shop. They really manage to pack a lot of fun yarn and inspiring sample projects in a cute little house. I got some half-price sock yarn. And then I searched for anything I could justify as "local" yarn. I found some gorgeous hand-painted stuff from Lonesome Stone. Most of the yarn cost far more than I could justify spending without a project in mind. So I got a reasonably-priced skein of mohair in this fiery colorway which they call Aztec Mountain. I have a couple of ideas for how to use it, and I'm eager to get started... but I have other things to finish first.
Oh yeah, the wedding was nice. There were plenty of friendly people there and it's good see a couple that knows not to get all stressed out over little wedding details. We also enjoyed the Sunday picnic by Loveland Lake.

Vacation Yarn

I have been trying to post vacation stuff in bite-size chunks. So, the yarn gets it's own post. Actually, it may be more of a rant, but it ends on a positive note, as all good blog rants should :)

First let me share the projects that have made progress since the vacation. The sock that I was making for Hubbers, doesn't actually fit him. In fact it barely fits me. So I shortened up the toe, and now I have one new sock. The other half of the pair just got started yesterday.
On the airplane, I started a new project and pretty much finished it on the flight back. I'm not posting pictures here, because it's a gift, but you can see it on Ravelry if you're a member. If you're a knitter and not a member of Ravelry, you should sign up, really.

Despite spending two weeks on an island that very well may have more sheep than people... it was difficult to find yarn. In Dublin, the sweaters for sale in July were clearly for tourists. Quite pricey, and limited selection. It was recommended that Dublin is not the best place to buy sweaters, so I decided to wait until I got to Killarney to look for wool. When we got to Killarney, it was a lot easier to find nice sweaters, but tough to find yarn. I did find some, and bought a kilo of the classic Aran yarn by Tivoli made in Cork. I have no idea what I'll make with it, but I'm sure it will include cables.

In the small town of Cahersiveen, I found a little sewing/alterations/knitting shop. The owner said that the only "local" yarn she had were these hanks of 100% wool from Kerry Woolen Mills. She had natural, dark green and berry. I bought 400 grams of berry, it is much darker than the photo shows (sorry about the terrible picture, my usual camera is on vacation with Hubbers). I plan to make a sweater out of it, but first I have to learn how to make sweaters.
Here's the rant: there were only two brands of wool yarn that I found in a land full of sheep. The guy at the Killarney store informed me that most of the Tivoli yarn is actually manufactured outside of Ireland. The stuff made locally was discontinued, and so it was on sale. Most stores seemed far happier to sell you wool in the form of sweaters and the people working there knew nothing about knitting. I don't know where the Irish knitters buy their yarn. Apparently I missed out on a great store just outside of Dublin, but otherwise, the internet showed that other knitters have had similar difficulty in buying Irish yarn.

Additionally, I would have like to actually see the people who spin wool. I visited Avoca which is famous for weaving. There, they had a large store with very expensive woven articles, but no sign of weavers. The tourist experience was definitely geared more towards buying stuff than experiencing where the stuff comes from.

I now realize how fanatic New Mexico knitters and spinners really are. I knew they were fanatic, but all the hand-dyed yarns and such that we have available here is really impressive. It felt that in Ireland the crafts-people who make the yarn and sweaters were hidden away, while here I know that even a tourist could find demonstrations of people working their craft which is far more interesting than just the finished product.