Kiss My Knits!

I’ve been running all over town for the past few days getting things ready for the upcoming trip. One stop on Saturday was the yarn stash swap sponsored by Charlotte Yarn, our most excellent local yarn store. People bring the stuff in their closets that they want to get rid of, and exchange it for money or other yarn. I brought some stuff I thought folks would want, and I was right. I had just opened my container and hadn’t yet taken the yarn out, when the other swappers were on it like piranhas on a dead cow.

And so, a hundred-odd bucks heavier and some Cherry Tree Hill lighter, I hied me to Borders and spent the entire wad on audiobooks for the St. Louis trip. I picked up Harry Potter on CD, but didn’t notice it was 80 bucks until I was already out the door. Well, at 21 hours, I suppose that’s still some good bang for your buck. I also picked up two Alexander McCall Smith audiobooks and some iTunes, mainly 80’s stuff, which is good to sing along to when I’m starting to feel sleepy but am not quite at my hotel yet. Because I’m a mom, I also snagged some activity books for Emily, so she’ll have something to do in the hotel room in case it rains while they’re at the beach.

One non-trip-related purchase: The DVD set of The Critic. Jon Lovitz, this is my pledge to you: every time you beat up Andy Dick, I will purchase another one of your products. Deal? Deal.

I had purchased some spinning fiber from SakinaNeedles to use to teach others the wheel on the trip, but that was a while ago. Last week in a moment of weakness, I forgot it had been earmarked for that purpose and I started spinning it. Oops. I intended to order more, but let that slide until it was too late to have it delivered in time. And so, panicking, I started searching around for another source of fiber between here and there. A very nice woman in St. Louis who dyes for sale has offered to help me out, and I’m definitely taking her up on it. Even if I wind up not using it for teaching, it’ll be a great souvenir to bring home.


In the meantime, it suddenly occurred to me that duh, I do in fact have fiber. I have that giant bag that gave me in Raleigh! Yay! What’s more, I have the fiber dyeing kit from Hello Yarn that my husband got me for my birthday. Double yay! And so I’ll give you one guess what I was doing tonight. Yes, dyeing wool.


It’s cooling down in a pot on the stove now, so we’ll see how it looks tomorrow. It looked good being dyed, but you never know. I was going for a kind of random pattern that left a fair amount of white showing rather than wide bands of solid. This is my first time dyeing unspun wool. I’m not expecting miracles. Although I’ll take a miracle if it happens.

Tomorrow my daughter and I will be stopping by AAA to get a TripTik, as well as the usual stuff like speech therapy and going to the library. I know I have a million things to do, but the major stuff is taken care of. Now it’s mostly “what to pack” type stuff, and being sure all the really time-sensitive Jayne hats get shipped out in time. I knitted up one for Georgia today at a Browncoat picnic, so I think we’re looking good on that front, too. I haven’t been getting enough sleep because I’ve been doing more weddings this week. Tonight, I’ll try to catch up a little.

…she said, noticing it was midnight. Oh well. Good night!