we closed on a house today. we are now homeowners. (let me mention, the house hunting started, oh, back around May or so…) 3 realtors and g-d knows how many properties looked at later, we have a house. YAY!

this means that I will need to reacquaint myself (or introduce myself, as the case may be) to the northern and northwestern yarn shops. and plan my trips to the more southernly ones very carefully (ie when I have lots of money saved up).

any good SnB’s in the northwest area? (we’ll be in Sherbourne [sp?] County for those needing more specific geography)

My package from my Holiday SP arrived today! yay!

amazing thought here, I actually swatched for a future project. and I even abused the swatch. it’s kind of important though - I’m attempting to make a felted hat and I want it to a) felt properly, and b) fit afterwards.

I bought some Paton’s Merino at Michael’s yesterday (since when do they carry that? and hey, it’s $1 less than JoAnns was selling it for. bonus.) found the working end of the grey pretty quickly, only to find another end soon after that. what the hey? oh.

what the heck? oddly enough, it turned out to be the perfect amount for my swatch. go figure.
so I made my swatch, playing with fair isle (the bottom rows) vs duplicate stitch (the top row).

then I went downstairs and felted it, modifying Zib’s instructions here. I don’t have any bouncy balls of my own, and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice any of dh’s, so I used some film canisters instead (and filled them with water to insure they wouldn’t just float about in there). I made my first shake of the container over the sink, which proved to be a very good idea - apparently, there was too much pressure and it burst open right away. I made sure to “burp” the container after that. after a few rounds, I pulled out this:

the purple more or less disappeared, though it’s slightly (very slightly) more visible where I tried the duplicate stitch. and I can’t tell if the white felted or not (I even bought the ‘Aran’ instead of the ‘Winter White’ cuz I thought it might felt better.) oh, well… I’ll just modify the pattern a bit, I think.

the size didn’t change much (if at all). but I think I need to go up a needle size to get gauge. hopefully there won’t be much shrinkage in the final project.

yes, I’m flooding my blog with photo posts… isn’t it fun?!

Here’s the hats I’ve been working on - 3 finished, 1 still in progress…

Full size and more pics (close-ups, etc) in the gallery

I think I forgot to post about this, so enjoy…

the weekend of Nov 5, lots of our LYS had sales. I went with Nancy & Rina (from the SnB I go to) to Yarnzilla, the Yarn Cafe, and Amazing Threads. Our first stop was Yarnzilla, who was having a warehouse sale - clearing things out and what-not. so much temptation… I came home with:
, , .
and a long cord for my Denise set (not on sale).

Our next stop was Yarn Cafe. There sale deal was that when you got to the counter you pulled a chip out and your discount was 10%-40% off depending on what color chip you had. I picked up:
and .
I got lucky and pulled out a 30% discount. (Addi’s at 30% off? why didn’t I quick grab some more?!)

I got home and realized that the POA scarf needs 4 balls of the main color (oops, I had it in my head that it needed 4 balls total). So, I snuck back to the store before my dance class on Sunday, grabbed my yarn, eyed up some other yarns, and went to pay. I pulled out the 30% chip again (wow, what luck), so went back and grabbed: