head for the hills

The laptop came. I couldn't handle the whining anymore and caved..."why do the other portable technologies get to come and I don't get to?"(the dvd player and nintendo ds came). At least that's the reason I'm holding to. It has nothing at all to do with my addiction to those silly internets. Nothing.

Except when you're camping like us there aren't too many of them to be found. We're hotelling it for one night, so I'm checking in on all of you quickly.

There is some sock knitting happening (see above) and other knitting, but not as much as I'd hoped. I'm doing a lot of the driving. And after we set up camp and eat each night there are usually about 20 minutes or so of daylight left and I do a few rows and then crash. I'm having an extremely lovely time anyway.

Note the bison walking the highway. It's a road within Elk Island Park, near Edmonton. What we failed to photograph in our excitement the previous day were the 60 or so bison of various sizes all over the same road and around our car as we inched our way through them. There were tons of coyotes there as well, howling through the night.

Tomorrow we head for the mountains.

give me land lots of land under starry skies above

Westward ho! We were thinking of leaving today, but we're putting it off until tomorrow. Still getting ready. I feel like I don't get to be home very much, and I'm really enjoying that right now, even though I'm happy to go travelling, too. We're going to be pretty chillaxed on this one...camping, staying as long as want where we like, going west 'til we hit the mountains and then finding our way back again.

So I have my knitting planned as follows: two tops and two pairs of socks. All are barely cast on at this point, all highly portable, on circular needles. Lots of car knitting time, though trickier during the 50% of the time I'm doing the driving. Roughly 2 weeks. There are at least 10 yarn stores and a fibre mill I know of already in our loop, so I could top up, if necessary. I guess I'm good.

The laptop's not coming, so see you later 'gators!

mail awesomeness

A few weeks ago the fabulous Melissa declared that her blog had turned 3 years old and she was giving away some great stuff to celebrate. And I actually won! The mailguy delivered the first package today (it's in 2 exciting shipments!). I am so absolutely happy to own this great book (you're well aware of my spinning technique shortcomings), this fabulous handspun sock yarn, and these adorable wooden buttons. I hope I shall knit a garment worthy of them. I am awaiting the Folktale Fibers handspun yarn which will be here when I get home from my travels.

Thanks so much Melissa!

...somewhere a dog barked

I was really hoping the fair isle cardigan I'm making for the girl would be finished by now but it's not quite. My personal deadline is before we leave on a westerly road trip next week because its 8 various balls of yarn and the fact I haven't bothered to copy the page in the hardcover book the pattern is in make it a not very portable project. And it's size 4-5 and she just turned 5, so time is running out.

So here's some other stuff. The top photo is the wonderful stilted Gustavo the Impossiblist at the Folk Festival this weekend. Much music was listened to and fun was had.

The middle (horrible) photos (please. someone. tell me about a good camera with a decent macro lens that I should buy) is some BFL roving I turned into 2-ply sock yarn. Why I only achieved 260 yds with 4oz I do not know. Argh. I want more!

Also, as you can tell I have made several doll-type toys for my children. These are just what I could grab in 2 minutes. There are others. Anyway, I am trying to resist this pattern from the fabulous Amy K. whose blog I adore. I have already undertaken her idea to turn an unused long-sleeved t-shirt into a cardigan. Isn't it great? I'm wearing one that I "made" right now but forgot to take a bad photo of it.

Hope you're enjoying your summer!

you also can't have too many socks

I'm really in a mood to finish up old stuff so I can move on. Plus, I'm running out of needles cause they're all on projects (and I own a LOT of needles. People have given them to me, I've bought many, and my friend once picked up a whole mess of them at an estate sale. I'm afraid to do an actual count, but I think this means I have about 40 WIPs).

So here's the mate to the sorry sock from here. Handspun (by me) from Yummy Yarn Finn roving. I learned two different toes (I did toe-up for these). I was stretching a very small amount of yarn for these as I had given most of this batch of yarn away, so they're a bit shorter than I would normally do and they're a looser gauge, too, but they're wearable. They were just meant to be an experiment anyway.