Relocated roughage rocks

Last night I headed on over for the combination "Congratulations Amy on quitting your job and doing Knitty fulltime"/"Grand opening of Lettuce Knit's new location" par-tay. And I had myself a grand old time. How could I not, surrounded by such great people? I even met Wannietta! (Whose name I mispronounced embarrassingly, sorry. For any of you who may meet her in the future, be warned, it's not wan-ee-ett-ah, it's wan-ee-tah, like Juanita.) And I also met Barbara!

First of all, a word about the new location. Apparently at last week's SnB, the ceiling started to leak. (!!!) I don't think any yarn was hurt, but Drea apparently got a good soaking in her efforts to stem the tide. The leaky roof was the catalyst for Megan (the amazingly competent owner of the shop) to find a new location, and FAST. But where? The answer...an unused section of her house literally just a few doors down from the old location. Best part: It has a BATHROOM. This was the cause of endless celebration last night. "Have more to drink? Sure I will! There's a bathroom here!!!"

Honestly, I have never seen so many people hanging out in/around the shop at the same time. It was madness. At one point there was a lineup for the cash going right out the door. So congratulations, Lettuce - I expect the shop will be entirely successful in its new location.

The most amazing part of the night, for me, came when Amy did the draw for all the door prizes she'd brought. Despite the fact that I never win anything, my name got drawn, and I won this:

I've only done a cursory glance through the book, so I'm not qualified yet to give a decent review, but I can say a few things about it. It looks like it talks quite a bit about Andean design elements, which is very nice indeed, especially since there are photos of actual Andean art sprinkled throughout the book to demonstrate the inspirations for the designs. There are also quite a lot of knitting patterns in the book. Unfortunately, not a lot of them jazzed me - just not to my taste. YMMV. However, I was definitely jazzed by this one:

It must be mine.

(Amy, thankyouthankyouthankyou. I am thrilled.)

If you want to read more about last night's awesome fun, I expect blog entries about it will appear at, among other places, Naked KnitGirl, Yarn Harlot, cosmipluto knits, and Knit, Stitch, Click. (There will likely be more, but those are off the top of my head.)

Garden Shawl for MIL

Worked on this for the first half of the evening, and it got a lot of attention from other knitters. (Intricate lace just does that.) But eventually I had to give it up because my brain was being melted by the endless repeats of the edging. The good news is that I've got an entire side done, have turned my first corner, and am probably about one-third through the whole edging. This allows me to spread out the work enough to show you this:



(Please don't mind the row markers dotted everywhere. As I approached the first corner I realised I was going to end up being short three stitches. I used the row markers to painstakingly figure out exactly where I'd gone wrong. Sadly, the answer was 'way too far back to frog'. So instead, I fudged gonig forward. However, for reasons unknown I haven't gotten around to removing the row markers yet.)

Stornaway sweater for DH

When I got sick of endless lace edging last night, I switched to this. The night was turning a tad chilly, so this had the added advantage of keeping me warm (lambswool/camel kicks lacy cotton/silk's ass when it comes to warmth). I'd say I'm about a third done the back: