Of yarn stores and SnBs

Firstly, the information that Bliss asked for: the pattern 411 for the snuggly romper I recently finished for DD2. This is a pattern called "Top to Toe". It comes from a booklet by Leisure Arts called "Beautiful Baby", and there's actually a copy on sale at eBay right now.

Okay...and now onto the topic at hand...

I'm unfortunately not sure when I'll be able to get out to the next Lettuce Knit SnB, since DH's new job (yay!) looks like it'll require him to work weeknights (boo!). This means that if I want to go, either I'll have to find babysitting for DD1, or bring her with me (not a great option). So anytime I go, it'll involve some planning. The upside of this is that I probably will be able to give Aven a heads-up in advance. :) On the downside, Emer, although I would loooove to meet up with you there, you probably don't want to wait on me and my schedule. I really think you should just up and go. New people come in on a fairly regular basis, so your arrival won't shock anyone. :) True, some of the new faces show up just to stalk the Harlot (heck, that was one of my motivations for starting to go), but they tend to either never be seen again after the first visit, or realise that the rest of the SnB is such a great group of people and keep coming back. If you show up at the shop, introduce yourself, pull up a chair, pull out your knitting, and contribute to the conversations, it will all go swimmingly. I hope you decide to go, I think you would really like the crowd there and I would sure like to meet you there, too. I'll keep trying to post in advance when I'm planning to go.

DH was off work Friday during the day because he was on during the evening, so after lunch I went back to Knitters Attic. I used the pedestrian walkway that DH had found for me, and the walk took...are you ready for this?...TEN MINUTES. Ten freakin' minutes! (Well...not including the stretch of time when I took a wrong turn and went in the opposite direction for twenty minutes.)

I went partly to time the walk, and partly because I was on the hunt for some baby crochet patterns for my mom, who for some reason insists on making large blankets for all new babies of friends and family. She's been complaining recently because the blankets take so long and there are a lot of families she knows who are expecting right now. She's therefore feeling a little overwhelmed. I thought it might be nice if she could make baby things that are a bit smaller and quicker to make than blankets (thus giving her less crochet deadline stress), so I picked up some pattern booklets for her for Mother's Day. Plus one knitting pattern booklet for myself. (I am weak.)

I also got to chatting with the woman (Mercedes) working at the store at the time (same one who showed up on Sunday after a stint of yarn-buying for the owner [June]), and hey, guess what? They need someone who can teach people how to knit socks! They've been wanting to hold a 'sock course' at the shop, but the person they found to do it isn't free during the weekdays, and that's when their customers have expressed interest in going. Since it looks like DH will be working a lot of weeknights at his new job, that leaves his days free, and he can probably take care of DD1 one afternoon a week so I can pop out and teach sock knitting (with DD2 in tow). So Mercedes said she'd talk to June about this possibility, and I'm going to think about how on earth I would teach a sock course. The money I earn from this could go a long ways towards mitigating the "financial catastrophe" that Carrie K has sagely predicted will result from having a yarn store so close to my house. Happy dance!

Then on Saturday, DH snuck out of the house on a mysterious "errand", which I figured was a pathetic last-minute shopping run for my Mother's Day card. But no! He actually went to Knitters Attic to get me my very own ball of Austermann "Step" yarn for Mother's Day!!! Check it out:

The colourway is not what I would have chosen for myself, but who cares, it's for socks. Socks for me! Foot-pampering socks for me!

And little did I know it, but another amazing Mother's Day gift was in the cards for me. For reasons unbeknownst to anyone but herself, my mom felt it was necessary to upgrade from her Olympus C-50 Zoom digital camera (5.0 megapixels) to something ridiculously jazzy and feature-rich (and expensive) right before DD2 was born. She was going to give the C-50 to my brother as a hand-me-down, but for some reason he didn't want it, so guess who got it instead!!!

(Picture me doing a serious happy dance right here.)

No more crappy photo quality from the digital camcorder!

Which of course brings us to...

Some kind of blanket

Here's a shot of the swatch I made (please ignore the crappy grafting job:


I'm going to do another swatch, this time knitting it clockwise so that the decreases on the "spines" will be K2togs. (My left-leaning decreases always come out disgustingly uneven, I have no idea why. It doesn't matter if I do K2togtbls, SSKs or Sl1/K/PSSOs, it always looks bad.)

Muppet roadkill

Zooming along very nicely on this - I'm now on the 17th repeat of the pattern. Less than 4 more to go! Of course, just as I was mentally congratulating myself on how fast I was getting this done, DD1 asked, "When are you going to be finished my blanket, Mummy? I want it now!"

Market bags

I was watching Oprah in the week leading up to Earth Day, and she had an Earth Day show which profiled a whole bunch of products and tips. One of these was to stop using the clear plastic bags for fruits and vegetables at the supermarket, in favour of a lightweight mesh bag. I liked this idea, so I'm going to try and find the time to make some. I've got a couple of contenders for patterns: the Eco-Friendly Expandable Shopping Bag from Lion Brand; Yarn Demon's Net Shopping Bag [scroll down]; and the Saturday Market Bag from MagKnits. No idea yet which one will be the winner. Stay tuned.