On the Road Again.....

Greetings and Dear Laura:

My apologies to anyone who, like me, now has the Willie Nelson song stuck in their head! But hey, if I gotta - you gotta.

Thanks to all the commenters lately - I've enjoyed hearing from you. I appreciate the positive response to the Seaside Sweater - and Elizabeth - fun to hear that you share my "style!"

I've had a really stressful week somehow and that translates into a back-ache and not sleeping well and....ok...being irritable. I'm sure that no one noticed....(eek!) And I'm not even taking an intensive class or anything.

Anyway. The bright spot in the week was Sunday morning when I checked my email and found my Ravelry invite! YAY!!! (NO - I did not skip church to start entering my stash!) I had taken a bunch of stash pictures and posted them on Flickr so that I would have a head start. I had also posted notes and tags about dye lot, color, yardage, gauge, stuff like that, and that was helpful. I did go back and retake some pictures after I found my tri-pod, because I could get much better color. Anyway, that did keep me occupied a lot this week.

I highly recommend signing up at the site to get on the waiting list. The good news is that they are making swift progress on the list. I expected to wait another 2-3 weeks! They're making a mad dash for the finish line to go out of Beta and be open to all, so that's good news.

I did get some knitting done - more progress on the Baby Surprise jacket, and I made three of my Soap Sweaters for gifts. I keep tweaking the cables for interest. If I make many more of these, I'm going to need an auxilliary stitch dictionary to keep interested.



And now I'm off for a weekend trip to Kenosha, WI to visit friends. This last year has been an almost complete "no-travel" year for me. I used to pull out my suitcase in March and use it 2-3 weekends a month until November, and even in the winter I made occasional trips somewhere, but that has changed. I did have trouble with my car last fall, so other than a failed attempt to drive it for an overnighter in MI, it hasn't been on the road for almost 8 months. I'm excited to visit my friends and see how the kids have all grown! At least they were able to visit me a few times this year.....

And the other excitement is that since my last visit, a yarn store has opened up in their town! So tomorrow will include S.tash E.nhancement X.pedition! I have really had withdrawal from hanging around a yarn store, even when I'm not buying. I still have to sit down and set up my "Yarn Store Rules" for this trip. One of the rules used to be not to buy anything while traveling that is readily available at my LYS, but that's not really an issue anymore. I will have set my budget carefully tho, because Stitches is only 2 weeks away (!) and there will be SO MUCH there.....

Just for some color to this post, here is the picture of my Kureyon stash....



And on that happy note, I leave you....

Keep knitting,

Cynthia (aka Designated Knitter)