Knitting or rather..not

Well, we are back from the sunny Dominican and I have to tell you I am a hot house flower. I bloomed while we were there and detect a distinct wilting since we got home.
I experienced every knitters worst nightmare. Two thousand plus miles from home and I have the wrong sized knitting needle! I had to medicate myself with 30 degree (Celsius) sunshine, white sand and a delicious beverage called a "Silver Clark." After all this was my holiday and I had looked forward to trying out a new lace pattern from "Wrapped in Lace.". Not so fellow knitters. The needle was too fine.
I kept trying as if the needle would have swollen in the sunshine..sigh ... I gave up and went to the pool bar, which by the way was behind a little waterfall. It's hard to see but trust me there is water falling in front of the bar.

Before we left I managed to finish and block the aforementioned slouch hat. Finally a gift finished in advance of the occasion.

Susan Pandorf, one of my favourite designers, has a new KAL, IN DREAMS, starting next week. It is in her Lord of the Ring series. I have been haunting the LOTR group on Ravelry. There are so many beautiful knitters out there. Ravelry is a wonderful place to chat with people who understand your passion. Last June I bought some of Blue Moon Fibers Silk Thread II for the Evenstar project. Everyone was so far into the project I fizzled and the silk has languished in the cedar chest. That is until Thursday night when I whipped up this swatch on a 3mm needle.

 I fear it is a pinch too small so I am doing another one with a 3.25mm. As the luck of the Irish would have it the ocean green beads are a perfect match to the blue green highlights in this colour way. Which by the by is called "Thraven." The In Dreams KAL has 5000 beads. That alone means I have to knit this. Susan P is making hers with Unique Sheep's Eos in their "unique" gradiance colour treatment. Unique sheep also offer  a 100% silk lace yarn called Marici. AND Laura will custom dye a colour way for you. You do see where this is going don't you? It all started with a colour way called "Galadriel's Crown" and ended up with "Feyrhi Wings"

Yup, that's mine and I named it. Too yummy for words. Now I have to find beads.
Then I went to Earthfaire to look for beads. I usually deal with Bead FX online but heard so much about Earthfaire I went to check them out. It turns out that they have exclusive colour ways from Unique Sheep.
Cue the drama music.
In March Unique Sheep has a KAL starting.  The Little Mermaid KAL and Earthfaire has this colourway called Dragon Fire....and they have the whole deal, sign up, beads, yarn ... you get the idea.
O.K. right moving on.
Julia and I spent a day Spinning.

 I am so rusty I can't believe it, well, yes I can. It is like riding a bike, a little wobbly but smoothing out. I plan on doing more today. Julia took to it like she should have with all those nice fibre genes in her DNA.

She took the Ashford home and tells me she has filled two bobbins and is ready for plying. Her stool was a little too low at picture taking but she got the right height chair when she got home. Now we need a niddy noddy.
It is snowing out there..yukky

Hairy Hats and Humming Alpacas

Chemo Caps: Mindless knitting of the hat variety has been about all I have accomplished this month. I have so many projects in the air the juggling act is getting ridiculous. I have yarn to knit about 6 more of these and then I am done, at least for the time being. On the charity knitting front I also have a baby all-in-one for St Luke's Mission Hospital. That deserves a post all it's own. More on that one later.

This is my Aphelandra ( Zebra Plant). The spikes were bright yellow they have now turned green and as everything outside the window is turning brown this is an ongoing source of pleasure.

Woodstock Fleece Festival: Look at this orphan baby alpaca, 5 weeks old. What a sweety. Everyone was getting a kick out of the black one behind her. The humming was so loud. When everyone laughed the black one would then hum all the louder.

The llamas were intently listening to Julia. They seemed oblivious to the fact it was raining. I told Todd he was a trooper for putting up with two women with a fiber obsession.

This is Billy (angora goat). He kept smacking his head into the rails in typical male goat fashion.

and then there was Sammy the Angora bunny.

Julia would have taken him home in a second.

There were twice as many vendors this year which was very good. I spoke with the girl's from Spun (Corinne's LYS) and they said it was a very good show. Julia won the last door prize of the day and everyone made a fuss over her name. It was all very exciting. I showed a great deal of restraint. I did purchase 2 pounds of fleece dyed in the most delicious colours and I found someone who services old spinning wheels. My little castle wheel needs some TLC. I think I may get it out tonight and have a go at some spinning. It has been ages but I think it is probably like riding a bike. Once you learn you never forget.