Wherein Romi pets pretty yarnz

I know. It's been a long time again. I've been a bad bad blogger. But have accomplished much! Before we get to that, though, I still want to share my gorgeous yarnz from Yarnover.

First up? These lace weight beauties given to me by the lovely people at Sun Valley Fibers. I particularly favor the grey.

Can you see the purple streaks in the grey? I love these two together. They are yummy!

And this green loveliness is from Little Gidding Farm. 100% suri alpaca lace weight. It is the softest, most silky incredible skein of fluff! It is truly drool-worthy.

Here we have a wool and corn blend. Yes! Corn! From Corny Goodness. I love the way it feels. I saw a shawl sample and it knits up something like Shetland wool, but much less scratchy. I can't wait to play with it!

Here's the 100% corn. It feels a lot like a cotton. Perfect for spring or summer!

And then I pet the bunny. (Did you notice I was in a purple and grey mood?) These are angora/merino from Kimmet Croft. So soft! I really can't wait to try it. btw, the purple is pretty spot on, but the picture doesn't come close to doing the grey justice. I do love me some good grey.

Guess what? Alcyone is released!

And with her release, all of the ebook shawls are out! (I do have a couple of little extra accessory patterns that are going in too, though.)

While I was putting together the final final pattern, something that I had been awaiting with great anticipation came.

Look how shiny they are!

I love them. :) In fact, the last pair of cowboy boots I ordered (but for way less money than shown) are going back, because these are just so much more me!

So I had to put them on and wear them around. Especially during my little photo shoot.

I enjoyed my private joke.

I also sent out a secret project that I so wish I could share with you! But, sadly, you will have to wait until winter.

And my shop is back up!

More to come soon. :)

In which Romi goes on and on and on

Whew. I feel like I haven't been here in ages! So much has been going on. This is going to be a long post, but I really think I owe you at least a few highlights!

I guess the super gigantic whirlwind really started being a perfect storm right after I rushed Sakaki out, with my 3 secret projects, due dates all falling within a period of two weeks. My first, a small one thankfully, was completed way ahead of time and sent off to its new home. It is still a sekrit. Then came my offering for Kristine's Pro-Verbial Club. (Isn't that a great name?) Meet Cáliz, which will not be available to everyone until later this year. She was designed to take full advantage of the rustic camel/silk blend from A Verb for Keeping Warm.

Kristine's club ships right at the same time as mine. I rushed to get Cáliz to my test knitter extraordinaire, so that I could then concentrate on my own club offering, a more complicated confection that needed tweaking before going to test knitters. All I can say is that I have the absolute best test knitters in the whole world. I am so lucky! With their help, I was able to get it all together in time. Meet Lisianthus (which, btw, is also the nickname of a very dear friend of my mother's).

You can see the center leaf panel transition into the edging a little more clearly here, I think.

And here we have the detail at the neckline.

She is knit from String Theory's seri silk silk lacewight yarn, which is utter heaven. It reminds me of that incredible color of blueish-purple hydrangeas. I have several options in my club, and the "Romi's Choice" people, who receive my choice of yarn, pin metal and pattern, received the pictured shipment for April.

There's also a little polishing cloth thrown in for fun. The packages all went out over a period of about a week and half, as I try to give the international members a little head start so they don't have to wait as long.

After that craziness, it was time to start another secret project, take the boys to STAR testing (which is an event when you homeschool as we do) and allow the poor long-suffering Mr. Romi to catch up on some things that had been put aside to help me get everything together. So the couple of weeks before I went off to teach at Yarnover were spent at a lot of swim practices and putting together some sizable wholesale shawl pin orders. This made me realize how much I really needed to have a Mac laptop, so that I could work on patterns in my Adobe software while at practice. I already had Mac and PC versions of charting software and OpenOffice so that I could use my little Toshiba laptop in the pattern writing process, but I wasn't about to buy Adobe's Creative Suite again for the PC! Enter my new MacBook Pro, the most beautiful piece of technology I have ever owned. (Posing here with one of the extra projects from my eBook).

I finished laying out my Alcyone pattern - the last shawl from the eBook subscription! - on my new laptop, the next up for test knitters after those three secret projects. And then? Disaster. I discovered an error that changed more than half of the charts and written instructions. Not complicated once discovered, but terribly time consuming, as I had to throw out a huge amount of work. By now it was time to be going, and so off I then went to Yarnover. (Can I just add that I absolutely love Yarnover? If you have a chance to go, grab it!) It was their 25th anniversary and I was lucky enough to be teaching there! Here I am with a great group of people from my Ravelry forum (thank you for letting me use the picture, Nora!); it was amazing meeting everyone in person, and I so wish I could have gotten pictures of all! :)

I also finally got to meet Twinset Ellen at dinner! Here she is (in a terrible, low-light grainy picture - sorry!) with StevenBe.

Here's Cathy, who wove that beautiful bookmark as a gift for me! I was very touched. Thank you, Cathy! :)

And here's the wonderful Kristine's wonderful mother.

I also collected some yummy yarnz, and I will show you those in my next post!

From where I live out in the middle of nowhere, it takes pretty much a full day to travel anywhere, so I had loads of time to work on different projects. One was the afore-mentioned 4th secret, and one was a little extra for my eBook: a cowl out of decadent cashmere sock yarn from Artyarns.

When I returned, it was three days until Mr. Romi left on a business trip through the next (swim meet) weekend (by now we're up to the week before Mother's Day). I was still working on some wholesale pin orders and the secret project, while trying to keep everything else going in preparation for Mr. Romi's business trip, and working through Alcyone for the second time.

Around this time, silver prices went up to an all time high of $50/ounce. I had been expecting prices to go down, and so had been absorbing the extra material cost (my sterling pin prices were set when silver was $18 an ounce). It was obvious I couldn't do that any longer and still feed the kids. So, with a weekend approaching, and no fast site fix (I needed to update the database and my site both to change silver prices), I was forced to take my jewelry site down for maintenance, thinking I could get it back up after the weekend swim meet. Um. Not.

That weekend, I put everything work related away, except for some work on the Alcyone pattern in spare moments. We were up at 4:45 a.m. both days to get there in time to set up and warm up in the pool. We got a smaller pop-up so that I could actually put it up with the help of the boys. (Mr. Romi is much taller than I, and the big pop-up tent was too much!) I love the checked top. :)

It was a very very windy weekend. This is the timing tent. Luckily it blew in after the last race when no one was in the pool! If you look closely, you will see buckets attached to the poles. They were full of water to weight the tent down. Heh.

The meet was super fun, but left me utterly exhausted. Sunday evening I went to bed early and slept late the next morning. And I slept ten hours a night for about two more nights, actually going to bed before midnight or one in the morning. This is unheard of!

Mr. Romi returned Monday and was immediately back to work catching up, and with promises to pamper me for two weekends for the missed Mother's Day. (I thought that was a great deal). :) Alcyone was fixed and in testing, and I breathed a little sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, the yearly swim team fund raising swim-a-thon event took place.

Here's a happy Bear, who swam the full 200 laps for the first time!

Onward! Life and the secret project knitting continued, it started raining, and I came down with the world's worst head cold. Bleh.

But now? The sun is out, the secret project finally dried and sent out (amazing what 3 hours in the sun will do for drying that 20 hours inside will not), and I am finishing up the pattern, getting my site back up, getting ready to release some half year club memberships (tomorrow, May 20th at 9 a.m. PST!), doing a final edit on Alcyone, and getting the last two extra patterns ready for the eBook. Other stuff is happening, too, but more about that later. (Hint: another subscription is part of it!)

I know I've omitted quite a bit, but really? If you have read this far, you deserve a cup of tea and some chocolate for your patience. So...more later!

Monday's Musing

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - St. Augustine

I'm back from teaching at Yarnover in Minneapolis! I admit to being a terrible hermit, tucked away in my little studio in wine country. I often have to force myself to travel, but I always always enjoy it. So much to see, so many new people to meet and old friends to hug once again!

I had a wonderful time, as I always do at Yarnover, and my only regret was not being able to have more time with the fabulous organizers, volunteers, members of my Ravelry group, and other teachers. I am so grateful for the time I was able to spend with them, though, and the ability finally to put names to faces and Ravatars, and hear people's voices. Are you like me? I always "hear" a voice when I am reading a message online, and now I can hear the real thing in my mind's ear. :)

I'll have a bit more later, but right now I'm off to do some catching up! Have a great week, everyone!

Travelin'

So here I am. Sitting on the airporter and blogging. How cool is that?! I know I will sound old saying this, but it amazes me every time I can do something like this. Really. On a bus. On my computer. On the internets. Blogging. Dude!

I'm on my way to Yarnover in Minneapolis and I hope to see you there!

More when I return. Maybe. Next week is even crazier than the past few weeks have been. I was actually looking forward to a little airporter and plane time so I could knit and blog!

My little Bear is swimming in the ten and under championships on Saturday and I will be missing it. I'm wishing my cutie a fast fast pool and some amazing times. I wish I could be there. Next weekend Mr. Romi is off to a big archery shoot and I am spending Mother's Day weekend being a mother and taking the kids to a swim meet! And knitting on a secret project.

Yep. The next couple of weeks are crazy!

Report from Yarnover

As I was waiting at the San Francisco airport to fly out to Yarnover last week, who should walk by but Cookie A?! We chatted for some time, but it soon became obvious that she was traveling in style! First class, and a driver who picked her up at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport!

He was sent by StevenBe, a thoroughly delightful yarn store owner where Cookie was teaching.

My friend Kerry picked me up at the MSP airport and we had dinner with Cookie and Jen, who was in town from Connecticut. Well, that is, we had dinner after we stopped by a sale at The Yarnery (I got a gorgeous lace book), one of the amazingly well stocked yarn stores in the area. I have definite yarn store envy. And there's no tax on yarn and fiber in MN. :happysigh:

The next day, we prowled a few more yarn stores and a fiber store (The Fiber Studio), and I ended up with some lovelies! (Can you imagine?! A whole store devoted to fiber!) Some alpaca/silk to spin for the spinner's challenge at the Sonoma County Fair,

and some gorgeous wool/silk.

Just look at that color!!!

On we went to Knitter's Palette to meet the wonderful Pam and Angela. I had spoken to Pam before since she carries my pins, but never met her in person. Something followed me home from there too. It's Dream in Color Starry in the Flamingo Pie colorway.

Isn't it incredible?! The color is even more amazing in person.

That evening was a teacher's dinner and I was beyond thrilled to meet, and eat with, Meg Swanson, Amy Detjen, Franklin Habit, Jared Flood and Lucy Neatby. Fabulous! The next day was off to teach classes - I loved that some of the students that were in my classes last year came back and took my classes this year! It was fun to see their friendly faces.

Even though shopping time was severely limited (thanks be!) I managed to pick up a skein of Rovings mohair/polwarth on the way out.

Trust me when I say the photo does not do the color justice. At all.

Then back to the hotel for dinner (where I got to hang out with Susan and Sally plus Shelley) and some relaxation before taking off the next day.

This is where I admit that, when Kerry took me back to the Fiber Studio to her spinning group, a bit of alpaca/silk that I had resisted the other day somehow made it into my possession.

Isn't it gorgeous?

Then back I went to chilly California - yes Minneapolis was warmer than home - and my boys picked me up at the airport. It seems I might have missed a little something while I was gone. It was loose before I left to teach at Yarnover, and when it's gotta come out, it's gotta come out! This was waiting for me when I returned home.

One of Dr. Destructo's upper teeth. He's got a pretty cute little snaggle-toothed grin now.

Whew! So there you go! Yarnover was wonderful - many thanks to the amazing organizers and everyone who took my classes!

YO

Yarnover, that is: a once a year mini knitting and fiber festival in Minneapolis. And I got to teach there this past weekend! I admit to feeling fairly very insecure when I found out who my fellow teachers were to be: Lily Chen, Sally Melville, Susanna Hansson and Ginger Luters, to name a few. Thankfully, I got over it and had a ball teaching beginning lace and a beaded lace scarf. I am now totally in love with Minnesota and Minnesotans. I got to meet Kerry (my chauffeur!), Susan and Kendra, who I had known online for some time, and then I was fortunate to meet a whole host of other wonderful people (hi Shelley!). Everyone was incredibly kind and welcoming.

Okay. I have to stop here and ask. Did you all know that yarn is not taxed in MN? Yep! So, of course, I had to partake. :)

Yarnover was Saturday, but I got in Thursday evening and had dinner with Kerry and Kendra, before Kendra flew out the next day. It was just amazing luck that we overlapped a half day! Friday, Kerry took me out to a few yarn stores in the area. The area was like yarn heaven. Really. There were so many things that I had only seen online. So, without further ado, here are my goodies!

This laceweight merino/silk from Karabella is an amazing shade of eggplanty-grey. It's difficult to capture. I'm thinking of a shoulder shawlette.

Next up, this gorgeous blend of rayon/linen/silk/nylon by Berroco, aptly named "Seduce."

Kerry and I had lunch with Susan and then...Minnesota has beads, too. Lots of beads. :drool: Next stop was Bead Monkey, where I got some beads to go on a chain. Then I saw a juice glass full of old keys. One of them followed me home.

And just look at this incredibly cool glass pendant I found!

Then Kerry and I were off to dinner with all the teachers. Saturday was the event, and it was sooooo well run. I taught all day (my students were all kinds of awesome), but I did have time to run down to the vendor area to meet Jennie the Potter and drool over her wares. I came away with a button, afraid that any of her bigger creations wouldn't survive the trip back.

Isn't this a cool button, though?

At lunch, Susan gave me a gorgeous beaded ball she made me.

And Kerry gave me two spindles! I had been spinning on one of them the evening before at her place.

And just look at that sliver she added.

Aren't those amazing colors? See what I mean? Minnesotans are the best.

On the way out after teaching, I spotted this yarn.

It is sooooo gorgeous. It's mohair/Polwarth wool from Rovings in Canada.

All the teachers and the Guild board had dinner together that evening. And really? I just can't say enough about how wonderful everyone was. Thank you all SO much for such a fantastic time.

Yarnover!

I'm off to teach at Yarnover in Minneapolis! See you all soon. :) And some of you sooner!