A little play

I can't believe it's Thursday already! Happy birthday to my Bear, who is 9 today.

I think he enjoyed the day. :) (See those swimmer's dreads? He wants a haircut, or maybe I should say shearing, but I've been stalling cause he's so cute this way.)

It's been a whirlwind week, actually. One more secret project finished, another halfway done and another cast on. I have been a crazy knitting machine! On Monday, though, I got to take a little time off when Anne, Cookie and friends came up to visit wine country!

We had lunch in Healdsburg (which is near me in Sonoma County, btw - not all the wine is in Napa!) at Zin, owned by my dear friend Susan's husband Jeff. In addition to being the catering director, she's the gal who makes it all work. Plus, she's a knitter. Perfect, right?

She ordered us some deep fried green beans (in tempura batter), one of Zin'e specialties. YUM!

We all whipped out the cameras.

It was a great photo op!

Though for some reason Cookie decided to eat instead.

It was fabulous to see you, ladies, even for a short while!

Back to knitting for me. :)

Through the woods and across the Sierras

Last Friday we packed up the car and headed off to our very first out of state swim meet; across the Sierras and into Carson City, Nevada! It had been a very long time since I'd actually been into Nevada (California is a big state and we don't usually leave by car!) and an even longer time since I'd been to Carson City. Newsflash for this California girl: on the other side of the state line, they have it pretty good! I mean, just look at this gorgeous indoor Olympic sized pool!

The Carson Tigersharks get to practice there. We were all seriously - and I mean seriously - green with envy. #1 Son just stared open-mouthed when he walked into the complex. They have a scoreboard that keeps a running time and has each swimmer's "name in lights" as #1 Son said. Both boys went on to have an absolutely amazing meet, with personal bests in every event. Part of that is because they are both finally getting thoroughly over whooping cough (yes - they were both vaccinated the requisite number of times, but they got it anyway), and part of that is because they were just so thoroughly enjoying the moment and the whole experience. It was such a joy to see!

Now, not only did both boys have personal bests in each event, The Bear won his 8 and under age division, taking first in every single one of his events. Here he is with his age division trophy. He is one proud little dude. And his parents may have burst a few buttons, as well.

While we were there, Mr. Romi, who loves archery, stopped by the local outdoor course. He had called ahead and gotten ahold of the caretaker (I was feeling the similarities here, since I checked Jimmy Beans' hours!) who met him there in the morning to shoot before the afternoon session of the swim meet. (Big kids in the morning, little kids in the afternoon). It was so gorgeous that Mr. Romi took me out later to see the view. Look at that sky!

It had snowed the night before, but the snow had all evaporated. You can still see some on the Sierras in the background here, though.

I was absolutely enthralled by the scenery. I have always always loved the desert, and the high desert in particular.

And then we were off to Reno. Happily for me, Jimmy Beans is open on Mondays! (And yes, I had already checked on the way up. I believe in being prepared.) Look at this yummy wall of yarn!

Mmmmmmmmore yarn.

This is where the website fulfillment magic happens - in the back room. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming (and they let the boys use the bathroom so I will love them all forever)! This is Kristen, who is packing up orders.

And this is Terry, who actually used to live in Sonoma County and knew exactly where my town is! This is a very Rare Thing.

She was nice enough not to say anything when I pronounced Nevada incorrectly. Being from California, I pronounced it with the Spanish "a" as Nev-AH-da. But in reality, locals pronounce it Nev-AD-a. So, many thanks to you, Terry (and apologies for messing up your state name); I am much obliged! :)

Oh. Did I mention that some yarn might have followed me home? This lovely is from Lorna's Laces. It's one of their designer series yarns, and this particular skein of Shepherd Sock is Grand Street Ink, Jared Flood's color. I loved the gorgeous rich purpley-brown color immediately, and it went wandering around the store with me.

And because a skein of yarn can never be lonely, it found a friend. Seasilk in the ebony colorway.

Seeing that I have an absurdly enormous stash, I asked #1 Son which he liked best, because I was determined to split them up and only adopt one. He gave his opinion. I asked Mr. Romi and The Bear. They said both. Hee. Love it! Although I secretly thought Mr. Romi was buttering me up because we were about to stop at Cabela's on the way back to California.

Here's the view out the Cabela's door. It is an insanely enormous store. Utterly overwhelming. All I can say is: it's a good thing I was there. Otherwise? We might be starving and homeless today.

We finally got out of Cabela's and were off back to California! The traffic was quite civilized, probably due to the exorbitant price of gas.

And when we returned? Look what was waiting for me! It is angora/wool/silk from one of my club members. She keeps angoras and had the fiber spun by a local mill. It is sumptuous!

I really wish you could see it and feel it. It's a lace weight and it is the lightest and softest stuff ever! I can't wait to dig into it. She spoiled me with four 315 yard skeins!

And then today it was back to work. It was nice to sleep in my own bed, but I find myself really missing the high desert! Kind of amazing for a dyed in the wool California girl. Just shows that even an old dog, well, you know.... ;)

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!

A little ketchup

I've been a bad blogger lately, but I'm hoping to make up for it a little bit at least. That is, before I jet off to Maryland on Friday where I'll be the featured designer at Eleganza Yarns' weekend Indie Artist Celebration. (Isn't that cool?!) But it doesn't make for lots of blog posts between now and then, I'm afraid!

Last Thursday, I left in the morning to drive down to Stitches West, and all the stormy weather that has not been happening all happened at once. On Thursday morning. While I was driving. And this is what was happening back home while I was in the rain.

The snow level was so low that it was about a five minute drive away.

And no one could resist.

By the way, this is what it looked like today.

But I hear that snow is due on Thursday and through the weekend. I hope my plane isn't delayed!

But I digress. The drive last Thursday took a little more than an hour longer than it should have, but really? I'm not complaining. I made it there in one piece, and so did my friend Anne, who came down with me a day early to help me set up (because she is a Goddess. Really. It's documented.)

Amazingly, even though we were late, we got set up in time for the show. We were all wearing tiaras (it being the Royale Hare booth and all.) I'm afraid I don't have a picture of me in my finery, but I can tell you that I felt quite resplendent with tiara and scepter. Every girl really needs a tiara, you know? I had a great little corner with my pins and patterns and samples all laid out.

I got to meet people from my Ravelry forum, which was incredibly cool. Pictured here are Caroline, Judy and Ali.

I also met up with tons of other people, but for the most part, no pictures were taken because everything was such a whirlwind of craziness! I shall punish myself severely for that. Um. Later.

This is Holly, and she gave me a home made scone shaped like a heart! :D

Here's Regina wearing her Bitterroot with a Romi shawl pin!

And this is a programmer with Square (and she knits!!!), who saw me using the cool little card reader with my iPhone and came to say hello and take a picture! So I had to get one of her, too.

Rick was dressed in fabulous shoes, as always.

Rachael gave me her new book that's coming out next week. (Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!)

And I can't put it down now! It is fabulous!!! A perfect feel good read.

And there was yarn.

Luminous yarn from Sunshine Yarns.

Stunning deep colors from Pigeon Roof Studios.

Gorgeous colors from Miss Babs. I love the Terra Cotta!

Sumptuous natural dyes from Sincere Sheep.

And deep golden loveliness from Royale Hare. (This was an accident. How many people want some more accidents to happen?!)

It was a fabulous and wonderful time. I got to meet so many people. And all I can say is wow. I loved every minute of it. Thank you everyone!

And tomorrow? Between working on three sekrit projects, I might just steal a few little moments with my pretties before I pack. See you all soon!