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. :)

Firsts

7 Small Shawls: T - 70 days and counting down.

My first ever home made sushi:

And my very first skein of Bugga! - in the Adonis Butterfly colorway.

Both delicious in their own way.

I need to work on making the quintessential sushi rice, but the Bugga is already perfect. :)

Did I mention that I'm thrilled that you all like Elektra?! I loved getting your comments; you all really made my day big time!

Craziness abounds here. I've come to the conclusion that I must really enjoy and thrive on it because I seem to be unable to keep from creating a chaos of over-work. My next task: learn to embrace and enjoy it thoroughly and completely. Onward!

Temptress

7 Small Shawls: T - 138 days and counting down.

Yesterday a priority mail box came. A surprise priority mail box. I love those. :) And this one did not disappoint! Dee had sent me a care package for my "inner magpie." Isn't that sweet?! And just look at what was inside!!! Warm.

And cool.

Oh, how I wish I could do the colors justice! Dee is an incredibly talented dyer.

The burgundy is Casablanca in the colorway Rusty Halo: 80% fine merino and 20% cashmere. The golden toned skein is Enya sock in colorway Harvest: 100% superwash merino. And the incredible deep aqua/teal/turquoise is Mica in the colorway Wild Night: 50% merino and 50% silk. I wish I could capture the incredible color! I spent some time trying to Photoshop it, too, and it's just one of those colors that doesn't photograph well. Trust me, though. It is incredible! I've been petting it. My inner magpie is very happy. :)

btw, did you see my interview over on the Knitting Daily blogs? I'm on "Inside Knits." Isn't that cool!? Sharon Riggs interviewed me. She's teh awesome. :)

Down the way

7 Small Shawls: T - 165 days and counting down.

Just look at what Karen dyed for me!

Believe me, it's even more stunning in real life. The color fairly crackles with life. It reminds me of that old song Harry Belafonte used to sing: Jamaica Farewell. I imagine the water around Jamaica to be this color, but, never having been there, I could certainly be wrong. Isn't it gorgeous?! What do you think the name should be?

Do I need help?

7 Small Shawls: T - 186 days and counting down.

Hello. My name is Romi, and I am a knitting geek. It first started at a young age, and has gotten worse and worse. Whereas I just used to make up patterns as I went along in a haphazard way, I now have purchased more and more knitting geeky tools to render pattern making and writing more precise, therefore furthering my sickness. Last week it was more stitch dictionaries. This week it's a scale.

Sure, it's helpful. Sure, it measures troy ounces too (ooh! jewelry geek!). Does this mean I have to go overboard and weigh everything? Apparently so. I am incapable of stopping myself. Where will it end?

For instance, I can tell you that Lisa Souza's cashmere/silk fingering weight yarn is 2.065 ounces with a yardage of 400. (And it smells yummy, too).

This gorgeous Serenity Silk from Zen Yarn Garden (in 14k) is 104.1 grams with 500 yards. That should mean the Lisa Souza yarn is finer, but that's not really the case. More of the extra light cashmere (45%) in the Souza yarn gives you more yardage for the weight.

This gorgeous yarn from Wabi Sabi (in Paua) is pure merino - superwash - and weighs in at 106.5 grams/400 yards.

And then there are the these two beauties from A Verb for Keeping Warm. They are destined to become a striped shawl and weigh in at a total of 207.3 grams for 770 yards. The colors are The French Monk's Finest and Magic Bean.

The funny thing is that, although the yardage varies all over the place, the yarns are all about the same thickness. But maybe an even funnier thing is that I actually care about stuff like this. Do I have a problem? I think so.

For others of you with the same problem, do not despair. You are not alone. And I also have good news for you. Karen at The Royale Hare has put up the yarn I used for Maia on her site for pre-order. Now you can have your very own Bug Juice. Woot!

Back to my sickness. Hee. :)

Process of elimination

7 Small Shawls: T - 198 days and counting down.

If weren't being really really careful, I'd probably end up with an eBook full of green shawlettes.

But I'm trying to broaden my horizons. :) I've been swatching this incredible yarn from Roxanne at Zen Yarn Garden.

It is heart-breakingly, sumptuously soft. And I love the color. But the pattern, at the moment, is eluding me, and I've moved on to a different idea that appeals to my over-loaded brain at the moment. My idea will be a fun, quick little knit in a bit of a different shape. This is perfect for me because a) hot weather makes me a little lazy, and b) I have a deadline looming. (I haven't cast on for Secret Project #2 and it is calling my name. Loudly. Secret Project #1 is blocking and about to travel off to its new home. Whew!)

This means I need to choose a different yarn to use before I get back to the golden yellow. Here are the contenders, in two color groups. First we have the reds from Lisa Souza and Wabi Sabi.

And here we have the blue-greens from Saffron and Royale Hare.

By process of elimination (completely unscientific I might add), I've narrowed it down to two. Both are more variegated than I've been using, and both are not green. Bonus! First there's Wabi Sabi's Brandywine colorway, which I love, but looks more autumn to me than summer.

And then there's Saffron's New Moon, which reminds me of nymphs dancing on a summer evening (okay, maybe I'm projecting a little).

I love them both, and I'm betting they will both make it into the eBook. I'm leaning heavily toward the New Moon for right now, but what do you think? Do warm or cool colors affect the way you perceive a knitted item's season?

True confessions of a yarn sniffer

7 Small Shawls: T - 204 days and counting down.

Scents have always made a huge impression on me, so it's no surprise that I sniff my yarn. Ok, maybe it does surprise you a little, but really, it's a natural thing. ;) Particularly the silk yarns. I've been sniffing silk ever since I was a child and my mother used to sew with silk fabrics. To me, silk has a very distinctive silky smell and I love it! I say "to me" because of all the strange stares I've gotten from people - when they ask the fiber content of a yarn or fabric, I sniff it, and then I say "it smells like silk." Apparently, not everyone thinks that silk smells like anything special. Who knew?!

But I digress. One of my most favorite things is walking into Stitches West to help set up and smelling all the hand dyed yarns. It smells like vinegar and wool, and silk, and...yum! I just walk in the door, close my eyes and breathe deeply. Euphoria!

Right about now, you are probably wondering what the point is. Well, Lisa Souza sent me some of her cashmere/silk fingering weight yarn in Forbidden City. (Wanna see? Look!)

It's been sitting next to my computer while I'm working, and every now and then, a delicious silky aroma wafts by my nose. Mmmmmmm. This is truly a yarn for all the senses! Soft, beautiful and delicious all around.

Lisa's yarn wasn't the only one that came in the mail. Just look at these!

These are from Saffron Dyeworks. OMG. The colors! Even #1 Son, who is generally unimpressed by such things, was drooling over it!

The colors are New Moon and Swoop (the teal). They don't smell though. Well, maybe a teensy bit woolly, but that may be my imagination. :)

Thank you both so much ladies! These will look incredible knitted up into Small Shawls!

I also want to thank you all so much for your kind comments about Maia! I'm excited about getting her to my test knitters and then off to you for the next eBook installment! This was a super fun and simple knit, and I know you'll enjoy her as much as I did. Plus, Maia is designed so that you can enlarge her by simply repeating the second to last chart as many times as you wish. How about that?! :)

In other news, today I helped my friend Karen set up her tent for our local little spinning event: Spinner's Day on the Farm. I'm missing it this year to go to a swim meet. The meet started started today, and I was running around like a madwoman before taking off up north. I got a little knitting done on a small (but painfully slooooow) secret project and planned other small shawls in my head while I knit and timed swimmers. The meet lasts all Saturday and Sunday, so we'll see how much I can get done! I'm off now to vegetate a little. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Meeting up

This past Sunday was the 1st Annual San Francisco Ravelry Meet-Up. It wasn't an officially sanctioned Ravelry function, but here's hoping that one of these days the Ravelry team will join us! It was a great little event (thanks to the fearless - and probably sleepless - organizers) at the Women's Building in SF, and on the same day as the Bay to Breakers race, a crazy anything-goes kind of event that turns into a giant street party. We were fairly nervous about getting through the traffic, but it turned out we needn't have been. It was no problem at all.

7 of us donned our Brandywines (my local group rocks!), piled into A's "Team Bus" and made the trek from Sonoma County to SF.

After finding an amazing parking place in the Mission District (half a block away - we used up our year's quota of parking karma!), we stopped at Delfina to have lunch.

The thought of this (instead of the Taquería we had originally discussed) made me seriously cranky (I am not at all a fan of pizza), but my dear Susan told me that I had never had pizza like this and she was absolutely right. It was delicious! I would have shown you pictures of our tasty meal, but it was gone too quickly!

After lunch, we stopped in at Bi-Rite, an amazing little store just filled full of little wonderful tidbits of good food. And just look at these flowers out front.

Isn't that lovely?

Little stores like this really make me miss living in SF.

Off we went to the Women's Building and almost the first person I saw was Jacquie sporting her incredibly gorgeous Bitterroot shawl. Seriously, you have to see the pictures of this on Ravelry; my photo does not do it justice at all.

She was collecting tickets for door prizes. More on this later.

Inside, this is the sight that greeted us, and we were maybe ten minutes late. There were knitters everywhere! It was fabulous. :)

I began wandering around and look who I saw! It's Betsy, wearing her lovely Brandywine! She's kindly letting Anzula borrow her shawl for a display at TNNA, so this shawl will be traveling soon!

Then I met the Stash and Burn Podcast gals and came to find out that Nicole works with an old and dear friend of mine. I had no idea - it's a very very small world! Nicole and Jenny gave away Brandywine patterns as part of one of their promotions. Thank you, ladies! It was great meeting you both!

I came back by to see how my home girls were doing, and then I was off again wandering about and talking with old and new friends.

Here's Síle of Knit-One-One. She is so stylish, warm and wonderful (plus her shortbread is amazing!). I just love her.

And I saw Robin again (I met her before at Knit-One-One)! She's test knitting for me and she has the most amazing spreadsheets EVER. Did you notice she's wearing a Muir scarf? So pretty!

She brought her test project, too. It's in Malabrigo sock and I wish I could have captured the gorgeous color play. You'll just have to imagine how incredibly beautiful it is!

I turned around from talking to Robin and who should I see but WonderMike. I adore Mike. Really. I'm trying to adopt him as my kids' uncle.

And then I saw Adrienne! Kristine wasn't feeling well :( but I got the full report from Adrienne and talked to both her and my friend J (whom I had not seen in quite awhile) for some time.

Look at what she has in her hat!

Then I was off hunting for shawls in the wild. Here's a Brandywine!

A Trieste - I love it made with sock yarn. Isn't that cool?!

And a lovely Bitterroot on Catarina, who I met at Stitches West. She had asked me if I thought the yarn she had just purchased would make a nice Bitterroot (Alpaca with a Twist) and I said absolutely! Well here it is!

Everywhere I turned, I saw people wearing shawls I designed. It was amazing to see what everyone had done with them! I felt so honored.

At about 3, we could hold out no longer and went off to Imagiknit.

OMG. I had never been there before (was afraid for my wallet).

It was incredible. And everyone was in a state of fiber-induced euphoria. The only imperfection? No Designs by Romi shawl pins!

I did succumb to one perfect skein of Malabrigo sock. In green. Even though I don't really need any more green sock yarn. In fact, I'm afraid my current stash of green sock yarn may warp the space-time continuum. But it was a chance I had to take. Because I couldn't leave it there. It needed to come home with me and become a lacy piece of lusciousness.

After Imagiknit, L insisted we go back to see if any of us had won door prizes. And I'm thrilled that she did. Because...um...I won 12 skeins of Koigu! 12. Skeins. Of. Koigu. from Article Pract. (Thank you for such a wonderful door prize!) They are all different gorgeous colors. I see two and three color shawls in my near future. I've just been staring at them. Aren't they lovely?

Then it was off to Tartine for a cup of coffee and a yummy dessert (I had chocolate pudding)...and home again. What a fabulous time! I am hoping for another meet-up next year.

Thank you, everyone, for a wonderful day!!!