Annual Demo at the NYS Fair

There's a tiny old building, called the Wool Center, squeezed between several others at the NYS State Fair. It's really only a couple of rooms with garage doors at either end but has served quite well through the years for all kinds of demos having to do with wool.

My guild, the Black Sheep Handspinners, take on one day each year to demo wheel and spindle spinning in this building.  Jim and I have been doing this for the last 3 years.  The first 2 were so hot we thought about not going again.  Really sticky, muggy, in the 90's, hot is not too wonderful for spinning wool but this year the temps were merely in the 80's and sometimes clouds blocked the blasting sun so it was fun and always interesting talking to folks wandering by.

I got to eat greasy expensive yam fries.  Jim had a humongmous fried haddock sandwich and Deirdre  got some excellent coffee with real cream.  I also indulged in fresh squeezed lemonade and a people watching walk around the area.  Other than that it was 4 hours of spinning with no phone calls or internet to interrupt us, just pleasant folks asking good questions.

That was my view from behind the picket fence.

A weaver answering questions.

Sharon and Sue getting ready for the afternoon shift.

Hard to see but these two stands had bacon everything -- batter fried, dipped in chocolate, etc.

And we couldn't have done it without our faithful Dolly.

Ravellenic Gold!!

Yesterday I received this:

Following the link I came to:

**PODIUM**

Done and Done

As of Friday, the knitting of the

was completed.  All that remains is the paperwork - finishing the pattern, figuring all the yardages, and whatever else is needed before I send it all away to Knitter's Mag.

Once that knitting was done, I concentrated on the socks.  It felt very freeing to have 5+ days to get it all done.  I was actually going for being able to mail them by Tuesday so MVOS would have her socks by her birthday on Thursday.  Instead of spinning at guild yesterday I knit.  Both Becki and I knit with these results.

 Hers are on the top and mine are the bottom ones.  One sock was ready for ribbing and the other had about 3+ inches to go on the cuff before the ribbing.

I remember on Friday Marina wrote to say she was spending most of her weekend trying to get her shawl done on time.  I thought she meant before her trip to Madison but, no, she meant before the Olympics ended.  I was happy to tell her it went until Thurs or Friday.

Then this morning while talking on the phone with my mother she mentioned the Olympics ending today.  I said I thought it was later in the week so she checked her newspaper and confirmed today as the day. My mother sometimes gets her dates mixed up but since the newspaper said the same she had to be right. Don't know where I got the 17th as the ending from either.

Sheesh!  And there went today's schedule of getting the paperwork for the skirt done.  I immediately turned on my ipod and the latest book I am listening to - Fern Michaels' Kentucky Series (I'm on Bk2).

Amazing how much knitting can get done when one puts one's mind and fingers to it and does not check email or facebook.

These will ship tomorrow!

19.5 - 9.5 + 0.5

I play Words with Friends from Zynga with a few friends.  Yesterday Ruth played ungot.  Ungot?  What kind of English is that?  We fooled around thinking of other un words - unhad, unborrowed, uneat, unknit.......

Little did I know what a portend that was.


About midnight when I was merely about 120 iterations away from completing the skirt I had a brainstorm.  Before even completing the I-cord cast-off I wanted to see just how the skirt might look. There were enough stitches off the needles to allow for that neat sneak peak.  So I spread the skirt on the table and it was HUGE.  Really HUGE. How could that have happened?  Was I just too tired and not seeing correctly?  No the circumference was really really big.  I had planned for some flounce but when I started analyzing the results I realized that the flounce was only meant to be 3-4 inches but now it was 9.5 to account for the extra length I misread.  Sigh.  Midnight is not the time to make big decisions.  But I was now not at all sleepy either so I left the skirt to sit and watch an episode of The Closer.  When I got back to it there was no difference but I was tired enough to sleep.

I woke up several times to relook, each time nothing had changed.  I guess I was hoping my view might change or my reaction - something.  Nope.  Even this morning at 7 it looked too big and bulky.
However this morning I also could think more rationally.  OK, so I submitted a piece to be done in sport weight yarn and they changed it to worsted making for automatic bulkiness.  Also when I lengthened the third tier got elongated. I could now see how out of proportion it was.  The second tier should be way longer and the third back to 3-4 inches.  sigh.  Major sigh.

So I fed Basel and the kitties and the bunnies and went to put out the new fly catcher thingie which really does keep flies away from the buns.  You know the kind you fill with water and dump in the magnet smelly stuff?  The old one was so full of dead smelly flies that it split when I lifted it. Dead smelly flies all down one leg, into my expensive Alegria clogs and all over the top of the bunny run.  DISGUSTING is too mild a word.  After I cleaned it all up I roamed the fresh smelling yard getting rose, berry, apple and Bee Balm branches for the buns.  On my way back to the bunnies I saw that the new, just put out, fly catcher thingie had separated from its top and spilled all over the spot I had just cleaned up.  Seems the screw on cap is not quite right so doesn't stay on.  Made in China is starting to mean no quality control. Not my morning.

I had something cool to drink, had an attitude adjustment and looked at the skirt again.  It had not changed and neither had my opinions.  OK. Frogging time. UNknitting.  Good thing most of the ends are left for tying at the end or it might have been a nightmare with 4 colors.

Several days of knitting now looks like this.

(I figure grayscale reballed yarn is not giving anything important away.)

The last time I frogged this piece it was 5 rounds from done, this time on the last round. Hopefully now it actually gets completed to my satisfaction.

Almost Done

The skirt, which I cannot show you even a bit of and that is so frustrating, is about to be done.  I am casting off.  Of course the cast-off involves I-cord so is 3 times as long to do as a regular cast-off.  I love the look of I-cord so put up with the repeat stitches but like to whine about it.

*knit 2, slip 1, knit 1, pass slipped stitch over knit stitch, move 3 stitches to left needle* and repeat what seems like endlessly until one day in the far future you reach the last stitch.

One of the socks is ready for gussets and the other is 2 inches shorter.  Once this skirt is done those socks will fly.