GREAT Fall Fiber Fest!

Here's a small glimpse of the Fall Fiber Fest on Saturday.


Spinning wheels and fiberarts everywhere!

Holly and I went by ourselves and had a great time. The weather was heavenly. It couldn't have been better if we had been able to plan it ourselves! It was sunny all day, and at no time was I too warm or too cold. And there was no mud! After the mud fest of 2006, this is always a concern. Who could ask for more?

Holly got a Christmas present for someone. I won't tell what the present is or who it's for, but she was very happy with it, and I think that the recipient will love it, too. She also bought some yarn for a scarf she plans to make. It's going to be really nice!

Now that I started making my own socks, I've found that it's much easier to do the kitchner stitch at the toe with a darning egg, and I've been thinking about getting one, which I actually did at the FFF. I got this from Knitting Notions, a very beautiful darning egg made from poplar. This feels so nice in your hand, like it just fits and belongs there. I love it!




I  looked around at everything else. I was hoping for some nice light blue wool yarn with some silk neps for a tweedy look to make a wimple to go with my new coat. But there was nothing of that description. I found some beautiful self-patterning sock yarn that was not what I had planned on, but would have made a beautiful wimple, but it would have cost $40 for enough yarn for the wimple, and after buying the egg, I just didn't have it.

I also found some beautiful light grey alpaca for $25 that was out of my league. I've seen some publicity photos of the making of the Half Blood Prince where Hermione is wearing a knitted cap in light grey, and I've been looking for something to make it in. So, that would have been perfect. Actually, she's wearing a knitted scarf in the photo that would be interesting to make, too.

I found some nice wool and tencel fiber that would have been perfect to spin to make a wimple. But I went back to get the egg, thinking that if it was there, I'd just buy 4 ounces of the merino/tencel, and if it wasn't, I'd buy 12 ounces. When I came back it was gone.

So, Holly and I left, and I was happy about the egg, but sad that I hadn't gotten some yarn or fiber for the wimple.

But the universe had other good things in store for me.

Holly wanted to stop to get something to eat, and we found a Carabbas Restaurant and had a great dinner. But the restaurant was just a few doors down from an AC Moore, and we stopped in and I bought some more of the beautiful tweed that I had used for the Celtic sweater, but now didn't have enough of. 

It turned out to be a really wonderful day!

Friday, I finished the poncho I was making, but didn't get around to taking a photo of it until today. So, here it is:


Over on the Steve Canyon blog, the votes are still poring in for the cover for the first of the Steve Canyon series DVDs. Go over there and vote, if you haven't already!

Life on Mars is on the BBC in America today, and I want to take the day off and sit and watch it. It's already started, but I'm recording it. I have to go check it, though, because I don't think there's enough space on the disk to record all of it, so I have to get something off of there real soon.

Have a great time with what little weekend is left!

Steve Canyon Covers!

John and I have been working hard all week on the cover for the Complete Steve Canyon on DVD Volume I, and the result is not one, but three covers!

This turned out really cool, and John and I are both pretty happy with it, except that we're having a hard time deciding what colors we want in the Steve Canyon logo at the top.

Here are the three covers:





To get a chance to vote for which one you want for your very own copy, go here.

Today is going to be a busy day for me, so I probably won't get a chance to blog again until Sunday, since we'll be going to the Fall Fiber Fest this Saturday.

So, I want to mention that the BBC in America will be rerunning a batch of the British series Life on Mars on Sunday. I've heard so much about this, but missed it when they were showing it before, so I really want to see at least some of it. Check your local listings.

And have a great weekend!

Two Days to the Fall Fiber Fest!

OK, it's not as good as the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, but the Fall Fiber Fest is the thing that keeps me going in between Sheep and Wool Festivals.

I just checked the weather forecast for the area in question instead of Northern Virginia, and it couldn't be better if we had been able to choose! I just need to know if there's a mud advisory, which the weather people have not judged to be important enough to report.

***************************

It's a good thing that I put the schedule up yesterday, because I was notified of a change in it last night. The trip to the Renfair will not be on the 18th as scheduled, but on the 11th due to a change in schedule where Malaia works.

*********************************

I am currently in the middle of binding off on the light blue poncho I've been working on. It's turning out nice.

This is what it looked like yesterday. It's now a bit longer, and the border is a smidge over seven inches rather than the five inches shown here. Bind off is in progress, and it should be finished by tomorrow.

********************************

Yesterday, John and I put some more finishing touches on the cover for the first of the new Steve Canyon DVDs. We have some alternate colors in contention for the color of the title. There was some loose talk about showing all three colorways and asking people to vote, but it's not up on the blog yet, and I'm wondering if it's going to happen. John has already warned me about telling people what he's going to do.

John has not been feeling his best, and had most of yesterday get sucked away by a doctor's appointment (with a multi-hour wait), getting prescriptions filled, and then collapsing in exhaustion. If the poll goes up on the blog, it may not be until later today. Maybe even tomorrow.

**********************************

As mentioned yesterday, Supernatural (the CW) will be on tonight, and Sanctuary will premier on the SciFi Channel.

Have a great day!

September Charms Homework

You may or may not be aware that I have joined a Harry Potter House Cup KAL on Ravelry.

Each month (or in one case, each week) there is a homework assignment posted for any members who care to participate.

The September Charms assignment was to choose either Lumos or Wingardium Leviosa to knit something for.

For Wingardium Leviosa, we need to make something that shows something that flies, or, for extra points, is something that flies itself, like a kite. The sweater I did for an earlier HP KAL would have been perfect. One year, for Christmas, Harry gets a blue sweater from Mrs. Weasley with a snitch on the front of it. Of course, since I did this for a previous KAL, it's not eligible.



For Lumos, you need to make something that shows something that lights up, or, better yet, something that actually lights up.

I made this Christmas stocking with beads (some of them star shaped) and white yarn that are glow-in-the-dark, so that when the lights go out, the stocking lights up by itself.

You can see other finished projects here.

**************************

Yesterday, I planned to do a lot of things, but then reality intruded with it's own plans, and very little of the the things I planned actually got done.

I'm finding that the current second great depression is causing a lot of the same effects as the first one There was a discussion I heard on the radio about it because of a book that had been written on the the great depression. 

The author said that it tended to separate people by their reaction to it. Some people became very nasty and treated others badly because those others could no longer afford to pay their debts. Some of these people went so far as to abandon their children.

In other cases, whole communities banded together to help each other survive in the best way possible.

Yesterday, annoyed that my bank had imposed fees that they previously had told me they wouldn't do, I went to close an account with them. I was amazed to find that they refunded some of the fees, changed my account to one without fees, and added in several nice things I hadn't even thought to ask for! So, now, according to the new set-up, I not only have a little money to spend at the Fall Fiber Fest, that money shouldn't be spent on anything but fiberarts, and I really need to spend it to avoid bank fees! This is the first time in my life that somebody else wanted me to spend money at a fiberarts sale!

So, now I'm really excited about the Fall Fiber Fest on Saturday! There has been some rain last week, and it looks like it might rain now, so I'm not sure about the footing we'll find this weekend. I'm taking my Wellies. But the weather sounds like it would not be better if we were given an air conditioning controller to set it up! The high for the day will be about 70, so we may want a little something to keep warm at some point, but it will not be too hot, even in the sun that is expected!

**********************

So, here is the schedule coming up for a while:

4 Sep 08  Fall Fiber Festival

18 Sep 08  Maryland Renaissance Festival

6-9 Nov 08  Stitches East

And then, of course, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and Twelfth Night.

Wow! What a lot of wonderful stuff to do!

************************

John and I are getting down to the end on the front cover of the New Steve Canyon DVD. We are pretty much agreed on the cover except for the colors for the title. We worked on it for a while yesterday.

************************

Tonight, Pushing Daisies is back on ABC for it's season premier!

In non-SF TV news tonight, it will be followed by Private Practice,  and Bones will be on at the same time.

Knight Rider will also be on (NBC) at the same time, which creates a conflict for me. I found the premier sufficiently intriguing to want to watch some more, but it will not be on again later in the week on the SciFi Channel, so I'll have to make some hard choices in order to see it.

Tomorrow evening, get set for another new episode of Supernatural, which has developed into the best spooky show on TV for a long time.

And on Friday, the premier of Sanctuary will be lighting up the SciFi Channel.

Have a great rest-of-the-week!

Media News

I want to start off with some knitting, since I haven't been writing about that for a while.


Accomplished procrastinator that I am, I've managed to put off knitting the sleeves for my Celtic sweater by working on this poncho.

It was originally slated to be a Ravelympics project, but I doubted that I'd finish it. Well, I didn't even start it before the end! So, at this point, I am down into the border around the bottom and nearly finished with the first skein of Lion Brand Homespun. I have two skeins of that, and I expect to probably use all of it. I promise a photo when it's done.

***************************************

When I originally moved into where I live now, I got a lot of stuff out of storage that had been there for a while. It got dumped in the bedroom with a promise that I'd unpack it a little at a time. As mentioned earlier, I'm really good at procrastination.

In the middle of October, the management at the apartment place will be inspecting apartments. There were still a lot of boxes in the bedroom when they came through last year and they OKd it, but said that if it was still that way for this year's inspection it would not be OK!

So, I'm trying to make a decent dent in it every day so I don't break my back in a couple of weeks.

The good part of that is that I'm finding clothes I had forgotten I had (just when I need them for Fall and Winter) and things to sell!

One of those things is an Ashford distaff (shown below).

This was intended for an Ashford Traditional Wheel. You can see how it looks on the wheel here. That little block of wood on the left in the photo will fasten to any narrow, flat piece to support the distaff. A few years ago, I saw some small, unfinished stools in the craft stores that had a hole in the middle of the seat that probably would support the distaff just fine.

If you are interested, leave a comment.

**********************************

You may have noticed that I'm putting a row of asterisks to separate topics. That way, if you aren't interested in the knitting, you can skip to the science fiction or whatever.

There has been progress made on the cover for the first Steve Canyon DVD (see the Special Edition here) of the series. John and I have been on iChat and the phone and been sending files back and forth, and have been having an exciting time putting together the first cover.

We're down to the nitpicking details at this point.

I mentioned to him how exciting it was, and he said not to exaggerate. I asked how many people he knew that were doing covers for DVDs (excluding us), and he said, "42, excluding Douglas Adams!"

So, now that the front cover is almost done, we have the spine and back cover to do. At least.

I'm excited! 

No matter what he says.

*************************

Well, I don't plan to work late on the cover because there's so much science fiction and other good shows on TV tonight!

The SciFi people, in their wisdom, are showing four more episodes of Lost, in their effort to help me catch up to what's happening. As you know, I missed out on the beginning of the first season, and have been lost ever since as far as the show goes. But it's getting good!

Over on NBC, they are trying to duplicate their Monday science fiction night from last year. The evening starts with the season premier of Chuck. Aside from having Adam Baldwin (whom I love from Firefly), I find I always tend to enjoy SF or spy stories where the science fiction (or spying) is mixed in with healthy doses of everyday reality (like working in a store). Somehow it always makes the SF or spying more real.

We'll be getting to see the third episode of the new season of Heroes right after Chuck!

Then, they'll be showing the season premier of Life, which is not SF, but good. It's about a cop who was convicted of a crime, sent to prison, cleared, and then freed and given an award in the form of a cash settlement that is big enough to live on forever, but he goes back to being a cop because he likes it. Check it out!

Tomorrow, on their daytime rotation, the SciFi Channel will be showing Jake 2.0, one of my favorites.

We won't be getting a new Eureka, though, or any Eureka at all tomorrow evening.

We will be getting The Mentalist (CBS), and Fringe (Fox), though.

Check your TV schedules and have a great beginning-of-the-week!

Steve Canyon Flies Again!

Last night, I got the last of the files from John I'll need to create the cover he designed for the first Steve Canyon DVD of the series. And a few extra, really neat photos!

Such excitement! I was up until almost 5 am downloading files, and going into ecstasies about some of the beautiful art coming up!

The photos are about 50 years old, so they'll need a little help before they're ready to be shown off at their best, looking better than they did when they were taken. This is kind of the the artistic version of "digitally remastered."

Here's one of the photos I like. It's of one of the pins, which has seen better days.

The pin is original, but the photo is new. This is what some of the art looks like before we spiff it up. Look for this in the future cleaned up and looking brand, sparkly new!

I think that even after being in the Air Force and flying T-34s (fighter trainers), I'm still a kid at heart, and would love to have a set of Steve Canyon Airangers wings! My mom always did wonder what I was going to be like when I grew up!

For a taste of what's coming, see The Steve Canyon Blog, and get a copy of the Special Edition Steve Canyon DVD at a really low we-want-to-let-people-know-about-this price!

And check this out!