Maryland Faerie Festival

I'm still here.

I just got distracted by a lot of things yesterday, and then today I went over the new, super-duper JoAnn Fabrics to look at beads. I ordered the wool/silk laceweight yarn from Knit Picks earlier this week, and it shipped on Wednesday, so it will be here soon. I chose the one with some silk so that it would be more likely to have a bit of shine. 

I can't wait.

I did buy some beads while I was at JoAnn. I first decided to get the ones with the silver lining in lavender. Well, kind of a soft, warm lavender.

But then I walked around a bit looking at other things and when I went back to look at the ones I'd chosen, I changed my mind and went with some beads that are overall lavender, but also have a lot of blue, green and even yellow in them. They're called "rainbow" beads, and I think this will work better. 

If I choose the solid lavender ones and they don't match the yarn, it could look bad. But these are guaranteed to not match the yarn, although they'll look very good with it, I think.

I also got some jump rings, a size 12 steel crochet hook (to apply the beads), and a copy of the new Vogue Knitting.

I should mention here, that although it's after midnight, it's still really  Friday for me. So everything I'm going to write will be with the perspective that it's Friday.

Except for one thing. Two weeks from Saturday is the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival! It's really sneaking up on me. Lynn will be coming down from New Jersey and staying with me, and that'll really be fun. Maybe not as much fun for her as she was hoping , though. Thursday, she has an appointment with the dentist to have a tooth pulled. When that happens to me, I'm not really happy about it even two days later.

Back to Friday. It went up over sixty degrees here, and was the first day it really looked like Spring around here. We've had a string of chilly. wet, rainy, overcast days.

I know, I know. Downtown, in DC, the Cherry Blossom festival is in full swing. But that's downtown. The cherry blossoms are just starting to come out around here, and there are trees smothered in white, pink and deep pink flowers. And the magnolias have started to come out. I saw dozens of magnolia trees from the window of the bus today.

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I found out about a new festival that I didn't even know about. It's the Maryland Faerie Festival, and it was recommended by Dancing Pig Pottery as the best festival ever! It will be happening on the 16th and 17th of May. Should I put it on my calendar? Yes! I should!

Putting it on my calendar doesn't mean that I'll actually get there, but it's possible.

I've got to go. It's after midnight here.

Have a great weekend!

I'm Sad

There's no reason in the world for me to be sad, but I am. I haven't a clue why.

Yesterday, I stopped at JoAnn Fabrics and got some fun stuff, which I thought would cheer me up, and it did, for an hour or two.

I bought a copy of Knit.1 Magazine. It has a lace shawl that I've been thinking about ever since I saw it in February when the new store opened. It's called the Sparkly Shawl, and they did it in light blue, which is always something to get my attention. It has clear glass beads with a silver lining, and the way the beads are done is interesting. Because the beads are strung as you go along (with a crochet hook), and because of the looser nature of lace knitting, I suspect that the beads show equally on either side, making it a bit more reversible.

I really liked the Shipwreck Shawl from Knitty, but the urge to knit lace has been building up for a while, but I think the sparkly shawl will teach me enough to branch out in new directions in lace design. It will certainly give me the chance to practice some new techniques.

So, I ordered the yarn from Knit Picks today, plus a small crochet hook from Etsy to pick up the beads. You'd think that if yesterday didn't cheer me up, that this would. There's more cheerful stuff about yesterday, by the way.

I'm going to do the shawl in black with blue/purple rainbow beads, so it will look very different from the photo in the book. I'm also thinking about doing three panels rather than two, which would give it a better shape. I haven't ordered the beads yet, and I'm thinking of trying to persuade Holly to go to either a new bead shop in Occoquan or to Beadazzled. JoAnn has some beads I like, too, but I'd rather look a bit before I settle for something when there may be something better out there. I've already looked at the Fire Mountain Gems website, and they probably have everything available, so I've probably already seen it all.

Anyway, back to yesterday and my swag.

I bought a tiny latch hook tool which I had hoped would fit through the hole in the size 6 seed beads. No dice. The latch hook is very small, though. A latch hook is always handy for knitters, so it's still a good buy, and has a very nice, ergonomic handle. If you want something like this, look in the section with the sewing tools. It's made by Dritz and has a pink (ugg) handle with rubbery soft fuchsia inserts to make it easy to hold. It would work well with sock or lace weight yarn for picking up stitches. It's a good tool for any lace knitter.

Here's a photo of the shawl from the magazine and the neat latch hook.

I've gotten hooked on latch hook tools lately. They're really good for fixing knitting problems, rather than having to rip back to fix it.

You can find a larger tool here and a slightly smaller one  here. It looks like the first one would be a good size for worsted and bulky yarns, and the second one for thinner yarns. Even better yet, I bought a few seed stitch tools last year, and I love them. It's a double-ended latch hook that you can use for latching up mistakes in both knit and purl stitches.

You'd think that all this would cheer me up, but it really hasn't.

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The other cheerful stuff I bought was at Borders.

The newest Dresden Files book is out, and it's called Turn Coat, and I bought a copy. The only problem with that is that I have a book out of the Library, and another one to pick up and read, and all of them have to be back soon, so I have to read them first or wait for them to come up in the lists for another go at them.

But I read a bit of the beginning of it on the way home on the bus, and it's dynamite so far!

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There's a new Lost on ABC tonight, followed by the premier of The Unusuals. Right before that, there's also a new episode of Better off Ted, which is a really quirky new science fiction/office drama/comedy.

Have a great evening!

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Addition:

I found a really neat stitch marker shown here. She has instructions for making a similar device here (scroll down for the row counter). She just makes tags with shrinky dink material with whatever markings are appropriate, and slips the lower ring each time. The tag on the top tells her what she's doing each round.

Holly was doing something similar to this a couple of weeks ago while she was knitting a circular blanket. She put "YO" on one side of an index card and "K" on the other. Each time she finished a row, she'd flip it over to remind her whether she was supposed in increase with a yarn over at each stitch marker or just knit around.

I like both of these ideas.