The very model of restraint

Last weekend was the annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. A slight damper was cast on this year’s festival because the lovely Sewing Goodness was unable to join me, as volcanoes and thunderstorms interfered. Yes, nature. We get it. You’re a badass. Why for you want to ruin our girls weekend, though? You sure can be a jerk sometimes.

But I went on with a few other lovely ladies and a good time was had by all. I’d been on a yarn diet for some months; hadn’t bought a THING and was prepared to go nutso.

But, surprisingly, I didn’t. This is the sum total of my haul. Half it isn’t even for me.

Firstly, this adorable robot magnet for my friend the K-bot, who was also visiting this weekend.

And a souvenir keychain for my father-in-law, who finds the concept of an entire festival devoted to sheep and yarn just fricking hilarious. This made him laugh, which made me happy, because it was a joke that could have fallen very flat.

And for myself, two skeins of wool from a local family farm and a coffee mug. A coffee mug with sheep on it.

That’s it. Seriously. There was *lots* of stuff I *wanted* to buy, but did not. After going for so long without spending any money on yarn, and severely cutting back on superfluous spending for no other reason than frugal responsibility, I found it very easy to say “no” to myself when I wanted to drop $75 on a skein of cashmere, even though I had no idea what I would do with it once I had it. I should really concentrate on burning through the three four 18-gallon rubbermaid tubs of yarn in my sewing room before I go off to buy more. I do prefer to buy from local stores and independent farms, and I could have given them more of my money than I did. But I was strictly limiting myself to what I needed for the first ten items on my Ravelry queue. Even that, though, I couldn’t really find anything that really jumped out at me as The Perfect Yarn.

Here, have a picture of a goat trying to sit in a chair.

Miniature (Giant) Squid

Have you ever had a day where, no matter what you did, you just sucked at doing it?

Yeah. Me, too.

There was this day last week where I failed at gobs of things. Cookies got burned. Puppy dog tails got stepped on during playtime. Cups of coffee got spilled on freshly steam-cleaned carpets. Pasta got overcooked. Gloves (and yes, they were handmade gloves) got lost under the millions of feet of snow that kept me trapped in the house for nearly a week.

There’s a point where a girl just gives up, sits down, and knits herself a miniature Giant Squid out of some leftover Knit Picks Palette.

His name is Captain Phil in honor of the late captain of the Cornelia Marie, of Deadliest Catch fame.

Snowmageddon ’09: The Snowening

Me and my broken foot are stuck in the house and unable to partake in nearly 2 feet of snow that just descended onto the Northeast. My favorite part of winter is taking my dog out to romp in the snow. But open-toed orthopedic boots  and snow are a good recipe for frostbite. I am confined to the couch.

To keep me in the loop, my husband took the video camera out on their snow-walk. I stayed inside knitting a TOP SECRET PROJECT.

Behold the cuteness that is my dog.

During the morning walk, the snow was around a foot deep.

This is from a few hours later, when the snow was about 1-1/2 feet deep.