neotoma

I went up with temve and a friend of theirs named M___; they picked me up from the Wendy's across the Wheaton Metro, because the Wheaton Kiss & Ride stops are impossible.

We got there about 10 am, and it was surprisingly little traffic for that time of day. Usually the last mile into the fairgrounds during MDSW takes a good 30 minutes, if not more. But it was raining and forecast to rain all day, so the casual daytrippers didn't come (leaving the hardcore yarn enthusiasts to be all over).

I stopped at the plant nurseries first, and bought 3 petunias plants (purple with yellow edges, and pink with white splotches), 2 fish peppers, 1 mortgage lifter tomato, 2 basils, and 6 cotton plants (from Putnam Hill Nursery.

Next we went to Friends in Reed, a group of basket makers who always have amazing baskets for reasonable prices. I bought a market basket and a smaller basket labeled as a 'bread basket' that is just the right size to drop envelopes in until I have enough energy to deal with sorting my mail.

Then we went to the auction tent -- there were a couple things that tempted me, like a 'surfboard' style tablet-weaving loom -- but it was still early so we checked out what was already there and then walked on.

We walked through the outside north booths until we came to The Bee Folks. It was only about 11, but they'd already sold out of the Coffee Blossom honey and the Mango honey, unless you were willing to by 1 gallon containers (that weigh 12 lbs). I did buy Thistle honey and WildFoam (when the bees have fed on meadowfoam and wildflowers, a good compromise when you don't want to pay the premium for pure monofloral meadowfoam honey) and picked up two bags of honey candy.

It was about 11:30 or so then, so we headed to the Boy Scouts and had lambburgers for lunch. The younger boys take the orders, the older boys handle money and serving up the food, and the dads do the cooking. It's adorable to have an 8 year old concentrating his hardest on customer service because they just aren't able to remember everything yet.

Then we stopped and picked up some candied pecans because the line was short and they're a good snack to carry with you through the fairgrounds.

We went into the Main Barn, partly to get out of the rain and partly because it has the biggest number of vendors. I picked up some yarn from Into the Whirled -- socks yarn in colors Melange (semi-solid copper orange) and Rhinebeck (chocolate brown with bronze notes). temve was surprised at the name, since there is a town in Germany named Rhinebach -- the Rhinebeck in New York state was probably named after it, but is also where the big sheep & wool festival is held in the autumn.

At about 12:45, M_____ had to go the auction and I decided I shouldn't, so temve and I walked on. I did run into someone I know from the farmer's market, and guided her to Bosworth Spindles and Charkas, partly because I knew where they were but mostly because they make excellent handspindles. I bought a new one out of spalted tamarind (apparently 'spalt' is same word in English and German, but in English refers specifically to spalting in wood instead of splitting in general).

I looked at Wild Hare, walked on, and then realized their Pinnacle DK mini-skein set was perfect for the 8-bit doodlee hat pattern I got from Pacific Knit Company (the place that does the knitting doodle decks.

We then walked through the annex where some demonstrations were being held, cut back through the main barn, and walked through the smaller barns. Tem was looking for yarn to knit a replacement shawl with but kept running into 'not enough skeins' or 'wrong color' but we did finally find something that should work -- a dark blue-purple-green, the colors of an oil slick but much nicer.

I bought a skein of flamingo pink fingering tencel just because I love the color, and a giant skein (5250 yards) of 72%wool/28%rayon in the palest lilac (the colors had already been picked over, so that was the best of a weird lot) to make one of the really big lace shawls out of. Also, I picked up three balls of merino roving, about 6 oz in all, and plan to spin them into fingering for fingerless mittens, a hat, and maybe a smoke ring scarf.

We walked through the south outside booths and came to Kiparoo Farm, which is both very local and a place I used to go to regularly, when I lived in upcounty from where I am now. I picked up 2 skeins of their silk/wool blend in a crimson that will look great when knit up. I plan to get gloves, a hat, and a scarf out of it.

Last, I picked up 1000 yds of a superfine merino lace, which I may make into either Eyjafjallajokull or Simurg.

M______ had managed to buy a spinning wheel, but one that needs a good bit of repair work. They retrieved it and I made my last purchase of the day, a partial cone of extra-fine weaving wool from a Pendelton mill end. We picked up all my plants on the way out and walked through squishy grass back to the car.

We drove back, and then hung out at temve's place for dinner, meeting several of her wife's martial arts students and enjoying no longer wearing wet socks.

I finished pleasance's Rhodopsin socks yesterday. The yarn is an Isomer colorway from String Theory Colorworks, a dye studio where all the yarn bases are named for physics terms, and all the colorways are named from science (usually chemistry, biology, or astronomy).



I have another isomer colorway for myself, in Tetrodotoxin, which I'm going to try as toe-up socks.

I started a pair of socks today, mainly because all of my other projects are either complicated, large, or both. Sometimes you just want to knit something easy that you don't have to think too much about and can get done fast.

So I started the Kick in the Pants sock pattern using Centripetal Acceleration from String Theory Colorworks; it's a fuchsia, lilac, fuchsia, turquoise self-striping yarn that yields equal sized stripes. I have it the Tachyon yarn base, which is a superwash Blue-Faced Leicester yarn. I have a matching mini-skein for cuffs, heels, and toes -- a bright fuchsia in Photon, a yarn that is superwash merino, nylon, and stellina (sparkles!)





After about 2 hours of knitting, I have a good start on the first sock. I'd forgotten how fun sock-knitting can be.

2 hours and 30 minutes last night got me through the rest of the Winter Branches lace pattern (12 rows) and 2 rows of the border, to end with 197 stitches on the needles.



texasgrandma is sending me some of her spare bias tape and trim, so I might spend some time working on more cloth masks when my Spoonflower order (they had a fat quarter sale a few weeks ago) arrives on Monday.

Last night, I knit for 2 hours and got from the set-up stitches all through the Isolation pattern block.



It doesn't look like much, but it finished up at 101 stitches in a complex lace pattern. It will look much more interesting once the whole this is finished and the shawl is blocked.

1/2 lb mushrooms, 4 pieces of strudel (apple pecan and cheese blueberry), pink lady apples, Greek almond cake, salted caramel olive oil cake, and 8 lbs of potato.

I'm probably going to make mushroom ragout for dinner.

Also, ordered enough yarn to make the 5 baby cousins each a wool scarf -- 4 gators, 1 diplodocus -- and one less whimsical scarf for my foster-nephew, who is older than the babies and deserves a scarf a teenager would like.

Finished today, 1 ounce of handspun laceweight in a colorway called "Blacktop Chalk Art".

This is from the fiber I picked up at MD Sheep & Wool, which I attended with el and temve this year. I have another ounce, which I will ply with this one when I finish it.

I'm not sure what I'll make out of this, but probably another scarf, or possibly a hat.

Went to Maryland Sheep and Wool with temve, and managed to see the whole thing in six hours, including the exhibition barn full of different breeds of sheep. The Valais Blacknose were a breed new to the festival this year, and looked as much like plush toys as you'd think.

I bought a lot of plants: hot peppers (Joe Parker, buena mulata, pasilla, Islander), tomatillos, dwarf cherry tomatoes, and cotton (3 different fiber colors!). Also bought three jars of honey, two bags of honey candy, a CD of hammered dulcimer music, one spindle, one bundle of fiber, one basket, two knitting kits, and three skeins of glow-under-ultraviolet sock yarn.

I received three compliments for the red linen lace shawl I knit myself years ago and wore because it was only slightly cool today, not boiling hot nor unseasonably chilly. It did rain, and I did have to duck outside into the drizzle when my brother called my about setting up my dad's new cellphone.

Also, I spotted one of my coworker's had entered the garment competition and got a very respectable Third Place in a crochet category, so I will congratulate her on Monday.

We shared a bag of roasted, cinnamon & sugar coated pecans -- Tem hadn't had them before, because almonds are the more usual thing in Europe -- and had lamb-burgers sold by a troop of Boy Scouts, who were adorable and trying very hard to be good at the customer service thing, but still needed coaching from their dads. (Also, the dads and older boys were doing the cooking, leaving the customer-facing service to the younger boys, who at least couldn't set themselves on fire accidentally with that responsibility).

After we left -- right on time since it began to rain in earnest -- we stopped at the Trader Joe's on the way home, and I now have enough chicken to make either chicken & dumplings or chicken pibil tacos tomorrow, depending on how much energy I have.

I met up with ambyr and went to the Textile Museum for their special exhibit on Okinawan bingata -- it's a specific resist-dye technique unique to Okinawa and included not only clothes, but in many cases the matching stencils used to make the clothes.

There were many historic pieces, and a couple of contemporary pieces -- a stage backdrop, a cultural fusion wedding gown, and a very traditional Okinawa robe with motifs of flowers, clouds, paratroopers, and fighter jets called Yu-I, Yu-I by Yuken Teruya.

Walking around I did notice some of the differences between the Okinawan garments and the Japanese garments I'm more familiar with. ambyr knows more about Japanese history than I do, but we both came out of the exhibit wanting to know more about Okinawan history, especially how they managed as comparatively small kingdom balanced between the spheres of influence of China and Japan. I don't suppose anyone has any recommended reading for me?

The museum offered keychains of Okinawan star sand in exchange for filling out a survey, so I now have brightly colored sand for my nephews.

Afterward, I stopped by Beefsteak as it is only a block from the Metro and had the beet-burger special. Very tasty, and quite cheap for downtown DC. Now that I know where it is, I would definitely stop there again when I'm down that way -- a good stop before going to a Millennium Stage concert.

By the way, on Saturday, February 11th, the Millennium Stage performance is a workshop by the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater... which would be awesome to attend.

I went yesterday... and had a great time.

Now I just need 12 more hours of sleep...