A Stitch in Time (forces you to buy more yarn)

Listening to: The wheels in my brain locking up...

This fine fine Sunday morning I am at my daughter's house in Springfield. But allow me to back up a few days. Thursday, I drove my mother and two aunts to Paducah, KY for the quilt show. The show itself is always impressive, and I'm boggled by the creativity and workmanship in the quilts on display. The vendors are an added bonus, though this year I refrained from buying much at the show. I did buy a set of fabric paints/dyes that are useable on natural fabrics - silks, cotton, rayons, etc. They are heat (or light?) reactive, and the gals running the booth were very good at their demos. I hope it's as easy as they made it look!

We also went to Hancock's of Paducah. The place was packed to the gills with rude little ladies pushing dangerously overfilled carts. The store has extremely narrow aisles anyway, and I'm more than willing to smash my body against one side to let a cart past, but please please ladies! don't go halfway past and stop right between me and the fabric I was fondling just before you came through. I made it out of there with three patterns and one piece of fabric for a skirt. And nobody was harmed in the process...

The best part about these trips (this is a second time for me) is being with the ladies in my family. It's hilarious to listen to them talk and cackle and make wisecracks. And it's funny too, to see how I fit into the group. My mom and aunt Sharon move a little slower because of foot-hip-leg problems. Aunt Marilyn, who is the oldest, still moves pretty quickly, and invariably we'd find ourselves way in front, talking away, and suddenly realize we needed to wait for the pokies to catch up with us. It cracked me up when Aunt Marilyn was complaining about the rude little old ladies, when she was most likely the same age or older... she's getting close to 70. It was a long, wonderful day, and I finally pulled into my driveway around 10 pm.

Throughout the last couple of weeks, I've been devoting nearly all my spare knitting time to the red kid merino shawl, furiously chugging away on the edging, because if I didn't have enough, I would have to buy another ball when I visited Anna this weekend. Curses! I came within 2 inches of finishing the edge and only had a foot of yarn left. So Friday I headed to Springfield, shawl in tow, and stopped at the yarn shop before meeting up with Anna. Of course, I couldn't see getting just one ball of the yarn, so I picked up two, and they are destined to become either a potato-chip type of scarf or a beaded openwork scarf. That project is for later though - I'm about red fuzzy yarned out. So the shawl is now complete except weaving in the ends and blocking.

Can you go to a yarn shop and just buy one yarn? Heck no. They had several skeins of new sock yarn - Colinette's Jitterbug (wow wow WOW) and Farmhouse Yarns hand-dyed. Jitterbug in Jewel is already 3 inches of sock, just a plain stockinette stitch leg. The yarn is extremely springy and spongy, and will feel great on my feet. Yes, MY feet. I also came away with a 47? inch circular size 9 so I can finish the Boku Circle Vest - there are just way too many stitches on the short circs for comfort, and it's going to get worse. I ended up with another hank of Jitterbug in Sahara (I think) and two hanks of the Farmhouse - Rock and Roll Blues and Purple Rainfall (another 'I think'). That should keep me bizzy.

Yesterday morning Anna and I hit a farmer's market for some plants - she'd been looking for sweet banana peppers since her own starts from seed got zapped in the freeze. Her little garden is so cute! It's the perfect size. After the market we went to a sewing machine dealer and I bought her a new machine. She tried 3 different ones before settling on a Pfaff, mechanical, not electronic. The other two she tried were Berninas and they sounded horrible and really didn't sew smoothly. She was really excited, since the used one I had given her to use pretty much bit the dust.

Today I'm heading home to a project group meeting at 6. The due date on the project has been extended until Thursday, which is a big relief. I've tried (seriously!!) to get my part of it done, but it's not clicking, and I really feel like I need some help. Hopefully some of the others will have ideas tonight.

That's all for now... time to get this day going!