Pre-Turkey Day Tidings

Since the many days since my last post, I've finished things:
And started things:
This is Cascade Heritage, in a pale yellow.

I've also decided that there will be no appearance by the Crazy Baker Lady this year. We'll be in Jersey, so I won't have my own kitchen to be my crazy baking self in. Only moderate amounts of baking allowed. Sigh.

Invention

After Rhinebeck, there was some family time, including a field trip to Mr. Edison's old thinktank in West Orange, NJ. This happy fellow was in the factory library, looking extremely pleased with life. After all, he did have wings, a bit of clothing, and a working lightbulb. Who wouldn't be happy?

This is Room12, where Edison did his own puttering about with dangerous chemicals and whatnot.
This is the second of the dreaded irregularly patterned pink socks, so dreaded and irregular that I have yet to finish them.

Jersey Baby wants red gloves, which led to some tinkering of my own:

This is the left glove in red and white Wool-Ease. The colorwork is based on this free firetruck pattern. I sort of made up the rest as sort of generic gloves. Now I just have to make the right hand glove.

Rhinebeck

Rhinebeck was wonderful! The weather was nowhere near as bad as they predicted. It was cold, but it didn't rain at all. Mom, Kim, Jersey Boy and I got to enjoy all the fibery critters without any of the mud.
And there were all the crafts too. Sausage is a craft, right? Well, I think it's crafty!


The Ravelry meetup was well attended.
I particularly enjoyed the button scrum.
Like they always say: so many buttons, so few Sharpies!

Kim and I knit on the Big Sock.
It takes a lot of circulars to knit something this big. There was a lady there to wrangle the knitters so they knew how to get started working on a section, and also how to stop. I wonder how the heel turn will work, whenever they get to it?

As for acquisitions, I was quite reserved. I bought a couple of small llama batts (3.8 oz total), a half pound of the infamous "Party in a Bag" blend, and some hand-dyed longwool roving (approx. 8oz). I also signed up for a subscription to Wild Fiber. I also brought home a cold. They were giving that out for free!

Ma vie en chaussette rose

My current plain stocking sock is a very pink affair. The yarn, S.R. Kertzer On Your Toes 4, is giving me fits. It's probably just me, but I don't think I'm crazy to insist on having actual patterns in my self-patterning socks. Despite my growing distaste for this yarn, I've continued to work on the sock while commuting. I got a lot of work done on it at the latest Smithsonian hosted Alton Brown event.

The slide in the back has a human brain in a jar of bright green liquid and the text says "the most important tool in the kitchen." His talk was great, with the usual good humor and lots of audience participation. This may be an observation only a Washingtonian would care about, but I do find his broad appeal curious; politically speaking, he's seemed well right of the majority of the audience, but he had no problems holding an open forum on family, modern life, and of course, food, with a left-ish audience. Anyway, most of the foot was finished during the talk and subsequent wait to get an autographed book.

I only had about a 30 min wait. There were way more people behind me (I'm telling you, he's got some serious groupies). Come to think of it, I guess the line must wound its way back into the auditorium.

The next day, I finished the first sock at the Caps/Sharks game. Here it is with the future owner:
She seems kinda attached to it, so I'd better finish the second one!