We’ll start with election night:

 

This means good news for my favorite candidate. The favorite senator turned President-Elect Barack Obama. This is Laura and I at the election night party hosted by the Democratic Party of Nevada where I missed the official announcement that Obama had won, but I did make it down there to watch his speech on the big screen with several hundred (maybe thousand?) of my newest nearest and dearest friends. And yes, in fine American patriot fashion we snuck our own beer in so we didn’t have to pay casino bar prices.  It was a good night and most importantly I’m glad this whole thing is over and I can return to watching normal television instead of MSNBC and CNN on a loop all day.

Moving on to fiber related things!

We took a trip to the Grand Canyon last weekend. There were sheep on the side of the road. I demanded that the car get pulled over, nearly tucked and rolled out the passenger side door and ran (RAN guys! This fat girl RAN towards sheep, who then ran away from me.) to get pictures of the sheep. They were freshly shorn which made me wonder where in all of the majestic land of Arizona there was fresh wool ripe for spinning, dying and knitting. And how I could get my grubby little mitts on it. Also, they walk in a line. How cute is that? There’s a video of me talking to the sheep, but I figure in order to preserve some shred of professional respect in the fiber community that it’s best for me not to post it on the Internet for all to mock.

On to actual yarn, I’ve been dying again. And here are the results:

 

This is an alpaca/wool blend that is deliciously soft and slightly fuzzy that is dyed in a colorway I’m calling ‘Cheated Hearts’ (keeping with the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s themed yarns).

 

This one is ‘The Sweets’ and there are two hanks of this colorway in the same alpaca/wool blend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this is my ‘Modern Romance’ colorway in the alpaca/wool blend as well.  Each of these alpaca/wool blend hanks are going to be for sale exclusively at Knit Las Vegas located in majestic Henderson, NV. However, as always if you like any of these colorways and have a specific fiber you want it on, simply email me and I can do a batch of any of the colorways listed here on any fiber you can think of.

I also dyed up the samples I’ll be contributing to the Phat Fiber subscription service for their January box. Here are the colorways the boxes will be getting:

Katchemak colorway

 

 

 

 

Kenai colorway

 

 

 

Modern Romance

 

 

 

 

Cheated Hearts

 

 

 

 

 

Wires and Waves

 

 

So two are Alaskan themed ones, two are Yeah Yeah Yeah’s ones and the last one is a Rilo Kiley song reference.

As for knitting lately, I’ve been working on a design for socks which are still currently nameless but feature a really cool cable pattern on the top of the foot and a slip stitch pattern on the ball of the foot to help with padding and hopefully reduce the need for darning after only a few wearing’s. (Several pairs of my  hand knit socks are in need of darning.) I also knit up this little sample to write a pattern to accompany the mini hanks for the Phat Fiber folks:

It’s a tiny hat keychain. It uses just a little less than the amount of yarn in each of the mini hanks I’ll be sending out.

Also I knit up some of my hand dyed cotton into a baby shrug for my cousin Heather who is due to give birth to her baby girl any minute now.

 

 

My dear friend Laura has gotten in on the yarn dying game as well and she played around in my ’studio’ (in quotes because really it’s my kitchen counter with a cheap plastic table cloth protecting the granite counter tops.) yesterday. I don’t have pictures of her yarns yet as they are still drip drying in my spare bathroom, but they are pretty and definitely scream ‘LAURA!’ which I just adore.

We also blew up a Pyrex baking dish yesterday. And lit 100% wool sock yarn on fire. Wonders never cease. Also, word to the wise: if you are using the microwave to heat set yarn let your poor Pyrex dish take a break every once in awhile because contrary to their supposedly indestructible nature I blew one up. Literally, it warped then blew up. Like a tiny glass bomb all over my kitchen. Thankfully no one was harmed in the making of these yarns. Other than Pyrex’s reputation for quality in the Cortez/Willoughby household.