I'm seeing Red.

See this beautiful stuff. Yes, that's the Laceweight Malabrigo. The color is even more magnificent red in person.
Note, it didn't even last 24 hours in my house before it became this...
It's going to be the Alpine Knit Scarf from the Victorian Lace Today book. So far I'm 5 rows into the garter stitch border, but It will move forward. I figured I needed something to work on as I move. :-)

As promised, my finished Sockapalooza sock pals socks. In STR Watermelon Tourmaline. The pattern is the Shimmer Socks from Magknits.com.
Pattern was easy and I like the finished project. It shows off the STR well. I'm going to need to block them because they seemed to bias a little as they were knit. It think from all the picked up stitches. They look fine on a foot.

Oh, I almost forgot. I rented an apartment in Reston, VA today. I'm no longer homeless. Now, I just need to figure out my move timeline. DC here I come.

Wet, wet, wet...Ughhh!

I think the word for the weekend is wet. Sadly, neither Beth or I had figured out how to control the rain. In spite of the rain, we soldiered on and had a great weekend.

On Thursday, we went to see Jimmy Buffett. We went early to check out everything and it, of course, decided to open up the heavens and pour down rain. Ughhh! Some nice gentlemen from Tennessee invited us under their shelter and shared their whiskey and beer. It had mostly dried up by concert time and Jimmy was, of course, excellent as always.

Friday, we went to Penn Station for lunch (how I miss it living in KC!). Then we went to see Ratatouille. It was cute. In the evening, we had tickets to see the Florence Freedom, a local minor league type baseball team. It was raining... We thought they'd call the game because it was really pouring, but they didn't. Eventually, we were cold and wet and decided we were done, so we left and later watched the fireworks from Beth's apartment.

Saturday, while cloudy...it didn't rain, we went on a yarn crawl. We went to lots of good yarn stores. Fiber Naturell, Fiberge, Just one more Row and Knits and Fabrications. I didn't buy anything on Saturday, but the day before, I'd purchased some lace weight Malabrigo. It's lucious!!!

Sunday, I traveled back home. Unfortunately, got delayed in Milwaukee and got home at 8:30 instead of 6:30. I decided to put the top down on the convertible and blast some Jimmy Buffet to finish off the weekend...unfortunately, while I was driving down the highway at 70mph in the fast lane, I ran into a wall of water. It went from no rain to POURING! I couldn't get over because of an 18 wheeler and there was no where to pull off, so, I'm trying to get over to an exit where I can get off and put the top up, I'm getting soaked. So, finally, I get behind this guy going 5mph on the exit and get to the top and a red light. I put the top off and...it starts raining inside the car. Yep, water had collected on the inside of the top and when I put it up, it started raining inside the car. Ummm. Yeah. So, needless to say, I was soaked. The inside of my car was soaked. Even though I had to walk up 4 buildings from where I parked my car with my luggage, I didn't even bother with an umbrella. Iwas that wet. Ugghhh!!

I will say, all in all the weekend was fun. I got to spend time with Beth, who I haven't seen in awhile and have missed. We knitted, we shopped for yarn...WE WENT TO SEE JIMMY BUFFETT. What more can you ask for??

I finished my sockapalooza Socks!!!!

I'm going to Cincinnati to see Beth.

We're going to see Jimmy Buffett!!! Beth rocks!!!!

You'll notice there aren't any pictures of my completed socks. That's because the camera's packed and I'm just not digging it back out, so you'll get pictures when I get back.

Yippeee!!! I SOOOOOOOO need a break! I'm bringing the computer, so perhaps there will be blogging while I'm there.

So, I'm back and I'm alive. Just barely. My plane got in a half an hour late last night at almost midnight. By the time, I collected my luggage, my car and drove home from the airport. I got in bed at 1:36. Yep and worse, I couldn't even hit snooze more than once because I had to be at work this morning for an 8am meeting. Ughhh!!!

So, I think I may have found a place to live. I found a place I like, but unfortunately, they don't have any units available 9/1. I'm going to see if they have something for 10/1 and then I'll just suffer through corporate housing for a month...might take my household goods that long to catch up with me anyway... If not, I found something that was okay and livable. Sadly, for you DCites, I've decided living in some of the more populated places is not for me, so I'm going to live out in Reston. 9.2 miles from the office....will probably still take me 45 minutes to get there, but I'm okay with that. So, hopefully, sometime this week I will have procurred a place to live. Just so you don't think I didn't check out the sites. I did visit 2 local yarn stops. I bought some commemorative yarn in honor of my trip. The first below is some laceweight alpaca in Mossy Hollow.
And to commemorate the move to Virgina, some Merino/Tencel sock yarn in "Virginia Creeper" colorway. I like it a lot.
Both yarn stores, Aylins Woolgatherer and Uniquities, had a good selection and very nice staff. I look forward to exploring more yarn stores once I move, but I had to check out what was on my route.

Onto the Harry Potter news. I managed to procur a book on Sunday before I left. I started reading it at 7pm EST while waiting to board the plane and (due in part to the 30 minute delay) finished it just as the plane hit the ground in KC. You'll have to imagine the scenario. Dark plane. Everyone is sleeping except for me in the back. Guy next to me is snoring and tears are running down my face and I'm sniffling. I can only be thankful that everyone was asleep..or at least pretending to be asleep so they didn't have to pay attention to the crazy woman in the back of the plane reading and crying. I loved it. I did feel that a few things were hurried up at the end. All in all, I was happy with the way it ended. I almost feel the need to reread it again just to see what I missed. I already reread the last 75 pages this evening because I just had to reread the end again. Even better the second time through.

Still homeless in DC...Ughhh!

Okay... I'm still homeless. I've seen 16 apartments in 6 different sections of the city. I think the real problem is I don't know what I want other than a washer/dryer inside the apt., 2 bdrms or 1bdrm & den and close to stores (grocery, target, etc.)

I did this when I moved to KC. I visited a million apartments and freaked myself out and...I'm there again. I have plans to go to at least 2 more places tomorrow, but then, I'm probably going to have to come back in two weeks... This is totally stressing me out.

On an unrelated note, I ran into two people from the office in KC in Cheesecake Factory. They were in DC for training. How completely random is that???

UGHH!!! Must find housing.

Homeless in DC

Yep, that's right. I haven't found a place to live yet. What I have found is where I don't want to live. I didn't like one of the areas and then the traffic at noon on a Friday was terrible, so that's a no go. I also didn't like the places close to where I work and I decided I'm not a high rise apartment person either.

What did I find you ask....ummmm...two yarns stores.... Ummm some hand dyed sock yarn, lace yarn and some Trekking....

I stopped at a Borders this evening and I watched them crate box after box after box of the Harry Potter books past me covered in black cloths. Unfortunately, since I reserved mine in KC, I can't get one here... Ugghhh!!! On Sunday, they will release the remaining books. I can only hope that I can stop by and pick one up on Sunday so I can read it on my way home.... Wish me luck.

I'm in DC

So I'm in DC. I almost killed the United people who couldn't seem to check in luggage at any rate of speed. I had a ticket. I just needed to have them wrap the little thing around my luggage so "I" could lug it over to the security counter. Good Lord. Then I had issues at Hertz, who told me I had a Mazda and I went to the spot and ...um...it was a Sonata and it didn't have the GPS anywhere. So, I had to go back into the building and find my car. UGHHH!!!!

I've decided I need a car with one of those GPS things. It's fabulous. It tells you exactly where to turn and which lane you need to be in. It's amazing. I can actually drive around without getting lost...well, so far anyway.

So, tomorrow I attempt to find a place to live. UGHHH!!! I really just want someone to find me a place to live at a cost I can deal with and call it good. As you can tell, I'm kind of freaking out...

Home again.

Back in town for 3.5 days until I fly to DC to begin the big apartment search. I get to see the baby again!!!! Yippee!!! I had a good weekend in St. Louis. We through my mom a surprise 60th birthday dinner. It was one week late so she was very happily surprised. Other than that, my dad helped me transfer some files onto my new computer. Big Hurrah to that.

The one obsession that remained the same over the weekend was Ravelry. I post stash pictures, queue items, projects current and past. I surf...and I fall in love. I've decided that Ravelry is one big site for knitting enablers. That's right. You see what other people are knitting. You fall in love. You must have. You see yarn in someone else's stash. You fall in love, you must buy. Ugghh!!! It's heaven... Now, if only I could cease working 12 hour days so I could spend more time on Ravelry.

Got my Ravelry Invite!!!!

Woo Hoo!! Can't write much, must upload!! Yippee!! Need to photograph more. Need to transfer everything off my old computer... How sad is it that I am really tempted to call in sick tomorrow and spend the day on Ravelry?? BTW, you can find me as Yarnedy.

The big announcement

Shoes and Yarn is picking up stakes and moving! No, I'm not moving blog providers, I'm picking up stakes and moving from KC to DC...which kind of cracks me up Yep, I accepted a new role with the company that I work for and it's in the DC office. I'm very excited. Professionally, this is a good move and personally, it's a good move because I'll be near my brother, his wife and the new baby. Yippee!!!

I won't be actually living in DC, but somewhere to be determined in Northern Virginia and working in Tyson's Corner. I want to find some place between the office and my brother's house. I'm going to go apartment hunting next weekend, so if anyone has any good ideas of where to live, let me know. Also, if there are any knitting groups in Northern Virginia, let me know, because I'll be looking from some knitters to hang out with.

Woo Hoo!

It's Sunday night and the weekend is over. Today almost felt like a bonus days since Saturday felt like Sunday...probably because I played hooky a half a day on Friday. Yesterday, I cleaned out my storage closet. Rearranged stuff and threw out a bunch of stuff. Then I went to Carmen's house for a girl's night that consisted of Tacos & sinful chocolate cake, movies, knitting and a clothing swap. I ended up with one sweater, which I'm very happy about. I have too many clothes anyway.

Today, my bonus day, I went shopping and after months and months of complaining about my old, slow desktop computer, I finally broke down and bought a new one. Yes, I'm the proud owner of a Toshiba laptop computer. Woo Hoo. So, I then spent half the day installing software and cursing the fact that I forgot to get a crossover USB cable so I could transfer files. Going to have to get one of those this week so I can transfer all of my music and photos of knitting, although, maybe I should just burn those to discs for posterity and start anew. I'm also going to have to sort out how much of the junk that it came preloaded with I want to keep and how much of it I want to uninstall...because it came with a lot of crap. Ughhh! Oh, well, it will keep me busy for awhile.

So, about 10:30 this morning, I finished a big project I've been working on at work and no one was there to review it, so I decided to play hooky for the rest of the afternoon. My vacation balance is near the limit, so this was a necessary step. So, Carmen and I met for lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. Yummm.
Then we went to the new yarn store in Kansas City Misknits. My credit card kind of slipped and I ended up with 5 skeins of SandnesGarn Mandarin Petit, a pattern book and a pair of size 3 INOX needles to make a striped cardigan for my neice. (BTW-SandnesGarn has some of the cutest kid patterns...)
Yes, you'll note that there is already about 2 inches of the sweater knitted. It just sort of happened. Amber has comfortable couches in her store. It's going to be so cute. Not quite as bright as the photo above.

After leaving Misknits, we went to the nail place and got pedicures. I got the super deluxe version with the see salt scrub leg massage and little flowers with rhinestones on my big toe. Yes, I'm absolutely crazy and I love it.

It's the weekend baby!!! Stay tuned for a big announcement early next week.

I finished a sock!!!!
You're probably thinking..."well Gwen, you finish socks all the time, you're a sock knitter." and you wouldn't be wrong, but this particular yarn and I have had a difficult time deciding what it wants to be. I love the colors in this yarn, but I tried pattern after pattern and still the yarn wasn't happy until finally, the Shimmer sock from Magknits and magic happened... Not to say that it still didn't take me over a month to finish 1 sock. There was that 10 day time period where I didn't knit a stitch and I've been working 60 hours a week and traveling... Excuses...Excuses... I was just terrified it would start pooling on the leg and since they're for a sockapalooza sockpal, and not just me, my inner perfectionist has come out. I even dropped down 16 stitches 4 rows to fix where I messed up the pattern. If it were just for me, that wouldn't have happened. It would have been a "design feature."

Since I finished the first sock with such gusto this evening, I immediately cast on the second one. Hurrah!!!
One month til they need to go out. I think I'll make the deadline.

Okay, finally back to knitting. The sockapalooza sock #1 is almost complete. Hurrah!!!
I'm ready to move onto something else already.

I really hate 4th of July in the middle of the week. The holiday is good, except the whole going back to work for 2 days. That's really going to suck. I need a vacation I'm telling you. Ughhh!

Day #10 of no knitting...

Yes, you read that right. 10 days of no knitting... My socks are in my second computer bag which is underneath my desk at work... I'm thinking they might need to be frogged anyway since they seem to be pooling now that I've gotten to the ankle. Ughhh. Other than that, I've been working...A LOT. Tonight I was going to knit, but I wasn't inspired, so I did 2 loads of laundry and cleaned off my desk. I will knit tomorrow night with the girls and Wednesday, I plan to sleep late and then knit for the rest of the day. Yippeee!!!