WoW and knitting

Finally finished drop spindling the lovely blue merino roving I bought from Shuttles, which I turned into a 2-ply. My beginning efforts were the standard thick and various thins of a first-time handspinning try, but by the end I was making a lovely, even sockweight, once plied (about laceweight before ply). Since I had already started this shrug with the thicker yarn, I decided to finish with my thinner yarn doubled up, and it’s turning out nicer than expected.

I also (finally!) finished Kyle’s WoW (World of Warcraft) guild socks. As a WoW widow, I am quite used to some of the terms, one being that he belongs to a Guild called “Death From Above” who have a tabard design that each person in the guild can wear, so I did a bit of my own sketch designing for a duplicate stitch version of the tabard for his socks. They turned out pretty well, and I think Kyle is pretty happy with them. Granted, now that it’s hot out, he has no cause to wear these comfy around the house socks, but in fall he will soon enough.

Estes Park Wool Market

On Sat June 14th I went with Kristi and Alyson (who I had just met but is really cool!) to the Estes Park Wool Market. It was a great day, even though it was pretty hot, but I picked up all sorts of fun new types of fibers to try my hand at spinning. I got llama, alpaca, bamboo, merino/silk, and superwash merino, all fun things I've never tried before.

Right now I still have my blue merino on my drop spindle, and once that's done, I can start playing with new fibers. I have severe wheel lust for the Lendrum DT thanks to Kristi's bad influence, and after checking with Shuttles, they said it will take 2-3 months to get a new one in! I'm so impatient, I don't wanna wait 3 months! Anyway, the wool market was awesome, filled with so many fibers and yarns and animals. I used my spending allotment almost immediately. Saw some cute llamas and alpacas though, and adorable baby sheep. Afterwards we all went to Estes Park proper and did a little winetasting.

On Father's day my hubby and I went my my dad, mom, and brother to lunch and to see the movie "The Happening", which is a horrible, pointless movie without any real suspense. Was going to see Indiana Jones, but they had shut off half of the theater building due to a fire alarm joke, so we need to go back next weekend and actually see Indy Jones.

Long time, no see

Yeah, yeah, I'm a horrible blogger with 18 months between posts. But instead of the long version, here's a quick recap: working as chemist at Catalent Pharma (formerly Cardinal Health); visiting families over 2007; went to see Keith and Abigail in Seattle and went to the yummy Cheese festival and had lots of beer there; some cooking but not as much as Kyle would like; Comic-Con again but sadly this time no pics of me with my personal heroes; many friends had babies (so cute!); big fires hit San Diego in the fall and lots of people were evacuated and the city pretty much shut down for a week; got back into crocheting and then learned to knit; knitting quickly became a large passion (just look at the pics in my Flickr if you don't believe me); visited Jimmy and Mirka for Thanksgiving and had a blast; Kyle defended and got his doctorate in Physics, yay!; he accepted a job in Colorado, and we moved in the winter; I'm working as QA Manager in Denver at company called Eurofins; I joined an awesome knitting group and made lots of great friends (see blog lists); we met some awesome beer people from Great Divide and are enjoying lots of yummy local beer; my brother has also started homebrewing, and Kyle's started back up again and got a fancy new brewpot, and he's updating his blog; spending lots of time with my family, and also Kyle's by visits; started using a drop spindle and am now spinning my own yarn!; considering purchasing a lovely Lendrum double-treadle spinning wheel; looking at buying a house in the fall/winter; adopted a wonderful 1 year Corgi mix dog from the Boulder Humane Society and named him Barley......

And of course, with the addition of a new dog, life is a little more crazy but way, way more fun. Hmm, don't think I forgot anything major, but feel free to remind me :)