Knit-in-law

The Boise knit along starts this week! Can I be any more excited? My mother in law came out this week, half on business and half to visit us. They were supposed to get in about 5pm Thursday night, and my plan was to take her to knit night while Mr. A found something for his dad to do. Of course, the train got in 7 hours late, so that didn't happen. Instead, before all of the rush of everything we had planned to do this weekend, I took her to Marin Fiber Arts on Saturday morning. She noticed the main difference between a California shop and a New England shop: here we have light yarns to make a variety of light things while there, they have very heavy wools for making afghans and thick sweaters. She was amazed at all of the yarns and the different types Warren has. We seemed to do a pretty good job of distracting Warren and Maya from rearranging the shop to actually get some yarn on shelves. We both ended up getting the Rowan Classic Style book 16, because there were so many cute things in there! She also bought some yarn to do one of the vests in said book along with 2 balls of the very Tapestry I have been eyeing since it first surfaced in the shop. Since it was recently my birthday, she was going to let me spend some money on yarn. After some debate, I ended up going with the turquiose (525 Kingfisher apparently) color. I have commited to the 2 person knit along that will commence once the shawl is completed! :o) Maya and I have both fallen for a certain sweater top pattern in the most recent Interweave Knits, and since there was so much talk about knit alongs being thrown around what with the addictive shawl, we decided to have a mini one as well. Hooray!
We came back to the apartment and Deb had some hanks that she wanted spun; she doesn't have a swift in Boston (why there are knitters out there who don't is beyond me. It is your best friend!!). She has been working on a sweater for me and had just finished the back. We measured it to make sure it would fit. One of the hanks we spun was the yarn for this. I didn't recognize it since it was almost a year since I picked out the yarn and commented how pretty it was as I was setting it up. At least it's nice to know that I still like it! It is a wool blend with.. something (refer back to that year thing.. and I was hurrying a little so I didn't look at the tag) and is very soft when loose in the hank. However, when knit it became a little rougher. It is still very nice in the sweater, it is just going to need to have a little cami under it when I wear it. Yai! Someone is knitting me something! I think this may be my first knitted gift FROM someone. Heh.
There was a good deal of driving the past 2 days, and at every chance I could (when not getting car sick) I would knit a row on the baby blanket. One ball down....5 to go? At the rate I seem to be going It may taken me a month to finish it. But the knit alongs will hinder progress that quickly. Oh well. Speaking of which.. I should make some progress...