yarn ahoy

Danger, Will Robinson!

Got Happy Feet. Yeah yeah, okay, so I got enough for 2 pairs. They were only $6 a hank!

The enhancements for the week:

• 2 50g hanks of Plymouth Yarn Co. "Happy Feet" (90% superwash merino/10% nylon) in colorway #8 (violet, blue, olive to dark forest green, burgundy to bright red)
• 2 50g hanks of Plymouth Yarn Co. "Happy Feet" (same as above) in colorway #9 (pink, orange, red, purple, magenta, fuschia, gold) This yarn is waaay soft, and there are a couple of the other colorways I really like.
• 1 100g ball of Plymouth Yarn Co. "Sockotta" (cotton/SW wool/nylon) in colorway #04 (grey, tan, green, blue, black) Yeah, I know - but I like Sockotta! I think the Horcrux socks I did a few months ago were in Sockotta #20, and the more I look at that, the more I think that was a very Harry color. lol

I bought a replacement mp3 player for my dearly departed Creative Zen Xtra, and it needs a battery. The broken player's battery is just fine, except for the fact that it's at HOME and I'm not. Alas. The new one does power up when plugged into the electrical, but then it stops on the library rebuild. I'm hoping (crosses fingers) that's because there's no battery in it. I'll be rather upset if it turns out to be DOA!

I recorded the Filkcast - Potterstyle ep on Monday - oi. I hope Delana or Michael edit me a lot...I tend to babble when I'm nervous, and I was NERVOUS. Blah blah blah. And more blah blah. *covers face* It's not up yet on iTunes, and I can't access their MySpace from here. Firewall, of course.

I went and bought all three of Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls CDs. I've been listening to a new podcast linked to PotterFicWeekly called the Pwncast of Wrock (!!), which is Julia and Dan having a lot of fun and playing wizard rock music. Dan says he doesn't fangrrl OBatR, but I'll freely admit that I do. LOL! You don't necessarily have to like HP to like Christian, but it doesn't hurt. Good music, folks. Go listen to the samples.

I've turned the heel on the Blues Jaywalkers, and I've cast on a Twinkle for me. I'm in the Sock Knitters Anonymous January Sockdown! on Ravelry, and am making these Twinkles out of the Scarlet Fleece's "Tubular X2!" yarn I bought before Thanksgiving from Loopy Ewe - the Easter Basket colorway.

Speaking of Loopy Ewe - they're mentioned in VOGUEKnitting! Squee!! They're listed as the North American source for Wollmeise sock yarn, which sells out so fast that the last time Sheri put it on the site, everyone crashed the server! It's a little blurb, but it made me happpyyyy.

Ace of Cakes was on on Thursday, and it amused me that when Duff was talking about how the actors reacted to the cake (omg, the cake. Amazing. Ah. Maze. Ing.), he called Rupert "Ron", but Dan was "Dan". Heheh. I think someone has a 'separation of actor and character' issue! No shots of Emma - I don't remember if she was at the LA premiere or not, but the show was very cool. Duff drove thru St. Louis to get to LA - they showed the Arch from the Poplar Street Bridge as he was crossing into Missouri. Hee! I would have been at work that day - he went right by. *fangrrls*

Okay, enough silliness. Cheers!

new (yarn) arrivals

*wraps up in a nice blanket*

Hi all, it's cold. We might have hit 20F today! woot!

Seriously, it's been an odd week. I really don't feel like I got a lot accomplished, and I'm starting to feel 'funk'ish. Gotta try to stay out of it.

On to the yarn! I will probably have another 'review'/stash enhancement to report on tomorrow, but I wanted to get these out :)

• A 100g hank of 100% superwash merino from SeeJayneKnitYarns in colorway Blue Agate Beauty (green, teal, aqua, turquoise, seafoam, ruby. gold) The yarn is sooo soft and the colors are amazing.


• A 100g hank of merino/silk blend (70/30) handpainted "Silky Sock" from Dharmafey, Potter Covers in colorway Order of the Phoenix (green-blues to purple-blues) with the "Prophesy" stitch marker and the original pattern called "Toujours Pur".

There was an 'announcement' posted over on the Weaving Dept Ravelry group that Nancy just got the new Plymouth "Happy Feet" superwash blend in! Yay! Must go look. And probably buy. At least one. :)

I finished the first of my Blues Jaywalkers:

You can't see it very well, but when I announced to the chat room (in the pic) that I'd finished #1, the quote from L in CO was "about time"! and I say again, :-P !!

Nothing much else going on - I'm in the HSKS4 group and am blogging away over there as well as here! I frogged my kit bag I was hand-knitting - I'm going to try it again on the machine and see if I can control the pucker problem a bit better. If not, well, Plan C! I am collecting more bits and pieces as we go along - happily, my swapee is an experienced sock knitter, so I can just about get for her as I'd get for *me*! LOL!

I discovered another Potter podcast this past week, and have been listening to it just about every day - PotterFicWeekly. It's not for children (iTunes has an explicit tag on it) but it's a LOT of fun. I'm way way back on Ep6 or 7 (they're up to Ep 36, I think) and the first fic they reviewed was the monster fic I'm narrating! Glad to see that other people are as nuts about this story as I am. They have a fun forum as well, which is linked off their main page. Come say hi and wish the main podcaster a late Happy Birthday :)

Off to go listen to John Noe's editing....er, I mean PotterCast #134.

Oh! I almost forgot! The Food Network show Ace of Cakes season premiere is this week, and the opener is the cake they did for the LA opening of OotP! PotterCast is doing an interview with Duff (the head dude) on this week's podcast, and the show will air on FoodTV on Thursday. Yes, I already have my DVR set up. LOL!! There are some pics and stuff on the PotterCast site about the interview - check it out here.

The Potter news for the week? There's a rumor (or two) going around that Deathly Hallows may be a two part movie. Egad. Someone needs to tell Warner that we WOULD be willing to sit through a 3+ hour movie - look at LotR! *pokes them*

Off to find something hot to drink - Cheers!

yarny goodness

I had yarn in my mailbox and the invisible UPS guy dropped a box off at the back door after I walked the pooch! Yay! I'm still waiting for the international shipment to arrive, but I know that's on the way.

The haul so far:

• 2 50g hanks of 100% superwash merino of "Louet Gems" in colorway Cabin Fever (red, burgundy, orange, tan, ash brown, charcoal) handpainted by Cherry Tree Hill


• A 4oz hank of 100% superwash merino of "Jumbo Gems" in colorway Rustic Roost (lime green, powder blue, yellow-gold, light terracotta, pink, olive) handpainted by Cherry Tree Hill


• A 100g hank of superwash/nylon blend "Sockittome" in colorway Caribou Creek (deep purple, chocolate brown, wine) from Cherry Tree Hill


• A 4oz hank of superwash/nylon blend from dkKnits in colorway Mother Earth (powder blue, rust to light orange, olive to forest green) that just screams "Ron" at me. Go fig.


• A 4oz hank of superwash/nylon blend also from dkKnits in colorway Partridge In A Pear Tree (burgundy to orange, light emerald green to forest green, gold to yellow) You tell me who it reminds you of. ;-)

I finished knitting on the hooded towel (the first approaching-finished object of the FinishALongaPalooza over on the Lime & Violet Ravelry group) and now it needs to be sewn up. Back to work on the Blues Socks (they won tonight - 4-2 against the Stars! woot!) and then, back to Big Blue.

I've been reading the Harlot's blog (you should too!) and she posted about a yarn from Webs called Valley Yarns Northampton that has a dark blue. *ponders this* I STILL have not heard anything from Brown Sheep about the 2 lone balls of royal purple I need to finish the design sweater, let alone the 8 balls I'll need for the 'production version'. *sigh* Nancy's having issues with them, methinks. I'd like to swatch the Northampton before I commit, but I'm starting to lean in that direction. It costs a little less than Nature Spun (4.99 vs. 6.50), but I really hate to not buy from my LYS. You know how it is.

I've signed up for the Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap 4. Last day to sign up is tomorrow (11 Jan), and it's linked in the sidebar if you're interested.

PotterCast #133 is up and running, and has all sorts of news about the movies and the theme park - and I do NOT want to be patient. Want HBP nowwww! arrrggghhhh! I've been listening to other podcasts that are news a fic related - some I like, some I don't, as I'm not a real big fan of Harry with anyone other than Ginny. Sorry! I'm a canon OTP chick. Same goes for Ron and Hermione. I won't listen to slash either. No thanks.

Lastly, the sports! LOL! The Mizzou Tigers were ranked #4 and #5 on two different end-of-season polls. This is the highest ranking the team has ever ended a season. I'm so impressed. :) Great job guys!!!

I'm kinda tired out now, and so I think I'll post. Cheers!

welcome to 2008

Happy New Year!

Now that everyone on the globe is on the same year, I thought I'd post a short entry.

I don't have any yarn to review, but I have some coming from a few places. DBNY has a sale going on at the moment for Cherry Tree Hill yarns, and apparently had a mad rush at midnight EST NYD that made the site inaccessible for several hours. I didn't log on at 11 PM my time because I was somewhere that couldn't get online (grr) and by the time I got home at 1:40, the site was completely frozen. It took about 35-40 minutes to get the page to open! I think I was finally able to place my order about 2:30 or so. Yikes. That was 3 hours after the sale started! I'll review that yarn when it arrives.

I also finally caved and bought a few skeins from dkKnits that were calling to me. J from chat agrees with me - they look Potterish. ;-) You knew that was coming.

Alli (who says she doesn't read my blog :-P ) started a booklist a few years ago, which follows her book-reading over the calendar year. I've decided to be a lemming and follow the leader, so I'll have the 2008 list on the sidebar. We decided that audiobooks do count as books, but that most fanfic doesn't. I'm altering the rules a tad to allow for fanfic, but the piece must be finished - NOT a WIP - and must be at least 50,000 words long. The fic that I'm narrating would count - as a paperback book, it would be over 2400 pages long and has over 590,000 words (!!). 50K would be about 200 pages at paperback size, and would be at the low end of novel sized. I'll be bouncing that stipulation off her tonight, and we'll see what she thinks.

I'm now surrounded by Potter at work - L of the OMG scarf sent me a HP page-a-day calendar (even tho she rolls her eyes at my OCD), and D gave me a HP wall calendar. I suppose I should round out the theme by putting the HP7 poster back up! Heh.

I just listened to the Filky Awards podcast from Filkcast Potterstyle and recommend it to those who like HP filk. Great job to everyone who won!

Missouri won the Cotton Bowl yesterday - they creamed Arkansas 38-7 in Dallas. What was so funny (or not, grrr) were all the commentators covering the OTHER Bowl games (specifically the Rose and the Sugar) who, every time they would do recaps/highlights for the completed games, would comment that Missouri should have been in a BCS Bowl game. The Tigers should have played USC at the Rose Bowl. I mean, honestly. The Illini were annihilated by the Trojans 49-10.

Congrats to Mizzou for taking that trophy home, tho. Sweet after more than 30 years, ain't it?

I think I'm tapped out for the day, so I'm off to listen to PotterCast #132, which I apparently cannot link as the site has not been updated yet! The main site is here.

Hope you're all recovering from the holidays - cheers!

Edit@5:30: The PotterCast podcast is a clip show for the stuff over the last year - was a lot of fun to listen to. They are so silly! Even if they can't count down from 10. LOL!!!!