Can I take a breath now?

This week has been jam packed with 'stuff'. Even now that it's Friday night and I'm finally home from a very stressful day of work I'm finding it hard to begin relaxing and winding down. I'm hoping that by taking a moment to blog will help kick start the process. :)

So where to begin?????? Well, let's see where did I leave off????? I'll be back in just a moment once I open another window and take a look see................

All right, so it looks like I'll be jumping around with a lot of 'stuff' in this posting. If you're really into torchering yourself, take a deep breathe and get ready for a long post. If you're not to much into the long bouts of the going ons and ons of this and that, I don't blame you for clicking on that little red x box in the corner there.

For those of you willing to stay on (at least for a little while) we'll start with Sunday's events. Honey and I spent a few hours leisurely strolling around the artist booths at the Sugarloaf Festival. I was really impressed with the level of craftsmanship present. I was equally impressed (read flabergasted) at the prices marked on various items. We'll stick to the stuff I actually know something (not much but something) about. There were three booths containing knitted items and I must say that I was not so impressed with the items that they had for sale. I thought "I could do that a lot better than they did and for a LOT less money." Even Honey made a similar comment after browsing some scarves and felted bags. One particular vendor really got my eyeballs in a tizzy. They actually had some hand dyed yarn for sale. Now I expect to spend a little more money for some nice hand dyed lovelies. But honestly... $280 for enough yarn to make a small sweater is WAY TOO pricey for me!!! Honey began to worry and started asking questions about how much I actually spend on yarn on a weekly basis. We both agreed that the yarn wasn't nice enough to spend that kind of money on. The hand was scratchy and the colorways were blotchy and looked as if someone messed up with their dyes in a muddy mess. Needless to say, no yarn goodies came home with us on Sunday.

But the day was not a complete loss for buying a handmade item. I picked up these wonderful porcelin earings for my mom. She's now a quilter and loving every minute of it. I'm sure she'll love these.Curtisey of Hook & Ayres Design and can be found at http://www.hookandayresdesign.com/

I also came across a vender saleing lovely soap and lotion items that I plan on contacting again for future swap items. Their scents were yummy! Pretty Baby Naturals and can be found at http://www.prettybabysoap.com/

Next up on my list of updates is a finished Den Throw!!! I'm very excited about this one because it's one off of my Mission Possible list. 1 down, 11 to go! Due to such a long post, I'll be brief with the details. As you can see, it's already getting good use! (Chan, I won't tell what I'm wearing underneath there! HA!)

Pattern: Cheveron Afghan from Creative Knitting magazine

Yarn: 3 colorways of Encore Worsted that mom bought me for my birthday. I wish I could tell you how many skeins I used, but I lost track. Bummer.

Needles: size 15 KnitPicks Options

Adaptations: The pattern orignially called for 4 colors and 6 Cheveron variations. I decided that I was only going to use 3 colors and I was planning on being confused as to which Cheveron variation I was on with each color change and quite frankly didn't like how it was looking with a different pattern knitting up on the same color pairings. So I chose to only use the first 2 Cheveron pattern variations - one for each of the multi-colored stripes (yellow-lt.green, lt.green-dk.green).

Verdict: I'm happy with it. It's extremely warm and I'm loving snuggling up with it!

Ok.... so this post is getting to be very long. And I'm getting hungry so I'm guessing you might be too. I think I'll come back when my belly is fuller and I have more energy to continue on.