Saturday was a very awesome Day. As many of you know by now My Best Friend Cookie, of the blog Shut Up And Knit, and I had our own little Fiber Festival. :D Go check out her blog if you haven't already to read her post about it.
The day started off bright and early as My Honey and I prepared to make our way over the hill to meet up with her. It's about a 125 miles to the bookstore/mall we were meeting her at and of course I had to go to the bank first. (Cause they don't have ATM's in Cali :P... just kidding, I'm just silly) So then after we we're on the road I pretty much knit on my Socktober Fest Sock and turned a heel. Go Me!
When we finally made it to the bookstore I was about ready to jump out of my own skin. PINS & NEEDLES!!! I was a wee bit nervous and of course this was the day I truly became aware of the size of my butt and how someone seeing me for the first time in person might view said butt. Of course that was such a non issue as this was my best friend Cookie who I've talked /emailed with daily for years. She loves me as I am, as she always has so any fear of not being good enough or whatever stupid shit my girlie brain can think up flew right out the window. Then I was just all bouncy and excited to see her. :D *Happy Otter Dance*
Once we'd hugged and made said our Hello's we had to go get my stuff from the car. This was when we also said goodbye to the Honey as he was spending the day doing a bookstore crawl while we went off on our Yarn Crawl.
At Cookie's car we had a show and tell and a surprise giftie exchange. She showed me the DK Scarf she's knitting for her Boy, the RainDrop Lace Socks She made recently and the adorable Cozy. She also showed me the new bag she designed herself. Hey What's that called anyway? You gotta come up with a name. :P
What that basically accomplished was that I want to make myself a cozy, raindrop lace socks and her bag. So Cute! She's really good. :D
I didn't have any finished things with me, but I showed her the sock I'm working on, a secret thingy that y'all can't know about just yet. You would have known about it sooner, but I HAD to show it to her first. So Nyah Nyah. :P I also showed her the giftie Dave recently sent me. I'll post about that tomorrow in it's own post though. So Sweet!
It was around this time I gave her a bag of Giftie Yarn. Mostly it was Dave's Faboo Sock Yarn and a couple skeins of Lorna's Laces Sock Yarn in a color scheme I thought she might like. :D
She gave me an ultra faboo basket that she made a lining for. :D It's PERFECT for when I'm at home knitting. Unlike the bags I have been using the opening stays open and I can see my little tools when I need them ASAP instead of having to stop and dig. I used it yesterday to knit on my sock in bed while we watched movies as we were just tired and it was AWESOME! :D Plus the colors are just so pretty and I'm really into the whole pinks and brown combo thing. Wheeeeeeee!
Oh and most of the piccies I post today will be clickie big piccies. ;)
Faboo isn't it. :D
Once we settled down and actually got into the car we headed over to Micheal's as it was the near us. The Patons was on sale and her store has colors mine doesn't have. Plus it was on sale. *GRIN*
When we got there she immediately MADE me buy some yarn. Then she told me if I didn't buy some stickers and more Halloween Pencils I was going to burn in hell. o.0 She's SO MEAN!
The Aqua and Brown Yarn are for the DK Kitty Paw Print Blankey. I've decided I just can't take that black anymore so I'm going to frog it and start over with these colors as they are softer and less likely to make me go blind. The other skein was a new Variegated from Patons I've never seen before that I just HAD to get. I think I might use it to make myself Mitts, and then whatever's left over from that and the brown from the Kitty Blankey Maybe a Hat. :D The stickers are just because I'm a sticker freak and I needed more Pencils for my Halloween Baggies. (Kids that come to my house won't just get a fun size candy bar. They get Pencils, little Halloween Toys and Eyeballs as well as their Fun Size Chocolate. I still don't like kids though. It's just that it's Halloween.)
After we left the Micheal's we headed over to Frog Pond Knits. Cookie posted a funny story about a conversation some random lady who was there got involved with. Thankfully we didn't go to the bad store that had the dog there. I'm not really a dog person. It's okay if other people want to do that, but come on, not in a Yarn store. They had a kitten, which I haven't seen one in years. It's weird seeing a small kitty since I only ever see my big old kitty. *L* Now the Cool thing about Frog Pond was that they had different lines of Lorna's Laces that my store doesn't have. As well as a BUNCH of different lines of Art Yarn. I love that stuff. This store had a lot of cool stuff actually. I held off on this trip though, mostly. I think I want to have a project in mind before I buy a bunch of random yarn. Sock yarn is different though. You get the right yardage of sock yarn and you're good to go. Everything else you really should know what you wanna make though, ya know.
At this store Cookie FORCED me to buy some Artyarn Sock Yarn and some Bryspun DPN's. She thought it was cute that I got some US 2's and said I wanted to try going down a size. She uses US0's over there. In my defense I'm a crazy tight knitter. I can't even imagine what would happen if I used 0's. *L* I'll get better and loosen up sooner or later. :P
After we left Frog Pond we hopped into the car and headed over to the world's best LYS, Babbetta's. :D
It was a whirlwind in there. Many Orders were given, mainly from Cookie. *L* "Looks Right, Look Down, Look Down Again.." It was CRAZY! I've never seen so much yummy fibery things in one place. :D They have all kinds of roving, plus dyes and spinning wheels, drop spindles, tools of all sorts. I think I blacked out for a moment before we were even 10 feet into the store. o.0 Seriously. It was a gold mine of yummy yarns and just every fiber related thing you could imagine. More than I think I even could see. It was like looking at the sun. *L*
We made two rounds through the store and I don't think I even really saw half of what I was seeing. It was overwhelming. MUST GO BACK! *L* :D
Here's the goodies I got there.
Oh and this is the store Cookie got me my Camel Hair Roving at. :D I picked up the pink roving there to maybe go with that Camel Hair when I ply it. Granted I still have to ya know take the class to learn to spin. I'll be doing Drop Spindle at first just so's ya know.
I also picked up some Superwash Merino Roving to play with when I finally do get my act together and take that class. SOON! Next One they have!
The other yummy treats I got were some Dye It Yourself Yarn that was a great price, some silk/wool blend that is so soft. I can't wait to play with that. Dave's got me on this silk kick. Now just need to get to knitting with it. *L* I picked up a big bottle of the Lavender Eucalan Wash, some Bamboo green and purple roving that Cookie MADE me get to make into yarn for her after I get a clue with what I'm doing (so mean to me! :P) and some Cherry Tree Hill Sock Yarn.
Now let me just say I've never seen so much sock yarn or sock yarn choices at one store. It was AMAZING. We even riffled through her unpacked box of Claudia Yarn. OMG! That's right her store has Claudia!! That store had EVERYTHING. I really do need to go back. Maybe this Spring after the melt. :D
Oh and yes that is cat tail in the picture. TKK was all excited about the roving. *L*
After we finally were able to drag ourselves out of the yummy yummy store we went and had lunch. The lunch was actually yummy. I had a chicken and rice Burrito. Well most of one. It was huge. o.0 It might have tried to take over the world had I not eaten most of it. Um yeah that's my story. Okay the weird things. They carried RC cola as their main soda line. No coke or Pepsi. That was a little weird as I've never seen that before. And as Cookie mentioned the crazy mirrors/lighting in the bathroom. For a minute I really did think I was going blind. It was bad. Not only was the lighting weird, but the mirrors were tinted. :/ How is that a good idea. It was like Zombie Vision in there. Also you were likely to get hit by a stall door since they both opened into the same space. o.0 But the food was yummy. *L*
Here's the Blue Sky and a Palm Tree that was in the parking lot of the restaurant.
From there we saw CHICKENS!! Lots of Chickens. Free Range, running free Chickens. It reminded me of Key West a bit actually. *L*
We saw a chicken who was wearing feather pants. (the chicken on the left, he was running around and it was hard to get a picture of him)
Here's a bunch of Fancy Chickens.
Here's a chicken butt. :P
Here's a Family of Chickens. Cookie got a better shot of them from the car. *L*
After we amused ourselves looking at the wild chickens we headed over to a craft store she has there called Beverlys. As soon as we walked in we went to the Beads. We spent a good bit of time picking out things we liked. Then we looked at fabric and stickers. Oh and while Cookie was chatting up a cute boy I found a really cool Halloween Paper Punch. Score! I use them on my Nori for when I make my Bentos. :D
Now the really funny thing about many of the stickers I bought Saturday is that they are Spiders. I hate spiders. They freak me out and it's not pretty at all. AT ALL.
Yet I think Spider stickers are cute. *L* The ones there look kinda lost and confused. Very Cute.
Oh and even more funny is that in many of the Halloween Baggies I have ready for Halloween Night Trick Or Treaters have life like plastic Spiders in them. HUGE ones. *GRIN* At least one kid is going to freak out when they open their treat bag. I didn't even think of that while I was packing the bags. But now that I've thought about it... well it's damn funny.
I'm so mean. I'm going to hell. But that's okay, Cookie said she'd save me a seat. ;^)
From the craft store we drove over to this little hole in the wall yarn store that I found online. The parking lot had maybe three spots that it shared with a nail place. Oh and it had no drive way to speak of at all. It was just like road and three parking spots. o.0 The parking lot was larger than the store. Errr. Not a great selection. The few cool things it did have were priced pretty high and we got out without even being really tempted. As Cookie said it was like someone was selling their stash. I kinda feel bad for the lady (who looked as disappointed in the store as we felt), which is why I'm not going to say the stores name.
As we were leaving that place the honey called and so we headed back to the Mall/Bookstore to meet him. Cookie showed us this really neat Fountain the mall had outside. I took a picture of the cute Bunnies they had. Plus one with the Raccoon and a Autumnish Tree. :D
From there we headed back into the mall where we got Pepsi's and the honey got a hot dog wrapped in a pretzel thingy. (he hadn't eaten lunch) We also went into the Hello Kitty Store. I was tempted but resisted buying any of the cute Bento items. I already have a pink Bento Box and pink Hello Kitty Chopsticks. :D I think next time I might get something though. I kinda wish I had gotten the small pink two tier box they had. *L* I was being good at that point since I spent some money on yarn. *L* Oh and I saw all kinds of cute ChocoCat Stuff and Panda Apple stuff. But we we're good. Well until I said Fuck. Apparently you shouldn't say Fuck in a Hello Kitty Store. *L* They didn't get on me about it, But Cookie decided we should perhaps leave and not overstay our welcome there. *L*
After that we kinda dragged our tired feetsies to the parking lot where we grabbed my stuff from Cookie's car and hugged goodbye. It was a great day. The bestest part was that we talked pretty much nonstop and laughed so much. We were serious and silly and dorky and just ourselves and it was all okay. Nothing weird at all. Nothing is different. We are who we are. The day did seem to go crazy fast though. Time Warp! *L* Oh and she's a really good driver. I'd have had a panic attack in the traffic that she just breezed through.
I can't wait to go back and see Cookie. It will of course have to be after the Spring Melt. We have to go through the Donner Pass to go down the hill to see Cookie. Yes That Donner Pass from the Donner Party's Misadventure. As we drove through it in the dark it was already getting cold. Just imagine what it will be like this winter. Spooky! *L*
It was an absolutely wonderful day spent with an absolutely wonderful person. ♥
