I finished up the week by laying about very lazily on Thursday and going to TYF on Friday. There are some really scary holes on Apache Blvd that about knocked me off my scooter!! I assume they are from the light rail construction as they were partially covered by metal plates. I really freaked out when I hit the first one and I tried to avoid the second one but couldn’t. Thankfully I did not go flying off the scooter. I really need to get onto four wheels. But with some potential financial crapola that may be a while.

Saturday was pretty boring, grocery shopping and some knitting. Got he sewing room cleaned up today and listed a couple of new bags in the shop. I also finished one more for Betsy so only 3 more to make for her.

I don’t think I ever blogged about this. Oops! Well, Shawna has created a gorgeous custom Blythe doll that she is currently auctioning off to raise money for the Susan G Komen Foundation. I donated a custom quilted dolly bag for the doll, and many other donated items as well.

Raffle tickets are available until August 1st http://effiedalshop.blogspot.com/ so run over there right now!!

Greetings blog world! I’ve just come back from a fabulous retreat here in town. Tempe Yarn and Fiber had their 2nd annual retreat this weekend and it was a blast. The fun began on Friday night where we chatted and knitted, crocheted, and spun.

There was a yarn tasting also where we got to sample different yarns and work up a swatch while we heard about the yarn. Each yarn was paired with a movie that went along with the name or the look of the yarn to make things fun. At the end we voted on our favorite of the yarns, and the winner was announced like the Academy Awards. We also each got an amazing tote bag and water bottle, plus other goodies!

The workroom closed down at 11pm but I wound up staying up in my room and making a doll cardigan from one of the tiny balls of yarn form the tasting. I did manage to watch Oceans 13 at the same time so that was cool.

Saturday we went to breakfast then headed to the workroom for more fiber fun. I had probably 3-4 projects on the table at any given time and just switched back and forth. The first night I finished a neckwarmer with some of my handspun. Saturday, in addition to the doll sweater finished in the wee hours of the morning I finished another doll cardigan, a sock, a slipper, and an Arizona Scarf made from Tango yarn which we received at the yarn tasting. It was really cool to meet new people and look at all the great projects everyone was working on. I also borrowed the spinning wheel for a bit and worked on some merino wool roving I brought.

The activity for Saturday was a white elephant give away. It was fun because all of the white elephant items were divided into paper bags that the grandchildren of the shop owners. They were so cute! As our names were drawn we picked one of the two bags currently up for grabs. I wound up with the 2007 knitting calendar (the kind with a page for each day with a pattern). It will go nice with the crochet one I had a couple years ago. When we signed up we also received a small length of beaded ribbon and were challenged to use it with a project. I put min into the center of a crochet flower that I made into a hair comb. There were some other really awesome projects like a wire crocheted bracelet and a cell case form handspun.

This morning we had breakfast (nice buffet at the hotel) and went shopping for a bit until going to the yarn store. They had special hours just for those who went to the retreat (they are normally closed on Sunday). Candace and I hung out there for a bit then I went home.

I can’t wait for next year!

Oh yes…and I will be in Indy July 26th-30th but have a family reunion on the 27th.

Here is the first bobbin I spun. Thick and thin, lumpy and bumpy, corkscrews everywhere! Everyone says that once you get good at spinning you can’t get it to look like this anymore even if you wanted to.

Then here is my second bobbin. I did pretty good at first, but then yesterday it was all lumpy again. Meh.

One of the billion nice things at TYF is that Terry an dCandy have decided that it is good for the beginner spinner’s morale to have one of them ply the first skein so we can see that no matter how horrid we thought our singles that the yarn would still be neat. Candy plied my skein of plum and teal. Look..yarn!

Since I don’t need a ton of scarves I decided I wanted to make a bag. So last night I broke out some size 11 needles and did a stockinette pattern rectangle. This afternoon I make a fabric bag lining for it and attached a magnet clasp and handle.

Jamie was working on a scarf from her pretty blue and white handspun yesterday and I’m not certain if Candace has started to work with hers her. The instructor will be a bit surprised I think as we haven’t even had the second class yet. For now I am practicing on the wheels at TYF, but I am going to try all of them that I can so I can decide which one I want to buy. So far I like the castle style and started on the Kromski Minstrel. I worked a bit on the Kromski Sonata yesterday as well which is also castle style but is more portable. It comes with a ginormous backpack.

My plans for this week are to get the house cleaning under control (a perpetual quest, I have no idea how one woman, 6 plastic girls, and 3-4 pets can make such a mess!), go to TYF to practice spinning, go to TYF to work in my Mystery Bag, attend My Fair Lady at Gammage, put together an eating and exercise plan to put a halt to my ever-growing self, sew dolly bags for the shop, sew dolly bags for Shawna. *whew*

This past Saturday was World Wide Knit in Pubic Day. A little meet up was scheduled in Jerome so Candace and I took a road trip up there for the day. We stopped first in Cottonwood to visit with her grandparents and to drop her pups off. Her grandparents are so awesome! Made me really really miss mine. I did notice some similarities that need investigating! Do your grandparents have any of the following in their home (or if you are an awesome grandparent, do you have these items):

• Soap tray in the bathroom in the shape of a bathtub
• Fridge magnet in the shape of a small straw hat complete with ribbon and dried/fake flowers
• Address book that is in a box type thing with the alphabet down the side and you use a slider to pick the letter then push a button and it opens to that letter.
• Several yard sticks\meter sticks in a holder by the door that is most commonly used for entry

So with a quick stop at a yarn store in Cottonwood we headed on to Jerome. Wow! It is all up in hills and stuff. Man was I tired from walking around there with it so steep.

We found the knitting shop, Knit 1 Bead 2 and even received a gift for being the first there to mention WWKIPD! We set ourselves up at the park and I had some lunch at Haunted Hamburger. Yummy stuff. They were very packed but the nice people let me do a to go order. In all about 8 people showed up. It was pretty cool.

Okay off to clean. More later!

KoKo is a dear…but dang is he clueless! Behind him (in the photo that wasn’t to be of him) is the knitting bag that I made last night.

In awesome news…the Mystery KAL started today so a happy time was had at TYF this evening. Oh yes, and tomorrow I am taking a class on spinning yarn. Eeep! Workwise I had to present some stuff to my fellow members of the technical architecture committee and I did not bomb so woo hoo.

I have all of next week off work so besides hanging out with my oldest niece on Monday while she is in town I should be able to get caught up on cleaning and sewing dolly bags.

I have been knitting like crazy lately. Candace, Suzanne, and I all joined the Mystery KAL at Tempe Yarn and Fiber. It doesn’t start until Wednesday so I am on pins and needles with my gauge swatch all ready to go. We know it will be a bag and use four colors of Cascade 220 Superwash and that is about it. Major kudos to Terry and Candy for designing the pattern and the mystery. Upwards of 60 people are signed up for the KAL! I chose the Petroglyph colorway, Candace chose her own colors, and Suzanne went with Monsoon.

I did still manage though to finally baste my latest quilt. Now just to freemotion the quilting and bind it.

I also bought a new camera. I got a used Nikon D40. I still have a ways to go in learning just how to use it but very slowly some of my knowledge from high school photo class is coming back to me. I really like the pictures I am getting form it though. I am keeping the Canon though since I don’t want to take this big camera with me everywhere.

The pets are doing well. We had a bit of a scare with Kitaro a couple weeks ago. B moved again and the housemates let Kit into the backyard and he got away. Freaked me the hell out since it is clear across town. His tag still has my number on it so thankfully a nice person found him and he got back to B’s safe and sound. He got a firm talking to by me when he was home next. That dog!

I am still going strong with my Blythe 365 project. I restarted Crafting 365 again a while back and am about 50 days into it this time. Whew.

Other than that…trying to clean the house as usual. My oldest niece will be in town next weekend so that will be awesome to see her. Also next weekend, Candace and I are going up to Jerome for Knit in Public Day. That should be cool. I’ve never been to Jerome but hear it is funky and artsy. Woo! Oh yes! And I have my flight booked for Indianapolis at the end of July. I didn’t take as much time as I had wanted all at once due to schedules at work but I am flying out Saturday the 26th and flying back on Wednesday August 2nd. Even with that vacation I still had oh about 12 vacations days left so I am also taking random days off here and there. I am so terrible about not taking my vacation days. I will be getting a head start next fiscal year though as I will be going to California in September to visit Deana since I’ve known since before Kindergarden. Yay!!

The ever so awesome Minklet has finished her latest custom Blythe Doll, am/pm aka Post. I was invited to design and create the carry bag for the doll. YAY! She is up for auction now. Check it out!

So yeah, my Internet at home has been down 4 times in the past week and a half. Not happy! One of these times was during an outage at work so I had to get someone else to cover. Yeah that was a bad weekend all round. A couple of us spent the whole weekend on the issue tearing our hair out to figure it out ’since the network was fine’ and come Monday morning someone who didn’t get called over the weekend solved it in 2 seconds…it was the network. Um yeah…I want my weekend back.

Anywho….

My team at work went to see Iron Man today, that was pretty good. I enjoyed the movie and getting a chance to get out of the office a bit and hang with the team. We also have another reorg coming, but this time it does not affect us much at all and should be helpful all round. For those who recall the deal with Ma-Bell and the Baby-Bells….and how they all seem to be reforming…yeah my work is kinda like that. Hys-ter-i-cal.

I also saw Sweeney Todd at Gammage a couple weeks back. The evening before the above mentioned networking work issue from H E double-hockey-sticks. It was a great show and very interesting how they used the one set throughout. Now I need to see the movie.

On the crafty front, next weekend Candace and I are taking a sock class to celebrate my birthday. Woot! I am getting the hang of knitting but it still is much more scary for me than crochet.

I did also get another doll, this time another Dal. So at 4 Blythes and 2 Dal’s I think I am done with my collection. I did also do something that further shows how deep my insanity has gone…I took the dolls out of a bookcase in my sewing room and put them in the ‘extra room’. It at least got me to clean that room. But it is totally crazy that I have so many shelves for them now. I am going to craft little 1:6 scale rooms. I had wanted to do smaller scale miniatures long ago when we were gong to be making a train set but since that never happened at least now I get to put those ideas to use in a larger way.

Also, some of my new bags have hit the This is Blythe shop so do go over and check that out. I am still doing ones for my Etsy shop as well but have been taking it a little slow so I don’t burn out.

That’s really about it as far as an update goes. I was going to write up some thing yesterday about my dad since May 1st was the 15th anniversary of his passing, but as I started out this post…my Internet was down. So now I have lost the steam on that and worked through some of the annual sadness that comes will counting the number of years that I have not had him here and all the events he has missed.