Captive on the carousel of time

It's been an eventful week, nothing drastic but a lot of little stuff.

Bob brought me Ladies of the Canyon to start off my Joni Mitchell kick... the last time I had any of her music in my collection was when I had vinyl and that's been a long time. So I've been enjoying listening to it and planning what else to get. Hence the blog title.

We had a nice time on Friday visiting an old friend and hearing two of his bands play at a local coffeehouse, Your Inner Vagabond. I think Bob and I will be going back there many times-it was so comfortable and just a nice place to hang out. Plus the coffee and tapas were awesome. My friend's name is Nick. We met when we both worked at Barnes and Noble, he was still in high school at the time and I had a child his age but we hit it off like contemporaries. Nick's super-intelligent, a brilliant musician and drummer and a genuinely nice person. It's nice to see that he is doing what he loves with his life. Also, a lot of people have talent. Nick has put in the work and dedication to make his level of skill match his talent.



So anyway, we had a nice time at the concert and I got myself on a mailing list for ney lessons. Saturday, I went to the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival. I had a budget and stuck to it.

I got this fiber from Rivers Edge Weaving Studio. The top one is Blue-Faced Leicester, one of my favorite spinning fibers. There are almost 8 oz of that, then four ounces of a gorgeous soft merino/silk blend.



From Fire Lizard Studios, I got 4 oz of BFL and 2 oz of merino/tencel blend. I'm thinking a big skein of sock yarn, three ply. The colors don't match, but coordinate nicely.


And from Cosy, I got two braids, one Corriedale,


and one Falkland, which I have not spun before.

I could not pass up the falkland because the colorway is named the same as my Ravelry name, Fennel.

So lots of happy spinning there. I could have spent a lot more on fiber but I got no yarn, and frankly, wasn't even remotely tempted by any yarn. Although that might be because it was really hard to get to many of the booths because of the crowds-there were a LOT of people there and my tolerance for shoving through crowds is low these days. Plus I did not take my crutch in, figured I'd need both hands to carry stuff. So I really missed a lot.



One of the knitting projects I couldn't talk about was Bob's socks. I made them out of one skein of the London Fog sock yarn I'd spun and gotten tangled as referenced in last week's post. I actually knit these socks in five days without him knowing they were for him so I'm pretty proud of them. They're super-squishy and soft and he loves them.

Please ignore the scruddy carpet-that's being remedied today. I also got him a card that amused me to no end.



Sick! I love it. He got a cake from Moio's which we ate all weekend, a very sweet card, and he took me to the Winchester Room for dinner last night. It was awesome.

Another acquisition from the knit expo was a needle-felting kit. Uh-oh. I did not need another fiber hobby, but this is actually pretty awesome and will be a good way to use up little odd bits of fiber. The first thing I made was this.


Then I made this.



Then I watched some videos on youtube and made these.




That is a peach.

And this is an egg.







It's a lot of fun. Pretty easy, too. I can see me having a lot of fun needle-felting and thankfully I have most of the materials already. I'll need to get more needles eventually but they're not expensive. Hey, maybe this is the 3-D art outlet I've been seeking.

I took some interesting photos on the way home from the knit expo.





Last thing in crafting, I finished spinning the yarn for the swap. It's currently in a nice soak to set the twist and soften.



I hope my swap victim likes it! It ended up being 640 yards of sportweight three ply. Nice stuff, I think. I'd be happier if it were a little softer but we'll see how it dries. I have until the 16th to send it off so I can always soak it with conditioner if it's still not soft enough after this. It's not scratchy, but it's not merino either. I guess I'm a little spoiled.

The other big thing we did was some house-related improvements-minor really but impactful. Our TV stand was very rickety, to the point I was seriously worried it was going to collapse. We got a new one last week at Circuit City's closeout sale and Bob put it together while I was off diving into bins of fibery goodness. We got it set up yesterday, and it looks really nice. And it's VERY sturdy.


Our TV is old-school and very heavy.

When deciding what to do with the old one, we came to the conclusion that we could use THAT for storage and shitcan the horrible black shelves of despair that had been our media storage. It worked out okay and it looks nice, I think. Nicer, anyway. We'll never be House Beautiful but at least those dreadful black things are gone.



Well that was a lot to talk about. So I'm outa here. I have more organizing to do, and I'm considering going to the pool before this afternoon's hockey game.

I leave you with my favorite song from Ladies of the Canyon. Ignore the horrible cheesy graphics and just listen to the music. :)