Well, Knock Me Down And Call Me Nancy!!

I guess I can no longer say that I never win anything!  A couple of months ago I entered a contest that Knitting Fever held where, if you wrote a blog post about Noro yarns, you had a chance to win the new Noro magazine.  Well, I love Noro, so that was a labor of love.  Noro has to be in my top 5...no, make that top 3 favorite yarn brands.  Make that top 2.  Noro and Madelinetosh...yum.

Anyway, I figured my chances of winning were pretty darn small so when I saw the new Noro magazine in Wegman's I went ahead and picked it up.  Nice patterns in this magazine, by the way.

And then, a few weeks ago, I got an email from a nice lady at Knitting Fever asking for my address, because I had won!  Well, my pleasure at winning was, I will admit, somewhat lessened by the fact that I already had the magazine, but still...I was happy and figured that perhaps I could give the magazine to someone.

Today I came home to find a box on my front porch from Knitting Fever...and it wasn't just the magazine!

Ten...count them, ten!!!...skeins of Silk Garden Lite.  In an absolutely gorgeous colorway (2073).  Time to start looking at patterns.

Meet My Sun, Ray

He's very cute, I think.

And no, it's not foggy here in Baltimore.  In the short time it took me to go outside from the air conditioning to the heat and humidity here, and take a couple of pictures, my camera lens fogged all up.  I'm hoping I haven't ruined my camera.

And here's a picture of my shawl so far...

How Weathery Of Me

My current most active projects?

A sun and a rainbow.  The sun needs four more rays, the rainbow needs to suck up the rest of the ball of yarn.

One Man's Meat...

I spend time, now and again, wondering why it is that we like things.  Usually I'm thinking about books, I'll admit.  Why is one book by an author....China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, for example....a book I just dive into and swim in and love and another, even by the same author....Mieville's The City and The City, for another example...one that I struggle with?  Or, more broadly even...I love to read...always have...but you wouldn't catch me dead reading a romance novel.  Why are those words on the page different than any others?

It's the same with yarn.  Barring allergies, why does one person prefer wool and another only enjoy knitting in cotton?  And why is there so much of a love-hate dichotomy over Noro?  There must be a discussion a month on Ravelry about Noro..."Why doesn't everyone love Noro?"  "How can anyone bear to knit in Noro?"  "Noro....love the colors but the yarn is scratchy!"  "I hate Noro!"  "I love Noro!"

I come down firmly on the pro-Noro side of things.  (In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that what prompted me to write this post is the chance of winning a copy of the new Noro magazine.)

I love Noro yarn.  I mean, go here and scroll down.  Look at those colors!  Look at those gorgeous lilacs and purples and that delicate "Hello-I've-just-sprouted" spring green in the socks...the sunny yellows with the touch of peach in that bobbly pullover....the somehow serene-but-still-electric blues in the lacey cardigan.  Just beautiful.  Is the yarn scratchy?  Well, the Kureyon isn't merino, perhaps, but it's perfectly wearable...and it's about the scratchiest of the lot.  Is there vegetable matter?  An occasional piece of hay or grass perhaps...easily removed.  Are there knots?  Perhaps I've been lucky, but I've found more knots in other brands of yarn.




































And you know, it wouldn't matter...load it up with knots and grass.  I'd still buy it and knit with it happily.  Eisaku Noro is a wizard with color...and color is something I love.  For whatever reason, it pushes all the right neurons.

(Picture lifted from the Noro website...look at those hues!)

Having now spent some time reading through the Knitting Fever blog, I also have to link to this post of theirs.  I love Mirasol yarns...and here's a great incentive to keep buying their yarns.  What a wonderful story.

Three Days Gone

Nice weekend, though it's almost over and that sucks.  I took Friday off, mostly for a routine doctor's appointment but it was also sooooo nice not to be at work.  I mean, I love Elizabeth but we've been working really hard and under a fair amount of pressure and it's been more tiring than I realized.  After the doctor's, Mr. Pointy Sticks and I had lunch out (at Atwater's -- yum) and then spent some time and money at Barnes and Noble.  I got both the new Garth Nix (A Confusion of Princes, which I've read already and really liked) and China Mieville's Railsea, which I may start today.

On Saturday we went to Cromwell Bridge Park and went on a bird walk.  We saw




Baltimore Orioles



Orchard Orioles



Indigo Bunting



Bluebird



Tree Swallows



Blue Grosbeaks (alas, only the brownish female, not this snappy blue male) and many others.  I didn't get any good pictures, having only a weensy digital, so these images come from Wikimedia Commons.  No copyright infringement here!

On the way home we stopped at Flavors and got ourselves some cupcakes.  Yum.  Their Salted Caramel cupcakes are marvelous!

And even with the cupcakes, the weight loss continues.  I'm down 18 pounds since February.  Little pat on the back for me.

And I finished my Wingspan!

Here it is on the hood of the car...the colors look pretty true here.  It's sort of disappointingly small.  More like a neckerchief than a shawl.  Someday perhaps I'll make a bigger one.

I'm going to wind my yarn one of these days for my first (of three) Camp Loopy project, which I can't start until next Sunday.  In the meantime, I'm working on a Hitchhiker in Kauni Rainbow.  I won't have it done by Sunday so it'll be a good waiting-to-start-Camp-Loopy's-project, in-between project.