Yarn Discovery Tour, Personal Modifications, and a Wedding

Once again I must ask, dear friends, to think back a few weeks ago. Because, once again, I've fallen behind on my blogging duties.

Clear back on the 16th, I was supposed to be going for a special birthday trip with a couple of friends. Sadly, those plans fell through due to the lovely season of colds starting. So I took Caitlin up on her offer of joining her on this year's Yarn Discovery Tour.

I originally had no plans on participating this year due to a lack of funds and really feeling like I shouldn't be buying more yarn. I mean, I'm pretty sure I've reached SABLE at this point. But it sounded like a fun day out, so I figured what the hell, and went along.

We started out at Harps & Thistles, which was probably a mistake. Because of course, I started chatting. I needed to catch up, alright?

I actually didn't buy any yarn there. Instead, I got some lovely fiber for spinning. I want to give it another go and Caitlin's promised to teach me.

The next stop was The Designing Woman. (Please excuse the text in the pic. My front-facing camera mirrors everything and I'm too lazy to fix it right now.)

A quaint little shop with both yarn and fabrics, it was pleasant. I've never seen such a large collection of Berroco brand yarn.

I just picked up a skein of worsted weight from Rowan to use for more Bulbasaur.

After that, it was up the road to Crochet Innovations.

Another lovely shop tucked into a plaza. There was a bistro right next door that had all sorts of divine smells coming from it.

I picked up a hank of Cascade 220 Superwash Aran weight in a lovely charcoal grey. No pics of just it, though. It's already all in the edging of September's shawl.

We hit up Long Tail Knits after that.

This place is definitely a spinner's paradise. Caitlin and I are already making plans on hitting it up again in the near future.

I, however, fell in love with a hank of their in-house yarn line and couldn't walk away.

At this point, we were definitely starting to go into sensory overload, so we made our stop at Fine Points as brief as we could. I bought neither yarn nor fiber. Instead, I walked away with this FRIGGIN AWESOME PROJECT BAG!

Our final stop was River Colors in Cleveland, where we met up with Mikayla. This was her LYS and it was easy to see why. It was huge  and inviting. The selection was superb. And I found freakin' Tosh in the clearance section!

Mikayla said she'd make me a hat if I bought it since bulky weight is her jam. Can't really say no to that sort of offer.

I also picked up this lil' hank of Malabrigo lace.

We got some much-needed food after all of that. But my day was only half-done. Caitlin handed me off to Kayla and we went to her apartment for a hair appointment of epic proportions.

The darling woman had agreed to redo my hair for me, and well, we went a little wild. Rather than just redoing the color I had, we went full galaxy up in my mane.

It was great fun and the results are amazing.

Seriously, how awesome does it look?

I wanted it done for a wedding that John and I attended last Friday. Have to look good, right?

My wedding 'do actually came out ridiculously epic for doing it myself and I had people coming up to me all night just to compliment my hair.

I also wanted something else done for the wedding, so last Tuesday, Kayla and I made our way to the local needleman.

My nose is now a little bit shinier.

Shoutout to Kayla for the amazing birthday present. And to Caitlin for the fun day out.

As for that wedding I mentioned, it was for John and I's favorite cousin on his side of the family. And let me tell you...

We clean up pretty good.

Seriously, I had the hottest date there.

And before you ask yes...

I knit at the wedding.

Did you expect anything less?

So congrats to Danielle and Carl, you two lovely nerds. Enjoy the months of writing down the wrong name, the mountains of paperwork, and the little skip your heart does whenever you look at your spouse and realize, "holy shit, we're married."

And thanks for not mentioning the yarn spread across our table.

Struggle

This month has kicked my ass. Hard.

I've only managed to get two blog posts done.

I've barely done any knitting, or painting, or much of anything.

Today has been the hardest, mentally, because an emotional scar got ripped open. And I was not in the best place to deal with it.

Right now I feel raw. Stripped to the bone.

So forgive me, but this is just going to be a short list post. I need to get my butt back in gear and put the effort back into this that it deserves.

1. I did manage to get a shawl done for August, but I haven't had the energy to write the post. But here's a little preview.

2. Jamie and I have been together for a year now. And this deserves so much more fanfare. But again, I haven't had the energy.

3. I finally managed to give Bethany birthday presents on time for the first time in about 5 years. She got a painting and a little knit cactus.

4. Al started high school. This is still terrifying.

5. Great Trail time is upon us again, and of course, I made my way to the spinning house and picked this up.

6. I FINALLY made myself some fingerless gloves after making some for like everyone else. I should have used different yarn and moved the owl pattern over a few stitches, but I was frantically trying to get them done to wear at Great Trail. And I'm glad, because it was effing cold.

Yarn is some random alpaca blend that I actually bought at Trail a few years ago.

7. I saw this at Joann's and need somebody to buy it for me as a birthday present.

8. And we found this guy shoved into the ivy in the floral department at Pat Catan's. I couldn't say no. It was too cute. So he's living in my library now.

9. Yes. I have a library. Yes, it's as awesome as you think. Yes, there will be a blog post about it in the future. But there are a couple of key components I'm waiting on before it's truly done.

10. Renee found this notebook for me and it's pretty much the best thing ever.

11. I harvested a bunch of herbs and now my hallway looks delightful.

12. This guy's pretty cute.

13. Ending on cat pictures because internet.

Total Eclipse of the Art

Yes, I went there. I made that joke. And I regret nothing.

Because what's better than spending the entire day outside, watching the eclipse, and painting something amazing?

That's exactly what I did.

Here's like the one super crappy picture I have of the whole thing.

The painting, however, came out marvelous.

Here's another shot with the colors a little bit more accurate, though it is still much more vibrant in person.

It was an amazing experience getting to sit out there, seeing something so strange and wonderful, all the while making a beautiful thing. I'm already counting down the years until the next one. Maybe we'll make that one an art party. Sounds fun, yeah?