Work of Art

The Work of Art workshop happened tonight at the store. I wish I'd thought to get pictures of what everyone was doing!

This is my yarn, to which some shocking pink fun fur and red ribbon yarn were added:

Yeah, it's mostly orange. No one was surprised.

Hello, I'm sort of back, and I'm about to get my own yarn store!

Oh, man. I'm sorry everyone - I just noticed that I hadn't published any of the comments you've left for the last... yikes!! Six months! I'll be better about that, I promise!

Since I've kinda vanished the last few weeks (okay, most of September), let me tell you what's going on:

I'm opening a yarn store!!!!!!

I haven't got a lease in hand (but hopefully soon), and I do have a name - which I'll tell you all once I have the website up and running so you can check it out.

I've already decided that this year's NaNoNovel will be my adventures with starting up and opening a yarn store.

Wish me luck!!

Playing Tourist at Home

Today, husband & I went to Mt. Vernon, George Washington's property on the Potomac River.

I went for the Bicentennial (yes, 40 years ago). BOY has it changed!! 

George Washington's View

First - paved parking lots. Then, past the Mount Vernon Inn and shops, there's a huge theater & education complex. All the outbuildings are restored & have living history actors. 

Automatic milkshake machines!

All the fields have livestock (I forgot to get a photo of the sheep, darnit). 

All the gardens have stuff. And there are a LOT of gardens. The botanical garden, the experimental garden (George was quite scientific about finding crops that would thrive on his land). The fruit and veg gardens. And those are the ones near the main house!

I found the pumpkins!

There's a trail through the forest with educational stops. Hear the bird calls George never heard! See the tracks of the local wildlife in his day! Guess the name of his dog!

Down by the river, The seawall was raised, so the marshy bits near the water are more living history and crops examples. There was a boatwright actually making a boat with period methods. The tobacco barn - they'd actually grown a saleable amount of tobacco (probably can't sell it; modern strains have way more nicotine). There were all the different types of fences, how they were made, and what they were used for.

A wild Husbeast appears!

There's even a pier and a boat tour now!!

Yes, there are 20+ Ingress missions. I did the 18 to get the banner - not well-created, IMO.

7.37 miles walked, which is still a lot for me. Really interesting stuff!!

Today, I saw stuff

Critters!

Memorials!

A restaraunt I thought had vanished forever!

Historic homes I haven't seen for decades!

(Gunston Hall, home of George Mason)

I also walked a LOT. 

PS, UMW has 53 portals with another half-dozen or so reachable from the grounds.

This week got away from me...

I did manage 3 medals in the Ravellenic Games this year... and a whole lot of misses (mostly WIPs). 

Restarted a Looped infinity scarf. We had a store model in Lustra; I have this stuff.

Got cookies.

Got new kicks.

(PS, taking photos of one's own feet is tricky.)

Walked around historic Occoquan, VA.

There are vultures there, yo. And spy cameras?

Did I mention cookies?

Yep. Had a lobster dinner. ;)

More coherence this week, hopefully!

MDSW 2016

If you have Instagram, you can see all my MDSW pics (and many others) with the tag #virtualMDSW . Here are a few of my favorites:

Pre-shearing

swag

lunch

skein & garment competition

skein & garment competition

the shawls of Sheep-to-Shawl

skein & garment competition

alpacas!

bunnies!!

so much to see!!

see you next year!

A visit to "outdoors"

Discovered Royal Lake today.

Metro Yarn Crawl, Part 2D: Yarn Cloud

The final stop on this year's crawl was Yarn Cloud in Occoquan, VA. As it was now around 2pm, we found the traffic:

Luckily, we were only stop-n-go for about 20 minutes. (We took the back way home, too.) Finally, we got there. Mom, of course, found parking within 50ft of the front door on a Sunday afternoon. (If you've ever done a historic district on Sunday afternoon...)

Yarn Cloud has the best collection of needle tatting stuff anywhere, so I got some of that. And a set of crochet hooks. And a Skeino (the autumnal one in the right pic, in fact). And buttons. And put myself on the list for the 2016 Men in Knits calendar.

And, based on the photo, some square knitting needles, and a hat. The little Yarn Cloud notions bag & pen were freebies.

I decided to put my passport in for the Yarn Cloud basket. 8 stamps from stores I don't work at:

I got a call from Robyn that evening that I'd won one of the door prizes, too! Will try to pick that up tomorrow. Yay!

Metro Yarn Crawl, Part 2C: Second Story Knits

Third stop on Sunday: Second Story knits in Bethesda. Things you need to know, in no particular order:

1. There is a parking lot next to the building. It is small, but has high turnover.

2. There is a flight of stairs, no elevator.

3. It is just a few blocks from the Bethesda Metro station - and just 2 blocks from the street-level elevator.

4. It is the door next to a small restaurant, and you need to look for it. I've accidentally gone into the restaurant twice, and I know better!

Second Story Knits door, right.

Once in the actual shop (be sure to look at the pretty shawls on the way up!), there's a lot to see! There aren't as many books as there used to be - the advent of electronic pattern sales has caused a downturn in both sales and publishing - but there's a good selection in the Book Nook.

There are indie dyers, Chiagoo needles, lots of notions, and more yarn. And more yarn.

I ended up getting a wee bit here:

A skein from A Hundred Ravens (fingering weight, "Flaming June" colorway, some brightly-colored needle coils, and a half-priced Slipped Stitch Studios pattern wallet (it had me at "Zombie HORDE!").

No idea what I'll use this yarn for. YET.

Metro Yarn Crawl, Part 2B: WoolWinders

The second last-day-of-Crawl stop was WoolWinders in Rockville, MD. It's just a quick hop down from Boyds, and mom pulled her usual "let's park right in front!" (As usual, there was a perfectly legal space just waiting for her. Parkma is a legit superpower.)

(WoolWinders, the view from the car, left.)

They've moved things - and gosh, look at the pics from last year: http://craftygryphon.blogspot.com/2015/06/wool-winders.html?m=0

Yeah. Even the front sign is different! (I bet they were told to get a new sign by whoever manages the complex to make everything more uniform or something, because the old one was cute.)

Inside: 

Different color scheme on the walls (I love the little yarn-and-needles border), things moved around a bit, more light in the corners for seeing the pretty yarn.

What I found there:

3 Hedgehog Fibers mini skeins, a MadTosh Unicorn Tail, a (hopefully) shatterproof/less fragile yarn dispenser, and the Mason-Dixon Knitting coloring book.

Onward!

Metro Yarn Crawl, Part 2A: Knit Locally!

Managed four more stores on the #metroyarncrawl2016 today. Since there's a lot to show, I'll do one store each of the next four days.

The first store we hit was Knit Locally up in Boyds, MD. It took much less time to get there than we'd allowed, so we sat in the parking lot behind the store and knit (me) and crocheted (mom), as we'd arrived a full hour before opening.

At 11.30, Peggy, the owner, tapped on our window and invited us in, so we finished whichever rows and scampered in after her.

It's a lovely little shop!

There's the front room (bottom left) and a middle room (top and bottom right), plus a long room off the middle room (which I'm calling the back room).

Top right is a view down the back room, left and bottom right are two more views of the middle room.

The store has plenty of yarn, indie dyers and commercial. I noticed Chiagoo needles, and some beautiful handcrafted jewelry. And yarn.

I got a sweater quantity of sparkly copper Venezia (yay!), a gradient kit from The Copper Corgi (one of the new-to-me dyers, and a Done Roving/Frolicking Feet Transitions, which will be a Sand Dollar shawl.  There was also a basket of back issues of magazines, which totally got raided. (There's stuff not pictured, which will remain secret until after Mothers' Day.)

I'm really glad we made it all the way north this crawl, this is a fabulous little shop!

Metro Yarn Crawl 2016!

Today was my #metroyarncrawl2016 day. I'm only able to hit 5 stores this year (including the one that employs me), but here's the virtual tour! Presented in order of shop, then loot.

Stop 1: The Yarn Barn in Burke

Three minutes after open:

Stop 2: Uniquities in Vienna

Stop 3: Aylin's Woolgatherer in Falls Church. V. sad she's closing 5/31.

 

Final stop: Fibre Space in Alexandria

And lunch at Eamon's, corner of King & Columbus. BEST chipper in the states, because it's the real deal.

Fun day! Time for a nap!