All Over...

Blue skies with a little cloud activity going on... cool, clear, crisp day.

Check.

Change? Signs? Ads?

Check.

Merchandise?

Oh, yeah, check!

Supervisor on duty?

Check!

Deryk did not spend all day in Baby Jail. He did, however, find the deck to be a great place for an afternoon nap.


Dillon agrees.
Merchandise displayed to advantage.

Check.

We tried to get everything at a pretty good height for browsing, since after all straining your back to bend over is not conducive to a good shopping experience.
There's a reason they put the high-priced impulse items at arm's reach in the supermarket, and make you bend for the store brands and the staples!
Wool-Ease is easy to display on the floor, however, since it's one of those yarns everyone knows! (Yeah, I think I had cornered the market. But most of it has gone to a new home or two or seven, so it's ok.)


The crew assembles for coffee and waiting for the first customers of the day.
The fence makes a great place to display quilts for sale. I might need to remember that!
No, they are not quilts I made; they are all commercial quilts. Nice ones.
But now that I no longer have 8 beds to cover, there really is no need to have a couple of dozen quilts. One dozen or so is sufficient!
This was before the knitting began. Of course, by that time, I had been relieved of the camera. If you want to see some more great pictures of the knitting bee, visit Ellen's blog. I'm not sure that a yard sale is supposed to generate quite so much laughter, but it was certainly a lot of fun!


Balls of yarn bigger than your head.
Check!

Who knew there was this much yarn lurking in our stashes?? No no, it's not all mine, not at all. It's come from lots of homes. Honest!
Mary is not tempted by that Koigu/Charlotte's Web Shawl kit.
Nope. Not at all!






End of the day, what's left over?

Well, there are a few boxes of yarn going to Stitches from the Heart.
Some books and fabric will go on to the next sale, at blogless Gwen's.


The needlepoint and cross-stitch supplies will head for A Stitch in Time, which will be having a special sale of UFOs to benefit a local charity.

Time to put our feet up and relax, with a little more breathing room in the house for the remaining yarn!

Many many thanks to everyone who helped out: Mary, Madge, Barbara, Mary U, Leigh and her boys, Anne, Sandy, Meighan and Courtney; Melise and her boys, and Ellen and the very supportive WeHo group, too!

Preview time!

Well, for starters, there are two BIG bags of crochet thread from Madgik. Also in sight, some needlepoint goodies from CatBookMom, as in, can you say Ehrman? Or hand-painted?


A view of the Book Dept. Yes, those are quilt books, and cross-stitch treasuries, and a lovely book on stenciling, and... well, you get the idea!
Tubs and tubs o' yarn. Oh yeah. I have lots and lots of Cherry Tree Hill, Wool-Ease, some mohairs, some vintage Sears Fisherman yarn--well aged!--lots of stuff. That's CBM checking out the tubs.

More stuff. There are some rubber stamps in there, and lots of albums.

Now, bear in mind, this is before we had everything out. There will be more coming in the next day or so.

I'm expecting baskets, and there will be quilts for sale, too. Finished quilts. Lots of fabric is supposed to be on its way, too.

Tempted yet? Check here for more info!

The weather is supposed to be cooperative in the next couple of days, with mid-70's temps and no rain in the forecast. Today was hot hot hot, too hot to be doing all this schlepping. Did it anyway. Many many thanks to CBM, Madgik, Mary, blogless Mary U, D5, D3, and Leigh.

Boo Hiss

I have some charming photos of stuff for the yard sale. Blogger pretended to upload them, but they have now vanished into the ether.

So I'll try again later! Meantime, there is sale info here: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sgv/art/433734410.html

Saturday Sky, and...

Last night, after a looooong day of getting ready for the Sale we went to dinner. This is the sky as we were going into the restaurant.

Ah, yes, we had a lovely stormy day with rain and everything. I loved it!

We'd spent the day going through tubs and boxes of yarn and fabric and... to get ready for next Saturday's Big Huge Crafters' Yard Sale. "We" in this case includes yours truly, plus D4 and D5 and Madgik too, with a little cheerleading from D3. (She'd been at work all day, starting at 3:30 am, so she wasn't up to much except egging us on and going to dinner with us.)
For your temptation: some boxes of goodies for the sale. Yes, that's a big ol' box of needles, many in grand living color. If you look hard you can see the sweater machine, too.



Just look at all those goodies: there is some Noro in there, and some Cherry Tree Hill, and lots of Wool-Ease. The hot pink Sayelle is already spoken for, though, as I promised it to a special Collector. Fear not, there is acrylic and fuzzy stuff too, along with the silver chenille and the lovely soft green cotton chenille.
Love them all, but the time has come to thin the stash. Culling is always painful but I'm hoping to see my treasures go to nice new loving homes.
Oh, there's a whole tub of cross-stitch fabrics, too. Tempted yet? And my buds haven't even started bringing over their additions!

On another note, I had a pleasant surprise this morning: I won! Dave Daniels of Cabin Cove had a contest, and I won! Dave makes such gorgeous yarns and takes beautiful pictures of his yarn and his lovely Miss Lulu Kitty (my furboys have a crush on her) and reading his blog is a delight. So thanks, Dave! (And thanks to Larry for alerting me, even before the coffee was done brewing!)
Now, having used up the rest of the month's allotment of exclamation points (!!) I need to go keep hunting for more goodies to put out for sale. Hey, one woman's surplus is someone else's treasure, right? (I have some philosophical musings about the cause of all this surplusage, but I will save it for another day. Suffice to say for now that I am quite at peace with saying bye-bye to this portion of the collection.)

Wednesday Whatsis

Some of my knitfriends use Wednesday as a WIP-Roundup day. Not me. I'm not even well enough organized at this point to even find all my WIPs! However, here's one that is an about-to-be frogged-object, an ABTFO.
This is the start of a Lady Eleanor, in Noro Transitions. First of all, I grabbed the ball thinking it was the "other" Noro, and I didn't realize my mistake right away. I cast on in the car on the way to hear the Harlot on Saturday, and this is how much I got done that day standing in line and waiting for her talk to begin.
Pretty good progress. Except that the gauge is definitely bulletproof, and at this rate it's eating up yarn really really fast. So I would have, if I continued with this piece, a "wrap" that would be really dense and maybe a foot long. Cause I have 3 balls of this stuff, and this is half of one ball.
Rrrrrip! The needles are out of it, and it will get frogged a bit later tonight while I watch Tim Gunn and learn a bit more about why I'm not very stylish.

For your pleasure, a recent shot of the Grandcarrot:


He is definitely into the maniacal 15-month-old phase by now, adorable little bundle of motion. He doesn't just walk, he runs. And he's inordinately pleased with this accomplishment, too.

Here's a little tease for you--these are all tubs of yarn that are headed for my Giant Crafters' Yard Sale. Next weekend, some fellow knitters and quilters and crafters are going to re-home some of our stash to make room for the latest acquisitions. I'll have more info for you, but if you're in the SoCal area, save the date: 9/29.
Poor Project Spectrum has been rather neglected around here lately. Well, purple and orange are a good combo on the toes, no? No!
This is what happens when you drop a bottle of shampoo (25.7 oz) on your toe.
For orange, how about some rose hips? They are pretty, and decorative, and I refuse to make rose-hip jam.
Oh, the cinder block? Isn't that how everyone props up a sagging rose bush?
Hi-Hi has found a new snooze spot: in Meg's clean laundry! He seems to think this is "his" towel and you know, she's inclined to let him have it, at least till next towel-washing day.

Simon always looks very hopeful. I'm not sure what he's hoping for, but he's very hopeful.
Ah, controversy! Here's a quiz for you.
I got these shoes. I think they're pretty cute, and very comfortable. Birki clogs, red with cartoon sheep.
D4 thinks they are awful.
D4 says I can't wear them. Ever. At least not out in public.
She thinks they would be cute on her 8-year-old niece, but not on her (supposedly) grown adult mother.

What do you think? Should I send them back to the Birki store, and get the blue or purple or maroon suede ones?
What is the price of familial harmony?
Oh, do go on over and see how the Fairy is growing!

A Very Harlot Saturday

Long-awaited, much anticipated:


We gathered at the impressive Los Angeles Downtown Library. Newly reopened after extensive renovation, there's a delightful atrium with sea critters and a fascinating sculptural piece. Something to look at while we all lined up patiently waiting our turn to go in.


Knitters of all shapes, sizes, genders, ethnicities, waiting waiting waiting. That line is actually wrapped around itself and everyone is standing there knitting. If you have sharp eyes, you can spot Wendy, MJ and Carolyn down there in line. (I'll add MJ's blog link when I can find it--must be leftover Harlot-fumes fogging my brain!) (Edited: found it, added her link! Go over and say hi to Bella, too!)
Once we got seated, Wendy organized us all for photos. As you can probably tell from the size of that lens, Wendy is a pro and takes some really great pictures. She's promised to send us all some, and I hope that she'll also post some on her blog.

I did smile nicely and hopefully didn't crack the lens.

I won't name the owner of that hair, just because. She knows who she is!
Ellen got to do the introduction. Go Ellen!! Then Stephanie came out, took her "usual" photos of the crowd with her traveling sock. Then she spent the next hour and a half keeping us in stitches (tee hee, I made a knitter pun!) and giving us lots to think about.

Have I ever mentioned that I love Stephanie?? Yeah, I admit it, I'm a Harlot groupie.

Then she signed books. And signed books. And even when she got to the end of the line, she still had a smile and a couple of comments for everyone.

Here's an example. And we were at the tail end of the line, too!

She signed Barbara's book, and mine, and even got very excited with us over Annette's first sock. (As she should, in fact, since it's a lovely thing and very well done!) That's Annette over there, waiting her turn, while Wendy keeps the camera handy.

She even climbed up on the desk to get a peek at Patty's darling shoes. I won't tell you what Mary said, but I hope she repeats it on her blog.
All of this wonderfulness was made possible by the indefatigable efforts of our own Madgik-worker, who made the reservations, organized the carpool, and generally herded cats to make sure we got there on time, with cameras, knitting, and enthusiasm.

I don't seem to have caught any pictures of Madge or Jillian or Zoe or Mary, and that's not the best shot of Patty, either. Now that I think about it, I could have photographed those cute shoes myself so you could see them. Sigh. It's that Heat Wave Hangover again--I sure hope I get my brain back soon!

So there you have it. Please do check out my traveling companions' blogs for more pics and more comments. And if the Harlot comes to your town, let me know--I'll be on the next flight over there!

Neglectful

Yes, today was very eventful, and I promise to post about it ASAP.
However, in the meantime, I need to catch up on what's been happening around here and why I've been so neglectful of my poor little blog.

Can I distract you from the outrageous lack of blog posting hereabouts with some pretty pictures? How about a pink-and-blue sunset??

More sunset clouds.


Pretty, aren't they?

The good news is, the horrid high heat has finally broken, and the weather has become almost livable. The bad news is that my brain, and my energy centers, all melted during the heat wave and haven't come back to life yet.

But I've done a little quilting.

You can sort of see what the pattern will look like. This is a pre-cut kit of hand-dyed fabrics which I "acquired" in 2003, according to the eBay paperwork that was with it.

Yeah, I stockpile fabric just like I do yarn. But, I must admit, it's nice to have something like this to do when you want to work on SOMETHING, but don't have the energy or the mental wherewithal to come up with that something.

Not that triangles are easy, you understand, nor is this a particularly easy design. It's easy to pair up the first set of triangles, and the second, and sewing them together is also easy.
But then you have to match the two halves of the quarter-block, and that is where the "fun" comes in.

I have a system. I match up the center points, and then sew a few stitches across the center to baste them together. If they match perfectly, it's all good. If they don't match up, then it's only a matter of ripping out a few stitches and redoing it.

Much better than picking out a whole long line of stitching!

I've also been visiting a few new cats and thought you might like to meet them.

First, meet Patty's little Sally Brown, aka Tortie. Isn't she a love with those big green eyes?

She's just noticed the camera--and the dangling camera strap.

Mmm! A new chew toy!

Attack cat mode: can I get into that camera?

We had a lot of fun playing with the camera strap. Kittens think the entire world is their playpen.

Next up, meet my pretty grandkitten Maxine. She belongs to D5 and husband, along with her sister Shyla and brother Potsy. They don't usually come out for company, but Max is gregarious and quite fond of being petted and "made" over.

Her favorite way to be held is on her back, just like a baby. She will purr and lap up the attention.

Max says:

You won't tell anyone how good I've got it here, will you??

PS--If you want to see some darling baby animal pics, head on over to Susan's to see her new baby goat kids!

For Robert

Robert Keith Watterlond

March 1, 1938--September 7, 2005

We know that this is not goodbye.

We're Havin' A Heat Wave...

... with no relief in sight for the long weekend at least. However, some areas are getting a bit of rain or at least some "shade" from the clouds.

We had an extremely brief, but very loud, thundershower a couple of nights ago. All it did was wake everyone up, and leave us with sticky humidity.

Sorry to keep complaining about the heat. It's just that I don't tolerate it very well, it's hard to sleep, and that makes me grumpy.

And cranky.

Okay, okay.

Grumpier.
and crankier.

So, just for a change of pace, this is what was on the agenda today.
Can you see the sign in that first cloud picture? This is where we met for lunch today--three Ds, a mom, and an auntie.

Well, and a grandchild-to-be. D3 said she felt mildly guilty for not bringing the Grandcarrot, however he is at an age where this particular restaurant--with the flaming onion volcano, the spectacular eruptions of flame, and the searing hot cooking table--would definitely not be the best choice.



Hold the presses! News of the World, pay attention!


mehitabel has... drum roll, please...
a real life, bona fide, Finished Object!!


Yes, the Rose Garden Shawl is done, finished,

complete,

and lovely and soft! (Thanks to Ms Patty for the superb modeling effort!)

It has been pointed out to me that this pattern is nearly identical to the Fir Cone Shawl that has been spotted elsewhere in Blogland. I couldn't agree more! It's actually something called The Lavender Linen Lace Shawl but I think of it as leaves. Rose leaves.

Between the resemblance to rose leaves and the fact that it's made from two skeins of Artyarns' Silk Rhapsody in the Rose Garden colorway, I think I can be allowed to call it the Rose Garden Shawl.

Can't I?




Close-up of leafy prettiness. I love the way the color played out on this piece--I was a little worried about using a variegated yarn because I didn't know how the pooling would look.

Looks fine to me!







When it's hot outside and inside, what's a big furry boy to do?
Why, find a cool spot on Mom's keyboard, of course. And if you squinch your eyes closed really really really REALLY tight, you can pretend to be sound asleep if someone tries to move you. Because, really, being The Cat means the world is your pillow.

Happy long weekend to those of you who are celebrating Labor Day. If you are in this particular corner of the world, do try to keep cool. Flex your power and all that--both your electrical power and your personal power. A little knitting, a tall cool drink, and some fur to love--what more does one need??