Wow!...where did the time go?...

Okay...It's been way too long since I last posted to this blog...Hang on, Postman's here!

Yea! It's my order from The Loopy Ewe. Give me a sec and I'll take some pics!(I achieved Groupie status, and I want to see what my goodies are!)

WOW! My order consisted of 2 skeins of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock DK in the Fall Foliage colourway. I received all this:

If you want to know the details, you're just going to have to become a Loopy Groupie!

My boyfriend and I went shopping on Friday and we hit up Mrs. Tiggy Winkles to buy some Tinker Toys to make me this:

A homemade swift! I got the idea from Crafting Jen and it works pretty well. Plus its a lot less expensive than a real swift!

The yarn being displayed on my "swift" is this:

Miski by Mirasol. It's 100% baby llama and it is SOOOOOOO soft. The colourway is 101, and although it looks really grey in the pic, it's more blue in reality. I bought it at KnitKnackers.

I am attempting to get my knitting patterns in some semblance of order so I bought this at HomeSense:

I'm afraid I might run out of space soon though, the way I hoard patterns.

Speaking of patterns, I finished the Campanulas:

and I received my prize that I won in the 1st Campanula KAL contest:

A skein of merino from Dyed in the Wool (the colourway is Singed Tomato) and a cool stitch marker:

I'm doing the Stitch Marker Exchange again, and I received my first stitch markers from Yosemite Knitting Addiction:

They have cool little flowers on them!

I also joined the September Sock Club at Robyn's Nest, and received my package:

A skein of Superwash Merino from Lotus Yarns in the exclusive colourway "Time to Go!", along with matching stitch markers and a cool sock pattern.

Alas, on the subject of socks...The Summer of Socks has ended. I managed to finish just 4 pairs in the allotted time. However, the SOS wasn't just to get pairs of socks, it was to minimize my sock yarn stash...

The stash before:

The stash after:



Hmmm...maybe it's a good thing I joined Sockknitter's Anonymous on Ravelry!

...And finally I have a little screen-mate. I've named him Socks.

Here he is checking out all the socks Wendy managed to finish during the SOS (all 19 pairs!):



He's an esheep! Isn't he cute? He keeps me company while I'm on the computer.

TTFN and KEEP KNITTING!

A Night At The Opera...

WOW...It was the most amazing night! I finished the stole on Thursday night:



This is a close-up of the knitted part. Note the little seed beads in the middle. I sewed those on by hand...all 111 of them!

And now....


...The fringe...:



I don't even want to contemplate how many little beads went into that fringe. Here's a close up:



What I do know is that a diamond consists of 4 black bicone glass beads, and 40 silver-blue glass seed beads. The long fringe consists of 151 seed beads and 1 black teardrop glass bead. There are 21 fringes on each side, and this stole took me almost 5 months to complete. (For the complete Shawl Saga, go to this blog posting, scroll down to the post labels, and click on The Shawl Saga. It will give you a backwards blogline of the Saga)

But it was so worth it. By the way I changed the name. Snowdrop/Tulip Stole just didn't sound special enough for this project. So I've named it the Midnight Garden Stole.

And so without further ado: The Midnight Garden Stole in action on Phantom night:



(This cropped photo gave the best shot of the fringe).

We left the apartment at 5pm, and arrived at D'arcy McGee's Irish Pub at around 5:30ish and manage to procure a table on the patio.

This was the entertainment that greeted us:



Only in Ottawa can you enjoy authentic Irish Pub food whilst being serenaded by a Scottish Pipe Band! (We got a real kick out of that!)

When we arrived at the NAC, this was the view of the stage from our seats:



I have purposely posted the blurry one so no one can steal the photo and use it to break any copyright laws. (Incidentally the blurry yellow blob that is almost in the centre of the shot is the chandelier. When it was raised it was almost right above us!) We couldn't have dreamed of better seats! There was one part where flames shot up from the front of the stage and we could feel the blast of heat from them! It was incredible. The man who played the Phantom was not the headliner John Cudia (he only played for 4 days or so, then went on vacation), all I can say is Stephen Tewksbury had the most amazing voice! It was so powerful...a number of people who had heard the other guy said this one was by far the better performer, so we missed out on nothing.

All in all it was a fantastic and memorable night.

And what is a memorable night without a few souvenirs?

A Phantom Mask pin:



And I bought two of these mugs:

The mug when cold:



The mug when hot liquid is added (in this case coffee):



Isn't that cool?

Anyhoo now I am going to work on some socks, and the Aran-style sweater for my boyfriend.

TTFN and KEEP KNITTING!