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Hoooo-eeee it's been a while. How've y'all been? Yeah? Cool.

Sooo let's start out with the knitting news. I made two pairs of socks for Christmas, neither of which I got pictures for, but they were both good. My mom couldn't love her socks more, and that makes me really, really happy. Ken loved his, too, but he doesn't express himself as well, lol.

I'm currently working on these top down short-row heel socks with my first (oh, but of MANY) skein of Socks That Rock, mediumweight which REALLY DO rock, in the Pebble Beach colorway.





This yarn blows Austermann Step RIGHT out of the water, my friends. It is downright bouncy, the stitch definition is totally boss, and the mediumweight is heavy enough to where you can get away with about 8 fewer stitches to the round, which makes the socks go faster. :) I desperately want to get two coordinating colorways and make the Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Gifts, which I do not own. If you search either STR or the Chevron Scarf on Ravelry you'll notice that people have done this and the results are incredible. I just have to get over the fact that I hate knitting scarves...

I'm also working on the Embossed Leaves pattern from Interweave's Favorite Socks, with Trekking XXL. The book I got for Christmas and the yarn I got at the Yankee Swap. I consider myself the luckiest person at that Yankee Swap, because it's such beautiful yarn, thanks to this kick ass stinker.



I don't have a sock model thingy, so to show the pattern I just threw a couple remote controls into it. MacGuyver? Yeah, I'll answer to that.

Here we have the burgundy cabley throw that I'm working on... Well, that I started, at least...



...one of the jumbo cables...



If I ever do actually knit the whole thing it'll be awesome. :)

I also knitted some mittens with an awesome colorway of Austermann Step, and found that I still had enough for a cute little pair of ankle socks! Happy surprise!





I have to say, I know I am in the minority here, but I don't mind it when the stripes don't match up. In fact, I actually kinda like it better. I like it when my feet are treated like individuals.


Spinning News!

After a couple months of not touching my wheel, I finally got the bug again and have been spinning spinning spinning lately. It's so great! I'm still not entirely consistent, but I'm actually noticing improvement in the balance of my yarn with each skein I spin.

Here we have the red and white roving I purchased at the Bazaar Bizarre in December, spun into a nice Candy Cane yarn. Yo yo, chiggety check it:



And, so far my favorite, I spun really tiny singles of a gorgeous dyed Romney that I got at the MA S&W, then spun up some thick and thin Merino top, purchased at Gore place about 10 minutes after I learned what spinning was, then plied them together:







I LOVE this stuff, but I can't figure out what to do with it. I think I'll end up with about 3 skeins of it. Ideas?


In farming news (I have farming news!) I just bought a CSA share from Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm! My $100 will go toward keeping the farm running, I'll go to the sheep shearing festival and in the fall I'll get all kinds of awesome, gorgeous mohair and kid mohair. WEEE-HAAAWWW!!!

And lastly, for the non-fiber-related news. I finally decided to join Weight Watchers and in the past 3 weeks I've lost 5.8 pounds! I'm really happy about that, I'm learning to make better choices, and I'm trying to eat as nutritiously as possible. I've recently become inexplicably obsessed with things like heart disease, silent killer blood clots, diabetes, etc. I don't know, I think it's all the evil gray hairs that are showing up on the top of my head... In addition my back has been getting worse and worse and worse, so my hope is that losing weight and eventually getting into much better shape will REALLY help that out.

Finally, some dude in Winnipeg somehow stole my debit card number and pin and charged over $1000 to my checking account! I've gotten half of the money back, and am one affidavit away from getting the rest back, I've cancelled the card and opened a new checking account. My bank doesn't want to follow up with it, so I'm left with an IP address, an email address and a street address, given to me by the fine people at karmaloop.com, who gave me every bit of information they had when they realized the $628.66 worth of merchandise that was purchased with my card wasn't actually purchased by me.

Soooo, any ideas as to what to do with that information? I'm thinking a big package with a return address that says "karmaloop.com" filled with dog poop.

If I get any kick ass ideas in the comments, I'll happily reward the commenter with some Candy Cane handspun, OR, hand dyed merino sock yarn, commenter's choice. :)