The Big Bang Theory-inspired his-and-hers sweater vests! Lieutenant Uhura’s red minidress! Firefly-inspired scarf, socks, hat, and jacket to go with the Jayne Cobb hat that of course you already have somewhere! In the interest of full disclosure, I have not made a Jayne hat yet, but I’ve had a Jayne hat kit in my closet for ages and ages (I think it’s this one), so you know I’ll get around to it. Eventually.

If you don’t understand how much I need a geeky knitting book…well, this is my shower curtain.

Clearly, I need geeky everything.

How can I possibly wait until next year for this book? That’s so far away! So of course I bought a copy of World of Geekcraft: Step-by-Step Instructions for 25 Super-Cool Craft Projects, edited by Susan Beal of Geek Crafts, to tide me over until then.

It truly contains projects to appeal to every geek. My friend Jeannie, a beader and D&D player, would be all over the d20 Deluxe necklace and earrings set made from sparkly many-sided dice. I can totally picture my Buffy-loving, cross stitching friend Yolande translating the Buffy Fuse Bead Portrait pattern from a Perler bead project to a stitching one. I love retro games, Magritte, and John Lohman’s site Sprite Stitch, so I think my favourite project is his Mario Magritte cross stitch pattern (I also own this shirt). Truly, though, I love everything. Star Wars terrariums! Crocheted tribbles! A knitted coffee sleeve with Trivial Pursuit-inspired embroidery!

Okay, that’s enough geeking out for now. Recently I knit baby legwarmers for a friend’s baby, with Bernat Baby Jacquards in Petunia. Although the pink and green parts in the repeats may look like flowers when you knit something wider, like a sweater or a blanket, in tiny skinny little legwarmers, they’re more like modern art-y pink and green diagonal lines. And not in a good way. But the striping is pretty, and although they’re a bit too big for Miranda right now, the size is for 3 to 6 months, and as she’s not three months old yet, she’ll grow into them.

I am now working on a pair in the 12-month size for Izzy. In the larger size, the “flowers” are upgraded from “pink and green diagonal lines” to “large pink and green blobs that might look sort of like flowers if your eyesight is not very good.” I’ve finished the first one, and although it’s only about an inch longer than the 3-6-month size (which is obvious from reading the pattern), it’s a lot bigger around (which should have been obvious to me from reading the pattern, since the biggest part is twelve stitches wider in DK weight yarn). The legwarmers may only fit Izzy if she wears them over her pants, which I think is perfectly fine, because I’m a child of the ’80s and I used to do that myself, as if it were normal and not insane. I am slightly worried, however, that they might only fit her if worn over ski pants, and that is just not okay, no matter what decade it is.

Judy Blume is wearing my sock on her hand. JUDY BLUME IS WEARING MY SOCK ON HER HAND. Excuse me while I go breathe into a paper bag for a while.

Apparently she enjoyed the concept of the travelling, poseable, bloggable sock, because she DREW ME A KITTY FACE. Judy Blume. Doodled a KITTY FACE. For ME.

I am not even jealous that my boyfriend was there and I wasn’t, because if I had been there, I would have been fangirlish about everyone and humiliated myself. When I was nine, I kept a diary in my Judy Blume Memory Book, beginning each entry with the words, “Dear Judy.” So if I ever actually met Judy Blume, I would babble something like, “Wow, I can’t believe this, like, seriously, when I was a kid my family had a myna bird named Uncle Feather because my little brother was totally obsessed with Superfudge, which makes sense, ’cause he was always so much like Fudge, and thanks for teaching me that everyone feels like they don’t fit in and it’s okay that I’m not normal ’cause nobody is normal, oh, and please write Alison’s story someday, because you’ve written Stephanie’s and Rachel’s, and you know it’s got to be a trilogy. Although I’m looking forward to the YA historical fiction you’re working on now, too.”

How would I have humiliated myself in front of Laurie Halse Anderson, this year’s Margaret A. Edwards Award winner, author of the modern YA classic Speak, Twisted, and Wintergirls, and other great books? Well, I’d probably say something like, “Sometimes, when it gets really bad, I sleep with a copy of Speak under my pillow, because I know that at least Melinda understands me even if nobody else does.” Then I would promptly burst into tears, which would at least prevent me from saying anything else embarrassing. Oh, and I know for sure that would happen because I burst into tears just writing that.

The line for Neil Gaiman was too long, so my boyfriend kinneared him.

Well, kinda sorta kinneared him. I’m pretty sure it was not all that surreptitious, since he took seven photos, but he did manage to get Neil and the sock in the same picture without, you know, asking if he could.

I believe I am safe in assuming that I do not have to explain who Neil Gaiman is. He is magical and he can do everything. In addition to his general awesomness, he won the Newbery Medal this year for The Graveyard Book. (By the way, have you seen the Coraline Sweater pattern?)

Here is John Green wearing a Nerdfighters shirt. He is the author of Printz Award winner Looking for Alaska, Printz Honor Book An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. The other day, I said, almost completely seriously, “I want to be John Green when I grow up.” The fly in the ointment is that he’s only three years older than I am. Clearly, if I want to be John Green when I grow up, I should hurry up and finish the second draft of my angsty teen novel (and somehow magically make it not suck anymore).

I may not have literally humiliated myself in front of Holly Black, but back in February, she ran a contest on her LiveJournal, and I did win an autographed ARC of Geektastic: Stories From the Nerd Herd, the fabulous short story collection that she and Cecil Castellucci edited, and I never thanked her for it. The woman who wrote Tithe, Valiant (which was the best book that I read in the year 2006), Ironside, and The Spiderwick Chronicles deserves better than that. I’m sorry, Holly! My parents brought me up better than that! It’s not their fault! I just suck! Thank you for the book, and for your toleration of the sock!

My boyfriend told me that Melina Marchetta seemed intrigued by the travelling sock dealio. Maybe he’s correct, or maybe she’s just incredibly good at Acting Normal and Friendly in Front of the Crazy Sock Man, but either way, it’s cool. The especially cool thing about a Melina Marchetta/Sock photo is that, apart from Judy Blume, she was the only author there whose YA or kids’ books I actually read when I was within the target age range for them. Well, “book” in the singular, in this case, since I first read Looking for Alibrandi when I was thirteen or so, but Saving Francesca wasn’t published until I was twenty-four. (No, I haven’t read Jellicoe Road yet. Yes, I know it won the Printz. Yes, I know I should be beaten for this dereliction of duty. I’ll read it soon, I swear.)

Look, this blog entry is getting hella long, and I am running out of steam. So here is E. Lockhart! She writes books! They are good! One of them is The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, which was a Printz Honor Book this year, and which I did read, despite not having gotten around to Jellicoe Road yet.

Brother/sister team Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm write (Jenni) and draw (Matthew) the kids’ graphic novel series Babymouse. They both do other things, too (two of Jenni’s novels are Newbery Honor Books), but it is Babymouse that I am obsessed with. Babymouse likes books, the colour pink, and eating cupcakes. A girl after my own heart.

Also? My own brother? Would totally never go out in public wearing that outfit. Pity.

I would like to point out that I really do read books for grown-ups sometimes, and I was a Sherman Alexie fan long before the publication of his YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Although I’m not sure that saying “I read books for adults written by a man who is holding a sock over his nose” is the best evidence of my maturity. He is a much better sport than I am, since I don’t know if I’d do that with a stranger’s sock.

These are the guys behind the comic Unshelved. Unless you work in a library or are in library school, you probably don’t read it. But you totally should.

Not everybody who held the sock was human, or even technically alive.

The sock even hung out with the LibraryThing rhino. No, I do not know why LibraryThing has a rhino. It is beyond my ken. Well, except for the fact that everybody would be happier if they had an inflatable rhino. That, I understand.

DID I MENTION THAT JUDY BLUME WORE MY SOCK ON HER HAND? I am totally naming that sock pattern “Margaret.”

Last Saturday, however, was glorious, sunny, and warm, which was serendipitous, since it was World Wide Knit in Public Day, and in Fredericton, we were knitting in public. Outdoors. Specifically, in front of the yarn shop. With considerably less planning than last year. (The lovely event notice I wrote up included the line “Hosted by: We’re sort of developing plans organically on Ravelry.”)

The turnout was quite good, considering how last-minute it was and how many people had other commitments that weekend. I think the most people we had sitting in lawnchairs on the sidewalk and knitting at one time was seven, with others arriving and leaving as their schedules allowed.

I actually have quite a few photos of people KIPping, but since I don’t know how well people I’d never met before would react to me posting pictures of them on the Internet, I’ll stick with a photo of Kathy, Trish, and me.

More people were induced to join Ravelry, more people later found one another on Ravelry, we taught some passers-by about WWKiP Day and were pleasantly surprised to discover that a few passers-by already knew it was WWKiP Day (fellow knitters? people who saw the—ahem!—highly popular WWKiP Day knitting book display at the library?), my awesome boyfriend did my laundry while I spent six hours knitting, a tourist took pictures of us, some guy walking by called us Amish, and a good time was had by all.

There was also some knit graffiti, in the vein of the scarf on the panther statue last year. Sadly, I never got to see that in person.

One of the lampposts on Queen Street now has a lamppost cozy.

It looked great last Saturday, but now it’s all slumped down onto the conical section below the most cylindral part, as it is clearly too big to properly fit on that pole.

One of the dolphins frolicking in Freddy the Nude Dude’s fountain celebrated WWKiP Day by wearing a little scarf around his tail. That only lasted until some point on Monday, when presumably a city employee was ordered to remove it.

My friend Mare just sent me some photos of another Animal Statue With a Scarf, which I’ll include in another post. Mare is a better photographer than I am, although so is everybody.

I’ve been reading about Knitta’s stuff pretty much since they came into existence, but I only recently started reading the Masquerade blog, which I now love. I don’t know why I said “reading,” when it’s almost entirely photographs. And I’m familiar with The Ladies’ Fancywork Society (a crochet street-art crew!) and the awesomeness that is Knitted Landscape and some others, but I’ll have to visit every single link on the Yarn Bombing blogroll to see what nifty things I have been missing out on. How much am I looking forward to this book? Let me count the ways. Oh, and speaking of books, how annoyed am I that the release date for Stitch ‘n Bitch Extreme keeps getting pushed further and further back?

I was working on my first toe-up socks on WWKiP Day. This is how they looked then.

That is also how they look now. They used to have a little bit of foot, too, besides just a toe, but I ripped it out. Then I knit a little bit more foot. Then I ripped it out. Then I knit a little bit more foot. Then I ripped it out.

I don’t want to talk about it right now.

and a white one,

and the word on the street is that they are both very rambunctious (I believe the word “evil” may have been used). Which is to be expected. We kittens are are a rambunctious lot. I have not yet met them, but plan to this summer. Oh, and the kittens are both dudes, so they are my little brothers.

Speaking of which, my mom finally got my (allegedly) human brother to send photos of the Heartbreakingly Cute Baby Kimonos, too. You know, the ones that we finished knitting in December? Although I posted a picture of mine months ago, I hadn’t seen what it looked like once my mom sewed the ribbon onto it. So as well as having guest photos in this post (all of them were taken either by my mom or my brother), I have some guest knitting, too. Hers is the greenish one in front, although it doesn’t look too greenish in this picture.

It’s made from acrylic. I forget what kind of acrylic, but it was nice stuff. I think she got it at Baadeck Yarns. Mine is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. Yeah, I gave a baby item that must be handwashed to the parents of twin babies and a preschooler, because I’m a jerk like that.

I finished knitting Branching Out, but I haven’t blocked it yet, and I won’t get around to doing that until sometime next week. This week I have a virus which has provided me with an extremely sore throat, a headache, and exhaustion, so now I am going to fall into bed with a good murder mystery.

Here’s some of my yarn so far. Notice how it’s extremely horrible near the bottom, but is starting to be thinner and a bit more even at the top? I don’t think it should all be that hairy, though. It’s awfully hairy. I think it needs to start shaving or something.

As for what I have learned, you know how everybody says that predrafting your fibre is important? And you know how when your mother is sometimes really annoying about something or other and says, “I’m not doing this for my health,” and you think, Duh, why would you be? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Well, when people tell you that predrafting your fibre is important, they’re not doing it for their health. It really is important.

I have also learned that just making crap up because you’re too lazy to read about spinning or watch spinning videos is kind of stupid.

Lesson #3: Spinning is hard enough that right now I can’t ever imagine not sucking at it, but it’s fun.

I probably learned some other things, too… but that doesn’t mean I remember them.

The weaving workshop I took on Saturday was also fun, and I’ll post about it another day. So of course I was happy tonight when I discovered that the new issue of Craft magazine is going to focus on all kinds of weaving. Sweet. The Craft blog also led me to Cake Wrecks today. The Cake Wrecks tagline is “When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong,” and it’s the funniest blog I’ve seen in a long time. It’s like the dear, departed You Knit What?? — only with cake!

Remember the third Patons Soy Wool Stripes seed stitch scarf that I knit, back in the winter? Yeah, I barely remember it either. I finished knitting it in December or January, but it was only recently that I forced myself to weave in the ends and send it off to the recipient. Merry Christmas! In June!

The colour is called Natural Green. I know there’s much more orange than green, but I didn’t name it. I keep knitting these scarves and giving them away. I swear I’ll make one for myself someday.

The second Tangled Up in Blue Sock is humming along. I’ve got about an inch of leg to go before I knit the heel flap. I’m going down a needle size for this next inch, because that’s what I did on the first sock to keep it from being baggy at the ankle. It didn’t work at all, but since I did it on the first sock, I want the second one to be as matchy-matchy with it as possible.

In the past few days I have actually been adding some project and stash details on Ravelry. See, even my laziness has its limits! It just takes a long time to find them.

It’s Sean Sheep Byron Bay in Antique Pink. I needed cheap yarn for a decorative strip of random knitting and I bought this yarn purely because it cost $2.20 (okay, I bought it because it cost $2.20 and it looks like a regurgitated ballerina), but I have grown so attached to it that I think I will buy some more and make an actual scarf out of it.

The stomach lining is actually part of the display, but the sock just ducked in there for a minute to put in an appearance. It gets around, it does.

Thus, there has been rather less knitting progress lately than I would have hoped. And no cross stitch progress. Eep.

Continuing with my long-standing tradition of finding the easy part hard and the hard part easy, you would not believe how many times I screwed up knitting the heel flap. This was a very simple heel flap. On wrong-side rows, slip one stitch, then purl across the rest of the row. On right-side rows, s1 k1 all the way across. Really, really, easy. KJ said to me last night, “I do read your blog, although I don’t understand it, because I don’t knit.” KJ, if this is making your eyes glaze over, trust me, it’s ridiculously easy.

Yet I still managed to mess it up about a million times, and there was much tinking and frogging and gnashing of teeth. Then it was on to turning the heel, which apparently some people actually worry about, and I discovered that, as I had suspected, it ain’t no thing. Dude, it’s not hard. At all. Although maybe it’s hard to do right, ’cause my sock heel looks awfully small. Should it be that small? Is the heel on my foot that small? I think not.

I have now picked up stitches for the gussets, ripped ‘em out, and picked ‘em up again, and although I thought I might have done something wrong the first time, they look exactly the same this time. I don’t know if I need to fix anything, nor do I care at this point. I will forge ahead with my sock-knitting, and if I did anything wrong, well, I won’t do the same wrong thing on the second sock. (I can’t be the only person who feels like throwing up in her mouth a little when she says “the second sock.”) I’ve got some more gusset-y things to do now. I could not define the word “gusset” to save my life.

Lately I’ve had some good thrifting finds. About a week ago, I went to Value Village and bought a Return of the Jedi bedsheet and a New Kids on the Block bedsheet for $1.99 each, because they will make awesome linings for bags, or possibly bags all by themselves.

At a charity booksale, I found a great nonbook item. A 1978 Fashion Plates toy, for a dollar.

It only has eleven of the fifteen plates, but I have a complete one from 1987 or so, which I spent about a bazillion happy hours with when I was a kid. It’s at my parents’ house, though, so I bought this one a) to have it here at the apartment and b) due to sheer vintage coolness. I also have one from 1989 that just has faces, and a Crayola Fashion Designer Light Up Tracing Desk from 1992, but they’re both at my parents’ house, as well. I do have the Klutz Paper Fashions kit here, but I’ve never even used it yet, because I just haven’t had the time.

Yesterday I went to a church flea market and got the most adorable dish shaped like a lady bug, for only a quarter. I collect lady bug stuff, so I am thrilled.

This is already so long that I am going to have to wait for another day to detail my latest purchases at Michaels. Hee.

Regarding the Fall 2007 Knitty, I was thinking how nifty the Back to Basics pattern looked before I noticed who designed it, so she can take this as a bizarre sort of compliment. I didn’t read the name, ’cause I’m unobservant like that, and it wasn’t until I had scrolled down to the end of the pattern and thought, “Hey, that’s Deb’s face!” So, yeah. Deb has a new pattern in Knitty.

I am also a very big fan of Call Me Crazy, David’s “Knit Like a Man” column in this issue. Because it’s very brave to admit to having suffered from depression, and latter paragraphs of the column show the importance of doing a tiny bit of something when you don’t feel like doing anything: “I pushed gently but insistently against the limits of my endurance without actually pushing my luck.”

So I’d like to do my part and represent, yo. I have bipolar disorder. I’ve only made extremely vague mentions of it before on this blog. I’d been severely ill frequently, for a long time, and it hasn’t been easy. I have been completely stable for the past nine months, however, after finally finding a medication combination that works for me. Throughout the decade before that, I hadn’t imagined that such a long period of stability would ever be possible for me.

But it is.

With the wonder
and bitterness of someone pardoned
for a crime she did not commit
I come back to marriage and friends,
to pink-fringed hollyhocks; come back
to my desk, books, and chair…

…What hurt me so terribly
all my life until this moment?

~ Jane Kenyon, from “Having it Out with Melancholy”

So last Tuesday morning I got up at 5:30 a.m. in order to make sure I could catch the bus at 6:45 a.m. Due to my unexpected negative bank balance, I had to put the bus ticket on my credit card. I slept during almost all of the bus ride, although once I woke up I knitted maybe two rounds on the Thing on DPNs. (Its actual goal is sockhood, but I feel too ambitious when I say that, so for the time being, I prefer to refer to it as the Thing on DPNs.) I decided the day before the trip that I would like to experiment with double-pointed needles, because I wanted to feel like less of a pussy when surrounded by people who are actually good knitters. (It’s okay to be a kitten, but not a pussy.) I just wanted to mess around with the DPNs before I went to play with the big girls, in the hopes that it would improve my self-esteem, which it sort of did. It is actually easier than I thought it would be to knit a tube on DPNs, just like everyone says it is, but I am terrified of things like toes and heels. (On the sock. Not on my feet. My actual heels and toes don’t scare me.) It could wind up as a very small legwarmer.

I got into Halifax around 1:20 p.m. and did a tiny bit of shopping that afternoon. What I actually had to do was run around to all the stores I wanted to check out (The Loop, Woozles, Little Mysteries, Venus Envy, the Jade W, the Bookmark) to see what books and yarn I might want to buy, and then, once the money my parents deposited in my account actually showed up in there, run around all over downtown again so that I could purchase a few items. This is not in any way a complaint, because I realize that I am very lucky that I got to do any shopping at all.

Then around four-ish, I headed to Your Father’s Mustache to meet up with members of the Halifax knitting group Knitting Out Loud. Some of them I had never met before, and others I had met when I went to KOL a grand total of twice during my last semester of grad school (and Steph I’d met a couple more times than that ’cause she works at a yarn shop… ’nuff said), but I asked the day before if I could get together with them anyway ’cause it seemed way less intimidating than showing up at the Lord Nelson all alone. Anyway, they are fun and welcoming.

I met Deb Barnhill in person, which was considerably more relaxing than when I was sending her frantic transportation-related emails. Deb is the designer of the Knitty pattern Babe, she is very nice, and she knits at the speed of light. This photo is actually from later on, because I was too lazy to take any at Your Father’s Mustache.

Rhonda designed an awesome KOL logo and the girls silkscreened matching T-shirts to wear to the event. They had an extra one, so they gave it to me. Squee! So much squee! And serendipitously, it is robin’s egg blue… I have this little obsession with any turquoise-y colour… Oh, and guys, I’m way sorry I didn’t contribute $3 or so at the time to the silkscreening fund. I know details about that were on the KOL blog, but I didn’t read them beforehand as I didn’t expect I would have anything to do with the T-shirts, and I was just getting back from the bathroom when you were chipping in money at the pub and didn’t know what was going on. They made a shirt for the Harlot as well, a green one, of course. You can see a picture of them presenting the T-shirt in Terra’s post The Fibre Dorks Leave Their Houses.

Lesley has great photos of the evening in her post An Evening with the Yarn Harlot, including one of the infamous battering ram. I did not see the battering ram in person; I think I was still at Your Father’s Mustache not eating my potato skins because I was way too excited to eat.

When the rest of us got to the Lord Nelson, Jennifer, Kelly, and Kelly’s husband were there. Yup, Jennifer had made it after all. Yaay! The waiting to be let into the ballroom was agonizing, but knowing that we were confusing hotel staff and guests helped a little bit.

The KOLers grabbed seats in the first two rows and then posed for group photos. This is yoinked from Lesley ’cause there wasn’t enough time to get pictures taken with everybody’s cameras:

If you look at the embiggened picture (it’s a perfectly cromulent word) on Lesley’s blog, you will also be able to tell that the thing that looks like a hole in the crotch of my jeans is actually my watch clipped onto my belt loop, thankyouverymuch.

In this group photo, my eyes are closed, but I don’t care because I usually have my eyes closed in pictures. I am not what you’d call photogenic. Usually in photos, my eyes are closed and there’s a weird look on my face, but in this one, my eyes are closed and I’m actually smiling, which, coupled with my sitting on the floor cross-legged, makes me look kind of serene and meditative. Ommm. For a who’s who of the faces in the photo, check out Steph’s post Harlot Hangover in Halifax.

When Stephanie Pearl-McPhee took the podium, we learned that the Yarn Harlot in person is just like she is on her blog, only more so: interesting, down-to-earth, and very, very funny. I can’t remember ever hearing more people laugh more times at any other speaker I’ve ever heard. She’s also a lot less grainy and faded in real life than she is in this crap photo I took.

I was working on the Irish Hiking Scarf while she was talking, and at the end it was only four rows longer than it had been at the beginning of her talk, because I kept getting distracted. Mainly ’cause I had to laugh so often. Blah, I suck. We heard quite a lot about CHOKE (Cultural Humiliation of Knitters Everywhere), but fear not. CHOKE has no real chance against us… because we are A CREEPY SUBCULTURE!

Afterward, I of course got my books signed. Yep, I brought all four of Stephanie’s books with me to get signed, plus Ria’s copy of Casts Off, since Ria had to work and couldn’t come herself. No, I couldn’t just bring one. Yep, I’m inconsiderate like that. Hey, I once got Tammy Pierce to sign twenty books for me (and a lot of those were hardcover and I had to bring them in a huge duffel bag).

Although I lived in Nova Scotia for twenty-six years and have lived in New Brunswick for less than one, it seemed likely that someone else would knit Stephanie a Nova Scotia washcloth, since it was going to be a bunch of Nova Scotian knitters in Nova Scotia. So I figured I’d knit her a New Brunswick washcloth. While a person can never have too many Nova Scotia washcloths, variety is also the very spice of life, innit? I’d rather have one NS and one NB washcloth than two NS washcloths. This is one of the very few times in my life that something worked out the way I had planned. Someone else did knit her a Nova Scotia washcloth (blue, this pattern) and I represented with my New Brunswick washcloth in a colour very aptly named “Hot Green.” Despite my usual procrastinating ways, it was all finished a couple of days before my trip, unlike the cloth I knit to go with my friends’ wedding present last month, when I was still weaving in ends minutes before I had to leave for the ceremony.

All my wacky washcloth pictures were in my post before this one. Oh, and despite what it says in this Yarn Harlot post, my name isn’t May. That’s a typo. Anyone who ever actually reads my blog knows what my name is, anyway.

That evening I also finally got to meet Henry, who hadn’t been born yet when I went to those two KOL nights. I’d been looking forward to meeting him for quite a while. He is a much more accomplished sock knitter than I am, despite… oh, I don’t know, his LACK OF EYES. And also LACK OF FINGERS. This is humbling.

Yes, again despite what it says on the Yarn Harlot’s site, that is Henry, not Mr. Happy. Mr. Happy is Steph’s husband. Steph is Henry’s mommy, and the Knitting Out Loud logo is on the back of her shirt, ’cause the incomparable Henry is on the front.

Here’s Jennifer buying a book.

I took a picture of Kelly by herself, too, as well as one of blogless Halifax knitter Jen D. and the Hallowig (don’t ask… but if you must, there’s a picture of it on Terra’s blog), but my camera gave them red devil eyes and I am too lazy to bother Photoshopping their eyes into normalcy, so those photos will just stay on my hard drive and off the blog.

I don’t have any photos of Kelly’s husband, “Moose,” but you can see him on Kelly’s blog, of course, as well as in Jennifer’s post I’ve Been to Halifax to Visit the Harlot.

Kelly and I had to leave right after getting our books signed so we could get back home that night, but Jennifer and the KOLers went to the Victory Arms pub with Stephanie and her friend Tim afterward. There are pictures on various people’s blogs, such as Alison’s. It was of course dark during most of our ride home, but when we stopped to get gas, Kelly used those two minutes in electric light to knit, which seemed to freak Moose out slightly.

In short, it was totally worth getting up at 5:30 a.m. and spending large portions of the day travelling. Totally. I knew it would be.

So now I am back in the regular world, where a friend of mine (also named Stephanie, which makes her the third Stephanie in this post) asked me if the Yarn Harlot is related to the String Jezebel or the Crochet Whore. While I would like to roll my eyes at that… honestly, I think it’s pretty damn funny.

I was in Halifax for a wedding. My boyfriend and I gave the bride and groom a gift certificate from Empire Theatres for a wedding gift, but I wanted them to have something tangible, too, so I also knit them a washcloth and bought some handmade soaps at the museum gift shop to go with it.

Nearly two weeks ago, I finally finished my Live Simply cross stitch, but I want to wait until I wash it and iron it before I take a photo of the finished object. Maybe next week. I started stitching a little Pirates of the Caribbean skull-and-crossed-swords design, but right now my knitting and stitching are on hold for a few days while I’m doing my Harry Potter readthrough. I’m still on Order of the Phoenix, which means I’ll never finish rereading the sixth book before I get my copy of the seventh on Saturday. Whoopsy.

I bought so much stuff in Halifax that I am somewhat embarrassed to take a picture of the new additions to the stash. Here’s a taste of it, though.

Celestial Merino Dream in the Aquarius colourway, being wound into a ball at The Loop.