Fiber Fool

I landed in MN almost 30 minutes early thanks to a hefty tailwind on November 28th. It was definitely an adventure wrestling my suitcase up the 2.5 flights of stairs between me with chronic pain and Chris not being that far post-surgery. But, we did it with team work. Chaos immediately puffed up and made me feel very welcomed, LOL! He calmed and accepted my presence though. May, on the other hand, was quite friendly. She especially liked to watch me sleep (and no doubt plot my demise as all good cats do).

Friday dawned quite cold, but I braved the walk and did a bit of shopping in Uptown. Looking at the forecast for Saturday and the yarn crawl we had planned on, Chris kindly ducked out of work early and met up with me in Uptown and we hit a few shops that afternoon. The first stop was Needlework Unlimited where there were three employees for every shopper. You couldn’t turn around without stepping on an employee. It’s great to find help when you need it, but I felt like I had been pegged as a shop lifter. I know shop lifting is a huge concern for brick and mortar yarn shops, but dang - take my bag and let me shop without someone breathing down my neck! They had a rather large selection of yarns, though no real felting yarn and when asked they tried to pass off some alpaca, which anyone who has felted alpaca knows it felts fine but it isn’t the same as felting with wool and thus is not appropriate to every felting project.

The other stop for Friday afternoon was a newer shop filling the hole left by Creative Fibers closing - The Fiber Studio. It is a cute little shop. Its focus is on mixed media and felting art, with a decent selection of beads and ephemera and found elements for collage work. They had a decent selection of fibers pre-packaged in various weights which was quite nice. There was a large selection of Ashland Bay and a smattering of other fibers, including raw, washed or fully processed wool from local shepherds.

Following the shopping we headed back to Chris’ to prepare for a little knit gathering she had planned so that I could meet a few more of the Twin Cities knitters in person. She made her fabulous brownies and we had brie and nut thins (these things are crack for me I *love* them) and some fabulous olives. Oh, and you can’t forget the great wine too! Jeanne, Guinifer, Jess, and the Procratinatrix came and shared their evening with Chris and I. I finally got to see some socks knit from Lisa Souza yarn and Jess was knitting the most striking green sweater and Jeanne was just going to town cranking out bibs. I also had the pleasure of seeing someone knit one of my patterns in person! I can’t give away the details though as they were being knit for an exchange. I still can’t believe their were six bloggers in a room and not a one of us snapped a picture. I even had my camera out! *sigh* Bad, bad, bloggers! LOL!

As forecasted, we awoke Saturday morning to lots of snow and messy roadways - even the Interstates were not great driving. But Chris kindly schlepped me up to White Bear Lake to meet up with my cousin, Andrea. Conveniently we met at the Sheepy Yarn Shoppe. It was especially good because Andrea got held up slightly, but waiting an extra thirty minutes in a yarn shop is never a bad thing, except perhaps hard on the checkbook, LOL!

There were of course purchases made (and gifties), but I’ll cover all that towards the end of my travelogue. Next up, my stay in Bayport!

Chaos says, “Kindly remove yourself from that butt divet, it isn’t yours!”

Whew, even though it was 12 days it feels like a whirlwind trip back home! I guess that is what happens when you go from February to December without getting back. I had a wonderful time visiting Chris and getting to meet several other knitters I hadn’t gotten to meet in person as well as some ones whose blogs I hadn’t stumbled upon yet. It was fantastic to meet yet another well-mannered and happy little boy when staying with my cousin, Andrea. I got to see many of my aunts and uncles. And, I got to celebrate Christmas all last weekend.

Like anyone who returns from vacation, you need another vacation. I have piles of stuff that need dealing with - preferably before the real Christmas and it has to get done between all the other crazy holiday stuff going on now. I will no doubt be slow to catch up on blogs (using it as a reward for jobs well done I’m sure) and probably slow to give you my travelogue. To keep you entertained while I work on my posts about the trip while spinning and knitting and designing like a mad woman I’m holding a fun holiday contest.

Over the course of the weekend we went to a couple Christmas concerts, visited a local museum house that was decorated for Christmas and had some really good food. We worked hard at getting into the holiday spirit early enough to celebrate on Monday evening. The group of photos above are some I took at one of the concerts we attended. They are a bit blurry due to low lighting and much movement of the performers, but if you are familiar with this group at all they are recognizable. You also have further info you can use hidden here in this post and info available if you’ve been around here for a while and know where “home” is to help you figure it out. Unleash that inner detective and your Googling skills :-)

For every seven comments containing guesses as to this band’s identity I’ll give away a free knitting pattern. At least one pattern will go out to someone who guessed incorrectly. If many get it right, part of the drawing for the patterns will contain only correct guessers.

As usual, if you’ve gotten the details or I knew you were present at said concert you are excluded from the contest. The contest is open through next Wednesday, December 19th.