Fresh Supply for the Stash

Woohoo!  We went shopping today!  Hubby, Missyboo, and I decided to take a Sunday drive that was multipurposed.  It got us out of the house and into the sunshine, we tested out my new GPS system from Christmas (pretty cool!), and put in a re-stock for my stash.  Along the way, we found a new site to explore later in the year - Gillette Castle State Park in Connecticut. 

I had seen a posting in one of the online groups I belong to concerning a "bin sale" of yarn at the Connecticut Yarn and Wool Co. in Haddam, CT.  You would be able to pick out all your own yarns to fill the bin for $300.  That made me curious to see what kinds were available.  The "bin" was one of those really large-sized Rubbermaid type bins, and if I heard the man right, you kept the bin also!  The store carried lots and lots of wools and all-natural wool blends to choose from. In almost any variegated color you could imagine.  Mostly from a local farm a couple miles away.  All hand dyed.  Along with some cottons, mohair and a limited amount of bamboos.  But, ooooh, the colors on the bamboos!  I think I'm glad I didn't see the bamboos until after I had made my purchase! (I'm still wiping the drool just thinking about them!)

I didn't buy a "bin"ful since the choices to pick from were limited to discontinued colors, changed dye processes, and returns.  There was very little solid colors to choose from, and not enough hanks of closely matched dyes for a full garment.  I would estimate 99% of the choices were the wools.  I have to be careful on that part since Hubby has a wool allergy.  We don't know if it's to the lanolin and other oils, or to the wool itself.  But I did buy some yarn that was a blend of cotton, silk and lambs wool, and some cottons.  I told him I would make a small swatch for him of the blend to wear for awhile in the waistband of his jeans to see if that combination bothered him.  Fingers are crossed it's the lanolin and oils in "adult" wool!

But I think I did get a pretty decent deal.  I came home with 15 new hanks of cottons and wool blends in an assortment of color, yardage from 200 up to 350/hank.  If you made a minimum purchase of $79, you could fill (read stuff!) a small shopping bag to the brim from the "choice" yarns for free.  So my new stash averaged out to about $10/hank counting in my freebies.  I was happy.  I have enough to make a top for Missyboo, and a sweater for Hubby and me.  

Missyboo was in loooooove!  We had found a real honest-to-gosh castle and she was there to see it!  But it's closed for the season.  My niece is coming to stay with us for a while this summer, so we told Missyboo we'd come back when the castle was open for tours.  Everything was all smiles again.  She was quite excited to "discover" a small picnic area that included a stone fire pit and very small enclosed garden box.  Gillete Castle was home to early 20th century (boy does that seem weird to say!!!) actor William Gillette, who was best known for playing Sherlock Holmes on the stage.  It was completed in 1919, and in his will, he insisted that it not fall to "some blithering saphead who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded."  It became a state park in 1943.  What gorgeous river views!!!!!  We'll be sure to take the camera with us in the summer!

When I first opened my Christmas present to see my hubby had gotten me a GPS system for my car, I wasn't quite sure how to take that.  Was that his "polite" way of telling me to "get lost"?  Did he figure I couldn't find my own way out of the driveway?  Or, were we supposed to get out on the road to "sightsee" more?  (what, with the price of gas these days?!?!?!?) We had never used it until today.  It was pretty cool!  It only gave us directions for one wrong turn the whole trip, and then it immediately took us around the block to get back on track.  Hubby set it up last night so it would be ready to go first thing this morning.  He has the time on the darn thing set wrong.  Now we have to take the battery out and start all over again with the set-up.  Teehee, snicker snicker, and he figured I  would be the one to get lost?!  LOL  I really don't care if the clock reads the right time or not, but I do know it will be plugged in on the way to NH for the conference in July!

All in all, it was a most excellent trip today!  Have a good night.  :-)

"Opening" Day

Today is the day!  To sign up and register for classes to the CGOA Conference in Manchester, NH!  I was all set to remember the date (March 24) and time (10:00am) and get my classes lined up and done within minutes of the "opening bell".  It didn't work that way.  I almost forgot all about it!!!!  Until I received an email from  a friend asking did I get it done, she was done by 10:24am, and told me her list.  When did I read her email?  It was after 4:00pm.  Oh man, oh man!  I'd better hurry and get mine done to make sure I could get the classes I wanted, when I wanted them!!!  Whew!  It's now official, I'm registered to go!  Hurray!  At least I think I have the all the classes I want, when I want them.  I didn't receive anything that said "Sorry, class is full", or "Better luck next time".  Yet.  lol  The only problem I had with the whole process was having to renew my CGOA membership to have the membership prices show up on the "invoice".  I hope I'm now extended in CGOA until 2010!  I'm so excited!  Just can't hide it!  (sorry, can't carry a tune in or out of the shower)  I'm going to my first-ever conference!  Yay!!!

On another note, I've had a lot of interested expressed in the hats I was making for my local CGOA chapter's chemo hat drive.  I usually take the projects to work with me, and a lot of people taking a look at them have expressed their interest in buying some of the designs already made up.  I gave some of them the address for this site to take a look at some of the pictures I had of other things, and they've all come back telling me I should start selling thru the site.  I had never thought about it before, but now I'm intrigued.  So for those of you reading this and that already do this kind of thing, please send me an email telling me what you think about your experiences doing it. Just click on the "Contact or Email Me" link in my Navigation side bar.  I'd really like to hear your thoughts and ideas on this subject, both the good and the bad.  Thanks in advance!

Have a good night.  I need to go on another egg hunt to find the missing two Easter eggs from our indoor egg hunt last night.  I'm hoping I find them before the smell finds me!  lol

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Countess Nancy the Ambidexterous of Peevish St Victor Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Pretty cool, eh?! Now anyone can have a title! Go for it! Thanks, Priscilla!

Time is Flying!!

Oh my!  I just realized it's been almost two weeks since my last post!  Eesh!  Where's the time going to?  I went to my Sunday-go-to-Guild-meeting this past weekend.  That was the fewest people I've ever seen there since I started!  I thought for sure I forgot to set the clock back!  We had a good time anyway.  Sort of a SnB type meeting.  I turned in 12 more chemo hats, so I think I did fairly well for the start of the year on my charity projects.  That 12 puts me up to 25 for the year so far.  I have a few preemie blankets done also, but not the hat and booties to go with them.  Yet!  They should be ready for next month's meeting.

Priscilla, my sock-knitting teacher wasn't able to make it for this month's meeting, so my socks will have to wait a while longer before they learn to become a "well-heeled" pair.  (pun was intended!  teehee)  I'll see if I can get a picture of them on here.  If I do, don't laugh!  The pattern says to stop about 2" before the end of the heel.  So I did.  I think.  It's kinda hard to tell since I still have the knitting cables running thru them, and every time I bent over to measure, the "darn" things (sorry!) {G} kept heading for my toes!  And if it wasn't that, the looped ends kept rolling over on me!  I think you need 2 pair of hands for knitting and measuring these kind of things!  lol  I used some Lion Brand Magic Stripes sock yarn that I found in my stash, and wouldn't you know it?  I was at AC Moore's the other day, and they don't even carry it anymore!!!  ( how do you show a raspberry in computereeze?  :-p= ?  ) It's pretty neat watching the stripes show up without my planning it!

We had some pretty bad weather here over the weekend.  Especially on Saturday with LOTS of rain and high winds.  By nightfall, the rains had stopped, but the wind hadn't.  Of course, Hubby, Missyboo and I had to go out in the mess.  (whatcha-gonna-do shrug)  When we got home, we found some branches in the driveway really really close to my car.  After taking a quick look around it, the car seemed ok.  The next morning I went out to get my crochet bag from the car.  When I shut the car door, I heard this tinkling kind of sound.  I thought to myself, that's an odd noise for tree bark to make falling down off the roof.  I turned around to look, and it wasn't tree bark at all.  It was my side window.  The vacuum created in the car by shutting the door popped the center of the window right out!  Looked like someone was inside and used their foot sideways to kick out the glass.  So the glass man finally got here today to fix the hole.  It was supposed to be done yesterday, but for whatever reason, they thought I had clear glass instead of tinted.  So I had to wait another day for them to get a tinted window.  And believe you me!  I looked real hard before I sat in the car afterwards to make sure all the glass pieces were out, and I wasn't going to sit in any bird or bat do!  lol

Only one more week to go before registration time for classes at the CGOA conference in NH.  WooHoo!  I have mine planned, or should I say plotted, out already.  Now to see if I can make that happen!  {VBG}  I'll bet a lot of other people are waiting for the same thing!  I have to hurry up and get my projects started that I want to take with me!  Eeek!

Oh, and before I forget, at Sunday's meeting I was telling one of the women about this new jacket designed by Tammy Hildebrand for Caron yarns.  What a beauty!!!!  Lots of rich texture, and a gorgeous plum color!  Yummy.  Check it out here.  Let me know what you think of it!

Have a good night.  :)