Another post?????

In a totally out of character, at least lately, move I have more to share with you today!

Firstly, for any of you hit by that mid-western storm yesterday, I hope you have power and no downed trees to deal with.  We were at the zoo when the storm descended, and literally got trapped in Sting Ray Bay.  As it turned out, it wasn't such a bad place to get trapped as they had these big rolling doors that blocked most of the wind and rain from blowing through the exhibit, and to make up for not letting us out we got to feed the sting rays for free.  Kids were quite impressed with that, although I was reminded of a segment from a book I read a while ago as one of the creatures never came up for food...I wondered if in fact it was a cleverly designed robot.  Once the winds and rain finally let up and we were able to leave the exhibit we wound our way home past downed trees and over various debris that was left in the road, with me worrying the whole time what our yard would look like.  Luckily it wasn't too bad and clean up was easily accomplished.

A lazy Saturday following the storm was then interrupted by a knock at the door.

I love it when the mailman has packages for me!

Those fabulous L's can only mean one thing!  This package is from my friend Lara over at Lara's Creations.  If you haven't had a chance to drool over some of her wonderful hand-dyed yarns run over there and take a peek.  An accomplished knitter herself, who has knit along with me on several group projects, Lara knows what to look for in a good base yarn and then adds just a little magic, along with a lot of hard work to create some colorways like you have never seen.  I played with a green morsel a little bit ago and loved it!

Knowing how much I love what she is able to do with some dye, a lot of time and talent and those great base yarns, I decided that it was time for a treat for me.  But, I wanted it to be a surprise, even though I was buying it for myself. (I know, I am a little crazy!) So I asked Lara if she could put together a couple of things, and then she threw in a few more for me to play with! Like you, I didn't know what the box held until I opened it.

Oh, you wanted to see what was inside?

The one on the left is called Sangria and is the perfect lead in to the other thing I wanted to tell you about!

It is that time of year again, when lace knitters gather to see what Andrea of Bad Cat Designs has in store for our Summer Project.  Today is the first day that registrations are open and I think that it is going to be the perfect summer knitting!  Check out the intro here and the sign ups here!  I already signed up, won't you join me???

In the meantime, Thank you Lara for a wonderful surprise package!

It gets a thumbs up from me and the (not) peanut gallery.

~M

No Knitting, but some real life stuff!

Disclaimer : Most of the pictures are courtesy of TDQ, a couple were blatently stolen from my employers intra-web as I have been out of town for most of the week.

This is a picture heavy post, purely because I haven't got any knitting to share, although I should have had time to get some done sitting on a plane flying away from summer weather into a tropical storm.

Yes, a tropical storm!  I have been in Orlando, Florida for several days and it rained all but the last one!

Before I left we did some playing in the park.

Yes, that is me hogging the swings so that the little kids couldn't play!  No, seriously there were not any kids that wanted to play on the swings to be seen, so I jumped on the opportunity to play on them myself.

We also did some gardening.

And then I did my travelling.  (This is the stolen picture, I haven't figured out how to get the ones in my phone onto my computer yet, but this was my final view of the very fancy hotel I was in)

Even with the rain I had a fabulous time in Florida.  Heard some very encouraging speakers, ate way too much wonderful food (they cheated though, making the desserts look so small that you had to, seriously had to, try each one and before you knew it three or four different ones had gone in your mouth at each lunch, snack time or dinner!) partied with executives and peers at Hard Rock Live!

It all culminated in getting this :

Out of 55,000 employees, of which approximately half were eligable to participate in Circle of Excellence, 500 people were selected to be given the award.  Both my banker and I got to go.

I guess this makes me part of the 1% we all love to hate!  :)

I leave you with my favorite picture that TDQ took at the park......just looking at it reminds me how relaxed I felt that day, before all the travelling, and how relaxed I felt on my free afternoon sitting by a lake in Orlando.

Sometimes you just have to slow down and enjoy the moment.....actually I think one of our keynote speakers said that while at Circle of Excellence.  Enjoy the moment!

Blue, blues, cool and snazzy

Alright, I admit that lately I have not been good at this whole blogging thing I had going!  The mundane world keeps getting in my way, but I have been busy working on things, really I have.

Um, let me think.......

Well, now that you mention it maybe there is nothing new on the knitting front to show you!

But there are other things going on at Chez YarnDiet that I can share, like this.....

Hot out of the mailbox, and I mean hot it was a nearly 90 degree day and this bag sat in my mailbox all day just steaming to itself!  One of those lovely blue bags that only ever contain wonderful things.

What did this one contain, you might ask?

Well, there is a little bit of this....Merino Lace weight yarn in cool blues.

And

A little bit of that, which is Cash/Cotton DK.

All nicely wound off into 50 gram skeins and called scraps!

Scraps?!?!?!  Other companies call those balls of yarn!

If you look really closely you will see they are labled as Scrap Challenge Sets and that is what they are.  From opening flame to closing ceremonies this is what I will be working with through the Olympics.

Now to pick, or create, designs.

The Spring Contest with ColourMart Lovers on Ravelry was good to me.  Look what I won!

If you want some of your own, go here!  They are fabulously snazzy and cute, and it is all I can do to keep TDQ's stealing little mitts off them!  I wonder if any of them will be on my scrap set challenge projects?

~M

I got a little busy

Quoting another blog that I read, I am not going to whine about how busy I have been lately. A lot of it has been good busy, some of it has been spinning my wheels busy, and a teeny bit was just frustrating add nerves to the shopping list because someone got on my last one and shredded it busy.

But, I did finally finish up that baby blanket...just needs a baby now!

No pattern, another off the top of my head kind of things that got worked on waiting in dentist/doctor offices, for lab work, conference call starts, lunch breaks...you know the drill.

This one used 100% Baby Merino 3/15nm yarn from Colourmart paired with some size 6(US) needles, Signature Arts Circulars if you are interested.  I called her Simple Slumbers as she was a pretty easy knit, center start square and if you look REALLY closely you can see that there are 8 nupp hearts, some garter stitch, feather and fan and a beginning of knit two together, knit the same two stitches together repeat until you get tired of it!

I tried taking some more "artsy" pictures, none turned out the way I wanted, for inspiration you should look at this post, now that is a fabulous picture!

I am still trying to decide what should be next on my needles, I do have some "oh my this yarn is going to make my eyes bleed but TDQ loves it" socks on the go, but they are completely mindless knitting and not what I want.  Does anyone have any ideas for me?

~M