Red-letter weekend

This weekend was yarny heaven. It was a Scrooge McDuck-worthy wallow in yarn. It was bliss.
Of course, I dyed. Picture of that maybe tomorrow or something. Maybe you guys are getting sick of seeing dyeing day after day anyway. But let me tell you, this yarn (and especially the spinning fiber) makes me drool whenever I walk past it. Not that I'm impressed with myself or anything.
I also went to Little Barn for a whole lot of spinning fiber, bought pseudo-wholesale to repackage for the Southern Indiana Fiberarts Festival, which will be my first show as a vendor, and which is this coming weekend.


Although this is not for me, there is still something so satisfying about going out and buying a big pile of spinning fiber and bringing it home! Also I only picked things I liked, so if something doesn't sell, worst case would be spinning it myself, woe is me.
Then, on the very same day, Franklin Habit of Panopticon fame was at Yarn Expressions! It was the last stop on his 1000 Knitters tour and the first on his book tour. I still can't believe we got so lucky!
I was giddy about this until I was getting ready to head over there, when I realized that if I was having my picture taken for this project, it suddenly mattered what I looked like. Crap! I did a low-grade freak-out right up until my turn, when he introduced himself, joked about school picture time, and instantly put me at ease. So much so that I forgot to take the big fat bandaid off my hand, in fact--I guess it will be immortalized too. Feh. But who cares? I had a blast. He is so gracious and charming and all-around awesome, he just about turned me into a fan girl. It never occurred to me that you need to be charming to be a good photographer, and I guess if you're doing grand sweeping vistas it really isn't necessary to put the mountains at ease so they don't look self-conscious in the picture, but for people, it's really important! All those people he's taken pictures of, all looking calm and none looking dorky? That's not just being good with a camera, and it's a really impressive accomplishment if you think about it.
So I bought his book: It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons It is even funnier than I expected. It is truly a delightful little book. And he signed it.


Yep, I'm a total fan girl. Squee!!
After the festivities wound down, we all sat around and knit. So cool. And the hat Helen made went over bigtime. Here he is admiring it and commenting on how well she made it.


And here he is twirling his braids! What a hoot!


As if all that wasn't enough, I bought myself another treat. We're really gilding the lily at this point.


Everybody: ooh, aah. This may be the softest yarn in the history of the world. It's going to be a scarf for my freezing cold office this winter. I'm a wanna-be French girl: instead of wearing ten sweaters and a hat, I just chic it up with a scarf. I have been wearing one that I made on the Knifty Knitter before I learned to crochet or knit. It's a very nice scarf with a lot going for it, but I love the idea of an actual knitted scarf made by me out of this gorgeous luxury fiber. I have to finish Mom's first, though--she actually lives somewhere cold.