There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

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Here's a new contest: leave me a comment with your favorite color(s) (all the way down at the bottom of this blog entry), and if your name is drawn you'll win a 500 yard skein of handpainted, fingering weight two-ply cashmere yarn in the colors you post in your comment. Be sure to include your email address, or Ravelry name, or some way for me to contact you. Anyone can enter (friends included, seriously ~ no reason why you should be left out just because you know me!). I'll draw a name from the proverbial hat on February 5.

No, you don't have to do anything else to enter (I'm not feeling creative enough to come up with any other requirements ... just wanted to have some fun dyeing yarn for no other reason than Just Because :-D ) .

I had alot of fun with the last contest, which was signing up on my website announcement list. Vi (Not a Shy Violet), who I happen to know and really like, won the skein of laceweight silk, which has been dyed and is almost on its way to her.

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B is for Beach

My highschool girlfriends and I took our annual trip to Stone Harbor, NJ over MLK weekend. This year there were 12 of us. It's amazing to all of us that we have stayed friends for so long, and it's wonderful how we just pick up wherever we've left off, no matter how long it's been. It's even wilder that several of us have known eachother even longer. Two others in our group I've known since we were 5 years old, and several others are the same way. We try to get together several times over the year, but this annual trip has become sacred.

It is always so much fun, and is a highlight of the year for all of us. We hang out, eat, watch silly movies, shop, laugh (lots and lots of that), drink various cocktails (this year it was margaritas and some pomegranate liquer drink thing).

I, of course, brought knitting (this is where I finished the Mountain Colors Throw) and received several requests for knitted items in specifically dyed colors, which I will definitely try to get done asap.

I don't have a photo yet of the group of us, but will be getting some from the photographer / historian of the group and will post that later.

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Remember how lovely my skein of Cashgora-Merino looked, that I was planning to use for the Flower Basket Shawl?

Once again, to my chagrin, my dog has proven his excellent taste in yarn (yes, I thought I had put this skein up high enough. Alas, no.). He's just alot bigger that I give him credit for (115 pounds as of yesterday ... 8 months old as of yesterday). Anyway, here's what I found dropped on the floor behind my chair as I was working on the computer the other day (I really need to pay more attention when he gets very, very quiet, and not assume that he's just sleeping):

#$%*&$%#!!!!! (repeat after me: ilovemydogilovemydogilovemydog)

Once I reskeined it and removed the little bits of yarn he had chewed, I have about 350 yards ~ one big ball, one small ball, numerous little lengths that in a pinch I'll use.

Anyway. I'm not using this particular skein for the Flower Basket anymore. It's going to be for something else ... maybe a scarf.

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In playing on Ravelry today, I came across a group called "Jennifers Unite" (yes, of course I had to join). There was this website posted with the Rules of Jen, which I thought was funny and cute (and at times true ;-D ). Here they are, for your amusement (yeah, go ahead and make fun of me, I know I'm in there):

Lamont's Rules of Jen. Too Funny.

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Off to skein yarn and ship some orders out. Photos of Forest Canopy will be forthcoming, at some point ... it continues, though a bit more slowly these days (too tired at the end of the day to consider knitting lace ... it'll only end up getting unknitted if I do).