First let me share with you this photo of a Giant Angora tribble, I mean rabbit, being groomed. They had all sorts of very fluffy rabbits on display at Lambtown. I got to feel one of these guys, and it was incredibly soft, but there was so much hair I couldn't get a solid feel of the body.Yah, we left for Lambtown at 9 AM Saturday, and didn't head home until 5 PM. Luckily we didn't spend all that time buying yarn. I did find some handpainted fingering yarn from Royale Hare, which I'd almost bought at Stitches West when I saw the pretty green and brown colorway named after redwoods. 100 g of that, and 100 g of some undyed worsted yarn, because I wanted to try dyeing something that had a little bit of grey, natural color.
Man, if I were into spinning, I could have really gone to town buying wool and roving and whatever else they call the stuff you use to spin yarn. One booth had packets with different coordinated colors of fiber and sparkley things you could spin in. I think this is a craft to take up once I have bought a house, and have room for a spinning wheel, a stash of wool, and a stash of the yarn that I spin from it.
There was a sheep to shawl competition, a spinning competition, sheep shearing, and sheep dog trials. We went to the sheep dog rink twice, with a few hours in between, so we got to see some amazing sheepdogs who could make the sheep go right through the gates and could easily separate one from the herd, and we saw some sheep dogs who preferred to chase the sheep around for their own amusement rather than obeying their owners' commands.
The "Freedom Fries" booth was back again this year. And I got a gigantic snowcone. Mmm, can't decide which other photos to post, so you can see the rest of them if you follow this link.
So, um, yeah, knitting projects that have been done for a few weeks:
The fetus! Sorry if you think I'm a sick, sick person for making this. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have kids someday, and if I somehow got pregnant today, there's a good chance I wouldn't abort it. But something just seems funny to me about fetuses (feti?) since people get so up in arms about them. I think it illustrates how the concepts of alive/not alive and human/not human are just illusions anyway. My to-do list says this will go in the mail to 
shadsdf on Saturday morning.I knit the body on size 7 needles in bulky acrylic yarn - the pink was Red Heart Baby Clouds, which is a huge pain on such small needles (not stretchy, and very difficult not to split the fiber), and the grey is Lion Brand Homespun, which was much easier. Sewed it up and attached the zipper according to instructions, then ran some red Laines du Nord Maxi and some green-blue Sincere Sheep through the belly and braided it up. Picked up three stitches off of the belly surrounding this braid, using white Laines du Nord Maxi (frogged from the "ornament" that was turning out as an almost full-sized Christmas stocking) and size 8 needles. Knit that into i-cord. Used the Sincere Sheep yarn to make the eyes, with a French knot and a whoops-I-thought-that-was-a French knot.
Here are a couple problems with the pattern that I noticed: I think in row 8, after binding off 5, you should purl 75 instead of 70, to keep it symmetrical. I purled 70, however, and the thing is amorphous enough that I can't see the difference. And after row 13 I had 77 stitches, so in row 14 I purled 39, then started the three needle bind off, purling three together instead of two for the first stitch in order to get an even number.
Socks! Despite losing patience with the cuff and interrupting it with two quicker projects, I did keep going on it until I had used up the yarn. They were 48 stitches around, then once I got to the calf, I added 12 stitches to each sock over the course of 11 rows, then knit a couple more rows before binding off. I basically took the two knit ribs on the back of each leg, expanded them until they each could fission into two more ribs, then expanded the inner ribs of those four.The pattern is toe-up and didn't have any instep increases, which makes them a little weird to put on but they fit okay. Hmm, must research other toe-up patterns, for other times when I want to use all the yarn and want to just design the sock myself for whatever gauge feels nicest.
I got the Knitpicks Options binder case and was a little disappointed with it. I was hoping to have room for my dpns, but it is rather full with six needle tips, two pairs of cables, stitch markers (the only think I can imagine fitting in that zippered pouch. and don't expect to get anything other than a business card into the flap pockets), cable needles, four fixed circulars sizes 1-3 (these do not fit in the vinyl pockets, they're just laying under them, with the cardboard inserts removed from the packaging), and my little Clover tube of darning needles (which is just sort of tucked between the vinyl pages and the zipper). These things took up less space in the Ziploc bag in which they previously resided. On the bright side, though, this is more organized than the Ziploc bag. It also seems very sturdy, so I won't have to worry about my needles dealing or receiving damage in my stash or luggage. And it looks snazzy and has a little metal "KnitPicks" tag, which is cool because I still think their needles are friggin' amazing.
