i met a lot of people and put my camera to go use taking photos of 95% of the people that i did meet.

1. amy (stashknitrepeat), 2. jess (yarnmonster), 3. tina (misplacedpom), 4. jess and sarah, 5. anne-marie (annie knits!), 6. casey (ravelry code monkey), 7. casey (ravelry code monkey), 8. M-H and pam, 9. caro (splityarn) and pam (flintknits), 10. ysolda, be nice!!, 11. wannett (aka, nettie, lulu c.), 12. kaitlyn (greatwhitewong), 13. chawne (cauchy09), 14. heather (addknitter), 15. maryse (bagntrash, monsteryarn), 16. photographing bob, 17. danielle (aswiminknits), 18. maritza (sotosofties), 19. karen (choochooknits), 20. mai (saomai, maitai113), 21. kim (yarny old kim), 22. emily (therewillbesnacks), 23. amy (limonene), 24. the split-off, 25. jess and bob, 26. melissa (neoknits), 27. maya (mayarn), steve, and miles, 28. cara (january one) and meli, 29. kay gardiner (mason dixon knitting), 30. elspeth (wry punster) and ann (annMT), 31. adam! (adamknits), 32. gudrun, 33. team rav gives out the prizes, 34. illanna, 35. the ravelry meetup on sunday, 36. 365.291:2009 (#475) – best weekend ever

though the trip up there was fraught with wrong turns and missteps (sorry tina!) we made it in one piece and proceeded to have a weekend full of fun despite the cold and dreary weather. i did buy some yarn though not a lot.

4 skeins of brooks farm four play, 2 skeins of socks that rock lightweight for a shawl, 1 skein of socks that rock mediumweight (i’ve already cast on for a pair of socks for KP!), and 2 small shawl pins from moving mud. i love these things. the glass is much more my style than metal.

did you go to rhinebeck? if so, direct me to your photos! i did meet some people who i had never met before and i’m already blanking on names

so, i’ll try to keep this post rather short since you’ve seen a lot of rhinebeck by this point today. i drove up a spidery contingent (veronique, lisa, jessica, and abby) in my trusty ford taurus rental car. the ride up was fairly non-eventful. i managed to navigate both manhattan and new jersey without a problem, and without even planning on it, we met up with the other car of spiders (carrie, jessica, marie, and virginia) at both a rest stop AND the parking lot. good planning. we even managed to bump into more spiders there: amanda, katie, blogless nancy, iraida, sarah scissorina, and julsey.

i have to say that this saturday was CRAZY with people! the place was crowded and swarming with knitbloggers. i was in a total daze so i’m sorry if i walked right past you and didn’t say hi. a few of the bloggers i remember meeting: carrieoke, anne marie, big geek beth, januaryone cara, cari and cassie (though i see them randomly in NYC every now and again) and mama-E. big thanks goes out to all the people that walked up to me and introduced themselves. you rock!

here are some pictures of animals:

fluffy bunny!

puppy!

this sheep had a lot to say

aren’t they precious!? i just love farm animals. and so do the spiders…

smile jess!

having a great time

i wish i had taken more pictures but i was just too tired to break out my camera at every opportunity and there was a point where some animal fluff flew into my eye and gave me an allergic reaction. it made it hard to actually SEE where i was going! the pregnancy made me especially tired this year but i did really well considering that i drove home and didn’t arrive at my apartment until close to midnight! yikes!

for more rhinebeck pictures, check in to the gallery.

now for the yarn haul. i did pretty good this year. i stuck to my “socks and shawls’ yarn only” mantra. click on the thumbnails to get more info on each in the gallery.

some closer shots of these yarns are also in the gallery.

so, that’s it! we had a good time. i’m still recovering and now there’s more yarn than ever to knit with. still to come: some videos i took of the sheep. i have to figure out how to get them on youtube and then i’ll post them!

i decided to upgrade and actually use my flickr account. i’m only keeping photos there of completed projects, some yarn p0rn, and my favorite non-craft photos (mainly from around town and on vacation.) i hope that this will encourage you all to make me your contact! flickr is such a fun and amazing site that i can’t not participate. the tagging schemes and flickr pools are enough to warant the pro upgrade, but this is what really got me going. i’ll be buying mine next week, i think!

just so you know, though, all photos on this blog and MORE will always be available in my gallery.

have a great weekend!

anyway, it was one heck of a weekend! yesterday, i had to get to a dentist appointment early and then to my last japanese class after work so i didn’t have the energy to update. sorry! i’m a bit overwhelmed by my schedule both at home and at work. i wish that the end was in sight.. but it’s not. i don’t expect things to calm down till mid may and by then i’m sure to be as whacky as the rest of the new yorkers i see around here. that, and my ganglion cysts are back at the base of my right index finger. this time they hurt! i have to take care on how much time i spend typing or using the trackpad on my PB at home. i took some time last night from knitting to ice them but they still hurt this morning. i don’t know what to do. should i even bother going to the doctor? anyone else out there have them?

ok, i know that you want pictures. let’s start things off with last friday at chez osoh.

the eatin’s good

katie and amanda threw a wonderful party at katie’s newly renovated digs on friday night. the wine was flowing, the spiders knitting. i wish i had taken more pictures!

discussion of knitting is good

the highlight of the event, besides katie’s cats climbing all over me in the bathroom, was abby finishing her first vino arm warmer!! huzzah!!

yeah! a finished vino arm warmer!

i was so tired that night because i spent so much time the night before working on a super secret project for kaitlyn. dubbed “project: blankie” by all the spiders, we knit up garter stitch mitered squares with rowan all seasons cotton, seamed them up, and then i sewed a fabric backing on it.

seaming

seaming

pinning

sewing

here i am saying, “this is not your blankie. it’s now mine.”

get your hands off my blankie!

we all went to the point early on saturday morning to throw kaitlyn an impromtu baby shower…

veronique in mid-munch and carrie

where we unveiled the baby blanket in all its glory!

happy sassy!

she looks pleased, no? i’m so glad that project is done! i was dying to blog about it for months. we started this project way back in november (we were even just brainstorming about it in october!) so it was a long time and coming. it also frees up a lot of space in my knitting spot! after the shower, i finally got a chance to go to purl soho and its new fabric companion store. i’m very entranced by both of them and will hopefully make it back there soon.

ok, now, i’m finally knitting my sockapaloooza socks. originally, i was going to do the mock crock pattern from knitpicks but after doing three repeats i really didn’t like the way that it was looking. so i frogged it and started the rib and cable socks from fall 2005 interweave knits. i must say that this sock yarn is a little strange but great at the same time. marie tells me that it will fluff up once it’s washed and i definitely believe her. it certainly started showing its true fluffiness after i frogged the first pattern. the thing is that it’s so springy that it makes the socks look tiny!

sock.. in my hand

here it is, unstretched. it makes me nervous.. but then i put it on my leg or stretch it with my hand and i see that it will fit just fine.

juuuuuust right

it’ll probably block even bigger which is what i’m hoping for. my sock pal’s feet are just a wee bit bigger than my own so i feel relatively confident that these will fit ok. i’m almost done with the cuff and i hope to finish off this sock by the end of the weekend. i’m knitting on these exclusively now because there’s deadline to meet!

wanna see more pictures? project: blankie, OSOH housewarming, and more knitblogger pics in the gallery.

yep, the spiders had another party and this one was a doozy. i don’t think that any of us ever believed that we would be at marie’s house for 9 hours but the majority of us were and damn did we have a good time (but everyone please remind me next time that i’m allergic to cats and it will cause me a great deal of stress to be around them.) in the end, i was able to test out two of my three signature colorways for the bokufish hot studs™ collection. say hello to jack and apollo.

from the bokufish hot studs™ collection

yep, i’ve decided to start up a yarn dyeing business (store to come in late summer/early fall at bokufish.com) because yesterday was SO MUCH FUN! all the spiders (and i mean all of them except for poor virginia who was home sick, we missed you!) showed up at marie’s to do some dyeing including our one non-spider friend, jess.

first, we all stood around and ate food, took in marie’s HUGE apartment, and looked over a large bag of yarn that joy brought to sell. joy is leaving us to move to hawaii (boooo!) so she is trying to unload some of her stash to make the trip a bit easier.

joy sells her yarn

then, after some time spent gabbing, marie took out the color card and we all took a look to decide which colors we were most interested in.

checking out the color card

dye dye dye

i had already spent a great deal of time thinking about my colorways (typical) and had even used my colorschemer studio to help develop the colors into usable palettes which i then printed out and brought along with me.

my colorway cards

i happened to be the first person to dye mainly because i’m vocal enough to have jumped up and down and screamed “me! me! me!” when marie asked who wanted to go first.

having a good time!

then amanda (unknowingly) locked herself in the bathroom. too bad that’s where all of the other yarn was soaking so i went and dyed both my skeins then ran and sprung her from the bathroom just as she was about to climb out the window. those who weren’t dyeing, sat around and watched bad movies while knitting and ate brooklyn blackout cake from my favorite bakery, two little red hens.

abby, sandra, and carrie

all in all, it was good times.. good times. i got a lot of knitting done and was able to spend lots of time with my spider friends. we laughed, we partied, we showed off our love of yarn and colors, and we didn’t leave there until 10:30PM. i was so tired from dyeing and having a prolonged allergy attack that i passed out as soon as i got home. but i have plenty of great pictures to show for it!

see more images in the gallery

We are currently moving our machines to a new network facility that will enable us to update feeds as soon as the publisher tells us there is something new. For feeds that don’t tell us when to check for new articles, we’ll update every hour or less.

this is good news as now i no longer have to write about how bloglines sucks. i can save that rant for the future should they ever suck again (and i wouldn’t put it past them.)

so a week ago, i attended the spiders holiday party! and no doubt if you read my blog then you probably read other spidey blogs so you saw pictures there that you did not see here. that’s due to my poor planning at the end of the evening. when i was gathering my goods together i left my camera on amanda’s coffee table, and there it sat until someone noticed it later and decided to have some fun. well, at least if i’m not there to continue the party, my camera was! before it was having a good time without me i captured a few moments…

ready to pounce on some gifts

kaitlyn says, who do these belong to?

then it all went downhill…

i say, who do these belong to?

hhmmm, not really sure what’s going on here…

anyway, there’s more madness in the gallery.

the conclusion of secret pal 6 is upon us! and though from the looks of the secret pal blog things were dicey this year, that wasn’t so at chez gleek. i got into SP6 late but managed to get a large package off to my secret pal (i won’t reveal her till she gets her last package which should be sometime late this week) and then received a few things from the woman who got me. she sent me some lovely bath products which i’ve already used, some lovely stationary, and fall themed pot holder perfect for hot pots. yesterday, i received my final package from her and it was the motherload!

a very cute hello kitty traveling cosmetics case which could be used for knitting (hehe, almost anything can be used for knitting i’ve found), a hello kitty padded hangar perfect for a winter dress, two skeins of recycled sari silk in kathmandu: original (which i totally wanted!! i think that i might make a mitered square bag with it), three skeins of lion brand landscapes in coral reef (which reminds me of manos so i’ll probably make a my so-called scarf with it), hello kitty magnets, a knitting journal, and picture cards. wow, i’m truly a happy camper. thanks starr!!! i hope that you’ll comment here and leave your blog address so that we can all visit you!

this week will be busy for me. like all other knitbloggers, i’ve taken on some last minute holiday knitting but all the people that i am gifting them to read this blog so that means no pictures! sorry! i’m still working on the jaywalkers but they’ve taken a backseat to holiday knitting for the time being. i’m also in training all this week for work (learning about XML) so i won’t be around much for updates anyway.

p.s. i finally saw harry potter today! talk about cutting out EVERYTHING that wasn’t absolutely necessary to the central plot! it jumped around a lot and lost a lot of the momentum of the story by doing so but i still enjoyed it. voldemort was scary looking and like i pictured him and so were the dragons and much of the other special effects. it’s just too bad that goblet is SO BIG that you have to lose so much in order to get it on the screen. prisoner of azakaban is a most shorter story and therefore didn’t lose a lot of its charm when it made it to the film. in the end, i think that the rest of the books will be better adapted since they’re also shorter and the extraneous plotlines have already been whittled out by this movie.

sorry for the poor image quality as this picture was taken at 2AM after having the spiders over for cocktails and a yarn swap before KP and i leave for tokyo on thursday. the aim for the evening was to get everyone together to drink, knit, and exchange yarn that you no longer want and, by golly, we did just that. unfortunately, i was too busy playing host to take too many pictures so i’ll give you the abbreviated tour of the evening.

i set up a winding station at the back of the couch for those spiders who wanted to spend some quality time with the swift. in a spare moment, i jumped back there and wound up my skein of socks that rock in the jewel of the nile colorway (ain’t it pretty!?) i’m not entirely sure which sock pattern i’m going to make yet. i really want to try the grumperina sock pattern, jaywalker, but it’s a whopping 75 stitches to cast-on and that’s really just too damn big. my mom’s cabled sock were 72 stitches and i thought they were big!

speaking of cabled socks, let me throw this in before continuing on with the party pics.

pattern: brainylady’s basic cabled sock pattern

needles: two US1 addi turbos

yarn: paton’s kroy sock yarn in pink power

these were an easy knit but i don’t recommend them if you’ve never knit socks before. the pattern is quite barren when it comes to the actual foot of the sock. you’re supposed to use whatever heel turn you like and whatever toe decreases you like but if you’ve never knit socks before then you don’t know what you like! so try something else first before you conquer these. the ribbing started to get really boring near the end so i think that the next pair that i make will have to be more challenging.

ok, back to the party. after downing a huge bottle of red wine and making a few pomegranate martinis we dumped out all our yarn and swapped according to birthdays.

i asked katie to lay down in the yarn but she declined. i wish i had a picture of everyone there but, like i said, i was too busy making cocktails and doling out the food! all in all, we had a quick appearance by abby, and marie, sarah, lisa, katie, and veronique all stayed for a late evening of fun. thanks for coming girls!

yarn and cocktails a-go-go gallery