Wollmeise Is Mine!!!

I have not mentioned this yet, but I am a huge, dorky yarn stalker. But it finally paid off. I got two skeins of Wollmeise this morning! Now, if you don't know what, or who, Wollmeise is allow me to explain. The Wollmeise is a yarn dyer in Germany, she is just one person and she usually updates her site on Fridays, which is usually very early in the morning here. She makes beautiful yarn (either look around her website or look here, I suggest clicking on any of those pictures and going through the slide show). I heard about her while listening to the Knitters Uncensored podcast, and if you are like me, when you see the pictures of her yarn you will see why I was instantly obsessed with it. The yarn is wildly popular with the people who know about it, and when she does update her site, the yarn is usually gone in less than an hour. Just to prove my dorkiness, the last update was on August 8th, and I set the alarm on my phone for every hour, starting at one in the morning. When I woke up at 3, the yarn was gone, and the site was updated at 2:30. I am so beyond excited. I cannot wait to get the yarn and take pictures of it and pet it. (By the way, if you look at that Flickr group slideshow, keep in mind that each skein averages out to a little over $20, so when you see those huge piles of yarn, try to add up the amount of money people are spending on this yarn.)

Okay, I need to get these out of the way:

This is the treat bag for dog training class. the training is working, by the way, it is so cute to see her start to understand things. Especially stay, which has been really hard for her. But she is really good, she just sits there and stares so intensely at the hand the treats are in and wags her tail the entire time.




Also,

Sorry for the terrible picture, the camera battery was about to die and it did not want to focus. These socks are called Crazy Monkeys. The non-crazy Monkeys (at least you can see what they look like better there) are knit from the cuff down, but the Crazy Monkeys are toe-up. Other than that, they look the same.

That's it for now, except that I would like to say that sushi is really good (and that is in no way a dirty joke about Michael Phelps[see my last post], I promise).

Knitting Takes A Backseat To A Fish

A real, real purdy one. Good grief.
(As if everything else has not been saturated with Michael Phelps pictures, but I can't help it.)

I am finding it difficult to knit and watch men's swimming at the same time. In fact, I can't be expected to knit and watch at the same time. I really don't know how anyone can drag themselves away from the tv. By the way, just for this post, and for research purposes only, I was forced to look through 55 pages of a Michael Phelps image search. Oh the torture.

Edit: Somehow I must have forgotten what I was going to say. While I fully support Speedo wearing in men's swimming, what I don't understand is why the women's volleyball players have to wear little bikinis. Don't get me wrong, they look amazing in their little bikinis, but it seems like a pair of shorts and a tank top would be just as functional. The men volleyball players don't have to wear skimpy little things, but most of the women marathon runners I am watching now are wearing practically nothing. By the way, why would you air a marathon run live?


Another Edit:


How's that?

Just to be completely sure, I also had to go through every page of a Ryan Lochte search. I definitely deserve a gold medal for each picture.

Tested On Animals

Kip approved.















Ah yes, knitted olives. Possibly the most pointless thing I have ever knitted. Their redeeming quality is that it took minutes to make each olive. Great for when you get tired of bigger projects and need a break, though.





This picture is kind of weird, I couldn't get the light to work with me. But, this is what the olives are doing right now. Sitting in a martini glass on a table. Totally pointless.

By the way, I tried to fix the extra header but I don't know how to. When I go into layout and page settings there is no option for deleting page elements. I did edit the header that should not be there, but that changed both headers. Why can't it just be an easy fix?

Also, I made soap. Soap from scratch, with lye and coconut oil. In hindsight, I probably should have done a little more research than I did before jumping right into soapmaking because I don't think I did it right. The research I did do recommended using an immersion blender to mix the soap because that way it only takes about 15 minutes, while if you mix by hand with a whisk it takes at least an hour. Well, I don't have an immersion blender so I mixed with a whisk. My arm got tired after the first hour so I quit. The next morning the soap was thick and perfect so I poured it into my mold (metal baking sheet thing with plastic bag lining). I let it cure for a couple of weeks and took a vegetable peeler to each bar to smooth out the edges, which then made a thin layer of the skin on my hands peel off. Nice, right? I haven't touched the soap since then, which has probably been about three months now. I think there was too much lye and not enough of everything else. From now on I think I will go to Michael's and buy the melt and pour stuff they have. That way I can keep that layer of skin on my hands.

I'm Not Even Busy And I Don't Post For Two Months

What have I been doing? I had no idea it had been so long since I posted. I guess I will get to it then and quit wasting time.

Finally, even though I finished it a long time ago, embarrassed dog pictures:


These are useful for two reasons: the sweater and the toy. Because both of the dogs like to tear up my yarn. More specifically, my wool yarn (they don't seem to care about cotton, acrylic or anything else). I made them toys out of wool that I felted. There was no pattern, I just made it up as I went along. When I finished the sweater and was going to take these pictures

he would not drop the toy. So I went with it and took the pictures anyway.

It has been so long since I finished the sweater I don't really remember if there was anything I wanted to say about it. I really am going to try to get back into the posting habit. I have some knitted olives that I need to put up here, and I have some socks that are very close to being finished, then there is the dog treat bag that I finished today (we have to take our insane dogs to training classes, so treat bags are a must). So that's what has been going on, except for my growing obsession with sock yarn, which I buy whenever I see it with money I don't have.