So Much for the Stash Challenge :-D

Lorna's Laces factory tour and mill end sale. Need I say more?

Prolly not, but I will anyway. Being a member of the Windy City Knitting Guild afforded me the opportunity to attend this event yesterday. I got up at my normal 5 a.m., and did my normal morning stuff, and headed up to Linda, the Chicken Lady's house to go to Lorna's Laces. You can't get in until 10 in the morning - but you have to get there early to get a number, because they only let 20 people in at one time. We were numbers 8 and 9!

We met Jamie and Rachel there (#s 6 and 7!), and with numbers and umbrellas in hand, we headed over to Beans & Bagels (it could be Bagels & Beans . . . one or the other) and had some breakfast and hung out for a couple of hours until it was time to go back over and get in line.

Mad rush for the first 20 people who get to get in first. I got some Helen's Lace, and also some roving, and a skein of the new Green Line yarn. Then I headed back into the main room to look over the Shepherd sock, worsted and sport yarns. It's not quite as bad as it looks, because the bag on the left has mostly roving in it, and that takes up more space :-)

After all the shopping was over, we got to see a demonstration of how the yarn is dyed. It was very interesting to see how it went from the plain base yarn at the top to the "Lakeview" colorway, at the bottom!

By the time we were done there, we were all hungry. We walked down a few blocks to Cafe 28, a Cuban restaurant that was just wonderful!! Yum! I'm reasonably sure that we saw Harold Ramis (or someone who looked a really lot like him) there, enjoying lunch with his family, so that was a fun celebrity siting :-)

Back up to Linda's for a while, but we were both really tired, so I didn't stay long.

This last week was a week of recovery from the work event I participated in last weekend - in addition, I picked this week to give up drinking Diet Pepsi. Now, if you know me at all, you know I am rarely seen without a Diet Pepsi attached to my hand. Giving up pop for me is akin to quitting smoking . . . and it did them both the same way. Cold turkey. Eleventy million years ago when I quit smoking, that's what I did. I quit. Tuesday, I quit drinking pop - actually, I suppose it's more accurate to say that I'm going caffeine-free. One caffeine headache on Wednesday morning, and a general fuzziness for a couple of days, and other than being a little sleepy, that's it. Pretty amazing, actually.

Are you asking yourself why? It's because I finally heard something that actually made sense to me about all that caffeine in my system and how constant jolts of caffeine trigger constant releases of the stress hormone cortisol into one's system. Made sense to me :-)

Today was a ride up to Elk Grove Village to enjoy my Christmas present from my friend, Connie (she's blogless :-) ). She got me a 2-hour lesson with my spinning teacher, PatsyZ. My homework was approved and marks given for my worsted - my woolen still has a ways to go, but since I prefer spinning worsted anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about it. I had a lesson in using my 4-pitch combs, and a refresher on carding. And probably the most exciting, Patsy helped me work with the Iona wool that started this entire spinning adventure. She sorted it out - the non-usable bits are gone, but there is still some good wool there, and I've changed my plan from a pullover to a cardigan.

I'll be getting the fleece this August with Patsy's guidance, probably Corriedale, and hopefully at the Michigan Fiber Festival. It will likely be cleaned, blended and processed in Ohio. I should be spinning my Iona sweater wool in Autumn 2008. I'm pretty excited about this!!