What better way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon than the Chocolate Bar at the Langham Hotel in Boston? I certainly can't think of one...certainly not one more delicious!

Cotton candy dusted with cocoa (served on silver!)

Black Forest Glasses

Look at the "stations"

Made to order chocolate crepes

Chocolate fountain anyone?

Chocolate stuffed panini - mmmm

Really - it was excellent

Fixins for crepes and ice cream

A beautiful spread

Ed loves chocolate covered strawberries.

My favorite on the other hand was the chocolate croissant bread pudding. Oh, it is the stuff dreams are made of! I wish I had some right now. Warm and comforting. There was also chocolate soup. Delicious cakes and puddings. Oh how I want to go back, but not until next year. :(

Well, it's done! I finished it Wednesday night and I'm pretty pleased with it. I stayed up later than usual to block it. Here it is in all it's glory.

I used almost the whole skein. I kept weighing it as I got toward the end to determine if I had enough left to do another repeat. It came out a bit bigger than I thought it would, but I can't say that I'm unhappy with it. I'm actually quite pleased. And since I stretched it out, the blotches of color from being handpainted spread out a bit and hide the pattern less.

And, since I was in the mood to finish things, I polished off the socks I started for Billy in February. A little late for Easter, but they are cute. They are garter rib in Cherry Red Louet Gems Sport. I really like knitting little kid socks in sport weight! They fly!

Finally, I am EXHAUSTED. Want to know why? Approximately 1000 knitters. Just 1 Yarn Harlot.

It was a fantastic event. I generally don't get to talk to the customers, but as I was on post-it duty for part of the morning, I was able to talk to people and listen in on their conversations. There were some really fun people in line. They made my morning fly by! I didn't get my book signed this time. I'm a little sad, but there was work to be done, yarn to be found, and water to put out. I got to meet Stephanie last year though, so it's okay. Considering how tired I was and I'm not on tour, I can't even imagine how exhausted she is! I'm slowly recovering from the tired though and working my way back into knitting...a few rows at a time on a Pea Pod Baby Sweater for Ed's cousin's baby (expected in August).

I think Ed and I are taking a day trip on Saturday, so I'll miss out on some knitting time (unless I can knit in the car, but the sinuses have been acting up, and my in-the-car-knitting-issues are worse then), but it will be nice to get away for a day. It should be pretty fun (and tasty). I'll be sure to fill you in when we get home. Friday I have big plans to exercise (have to counteract the planned eating), relax, lunch with Anna and dinner with friends. It should be fantastic!

So, this weekend I had a plan! I was going to finish the Flower Basket Shawl I'm working on. Well, as usual, my best laid plans...

Skip to last night. I went to bed thinking, I'm going to finish that sucker tomorrow night and I'll have it blocking in time to be tucked in and asleep before 11:00. All was going well...until...

We had a meeting at the Hotel Northampton tonight to make our choices for the reception (eek....it's real!) and I left work and had fantastic plans to sit in my car in the parking lot with the windows open knitting in the sun while waiting for Ed. I go to take the shawl out of my bag, it snags on my purse (I don't even know how) and it gets a HUGE pull. And I mean huge. I'm pretty good at covering up knitting mistakes (if I do say so myself), but this was a good 7-8 inches of yarn just pulled out. I tried stretching it, but quickly decided that wouldn't work. Did I have a lifeline? No. Of course not. I like to knit lace dangerously.

My eyes welled up a bit, but off to unknitting I went (I hate the term tinking). We had our meeting, made some interesting choices for the reception and home we went. I had dinner and unkint some more. Then I turned on Bones and unknit some more...and unknit, and unknit and unknit. In the end, I only had to go back 4 rows, but since I'm towards the end, I'm working with some pretty long rows. I have two rows reknit, so I'm 2 rows behind where I was at about 3 o'clock this afternoon. But, I'm going to be optomistic. I'll get up early, go for a refreshing walk, get ready for work, get there and work, work, work (though I have to be careful, I'm running out of words, must reserve them!) and go home and knit, knit, knit. I will finish the shawl tomorrow.

By the way, I keep weighing the ball, and I am seriously knitting the never-ending ball of yarn. I knit 10 rows and it weighs practically the same! Off to bed.

The more days that go by, the more I appreciate my finished Hemlock Ring Throw. The cat loves it too! I got some of those kids playmats that you can put together like giant puzzle pieces for blocking my larger projects and it's fantastic! The cat thought so too. Every time I checked on it, it was all wrinkled and rolled up in a little ball. Apparently, she was quite taken with rolling around in it. It isn't as big as I thought it was going to be, but I'm pretty happy with it. It's good for a lap blanket, or if I'm scrunched up in the chair, it covers me.

It is knit in Cascade Ecological Wool color 8018. The yarn is surprisingly soft. The bind off didn't take nearly as long as I thought it was going to. It only took a few hours, which was pretty good considering it was over 600 stitches.

I have been up to other things too. I found a free project on beadingdaily.com that I really liked, so I walked myself over to the bead store :) and asked them for some help. I needed a pointing in the right direction. I'm thrilled with the way it came out. It's Swarovski crystals, pearls and seed beads, plus a sterling silver chain. The best part was that it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought. So, now in addition to the yarn bug, I'm fighting a bit of a bead bug!

I gave it to my friend for her birthday. It was a REALLY late birthday present, but I think she liked it.

We also got our engagement pictures taken (but have yet to send them into the newspaper with the announcement). Here are my two favorites. They don't look anything like me! 

Now that's I'm back, I'm pretty excited about finishing my next project....a Flower Basket Shawl (it's a Ravelry link) in Misti Alpaca Lace Hand Dyed. I'm not sure it's the best pattern for the yarn, or any lace for that matter. The color repeats are very short, but when I stretch it out it doesn't look horrible. I hope to have it done tomorrow night or Saturday morning. Then I'll move on to another project. Either finishing something that's been languishing or I'll start on of the new projects I'm excited about. I also have baby stuff to knit (again!) because Ed's cousin is expecting and I'm sure the shower will be here before I know it! I'd rather be prepared this time than last minute.

Things have been rather eventful lately, but there hasn't been as much knitting going on as I would like. Or rather, I should say crafting because I want to crochet, and with the bead store  a very short (and very pleasant the past few days) walk from the office, I've decided I love beads now too.

We went and picked out the bridesmaids dresses and everyone was measured. A few weeks ago we picked out my mom's dress. My cousin's wedding is in two months, so we had her shower last weekend. All of this stuff is making me start to wonder if I'm really that excited about the whole wedding thing. I'm not exactly one who likes to be the center of attention. Though I am excited about the honeymoon. It's been far too long since my last trip to Disney and I'm excited to be staying at a deluxe resort.

Yesterday I met up with a few friends from high school for one of the girl's "bachelorette party." We ate at FitzWilly's and they proceeded on to the bar, but since that's not my scene I went home and knit and went to bed early (I've been really tired lately...I think I'm fighting something, and since I refuse to get sick, I'll just go to bed early!) It was nice to see them. Since I haven't seen them in almost seven years (eek, has it really been that long since I've been out of high school!?), it was fun to catch up!

Anyway, I did finish the Hemlock Ring Throw tonight. It's blocking right now, so I should have a picture in a day or so. I'm not totally thrilled with the way it came out. I wish it was a little bit bigger, and I wish I had more energy to give it a good, thorough blocking, but I blocked it as well as I could. I'm happy it's done. It's soft, and I like the yarn well enough, but I may send it to the office with Ed or something (now that it's not cold anymore).

I do feel a bit like I've got my knitting "mojo" (for lack of a better term) back. It's been a while since I've finished anything, and now that I've reminded myself that I am in fact capable of finishing projects, I feel like knitting a lot more.

I'm still here...just really really tired. I've been trying to get some knitting done, but I haven't been too successful, but I do have big plans to get some stuff done.

We've been really busy and not busy at all at the same time. With wedding planning and house hunting, plus work stuff and just being tired overall, it's been a little rough on the knitting. I'm coming along on the Hemlock Ring Blanket. I hope to finish it soon. I started a Flower Basket Shawl and it's coming along fairly quickly.

I'll have some pictures when I have a bit more time and some natural light.

I recently snapped a bunch of pictures of my stash for Ravelry. I have decided I have WAY too much yarn, but the Anniversary Sale has started and I don't know if I can say no to anything. Also, the next project-a-long on Ready, Set, Knit is Babette and I really want to crochet it. I've been feeling the urge to crochet lately. Though I should probably use that urge to finish the blanket I've been working on for Ed for years now...

Be back soon.

The past few days I've been contemplating stash. The Yarn Harlot recently posted about it and a podcast was recently pondering stash as well. I believe it was Cast On and Brenda Dayne said that she wanted to knit all her stash by 2009 and start over again.

This one really got me thinking. Why on earth do I even have such a large stash. It's not the largest I've heard of. There's some in the closet, some in a basket, in a wicker hamper, under the bed, in my (ahem, large) nightstand, but really it's not that much. Or, perhaps I'm in denial about the size of my stash because it is in so many different places. When I purchased pretty much everything, I had a project in mind for it. There are a few Tent Sale purchases that I made where I decided I had to have it just because it was discontinued and I love the yarn and I don't want to lose out, but really, now that I think about it, I'm not thrilled with the decision. Yes, they are nice yarns, but now I have no clue what I'm going to do with them! Yet, I don't know that I'm really interested in parting with them because they are such nice yarns.

So, do I go with the same goal, and plan to knit my stash down (and gone) in 2009? I don't know that I can. I'm not that speedy of a knitter, and I have a short attention span with projects. Halfway through I want them done, but there's still half a project to go, so I give up and start something new. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I've got stuff that's been hanging around for far too long (this has been addressed before...Tangled Yoke Cardigan, Log Cabin Blanket, Ed's Crochet Blanket...). I feel like if (I mean when, don't I) I can get these projects done, I will feel lighter. I will feel accomplished. I'll have stuff checked off the list (I love checking things of the list).

I guess I'm planning on trying not to buy new yarn and using the yarn I have, but it's really hard, especially considering where I work. I suppose I can try and bribe myself. I could say I'm going to reward myself with an iPhone if I do not buy any yarn between now and...let's say July (with the exception of the Tent Sale), but I know I can't keep that promise to myself, plus I've already got the iPhone riding on another goal. Now, yes I could just buy the darn phone, but what would that teach me. I feel like I need a focus, and right now, it's going to be reaching my goal so I can get a silly phone. (It's better this way....new and updated will be out by the time I reach said goal).
I'll just try as hard as I can to knit what I have and not buy more. I really don't want to have a stash that exceeds my life expectancy. I have no one to leave my yarn. I don't like clutter, and right now, the stash is starting to have a life of it's own...it's closing in on me and I can't breathe.

So with today, I take a deep breath and say no thank you to the latest yarn to come in, or the desire to knit the pattern in the recommended yarn, because I have yarn. I will not let my stash smother me. It is one of the few things I can control right now, and gosh darn it, control it I will!