last night was “teach jaz to knit” night! so we had a little shindig at the compound.
after an amazing meal, the boys went to traci’s to play poker and the knitters settled into katy’s living room:

there were snacks, there were drinks, there was yarn, there was new-ish knitter progress:

(we sucked molly in a few weeks ago…she made such great progress last night!)

and there were dance moves. zombie dance moves:

we have plans…big plans:

most importantly, the night’s goal was achieved:

jaz learned to knit! hooray!

oh, and tom won one of the rounds of poker, so we blew his winnings on breakfast this morning at the green bean:

i mentioned a while back that i have been doing some knitting for the store. well, here’s another project, completed and on display:

it is called “flow” from Norah Gaughan Collection #2. the texture doesn’t show up all that great in my photos, but you can see it better if you click on that link.

recently, stephanie pearl mcphee (aka “the yarn harlot“) visited the store to do a book signing and give a talk. approximately 1,000 people showed up in our little town, and in the store, to see her:

it was crazy. and fun.

well, that day, she apparently spotted my little “flow,” and went home with the yarn to make it. and it got a mention on her blog! click here and scroll down to number 4, it’s about halfway down the post. it’s so fun to have an indirect mention on such a huge knitting blog.

the store should probably stock up on that yarn, because what the harlot knits, the world knits.

it’s warming up a bit around here and the outdoors are calling.

seen in our front yard recently, a bright shot of purple:

some deep greens:

and some black:

we got a grill on freecycle today! it works great and just needed a little cleaning.

i’m a person who loves winter, but i have to say, even i am excited for spring.

in knitting news, i finally finished all of the seaming on the toy i knit for my knit group’s charity project:

the pieces were each super quick to make, but there was soooo much finishing. being sick and having pink eye didn’t help the sewing get done at all. but after it was all done up, i fell in love! this little dinosaur is so cute and the perfect size to hug. it’s hard to give it up, but i know a little kid in need will love it more than me.

when i got into work at the yarn store last week, i noticed something new hanging among the staff-notes, next to the register:

a nice note from a customer i had helped the week before! how sweet! it’s nice to be able to help people with all of the silly knitting tricks i have stored in my head.

speaking of knitting - here is one of the projects that i completed recently. it was one of the deadline projects i mentioned:

it’s my first store sample! the yarn store puts certain projects on display to encourage customers to buy the patterns and/or yarns, so someone has to make the items. employees can get the yarn and pattern for free and then get store credit as payment for the labor of knitting the project. basically, we work (knit) for free yarn! not too bad. stop by the store and you can see my work perched above the sock yarns.

(the sock is actually long enough to go just over the knee, but the store doesn’t have a leg long enough to display it. oh well.)

my sister and niece came up for a visit this thursday thru sunday! it was fabulous to have them around. we did a lot of hanging around the house and playing with toys. but we also ventured outside of the house to explore the town, see a dog show, go consignment shopping and hear some stories read.

the story and song hour was at the eric carle museum of picture book art, a place i adore. after the books were read, we wandered around the exhibits. landry fell in love with this picture:

and we played with paper in the art room:

where she grabbed a piece of blue paper and carried it around for quite some time.

she was willing to trade the paper for a very hungry caterpillar, which she hung onto for most of the rest of the visit:

she did put it down for a few minutes to play with some yarn, though:

that’s my girl.

a very good question! i’m not quite sure of the answer.

i have heard, loud and clear, from quite a few people, that leaving a waffle-related post up for over two weeks is not enough to keep everyone entertained. (but it’s about waffles! how can you grow tired of waffles?) fair enough.

so, here i am. getting back in the habit of posting on the blog. a quick look through recent photos on my computer makes me wonder just what has been going on in life around here. apparently nothing camera-worthy. while there has been no blogging, there has also been very little picture taking.

i think that part of the problem is that i have yet to figure out how to knit and blog at the same time. unfortunately, both hobbies seem to use both of my hands. and while i can normally commit enough time to blogging and knitting, i have been facing some wacky knitting deadlines, both work-related and personal. i was a bit in over my head in yarn. but those deadlines have passed and i would show you the results, but again…there are no pics. odd.

i promise to try to do better moving forward.