Prepare yourself now.

Headed to Sock Summit this weekend? Might as well get used to this idea:

Also, shorter online.

So, no need to inform me of this fact, just lower your expectations.

The yarn? Now that, on the other hand, is prettier in person than it is on your screen.

See you in Booth #808!

so, here's me.

Waiting on hold on two separate phones.

Here's me, staring at what looks like gibberish on my computer screen.

Here's me, icing my back, having wrenched it three days ago lifting 6,000 heavy buckets of yarn and water.

Here's me, having just left the studio at midnight last night.

There's my case of glove arm, which looks like a huge bruise on my arm, but isn't. 

And here's some yarn. Mini skein sets, already waiting patiently for my arrival in Portland tomorrow. Cashmere.

Colorways that can never be repeated. Because I don't use a recipe, I don't write down a recipe, I just make pretty stuff to my heart's content, and then some.

Oh, look. I'm still sitting here on hold.

Here's some more info on what's been keeping chained to the dye pots, seven days a week:

So, here's me: excited, tired, crazed, excited, sleep deprived, tired. Excited. If we're lucky, I'll grab a few more photos of what's in store for y'all this weekend at Sock Summit.

And yeah, still on hold.

I hereby declare myself...

The Official Baby Holder of Three Irish Girls.

It was a tough competition, but I decided that Boy Aaron's facial hair situation was just too precarious, that any moment things could go horribly awry in a Unabomber sort of way.  Besides, he's better with the preschool crowd. He can make giant soap bubbles with his hands, and his spitballs are the stuff of legends. Or nightmares, depending on your perspective.

I do like me some babies. This one, Miss P, belongs to Victoria Rothenberg, the owner of The Yarn Spot. I got to hold her to my heart's content on July 4th, when I was there for a trunk show.

Look at that look on her face. Blissed out, snuggling with her mama.

Also, look at Victoria's sweater. I would have stolen it, but she probably would have revoked my status as Official Baby Holder.

There were other babies at this fun party -- twins Nora and Liam, whom we last saw here.

And then, there are my yarn babies, which I also love holding. And I love seeing them adopted by competent, caring moms and dads like these fine people here.

Initially, I thought July 4th would not have been a popular shopping day. But Victoria assured me it would be, because people usually have the day off, and most festivities don't begin until the afternoon. And she was right.

The Yarn Spot gave away prizes. If you wore red, white, and blue, you were entered into a drawing once. If you wore a red, white, and blue hat, you got entered twice. It was fun to see people's creations -- I wish I'd gotten more pictures of them.  (Love the ensemble!)

Here's a baby I gave birth to four years ago. I've held her.

And another who just turned seven. Held her too.

She's such a sweet ballerina. Just beams the entire time.

And this nine year old blondie who's eating me out of house and home. Probably because he's trying to grow a skeleton that will be 6'8". Takes a lot of calories to go from 22 inches to 80 inches in a few short years.

I try to hold him sometimes and fall over. Which he thinks is funny, so he asks me to do it all the time.

Boys are weird, with their spitballs and their lack of affinity for grooming.

As the self-proclaimed Official Baby Holder of Three Irish Girls, I would love to meet you (and hold your baby) next weekend (July 28-31) at Sock Summit in Portland. I'll be in booth #808 anytime I'm not teaching.

Places I would also love to hold babies:

Loops South in Tulsa, OK on August 13th.

Windy Knitty in Chicago, IL on September 17th.

Yarn Harbor in Duluth, MN on September 24th.

Amazing Threads in Maple Grove, MN on October 15th.

Serendipity Needleworks in Tuscaloosa, AL on October 29th (No, the Crimson Tide are not playing that weekend -- we checked!)

I'll bring yarn, you bring yourself and any babies you can manage!

front porch makeover! also, my dog never listens to me.

It all started more than a year ago, when I found this bench at an estate sale. It was solid oak, sturdy enough, but they were asking way too much money for it.

Especially considering that it was upholstered with teddy bears.

Teddy bear tapestry? I think I'll take a pass. It was the end of the last day of the sale, so I offered them $20, and they accepted. I brought it home and it sat on my sunporch. (Three season porch? A porch enclosed with windows? What are we calling these nowadays?)

Someone thought the teddy bear tapestry was quite comfy.

I said, "Horsedog, get off the bench. You're in the way."

To which she responded, "I'm not listening."

"Rosie."

"Yes?" she said.

"Get off the bench."

"You're mumbling, I didn't understand a word you just said," she replied.

Retrievers will play this game all night. Just like they will bring back a stick 650 times without tiring.

They're very good at focusing. Unfortunately, this one is focused on pretending she can't understand me. Which is a tiny bit problematic.

After we played Get Off the Bench, Horsedog until 3:30 am, I decided to call it a night and came back bright and early the next morning.

Have I ever mentioned how much I admire the handiwork of the people who previously owned my house?

Oh, I haven't? That's probably because I don't admire the handiwork of the people who previously owned my house.

This is the kind of stuff they liked to do.

The porch was painted shortly before we bought the house a year ago.

Apparently, primer was too much work?

At any rate, you can't put latex paint over oil-based paint, expose it to heat and cold, and expect it to do anything other than crack, bubble, and flake.

This is what the sunporch looked like after about two minutes with a wire brush.

Classy.

You can see the years of paint underneath. An aging white. Some kind of green.

And the parts that were not flaking still had this...attractive?...texture.

While the entire sunporch really needs to be stripped of all the...awesomely?...textured paint, I have other plans for this portion of the house, and don't want to labor in the summer heat doing work that will only be undone. What I did want was to be able to enjoy the sunporch as long as it's there, and to be able to offer my guests a seat on something not upholstered with children's toys.

After I scraped the obviously flaking paint, I primed and painted over those areas to prevent future problems, and set to work scrubbing the floors and window ledges, which had been exposed to a year of dirt traipsed in by children and large equinecanines.

So, for a day's work and $150, this is where we are now.

The daybed was a Craigslist find, and came with a trundle. I drove about 40 minutes to pick it up, but for $40, I couldn't pass it up.  I painted it robin's egg blue.

The pictures and picture frame are vintage, things I picked up for a couple of bucks here and there at thrift stores and yard sales. Alone, each print is pretty lackluster. But en masse, they become larger than the sum of their parts.

The only new piece in this grouping is the shadow box in the lower left. I put a skein of yarn in it.

I'd be willing to wager that at least 20 of you also have this IKEA chair. I've had mine for more than ten years, and while it's not really my preferred decorating style, it's darn comfy. The lamp was repurposed from another part of the house where it wasn't being loved the way a lamp should.

I painted the IKEA chair white and added a pillow covered with a vintage pillow case.

Print: Yard sale, $.50. Aqua canning jar? Gift from sister.

This coffee table is a very old chest I bought at an estate sale for $10. It has square nails and rope handles, and while someone did a less than perfect job repairing the lid, I like the weathered, grounding feel that it adds to the space. You don't feel bad putting your feet on it.

My mother in law gave me the tin sign on the left -- she picked it up because it says "Diamond Dyes," and she thought I might like it. Which I do.

The bed linens were mine, bought from Garnet Hill a few years ago.

And here's the bench now. I roughed up the glossy surface with some sandpaper, gave it a coat of spray primer, and then sprayed it a cheerful, sunporchy kind of yellow.

I reupholstered the seat with a piece of remnant fabric I bought at Hancock for $2, which just so happened to match these pillows I had. The pillows are from a pink upholstered chair that we have in our break area at the studio, and I was able to use the mate to the aqua pillowcase here.

The artwork above the bench was a message board I bought at a yard sale for $.50. I painted it a color I mixed up from one of the 9,000 swatches I painted on my dining room walls, and then filled it in with vintage bird prints. The prints came from a book I also got at a yard sale.

The side table and linens were repurposed from other parts of my house.

The plants were 50% off at a garden center, and I was also able to use a gift certificate that my employees gave me for my birthday in May. I'm constantly lamenting my lack of landscaping, so it was a fitting gift, one that I'm enjoying every day now.

Astilbe, double begonias, and columbine.

Ideally, I'd like a more interesting rug. But you can't beat refinding something you didn't even remember you had.

I was out in the garage, sifting around for tools. Half the time, I don't even know what I'm looking for, I'm just looking for something. In this particular instance, I was in the garage looking for the kind of sandpaper that I like. 

I live three blocks from one of those mom-and-pop hardware stores. The kind that you go in and three guys named Steve behind the counter ask what they can find for you.  No, really, there are three guys named Steve. And one of the Steves told me to try this new 3M sandpaper that is much longer lasting than the traditional stuff.

And might I add, mom and dad, that every time I go in there, one of the Steves asks if I would like to put my purchases on your account. The first time they asked me that, I looked around. How did they know who my dad was? Was he standing behind me and I didn't know it? I haven't lived in Duluth for a dozen years, how did he know I was your daughter? And also, there are still hardware stores that let people have standing accounts? What is this, the upper midwest?

Anyway, while I was wandering around the garage, I spotted an area rug leaning up against the wall, still in its protective plastic.  Upon closer examination, I remembered that I bought two of them at a home improvement store on clearance For $39 each for use in the studio. I ended up only using one in my office, and the other has been sitting unnoticed for ten months.

The size was right, the price was right, and I won't care if it gets muddy horsepaws on it.

So that's my one day, $150 makeover.  In fact, I'm writing this from the daybed, which is quite comfy.

What do you think?

i have a problem. alaska, part 5

I have a problem.

I love Alaska.

I can't stop thinking about it.

I want to go back tomorrow.

I know I would never tire of luxuriating in the delicious views.

But that's not even the best part of this tiny corner of the globe.

The best part is the people. Here are some of them, at our dyeing class in Cordova.

Yarn people are by definition some of the nicest people you'd ever have coffee with.

But the yarnies in Alaska? Horse of a different color.

Nice isn't even close.

Have you ever been to a concert and been thanked by the performer for being a great crowd?

Or been a teacher and just totally clicked with a group of students?

Groups have personalities. And this is a very small town in a remote location, so the group is more cohesive than you might find in big cities.

Gracious, is how I would describe them. Genial. Neighborly. Fun loving.

Kind.

Genuine.

I never felt like an outsider here, despite my schmancy, impractical attire.

I like to sleep with a fan on, for the white noise. The cabin I stayed at didn't have one, but five minutes later, someone else in town brought me one of theirs. I don't even know how she knew I needed a fan. But yet, a need was seen and a need was met. That's just a small example, but people here take care of each other.

People here do amazing things like this.

Sit down.

That is a cake, my friends. A big chocolate cake.

I can't even begin to imagine the work that went into that beauty. (Diane, you are a genius.)

More astonishing still is that she made that at home and then brought it a very long way on a very bumpy dirt road to a potluck here:

This calving glacier periodically sounds like a building is about to collapse as chunks break off and fall into the water.

Ice doesn't look like it can heave mighty groans and trigger small explosive devices. But it does.

I was told by more than one person that the distance across this river is one mile, and that the glacier is 11 stories tall.

How can that be true? How? They swear it is.

I'm not using forced perspective or other photography tricks. The river looks in person as it does in my pictures.

The adults chatted and stood near the fire while the children ran and squealed, just as it should be.

Bald eagles flew overhead, the sky still blue at 10:00 pm.

Then someone -- who shall remain nameless -- insisted that I have my picture taken with the amazing cake in front of the glacier that cannot possibly be a mile away.

(OK, fine. It was Dotty. Resistance was futile.)

While the cake was carefully moved into position, I handed off my camera so someone could take a picture.

My memory card held nine pictures of me making this face. I call it Amused and Mildly Embarrassed.

And twenty four shots of this. I call it My Eyes are Closed and You Can't See the Cake.

The Net Loft -- the store I taught at while I was in Cordova -- is a sanctuary.

I have never seen a shop like it. I would like to set up camp here.

I can move in, right, Dotty? The horsedog would be on her best behavior.

Or, let's be honest. I would just hang around until they gave me a job. I'm persistent like that.

The Net Loft has nearly everything I need to lead a happy life. Beautifully scented everything.

Lush displays.

Large quantities of my very own yarn. This is only a portion of it.

A wall of ribbons.

Sparkly jewelry.

Gorgeous beauty products.

And enough knitted inspiration to stop your heart.

This sweater is an entirely original design, knit from our yarn.  Can you even believe it?

The Net Loft almost has as many knitting books as I do. Between the two of us, we're keeping the knitting book publishers afloat.

I love seeing yarn arranged by color. It makes sense to my brain.

This amazing needle case came home with me.

You know what I didn't get any pictures of? The wall of imported chocolate. Think artisan-crafted chocolate covered fudge caramels with Hawaiian Sea Salt. I thought my way through several bags full.

So, my problem is that I liked it here so much that I want to move into The Net Loft.

I liked the people so much that I want to be their best friend.

I liked the cake and chocolate so much that I want to gain 40 pounds.

What can I do about these problems?

Help?