Additions

Holy guacamole.  I haven’t posted since July.  I’m going to blame school.  Developments:

Poor Nart had to go to sleep.  She was so sick, and in September she wasn’t able to keep her balance, or keep food down at all.  She went from 9 pounds to 6.  We made the tough choice and she went to sleep at the end of September.  Poor little Nart.

After more than a month of missing Nart, and missing have a cat around the house, we went to the Northampton SPCA and found an enormous ginger cat we called Fat Tony.  He’s fit right into our house, and knocks Roxy around regularly.  Interests include watching people shower, playing fetch, and showing everyone his junk.

Fat Tony on Nart's heffalump...

If you thought of all the things about Nart that made her Nart, and chose the opposite, that’d be Fat Tony.  He’s enormous (18 pounds). He’s friendly.  He plays.  He likes to be where we are.  He doesn’t take the dog’s crap.  He’s been fitting into our home very well, and Scott has another male in the house finally.

I’ll be spending my weekend working on making my sewing room usable again.  It’s funny how things just get put in there…

Moving

Today is the day. The beautiful and talented Tim has informed me that the site will be down from approximately 12:00 – 6:00 pm EDT. I’m going to extend that down time until tomorrow morning because I’ll be busily building content! Times, they are a-changing!

Robots in Disguise

The big move is in progress!  When it’s done, this whole site will be different.  I’m so excited.  New theme, new pages, new products!

While we were waiting, Scotty and I went to see Transformers 3: Dark Side of the Moon.  Totally badass!  I have some thoughts.

1.  Scotty REALLY likes Transformers.  All of them.  Good, bad, he doesn’t care.  He thinks they’re the coolest things EVER.

2.  I can tell this because we hold hands in the theater, and he squeezes my hands really hard when he gets excited.

3.  I used to be mesmerized by Megan Fox.  Not because I thought she was hot, because I didn’t.  It was because of her toe-thumbs.  I don’t like this new girlfriend of his; her sole purpose in this film was to walk around in tight pants or short skirts.  Not that Megan Fox was any better, I just felt like she was a little bit more a part of the storyline.

4.  The time I spent staring at the toe-thumbs has been replaced by the time I spent looking at the girlfriend’s shoes.  Because she’s a super-hot model, she wears heels a lot.  In fact, Christian Louboutins.  So when Sam rescues her from Patrick Dempsey, she’s still wearing the Louboutins… and so on, through the rest of the action.  Running, jumping, diving, sliding, escaping… all in Louboutins?  NO.  I spent the entire freaking moving looking at her feet- and the incredible disappearing, reappearing heels.  I’d have way more respect for her as an actress if she did her own stunts instead of changing to flats for the hard bits.  If you’re going to wear heels, commit.

5.  When I pointed this out to Scott, his response was, “She’s got feet?”

6.  Highlight for spoiler: To put rumors to rest, neither Bumblebee nor Optimus dies.  I’ll leave it at that, but it’s something I keep hearing over and over and over again.

7.  Seriously, see it in the theater.  Wicked awesome, and worth $7.50 (we saw a matinée).

Pause…

This website is undergoing magical transformations!  I have to call them magical, because I only understand one in three words used in the process.  It involves switching to wordpress.org, and adding different pages, and- most importantly- moving the Auld Lang Designs shop from etsy.com to RIGHT HERE!

I’m crazy excited to be making this move.  It’ll be so much easier to list things, because each item is one-of-a-kind.  Thanks to Tim the Enchanter (not his real name), the new site will be up and running within a few weeks.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to blog in the meantime, but I’ll sure try!  I’ve got a couple of socks to show you, and a new iPad cover, and (probably, by then) an awesome amigurumi for my super-smart cousin James!

I’ll leave you with a question- what is your favorite fiber?  If you were stranded in the airport, and all that was available was ONE kind of yarn, which would you want it to be?

Wordless Wednesday

Knitche, Downers Grove

So I’m in the Chicago area for a convention with my mom.  I love taking trips with Mom, but when it comes to visiting yarn shops I’m on my own.  A tip from my friend Heather led me to visit Knitche in Downers Grove, Illinois, so  I made the trek from Skokie to the West Suburbs to visit.  Apparently, this time of year they’ve got really crummy weather, and this week was no exception.  Power outages and closed roadways meant that a 60-mile round trip took about 5 hours.  When I got to Knitche, it was 3:45… and they were closing in 15 minutes!  It wasn’t exactly how I wanted to conduct my visit, but they couldn’t have been nicer.  This is Emma and Susan.

I asked Susan (right) if they had anything unique or local.  She showed me the entire shop, full of lovely Noro and Rowan and Dream in Color and Madelinetosh.  Susan pointed out to me all the different yarns they carried.  There were walls of yarn, yarn on tables, yarn on baskets, yarn on pegs…I really need to hit the lottery.  There should be a YARN lottery!

These two wonderful ladies stayed late, without even mentioning it or doing those “hurry up and get out” movements retail people sometimes get at closing time.  I didn’t even realize until after I’d left that it was ten past.

I brought home such great stuff.  Knitche is the only US distributor for Vivoli yarns, produced in Italy.  This is going to be something for my stepdad:

Altogether, I brought home a nice little pile of yarn.  Clockwise from top right is Kauni (fingering weight wool from Denmark),  Zealana Kauri (fingering weight blend of merino, silk, and possum- yes, possum), Dream in Color Classy, Be Sweet Bamboo (Bambino Taffy hat kit), and the Vivoli.  I can’t wait to dig into these fantastic fibers.

Because it was so close to closing, I didn’t ask for one of the things that sets Knitche apart- NOMS.  They’ve got coffee, espresso, and yummy baked goods right there.  How awesome is that? Caffeine AND knitting?  Good thing I don’t live here- I’d never sleep.

The town is cute, parking in the parking deck is free on the first floor, and the people at the shop are friendly and kind.  Grab a coffee and a danish and sit and knit at Knitche.

Chicago!

First, I think that musical should be playing somewhere in this city every single day.  I mean, really.  It’s CHICAGO.

Second, I think that entirely too many people live here.  And I think they all want to be going in the exact same direction I’m going at the exact same time.  In fact, it’s SO COOL to be driving on the Edens Expressway that Vice President Biden even did it.  Yesterday, I wanted to visit a yarn shop (which I did, and will be reviewing in my next post).  I left my hotel at around 1:30, and drove around 30 miles.  I spent 30 minutes in the yarn shop, and returned the 30ish miles to my hotel.  That trip took 5 hours.  No, read that again.  It really took 5 hours.  FIVE hours.  I can drive the entire length of New Jersey in that time.  I can drive to Pittsburgh in that time.  I can watch the entire Back to the Future trilogy in that time.  I could knit the Mini a mitten and a half in that time.  Instead, I drove 60 miles and bought yarn.

I have three theories on this phenomenon.  Either a) too many people live in the Chicagoland area, or b) they import people from Indiana to mess up the tourists, or c) Oprah’s studio audience is driving around aimlessly with nothing to do.

The sock begun at Philadelphia airport is no more.  It has ceased to be.  It is an ex-sock.  You’d think after all this time, I would know that 64 stitches on size 2 needles yields a sock I can wear, and that if I switch to size 1 needles I NEED TO USE MORE STITCHES.  Apparently, my brain took a vacation too.  So it’s been frogged, and begun again with a very simple pattern over 80 stitches.  I really love Unisono yarn; the aloe and jojoba make it so nice to work with, especially when you have to work with it twice.

There’s something so satisfying about lines of neat stockinette stitches, all in their rows.  Stockinette makes me so happy.  Know what else makes me happy?  NOT KNITTING WITH DOUBLE POINTS.  I dislike it intensely.  So intensely, in fact, that when I visited the yarn shop I bought two circulars.  Like I needed more needles.