Monday, October 01, 2007

Last Weekend in September

Where did September go? Time does fly when you are having fun! So let me recap on what happened this past weekend - I feel like I need another weekend just to recover from all the excitement!

The excitement really started Saturday afternoon after coming home from my morning training session. A picture is worth a 1000 words:


The beginning


The wing



Pattern - Swan Lake by Melanie Gibbons, aka Pink Lemon Twist
Yarn Called For - 780 yards of lace weight yarn, Zephyr used, black or white
Yarn Used - 1 skein of Skacel Merino Lace in pale pink
Beads - About 300 Swarovski crystal in Antique Rose, bicone, size 3
Needles - Crystal Palace bamboo circular size 2
Gauge - N/A
Knit - June 29, 2007 to September 24, 2007
Blocked - September 29, 2007
Modifications - None

SOOO PUUUUUURTY! The wing and where the cat's paws pattern in the center was hard to knit - it's not difficult, it's just boring! And adding beads just slows down the process. I also didn't use any stitch markers until the wing portion, and I only used one. But all the trouble is worth it at the end! And now I'm gonna send it to its merry way. Maybe I have enough yarn leftover to make another one for myself when I feel like it! Speaking of yarn, I forgot to showcase these awhile back when I received the order, along with quite a few of my fellow SnBers:

Pounds of Zephyr!!

No, they are not all for me!! I am holding for Anphoe and a friend Anya.

After the MS3 dried, David and I went to the Mid-Autumn Festival celebration put out by Aiping Tai Chi & Wu Dang Kung Fu Academy. It had a huge variety of different performances, including students from the academy showcaseing what they learned, special guests from "Changing Face" master to Chinese Acrobatics. Here are some of the pictures I took during the celebration:


Lion dance!


Traditional Chinese folk music


"Changing Face"


Everyone who performed


The Chinese Acrobatics who is balancing THREE eggs on some stick!

Yeah! THREE eggs! He even cracked them to prove that he didn't cheat! I thought that was amazing! The show was definitely worth my money and we will be sure to come back for next year!

Sunday morning I woke up with these on top of me:


Mick and Bruno on the bed waking me up

See my arm? Yeah, Mick likes to cover my face for some reason - it's a good thing he just got groomed and is super fluffy and soft and smelly good :). I let them out and saw the beautiful Sunday sky:


Beautiful September sky

We woke up so early for Sunday, it's not even funny... 6AM!! Yes, you read it right, and for what? See below:


46 tires!!!

A truck full of tires - We had to go get it up in MA, near VT border. It was for David's race car, and they were free, so there we were, up so early to get them. After we got the tires, we drove back down to go here:


Yankee Candle Village

I haven't gone there for awhile now, and I always like going in there, one, to check out all the new scents, and two, to see all the Christmas decorations. Although, I completely forgot to take ANY pictures...

After Yankee Candles, we finally headed to the Big E. (Click if you don't know what a Big E is) The first vendor we went to sells linens. We found these beautiful doily type thing that has autumn leaves on it - perfect for our wedding! So we ended up buying 15 of them for the center pieces. We continued on and went into the State Buildings (Each of the New England State has its own building showcasing what is produced in that state). New Hampshire was the first. I got a Maple Sundae and turned around and found this:


Spinners in New Hampshire Building


Yup! You see that right! And she was wearing her handmade socks! :) Then we moved onto Connecticut. On the way in, we saw this new potato place that wasn't there couple of years ago:


Giant baked potato with butter, cheese and BBQ pull pork. YUM!

Now, what you need to know, is that Baked Potato is Maine's specialty - at least that's when people lined up all the way outside to get a Maine Baked Potato:


The looooong line in Maine Building waiting for baked potatoes!

So this year, we didn't wait at all! AND we got pull pork on top of it! We moved on through all the states and went out to the antique car show:


OOOOOLD car in display

There are actually quite a few cars out there and I wish I had them all... Old cars are just so much prettier than the newer ones. The next major thing we did was to go see the bears:


One of the bears we saw!

This time, there was no mama bear though. I hope mama bear was okay. There were about 6 or 7 bears in there total. They are actually quite cute and they nudged the guy who was IN the trailer with them who fed them to play! Can you imagine? In an enclosed space with 6 live bears? Yeah, me either.

The last place we went to was the barn that house all the live stocks. There was a little place for the fiber:


Fiber? Anyone??


Baaaaaaaah...

I went inside the fiber nook but I just missed it! They were all cleaning up! However, I did find a vendor who is not completely finished on cleaning and found a bunch of patterns. I went home with 3 Fiber Trend patterns for $5!!! Not to shabby if I do say so myself!

While we were there, there was a sheep show going on...


Sheep show

So here is the loot:

The Loot!

The green Marker vest usually runs about 80 bucks, but I got it for half off, along with the hot chili undershirt and long underwear - all for half off! I know it's hard to think of winter right now, but when they are at that price, I know it is a good idea to get them now. The yellow 400 thread count Egyptian Cotton sheets - 20 bucks for the entire set! Great Pyrenees picture frame, key chain, tea cup ornament, and stickers - we NEVER find anything Great Pyrenees related so we had to get them! I put the key chain on my purse and I'm going to print some pictures of the dogs to put it in the frame. The autumn leaves doilies, Florian ratchet-cut pruning tool, a box of fudge, and the stuff from Yankee Candles - Tea and Honey candle, Maple leave cookie cutter and a little maple syrup for my Christmas Swapee :) It's secret, so no showing off her blog right now, in case somehow she finds me. But I am super excited about the swap though :).

We were so exhausted when we got home... My legs and butt still hurt when I woke up on Monday!! We took this right before we went to bed:


Vanilla waiting for us going to bed!

Yeah, my weekend was just a little busy...

ps. Just so you know, there are only 76 people in front of me in Ravelry!!!!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

yeah FO! It looks awesome! Now where'd I put my nearly done project... ;)

Robin said...

What can one say but...WOW!!!

Anonymous said...

The line for the baked potatoes only LOOKED long, actually there was a sign at the end of the line that said "from this point your baked potato is 10 minutes away" It was actually more like 15 but that's still pretty good.
Where did you see bears???? I didn't see any!

Anonymous said...

Did you look in your emailaccount?

Sneaksleep said...

OMG that was an insane post--I think it could be the longest one in the history of knitblogging! I loooove you MS3. Definitely excited about finally starting mine. :-P

Anonymous said...

I would be very happy if you come to swap gift with us!
have a nice day!
Mama from France
http://www.sirpriz.com
Swap gift communauty and friends