Long Weekend

So, as you may know, it's Labor Day weekend. Which, since I work for some pretty cool schools, means I get 2 days off. Which means I get a 4 day weekend, plus I don't really have much to do on Wednesdays, so I've got lots of time this weekend. Which does not necessarily equate to getting lots of stuff done. Well, not stuff that I wanted to get done, anyway.

See, Labor Day weekend means 2 things for me: Mariah's birthday, and the Colorado Balloon Classic.

Friday was technically Mariah's birthday, but she had things to do, so we celebrated Saturday night. I gave her some stuff for learning to knit, since she said she wanted to learn, and her boyfriend is out of town for the next 9 days. Seemed pretty convenient to me. Unfortunately, we ran out of time on Saturday night for knitting instruction, so we had to postpone it. She'll get there, though. And then I will have someone else to talk about knitting with! Mwahahaha.

The Colorado Balloon Classic is a hot-air balloon meet up that happens every Labor Day less than a mile from my house. The balloonists show up really early in the morning, decide whether the weather conditions will allow them to inflate their balloons and actually take off, and then either lots of people show up to watch or lots of people show up and get disappointed. This year, since I was running low on sleep, I did neither. However, Sunday morning, my father woke me up twice because he and my mother both went down to see the balloons take off. The second time he woke me up, it was via text message saying "The balloons are headed north." So I dragged my sorry self out of bed to see them float almost directly over my house.

Later on Sunday, my friend Jessica (who lives 2 blocks from the park where the balloons set up and take off), hosted a barbeque so that we could all get together and eat, and then walk to the park to see the balloon "glow." We didn't end up walking down because of various circumstances involving a late arrival to the party, and the fact that there weren't many balloons set up for the glow. Basically, the balloons get inflated and lots of people walk around in the dark, interspersed with some obnoxious person counting to 3 and all the balloonists lighting up their balloons with flame. Anyway, we didn't go down. But I didn't have any knitting time either. Know what I did have?

A chocolate fountain. I ordered it for Shelby's bridal shower, and it came in the mail on Saturday. It seemed like a good idea to give it a trial before I actually took it to the shower and something catastrophic happened. So I took it to Jessica's barbeque. It was a big hit! Especially with her younger siblings. And I learned some valuable things. Like the fact that I need more chocolate than the little booklet says. And I should place some kind of placemat underneath the machine to catch drips. And I should use not milk chocolate chips, because they're a little too sweet. Not that it didn't taste awesome.

I have gotten some knitting done this weekend, I am proud to say. I started a hat for Robert, who requested one and seems to be the sort of guy to appreciate handknits, even if he does have rather dull taste.

He didn't want anything too ornate in terms of the pattern, and he wanted dark colors. Or actually, just one color. I chose to go with stripes so I don't actually die of boredom. Anyway, it's shaping up nicely. I haven't spent that much time knitting on it, and I've already got a fair amount done. Still quite a bit to go, but it makes good knitting for when I can't pay attention.

I also picked up the fronts for the Runcorn again. It's been comparatively chilly here lately, and I'm longing for a nice sweater. I know I said last week that I was going to have the fronts done by Monday, but I lied. Because I messed up the decreases and decided that I'd work on something simpler for a while before I tried again.

I finished the first repeat for the pattern today. Only 2 more to go! Huffah. And sleeves. And the ribbed edging and buttonholes. Yeah, so maybe not all that much progress. But any progress is better than being left to rot in the bag I've allotted to it for an indeterminate amount of time.








When I started working the fronts two at a time, I thought it was going to be a great idea. I'd get it all done in one go, they'd be the same length, the shaping would be mirrored, I wouldn't have to redo basically the same thing. I just forgot one thing. The ends. The stripes in the pattern yield a lot of little ends that have to be woven in. It was bad enough with the back of the sweater. Weaving in two sets of ends at the end of each repeat is not such a good idea. Especially since I despise weaving in ends. Guess I'll have to get over that...






I've also picked up some neglected spinning:

I didn't spin the two little skeins all today, or even this weekend, of course. Drop spindling is a lot slower than wheel spinning. And I've been kind of fighting with the fiber. It's BFL from Storied Yarns in the Prim colorway. The lady who does the dying likes to take her colorways from books that she likes, hence her shop name. Prim is a character in the Hunger Games. I liked the colors, the character, and I'd tried some BFL from this shop last year and thought it was going to be perfect. Unfortunately, something is different this time around. It might be me, it might be the fiber. Either way, it's not been as perfect as I'd like it to be and the spinning has been a bit thick and thin. At least it looks pretty, right?