I don’t know exactly when this happened, but this is a lovely resource on lace knitting - the relics of a symposium that took place earlier this month. I especially like the deconstruction of lace patterns. Enjoy!

Have you gone on over to Eunny Jang’s excellent blog recently? Ms. Jang has topped her own amazing lace tutorial (which topped her amazing steek tutorial) by commencing to write a regular advice column for sticky knitting issues. That’s right, the reigning knit-mistress of many a difficult technical issue will now answer your toughest questions, pretty much daily. How sweet is that people?

Here’s the latest WIP - in Artyarns Silk Rhapsody, which is sooooo appealing:

More to come!

I came back from Baltimore with serious booty, people, booty of the pirate variety (that is, if pirates could knit.) Here’s a sampling of the tastiness I picked up in Maryland:

First, the luscious roving in the bottom of the pic. The natural is Corriedale curls; the brilliant orange is blue-faced Leicester and Cotswold. It’s ridiculous - I can’t spin, and I bought only a tiny amount of each - but I was so drawn to these that I decided I would determinedly figure out how to make a shawl or two with great curly locks as fringe. The grey is some wonderfully lustrous Mountain Shepherdess yarn from Coburn Creek Farm & Pottery in West Virginia. And the blue mohair was a thrift store score at 50 cents a ball! Best of all, in the center, is this extraordinary 100% kid mohair fingering weight from Brooks Farm. I didn’t realize until it was too late that this might be a yarn worth stocking up on. It’s extraordinary stuff, all of it, and much more is available at the shows than is available on their website.

In other yarn acquisitions, I’ve made some nice trades lately - including this gorgeous Koigu:

There’s more of that (in a crazy bright color) that you’ll be seeing when I show off my half completed sock!

And here’s some lovely Noro, which I am going to make into a mitered bag:

Thank goodness for Knitty!

…Baltimore! Yes, fabulous, genteel, skeezy Baltimore, home of Edgar Allen Poe and Divine and the fried soft shell crab sandwich. I spent a wonderful weekend in Charm City with four of my oldest and closest friends. It was a blast - and here’s the evidence of a late-night toast to our arrival by the world’s most fantastic host, LaddieO:

Yes, Maria, Aushra, Laddie and I all make those faces when someone points a camera at us.

Baltimore is indeed Charm City, but its charms are somewhat dilapidated and blowsy - like a somewhat plain but decidedly vivacious floozy. It’s no wonder that this is the home of John Waters. Everywhere we went, it felt as if we were in the center of Polyester - the little row houses, the sense of vague criminality, the cuteness and horror of it all. We stayed in Pigtown, where we encountered both wonderful things (grafitti that declared “Fat Chicks Rock”, lovingly restored townhouses) and, late at night, the sound of semi-automatic gunfire in the darkness. We had only a sampling of what Baltimore has to offer, but what we did catch was great. Nothing quite made our day like catching the Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race - which we were lucky enough to do last Saturday. Sponsored by the amazing American Visionary Art Museum - one of the finest museums I have ever had the pleasure to visit - the race pits amphibious, man-powered vehicles against each other on a course that includes an obstacle course, a water segment in the harbor, and several damn steep hills. Here are a few pics of our own:

After the race, we headed on down to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. All I can say is that it was paradise for yarn freaks and knittyheads. Imagine, if you will, a state fair type environs but devoted entirely to yarn and the beasties it comes from:

It came as a bit of a shock to all of us that such a thing even existed. (I suppose none of us quite knew what to expect when we went.) But Maria caught yarn fever and started knitting over the weekend. One of us! One of us! - ahem. Another convert to my dearest addiction.

It lends a new understanding to my fiber-lust, knowing where the yarn ultimately comes from, being close to the animals and even to bags and bags of fleece (witness Maria, above, encountering roving for the first time.) Here’s Maria and Aushra, taking turns holding a wee baby lamb:

They are so outrageously cute that they make you want to run home and put sheep in the backyard. We wouldn’t have to mow the lawn then, would we now?

The next day, after what seemed like several thousand pounds of food (including remarkably fresh sushi, several ill-fated live crabs, and the most amazing grits with marscapone and bacon at a place named Miss Shirley’s), we headed over to our friend Michelle’s art exhibit at the Garrett family manse. Michelle’s piece was really fantastic - incorporating a set of rubber bulbs, bird call reeds, and gramophone horns into a pair of gorgeous wallpapered duck blinds. Here’s Laddie and Amy enjoying the quack of it all:

Here’s a lovely pic of the bunch of us in front of Michelle’s piece:

Tomorrow: on to the good stuff - yarn porn a g0-g0!