Road Rage

I finally finished my father's sweater. I will post a pic later. It is large enough that it doesn't really fit on any surface in my apartment. I might have to get someone to model it. I'm pretty pleased with it, though it still needs to be blocked...and I'm hoping that blocking it will work out some of the imperfections in it....like a little bunching around the collar. I'll ask Cate...she is wise about such things.

So, yesterday I went up to NoVA to visit with my friend Gwen and go on a NoVA yarn crawl. Unfortunately, as so often is the case when travelling up there, I got stuck in traffic. The traffic on the way up was bad and slow, but managable. So, even though I left around 8:30 (stopping briefly for breakfast), I didn't get to Gwen's until about 12:30.

I had to be back in Richmond by 6p.m. to pick up Ginnie Lee from Pets at Play, so I knew I had to be back on the road about 3:30 in order to make sure I was back home in time. You do the math! This left only 3 hours for yarn shopping! But first things first, we had to have a delicious brunch of waffles and bacon made my Gwen!
Here's Tia:

Tia is a Husky and German Shepherd mix. Isn't she a good girl. Look how nicely she posed for the camera! Tia is 11 years old and she is a cancer survivor! Yay Tia!!! She's healthy and strong now! And she knows how to pay dead! She got a little bacon for doing that trick!

We took Gwen's new Cooper Mini! It's as cute as Gwen is! It was fun riding around in the Mini!

Our first stop was Knit Happens in Alexandria. They have a v. pretty storefront, as you can see:

And they had a v. bright and cheerful store. There were tons of people in there too! They were having a pretty good sale! And they're having an even bigger one next week! I bet Gwen goes back! I didn't find anything I couldn't live without, though. There were a few pattern books that I really liked, but nothing I found compelling.

Our next stop was Springwater Fiber Workshop. This is a non-profit studio for the fiber arts!! Yay!!

I bought some Misit Alpaca at Springwater Fiber. It is so soft! But I'm not keeping the Misti Alpaca! More on that later!

And that was all we got to do. How rotten. There were at least two other shops on our list, but we didn't have time! I got back on the road around 3:30...but lo and behold....95S suffered paralyzing delays! Poor Gwen...she had to navigate via phone so I could find a way to US 1. But US 1 was a parking lot too! So another friend had to come to the rescue...of not me, but my little furry baby! Susan, superstar that she is, went and picked up Ginnie Lee from daycare before they closed and GL had to spend the night! Because Susan went out of her way and is such a good friend, I'm giving her the Misti Alpaca...because she's going to love it! Susan loves soft yarn, and this is the softest I've ever touched!

Last night I was too tired to blog, but I started on my next project which is the Garter Stitch Edged Cardigan in Knitter's Stash. It calls for Classic Elite Montera, which I just happened to have in my stash! I really like this yarn and am hoping that Stewart might consider carrying it.

More later!