Natalie, sitting at her desk in my dining room (for the four hours a week she has to tolerate me) can tell you that I have not yet found the bad seed, and the house is still a mess, or what I would call a mess, or whatever. Today I’m throwing out half of the stuff on her desk, so that might help. Instead of fretting about the loss of control (and therefore knitting time) that’s going on around here, lets have a bit of a flashback… shall we?

Thing the first: Last week I taught and spoke at StevenBe.  This is a hard shop to describe – a lot of you are going to look at the pictures and think it was over the top – and yeah. It was… but it was over the top in a fun, campy way that reeked of kindness and knitters looking for a good time. 
This is the StevenBe shop:


Please note the boudoir-esqe teaching space. Totally over the top.

This is the man himself – he also, is over the top.


This is his amazing staff (great staff.)


and this is how his staff looks at him half the time. (I love the look on her face, like "Sure Steven, sure.  You lunatic.)

This is how the crowd looked the night of the talk.  There are some amazing knitters in Minneapolis.  (I am not even kidding about that.)


Thanks for coming out to play guys.  It was a blast and a half.

Thing the second:

I finished some great socks.  I love this yarn – Gypsy Girl Creations, Transitions, in Mountain Home.  It wasn’t exactly my colours but I was so charmed by the idea that I bought it anyway. 

I started toe-up, because I wanted to use every inch, and then ended up being pretty long socks.  I had to do a little shaping in the back, actually – to allow for how high up they got.

It was at that point that I thought maybe they were too high, or maybe I should have made them for bigger feet, so they wouldn’t go so high – but I was still helpless to stop.

I like them now. They’re long socks, but they’ll be warm in the winter –

and winter is coming.