of bento, lace and fun

This past Friday (okay, I know it's almost been a week, but I'm trying!) I went and saw a harlot. Not just any harlot, but this one.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka the yarn harlot was in the 'hood. I met up with Naomi, Amy,
Ryan and TMK at Third Place Books. She was hilarious! I had met her before (she stopped in at the shop before her talk for the the first book), but I had never heard her speak.

Earlier in the day, Amy and I took a quick break in our days to head over to Bad Woman Knits and Trophy Cupcakes. I didn't get anything at Bad Woman, but I did have a vanilla with chocolate frosting cupcake and bought 2 buttons for my knitting bag. The cupcake was good, but since I don't really each much sugar, it was a bit too sweet for me. I felt like I was on extreme sugar high for the rest of the afternoon!

Do you know Jane Jenni buttons? They had a bunch of these that I hadn't seen before. On my knitting bag I've had happy camper and busy bee for a while. Now added to the collection are black sheep and goof ball.

I've been trying to get another sweater done for this weekend. Saturday will be my father-in-law's memorial service, and I wanted something not so somber to wear. This will be the Tithe sweater (no link available) from the book "Noro Unlimited".
The sweater is fairly unstructured, and didn't even have ribbing at the edges. I changed that to four rows of seed stitch, as I really didn't want the rolled edge look. The sleeves are elbow length, so I really think I'll be able to get it done today, block at work and seam tomorrow. Oh - the yarn is Noro Kureyon, color 188 (scrumptious, no?)

Last weekend I was lucky enough to get to take a workshop with Evelyn Clark. She is such a nice person. We worked on making our own designs using her new book (great stuff!) and also how to chart and design our own lace. She is so gracious at sharing information so that we too can design. I also love that she throws in quirkly sayings like I do, such as "wonky". Naomi also took the workshop, so we carpooled together. Very,very fun weekend. Here is my progress on a shawl using the book:

It's sort of hard to see, (very hard to see?) but it will have three sections of leaves at the top, transition to ripple, then medallion, ripple, and 3 sets of leaves. What's my story? It's leaves, with wind (ripple) and the sun (medallion). Evelyn talked about having a theme or a story to your work, so that it had a flow to it. So, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I'm really looking forward to putting the designing bits into practice, but want to finish this green number first, and probably finish the Mystery Stole also. Oh, I decided that even though I'm a bit hesistant about the wing on the MS3, I'm just going to go for it as written. The finished stoles I've seen on the web are quite pretty.

Why bento in the title? Sara spent the summer commuting to her job and class on campus at the UW. She has long been into everything Japanese, so she made bento lunches most days. I was even the lucky receipient a few times. Here is one of her creations. I especially like where she took two different colored plums, cut a star shape out of each and then swapped colors. So cute!
It's a bit hard to see in the pix, but it's the dark purple moundy thing near the top.I signed up for Ravelry a few months back. Now that it's old hat for most people, I'm almost on! I checked this morning, and there are only 180 people ahead of me. I bet I get on it the day before they are done beta testing. Off to finish my sleeve!

ETA: For any of you that pray, or can just wish good thoughts my way, I'd appreciate it tomorrow. My mom is going in for some vascular surgery (carotid artery) tomorrow morning. Should be fine, but it is considered pretty major surgery with risk of stroke among other things. My brother and I are headed down to wait it out with her fiance at 5:15 tomorrow morning. The procedure starts at 6 am, should last three hours. Thanks, I really appreciate the support.