I met Doris Chan!

Oh, today was so much darn fun. I went to Loop, one of my favorite stores of all time, and I got to meet crochet guru Doris Chan! Look! There we are together!

She is a totally cool lady, and I bought her latest book, Everyday Crochet, and she autographed it for me. I also met and talked to three really neat ladies, Yvette, Kate, and Mary, and I saw Craig, the owner of Loop, and Elizabeth, one of his esteemed employees who also happens to dye some gorgeous yarn. Doris showed me how to do foundation single crochet, which is when you create your foundation chain and your first row of single crochet at the same time. It is efficient, easy, and it pretty much ensures that your inital chain isn't too tight. I also discovered (or rather, Doris discovered), that I wrap my yarn differently than everyone else. Who knew?

Here's Doris's magic hands showing Craig how to do something (I think it had to do with joining motifs). You can see Craig's Babette there on the table, and yes, it is made out of Kersti. These pictures don't do the colors justice, it is gorgeous.

This here would be Koigu. Lots and lots of Koigu. Be still, my beating heart.

I love Loop, and I love the fiber arts community in our area, and I love Philadelphia, unlike some people I know (Sahfi!).

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After my fabulous afternoon at Loop, my friend Sahfi met me there and we went and had lunch, then went to a French meet-up. I spent some time in Paris about 10 years ago, and Sahfi lived in Montreal for several years, and we are trying to improve our rusty French. I think it would really help if we had our French meet-up in a bar. My French improves drastically when I'm drunk (at least I think it does). The group is organized by this nice guy named Pascal. He is Quebecois, and I'll be damned if I can understand half of what he says. But he is patient with all of us, and it's a great opportunity to get together with like-minded people and just have a lovely time downtown.

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So what are you all doing for Halloween? I'm playing hooky from my night classes and taking the Banana trick-or-treating with a friend we met at the pool this summer. It will be fun. She is going to be, in her words, a 'pretty pink princess'. I swear, I don't know where this child came from. When I was a kid, for Halloween, I was (in no particular order) a clown, a firefighter, Wonder Woman (one of those horrid plastic costumes with a mask that didn't allow you to breathe that cost $5 at Woolworth's [remember Woolworth's?]) a ladybug, a black cat, a witch, a fairy, and a Catholic school girl (that last one was post-college when I lived downtown and was single). I haven't dressed up in quite some time. Probably because I generally feel pretty freakish most of the time these days.

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Have a good week!

And so the purge continues...

Still no photos pour vous, sorry. But that doesn't mean that things aren't happening around here. First, I cast on for the Chevron Scarf from LMKG by Joelle Hoverson - can I tell you how much I love it? Oh sure, everyone in the Milky Way galaxy has made one, but mine's special. It gave me an excuse to buy two skeins of Koigu, for crying out loud! And it's Koigu I've had for a while, so the yarn diet is still going strong.

Speaking of which - it's been two months. Two freakin' months since I bought yarn. Not bad, eh?

One of my projects on the needles is (are?) the Legwarmers, also from LMKG. Because I'm a big old dork, I made one and have not yet made the other because trying to knit 58 stitches in the round on 12" circs is enough to drive a woman to drink (which sometimes is not a bad thing, but I digress). So I was on a Ravelry forum, and someone suggested that I knit it flat and seam it.

Duh.

So that's what I'll be doing. Finishing my scarf and finishing my legwarmers and finishing up a thuper-thecret gift for a friend and stuff.

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Right, so this post is entitled 'And so the purge continues...', so maybe I should actually discuss that. I told you we cleaned out a closet (OH MY GOD THAT IS SO THRILLING SALLY), and this weekend I cleaned part of my basement and took a whole carload of stuff over and donated it to the thrift store (OH NO YOU DINT GIRLFRIEND [OH YES I DID, BELIEVE IT]). You can actually see my basement floor! And boy, does it need to be cleaned! But I tell ya, it feels good to get rid of crap that we are not using. I've discovered that my environment is either a reflection of or an influence on my state of mind - either way, when my environment is cleaned and organized, so is my brain. So I feel good.

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I just read over this post, and my GOD is it boring. Sorry about that. If you read it and bother to come back, I promise I'll have pictures or a movie or something for you next time. Oh, is anyone going to go see Doris Chan at Loop? Lemme know...

Thanks for stopping by. ;o)