Happy place recap and sometimes I lie.

I spent the past weekend at Tempted Estates. I had a fantastic time! I made some new friends too. Laura and Leslie of The Knitgirllls were there, as well as Tracee (Catraggedy), Jessica (showmeyourknits), and Sara (saradknits). Completing the lineup are Muriel (bffofwendy) and Stacy (Tempted). Bob was there too, of course.  I managed to knit about a sock and a half. I used Wendy's Toe-Up Slip-Stitch Heel socks pattern and Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy yarn to make my first ever pair of vanilla socks. They're definitely fraternal, which bugs me a little bit, but I still love the colors. I've knit about half of the leg now on the second one.

My triumph of the weekend was finishing Muriel's girasole for her. She didn't want to do the edging, so I did it for her. It would have driven me completely insane for her to leave it unfinished or to take the next year to do a super-easy edging. She claimed on the podcast that she did 1/3 of the edging, but I think that's being overly generous. Because I finished it, I claim it as mine. I even made a ravelry project page for it. Here's a pic of the unblocked FO:

And an example of my contribution:

See? It's not that hard. Moving on.

There is a small shawl swap going on on the Knitgirllls group on Ravelry. This is my first swap. Basically, everyone fills out a questionairre and names are drawn. You use your partner's answers to determine your yarn color choice and pattern. As far as I know, it is a round-robin swap, meaning that the girl I am knitting for does not have my name. Everyone has until March 16 to finish and mail their shawl to their partner.

I took advantage of spending the weekend at my favorite yarn dyer's house to dye some yarn for the swap.  I'm making the Leaf Shawl, so I wanted spring green yarn with a little brown in it. Stacy did the green and I added the brown. The brown isn't as dark as I wanted it, but I still adore the yarn. I can only  give it away because I'm going to buy a skein or two in the future when I have more cashflow. Here is the yarn in all of its gorgeous beauty:

In the past few weeks, I have purposefully lied at least twice. Both times it was because I was knitting gifts. Remember this? It was Muriel's birthday present.

This was Stacy's thank-you-for-having-me gift. I even went as far as asking her how to block it properly lol. It looks better blocked, but I can't find the pic right away.

BTW, you should watch the latest episode (and all of them, really) of The Knitgirllls. I think you can watch it on their website (linked above), but I prefer to watch it through iTunes. Finally, I have the last Tempted @ 3am sock club package. I won't post a pic here for a week or so to prevent spoilers, but you can see it in the spoilers thread on the Tempted board on Ravelry.