Birthday Joy

La Favorites Birthday Splurge
Bradley is pleased with his contribution to the display.
Me--not so much.

For my special day I chose to go visit a specialty yarn shop over in Kelso and splurge on lace weight yarn for making things for myself.  Besides being a birthday blessing for myself it was a reward for several major recent accomplishments:

• significant weight loss
• finishing over a dozen small to medium sized crochet projects since August
• finishing the mobius strip and thus nearing the finish line of the two year past due Secret Santa 2012 project.

I've been neglecting posting because of all that crocheting that was combined with prep for NaNo and now NaNo in progress.  I took pics of every project for posts and even opened drafts but never got posts ready to publish.  Am going to try to remedy that soon.

I've been thinking about making myself a skirt and top for several months as a kind of celebration of loosing enough weight for it to hang well on me.  That's what the three in front are for.  The solid is a merino wool and silk blend for a skirt and short sleeved top.  The variegated, a 100% baby alpaca, is for a second top and/or a long sleeved button up sweater or a shawl or a vest to wear with the skirt.

The long skein in the back is a nylon, silk and superwash blend with a silver thread in it that I intend to make a matching scarf and hat with.  The black and white with shades of grey is for making something to go with my grey knit skirt and top--a scarf and hat, a shawl or vest or a short sleeved top.  Most likely the scarf and hat as they would go with several other outfits or at least with my grey fleece jacket.  With 420 yards there might be enough to make fingerless gloves as well.  It is very soft acrylic and polyester blend with elasticity.

I will leave descriptions and intentions for the rest of the yarn and thread for another post.

The purple and pastel striped nylon bag is for holding a project that can hang off your wrist as you work and that has long been my preferred way to go.  I've made the project bags out of many found items including gift bags, ziplock bags with rubber bands, elastic headbands or ponytail bands attached, those transparent zippered bags of various sizes that cloth products are packaged in--again with elastic bands attached, the drawstring bags that sheet sets come in.  I even started to make myself a large one summer of 2011--the rainbow bag--which got set aside when I started work on my Secret Santa project in 2012 that is still unfinished :( and because of which I denied myself the right to return to work on any of the things I was making for myself.

I was excited to find that pretty wrist bag and decided to treat myself to it but because I'd just added up the amount of the yarn and thread and was already over my budget by about the cost of the bag I decided I would have to give up the equivalent and was going to put back the skein with the silver thread.  But my sister said, I think Mom would like to get you the bag.  So I kept the skein.

This was my second visit to La Favorites but the first time in their new location.  My first visit in January or February March 2013 was to their original location in a house which I thought was quite cute and felt a lot like visiting someone at home.  But they were outgrowing it and it wasn't very well lit for my visual impairment needs.  The lighting added to the crowding kept me anxious about knocking things over or off shelves and racks.

The new store is big and well lit with roomy isles.  And big tables for spreading out large projects as they encourage you to bring your knitting or crochet projects with you and hang around  plying your hooks and needles.

I'm thinking that is the perfect place for me to work on the crafter's tote now that I'm at the stage where I need to start laying out the panels and the mobius strip and pinning together the edges that will be joined.  This was supposed to be my Secret Santa gift for 2012!!!  For my sister-in-law.

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