Luggage Space

It's difficult to throw away good clothes, but based on what I won, was gifted or came in the giveaway bags at the Men's Fall Knitting Retreat, I may just have to throw out work clothes and toiletries so I can pack everything to get home on Thursday.

Knitting Retreat Swag
As always, Mike got some amazing donations from vendors for this years West Coast retreat. Skacel provided awesome project bags, his LYS, A Verb for Keeping Warm provided a number of nice gifts and we each got two books in our give-away bags:

Noro Men by Jane Ellison, looks just beautiful...I can't wait to look through it more.

Entree to Entrelac by Gwen Bortner looks intriguing as well...especially when you read the four reviews on Amazon about her book...widely varying opinions.

Then I won the best prize of all of them (and all 39 of us got a prize). Knitterguy Ted donated 1150 yards of lace-weight, hand-spindled yarn, and I was thrilled to win it.

I checked out Ted's blog entries and found out it's spun from merino top, dyed by Karen Emry at Royale Hare at Santa Rosa, California. Colourway is called "Pacific Amber".  Not only is Ted an amazing spinner, but he's also incredibly generous to donate such an incredibly rare gift.

Finally, if that wasn't enough, I was bowled over when Franklin gave me the most wonderful gift I could have imagined.

Namaste bags asked Franklin for ideas on designing knitting bags for men (well, they asked after he told them he had some thoughts on the matter) and they used his ideas as inspiration to create two incredible bags that don't look like purses and would be perfect of project knitting bags. I think I may have to just break down and buy myself the messenger bag as well. It's only $79 and looks amazing.

For those interested in trying to win one of these two bags, Namaste is having a contest on Ravelry where you need to post a photo of where you knit. Check it out here and add your name to the list of possible winners.

Thank you SO much Franklin <3 - Namaste my friend.  

Current Knitting
Okay, so I've done incredibly little knitting.

Here's a photo of what I've done in a week since finishing the purple sweater.

Pathetic, I know.

Current Dyeing
Yes, I wrote "DYEING."

As one of the workshops/road-trips during the men's knitting retreat, we were treated to an indigo dyeing workshop with Kathy Hatori at Earthues Natural Dyeing studios.

Credit to CraftyAndy and Kent for photos

I got to take two hanks of early spinning done in a natural off-white colored corriedale (I think) and turn it into this.

I can't tell you how magical it was to see how indigo dyeing works...if you've never experienced it, you absolutely must.

Readers' Comments/Questions
Fiberqat and Judi both wanted to know where Kurt got his spinning wheel t-shirt.

It's actually the standard t-shirt sold by the Berkley store, A Verb for Keeping Warm. WonderMike was wearing one during the retreat as well...they look great.