the Akamai Knitter

I hope you all had a lovely Memorial Day weekend. My weekend was crammed full so this will be a long post.

On Saturday Shelly and her family took me out for some site seeing. The first place we hit was Baker’s Mansion, which was originally the home of ironmaster Elias Baker and his family. The house is beautiful and so are all the wonderful things inside. I went a little crazy with my camera. You can see all the pictures I took here.

After the tour, we drove past the Bedford Springs Resort, which is a historical landmark here in Pennsylvania. It’s incredibly beautiful and from what I hear, incredibly expensive.

After we oohed and ahhed over the beautiful architecture of the resort, we drove to Gravity Hill where we defied the laws of physics and coasted our vehicle uphill. It was quite a thrill!

Finally we adjourned for a meal at the Jean Bonnet Tavern where we dined alfresco. I had the house specialty crab cakes and they were delicious! I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture.

I got a real kick out of the Rules Of The Tavern that they had posted.

I had a really good time and I can honestly say that I was thoroughly exhausted by day’s end.

Instead of resting on Sunday like I would normally have done, Shelly and I decided to have a Dye Day. The fun never stops here in Altoona. :)

We started by weighing out roving into 4oz increments. There’s a scale under that yellow bin.

After that we soaked the wool in water for about an hour.

While that was soaking, we played with painter sample cards to see what colors we wanted to dye up.

Finally, the dyeing began. First we laid out plastic wrap across the table. Then we laid the roving over the wrap in strips.

We used squeeze bottles to paint the roving. Here’s some Corriedale I did myself in blues and greens. My camera really didn’t like these colors.

Then we wrapped the roving into little squares with the plastic wrap and nuked them in the microwave.

And voila! Hand painted roving!

Most of the roving you see here will be posted on Shelly’s Etsy shop, Rose Garden Fibers, in the coming days. That’s if I don’t snatch them all up first. The roving I dyed, which is on the far left, will be coming home with me. I think I’ll probably spin it up into laceweight.

Yesterday, I did have a chance to rest and recuperate from all the activity. We ended up staying in and watching Gone With The Wind. Can you believe that this was the first time I’ve ever seen that movie? And for some odd reason I thought that Elizabeth Taylor played Scarlett O’hara. Shows how much of a movie buff I am. I really enjoyed it, but I was flabbergasted at the ending. I mean really, that’s it?

Anyway, I did get a lot of knitting done. It’s amazing how much you can get done during a movie and in the car. More on that later.

Thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a happy Tuesday! The day after a long weekend is always tough. Here’s a picture of some mighty cute dogs to help with that.

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On Wednesday Shelly took me out to The Knitter’s Underground and its new location. It’s located right on Molly’s farm.

Inside was a beautiful shop full of racks of gorgeous yarn.

Needless to say, I bought some yarn.

On the very top we have Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted* in Onyx and Lotus Pink for the Pirate Queen Booty Bag.

In the middle, we have Frog Tree Alpaca Wool in fingering weight for the Shetland Triangle Shawl that I’m planning on making for my mother. (See? This yarn isn’t for me. It’s for my mother. It doesn’t count as stash!)

Finally, we have Trekking XXL in Color No. 105 and Trekking Pro Natura in Color No. 1506 because a shopping trip just isn’t complete without sock yarn.

Yarn wasn’t all I got either.

I picked up another copy of Barbara G. Walker’s Knitting From The Top, because I seem to have misplaced my own copy.

Then there’s the pattern The Brora Black Cobweb Shawl, which I consider my greatest find. I didn’t think I’d ever get my hands on this pattern. I’ve been coveting it for quite awhile too.

After our visit to the yarn store, we traveled on to Miller’s Hoagie’s. They have the best sandwiches I have ever tasted.

The sandwich has ham, bologna, hard salami, and provolone. The veggies consisted of lettuce, onions, and tomatoes. I declined on the hot peppers that day because my stomach was feeling a little iffy. As you can see, they put the meat on top. This made the sandwich a lot less sloppy then the hoagies I’m used to.

All in all, it was a wonderfully successful excursion. Thanks to Shelly for giving me such a fabulous time! Tomorrow there’s more fun planned, but none of it has much to do with fiber. This is actually a good thing for my wallet.

Still to come are the purchases I made from Delightful Ewe, the local yarn shop that I helped move. It seems every time I stop by I come away with more yarn. Carla, the yarn shop owner, has generously donated an extra suitcase or two for me to cart my purchases home with me. I’m sure she gave me the biggest suitcase she could find in order to urge me on in filling it up with all the yarn I can.

Have a great weekend and thanks so much for reading. :-)

*It’s late here so I took the lazy way out and linked most of my purchases to Ravelry. My apologies!

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