Beer weekend and The Yarn Truck Commith!!

This was my plan for last weekend:

Beer Festival in Alexandria
Attendees can try beers from 18 breweries while listening to live music from noon to 6 p.m. The event is held in John Carlyle Square Park (300 John Carlyle Street), a short distance south of the King Street Metro station.
The event is free to attend, but tickets are needed to sample beers. The $25 ticket includes a custom beer glass, and two samples from each brewery.
The beer festival has been moved from April 22 and 23 due to expected inclement weather. Tickets already purchased will be honored on the new date, or refunds will be available.

Participating breweries and their offerings for the festival include:

• Spaten, München, Germany: Spaten Optimat
• Artisanal Family: Tripel Karmeli
• Franziskaner: Franz Dunkel
• Global Belgian: Monk’s Cafe
• Blue Mountain Brewery: BM Evil 8 & BM Hopwork
• South Street Brewery: SS BBL Pony & SS Hop
• Chaos Mountain Brew: Chaos Derring & Chaos Cocoborl
• Devil's Backbone: DB Pear Lager & DB TRL Catty
• Dominion Family: DOM Millenium & DOM Double D
• Forge Works: Forge Farmhouse & Forge Ryes Up
• Golden Road: GR Wolf Weeds & GR Wolf Pup
• Goose Island: GI Matilda & GI Halia
• Mad Fox Brewing Company: Fox Orange Whip & Fox State Vipa
• O'Connor Brewing: OC TS Zephyr & OC ED Shipwreck
• Pale Fire: Pale Molly & Pale Salad Day
• Smartmouth: Smart Notch 9 & Smart Alter EG
• Starr Hill: SH SS Reviver & SH AA Double Bass
• Bold Rock: BR Citrus DFT & BBL Bold Citrus

The event also features food selections from:

• Zabb Thai Restaurant (Manassas)
• Dolci Gelati Gelato Shop (Alexandria)
• Passanante’s Home Food Services
• The Hideout

  However, it was supposed to rain all weekend and as you can see in the description.  It got moved to this coming weekend.  This makes this weekend really busy.  Also very tiring since I have to be at work early for a New Member Orientation.
  The thing I had planned for this weekend was to go and visit with Geraldine, The Yarn Truck.  I know, I know.  The last thing I need is more yarn.  I do want to go and experience it though.  I'm not totally ruling out the option for buying a skein or two of yarn, but it is not why I'm going.  I want to be able to experience it.  I've never seen anything like it in person before, so I'm excited!

Everything is coming up 'me' today!

  Yesterday was kind of lame for a few reasons.  We were working on taxes and didn't have all the info we needed, so we needed to file for an extension.  Well, the program kept trying to get us not to, but Bill finally got it to work.  We also tacked the drip that was happening from the master bedroom shower.

  Bill cut down the ceiling and then had me take video as he ran the water.  Though I don't think he necessarily had fun cutting it down, I don't think he hated it.

  We had Tank take a look at it.  He wasn't sure how to fix it, so we will have to check more sources.

  However, today was different for me.  I had a whole list of things that I wanted to try and get done and I was hoping I could before I was supposed to meet up with someone.  The first thing on my list was to get some certified mail that Bill missed signing for.  It was really funny because when I handed the lady the slip she said "Who's handwriting is this?" and then tsked at it.  I heard some yelling from the back and then she brought it out.  Turns out our carrier didn't put it with the other envelopes.

  I then headed to the auto-supply shop to get new wipers.  Mine were worn out last year when I got my car checked and I promised the guy I would get new blades.  I kept forgetting and since it has been a year, I needed to get my car looked at again.  The guy at the store looked them up for me and we got me some new blades.  I had to get two brands because they didn't have two of the same kind.  I was worried it was going to be hard to fix, but they were super easy to change.  You push on a little button and the old blade slides off.  The first blade just had an adapter that I had to pop off before it fit.  The second one had an adapter on it that I had to take off and then put the one that worked for me on.  Also pretty easy.  I felt super accomplished.

  I had downloaded some Netflix movies onto my phone so I would have something to do while I waited my turn to get my car inspected.  I drove up and I was first in line!!  So I only had time to take that picture and then the guy was walking over to take my car to the bay.

  I had finished everything I was hoping to get done before 2pm before 11:30am!!  This meant that I had time to get some other stuff done.

  We have been without a working air filter for a while now.  The one that was in there had fallen over.  Today I decided to try and slide it out of the way and put a new one in.  That didn't work because there wasn't enough room.  I then got a flashlight and some tongs and dragged it out.  It took a lot of pulling, but I win the battle.  You can see it is properly gross.  New one is in (hopefully in the correct direction) and hopefully we will have nicer air in the house.

  Look who is done and dry and getting some screen time!  My shrug is finally done!  It is in the bag to take to knitting on Sat to get donated.

  Here is my my first hat done!  I can't believe how fun it looks.  Everyone who saw me knitting it was super impressed.  I even had to give some demos how I was doing it, especially since I wasn't going to the very end of each color, but I stopped two stitches before so I could keep the tension on each color and not worry about putting it too tightly at any point.

  Since I was doing the tension trick I was worried that the top was going to get messed up.  I was worried that there was going to be mostly one color and only one stitch of the other colors.  Seems I was being silly because it turned out perfectly.

  I thought that this was going to happen on the first hat, but you can see where I ran out of the blue yarn.  That one kept getting over spun as I worked with it, so I wasn't too bummed.  I was also planning for it, so I liked that it did happen.  You can also see that is is possible to pull the new color a bit too tightly as you go if you don't pay enough attention.

  I was thinking that I was going to have enough yarn to make one hat.  Well, I made two hats and even had some left over.  I made these from a crochet bow pattern I found on Pinterest.  I think I will give these to Carola to add to monsters.

  On Sat we had someone new join us.  She usually works at Nature's Yarn on Saturdays, but they didn't need her that day so she decided to come to Wegmans and have lunch and knit.  She didn't even know we were going to be there!  She was making those crochet octopus critters for Cancer Kickin' Critters.  She knows the people who run it and everything.

I got it!

  I was really nervous about when I got to the part where I knew I was going to start decreasing.  I had never done it before and I was treating each row differently than I was in the beginning.  I was stopping each color two stitches before it reached the new one.  I found it was easier to keep the tension more even.  I knew I would have to do it while alone so I could concentrate.

  Here is what it looked like right before I started decreasing.  I mostly took this picture so I could put it off for another minute or two.  I hadn't needed to be worried, because it all turned out great in the end.  I did a 8 stitch decrease, so the top might be a bit more pulled in than I had originally planned, but that is okay.  I think I even have enough yarn to do another one.  So I will be casting that on later.

  This is fun to see.  I know they just put random things on these and you just randomly get them, but I feel this one really does apply to me.  Like how I like knitting and it isn't a big deal to me to make something, but when someone who needs it gets it, they get a lot of joy out of it.  At least, I hope they do.

  Hopefully I will be able to show pictures soon of the finished shrug and hat.  The hat is soaking now, but I know it won't take long to dry.  The shrug is dry, but it has been raining like crazy in my area, so that isn't the best for pictures.  It says rain tomorrow too, but I'm hoping to get some moments of sun and no more tornado warnings.

This didn't work as I thought.

  So I thought I was being all smart the way I was figuring my rows.  I at least knew that since I cast on with each color that each one has its own row beginning.  I didn't, however, pay attention to the row stacking and how the stripes were laying down.  I had wanted to do four rows of each color and then move to the body of the hat.
  I was super confident that I knew what I was doing and that I didn't need to really pay attention to the rows and how they looked.  This has resulted in me knitting about two thirds of each bonus row in ribbing and the last third in stockinette.  So this means that each rib section doesn't have a last full set of stripes and that my band is a bit larger than I wanted.

  My choices are to live with it, or tink back and fix it.  I'm close enough to the problem that tinking wouldn't take me too long, but I'm also pretty sure that I am the only person who would notice.  I mean, hey, I didn't even notice at first.  I'm thinking it is something that I can live with and will just have to remember for another time.  The general knitting is fun enough that I think I will do this again.

  Ribbed color work is tricky.  You have to consider the future in the present.  If I knew that the next section of red needs to become stockinette, I can't just knit with the red.  Even though I am using the red yarn, I am really manipulating the white row under it.  The next row is where I have to knit with the blue because it would make the red stitches all appear as stockinette.  Next time I will have to just take each section as I come to it.

  Even though it requires more thought, I really like this style of one row stripes because it just flows so nicely.  If I had just cast on with one color and knit a row, then moved to the next there would be jogs, or little steps.  People have come up with ways to minimize it, but it is still there.  Knitting in the round is a spiral.  This version if it uses the spiral to my advantage.  This doesn't work if you want bigger stripes unless you use more than one ball of any color.  It is also a bit slower since you only work in partial rows with each color every time you go around.
  I've also been thinking about how I was going to be doing the decreases.  While it would make sense to do a row of blue with all decreases, a row with the white straight, a white decrease row, then the colors would do the opposite. This would make sense if all the colors had the same starting point for their rows.  Since they do not, I have been thinking that each color will get a third of a row decreasing, and then a plain third.

  In less confusing news, the grey shrug is off the needles, and getting a soak before I semi-block it.  Acrylic doesn't take a blocking as well as animal fibers, but I does listen some.

April Fools!!

  I spent most of yesterday trying to think of something funny to post for April Fool's Day.  The only thing I could think of was to try and tell people I had given up knitting.  The only problem with that is that anyone who really knows me would have seen through that before they finished reading and would have started laughing.  Some may have laughed so hard that they would have hurt themselves.  Since I didn't want that, I didn't post anything.

  I did, however, go to knitting.  See?  No one would have believed that I would have given up on knitting.  Because of when Easter is and when we meet, we didn't go to the Church on the second Sat, but the first.  These are some of the items dropped off for donation.  So many lovely things!!

  I've also not be sticking to my own plan.  Instead of bringing the grey shrug to work on, I started this hat.  Andrea and I agree that it looks like a Rocket Pop and then we both wanted one.
  Since getting home I have switched back to the grey shrug.  The cat is helping me.

  Are you wondering if that FAQ page is new? Nah, it's been there for months...just kidding, April Fools!  Did I get you?  No?  Well, I was amused.  I had asked friends to send me questions since I don't want people to get confused, but feel free to ask if I have made anything more confusing or didn't answer your question.