Instead of sharing a picture that looks pretty much like my last picture of the blanket, I figured I’d share a picture of some yarn that will make at least one of my readers drool.

It’s from Dancing Dog Dye Works, and the color is as vibrant in real life as it is in the picture. I wonder what it will become!

Tonight they had a “Yarn Tasting” party. We got to knit a small swatch of a number of different yarns. My favorite was a yarn called “Glisten”. It was alpaca and merino, and some sort of metallic sparkle. It knitted like a dream, and for $11.50 for 88 yards, it had better! The party was loads of fun.

Much to my delight, Brooks Farms was there with a large stock of their yarn.

I did not go away empty-handed!

I wonder what it will become!

Today we decided to head off to Dallas to have lunch and go to The Shabby Sheep anniversary sale. Off course, we started out by getting turned around and heading in the wrong direction. When we got to Dallas, we found that the restaurant that we wanted to visit (Screendoor) is closed on Saturday for lunch. So we went to another restaurant that was nearby.

Jorge’s is a Tex Mex place. They serve chimichangas, nachos, salads, and fajitas. The food was good, but the company was better. There’s nothing like sharing a long meal with an old friend! We talked for ages about things that we can’t talk about at our jobs. Oddly enough, though we work in different businesses in different states, we’re suffering from many of the same problems.

Then we headed off to the Shabby Sheep. I found one yarn in the store that I thought about buying, but decided to pass because I knew I’d be spending money at the Alisha Goes Around trunk show that was camped out in the Shabby Sheep’s studio.

When I went to check out at the trunk show, I found out that my debit card was gone. Kitty and I talked through our steps. We hadn’t been too many places, and the only place it really could be was the restaurant.

So I called them, only to be told, “No. No one has seen it.”

I didn’t believe it, and neither did Kitty. We looked around the Shabby Sheep quickly (with Ronda, the owner, saying, “But you didn’t BUY anything! You couldn’t have lost it here!” Ouch!). Then we drove back to the restaurant.

When I asked the manager again if they had seen my card, they said, “No.” I asked them to check again. They checked all of the check holders but found nothing.

I insisted again that they HAD to have the card. The staff half-heartedly looked around again. So I insisted again, a little more loudly, that my card HAD to be there. (The restaurant was nearly empty when Kitty and I left, and there was almost no one in the restaurant when we returned.) The few people who were in the restaurant stopped eating and looked at me with interest.

At that point, one of the staff members walked out with the card and said, “I found it between the cushions in the booth.”

Uh huh.

So we returned to the Sheep. When I stopped in to tell Ronda I’d found the card, I felt guilty and both the Cascade Magnum that I’d seen earlier. Then I stopped at the Trunk Show and bought the yarn that I wanted there.

Kitty and I spent the rest of the afternoon knitting and watching “French Kiss” on DVD.

I’m not sure what we’re going to do tomorrow. Something fun, no doubt!

The secret was doing a little bit each day… Never more than 15-20 minutes at a time. I’m not sure exactly how long it took total. Hubby said that he was sure I wasn’t going to be able to do it, but then was amazed that I never seemed to be working too hard at it. (Really… My method of untangling is shaking the pile until it loosens up and then passing the growing ball through the holes in the pile. Little Grump says it’s like watching a magic trick!)

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get it all in one piece. The yarn was broken in the middle of the skein somewhere. Still, the friend who asked for untangling services should be able to make something wonderful from it.

In a fit of homework avoidance, I started untangling it. When I left, I took it with me (for more “homework”… Yay!).

After a couple hours, I have it half untangled. I’ll finish it tomorrow. The dying of the yarn is so beautiful and the yarn so yummy that it’s a joy to have an excuse to repeatedly run my fingers through it! (Not sure what the yarn is… It’s one of SouthernMystic’s.)

While we’ve been meeting at the same location for ages, we still get odd looks when someone new starts working there. This is especially true for our spinners… Even more so if they’re one of the folks that use spinning wheels that don’t look like traditional spinning wheels. (Sleeping Beauty NEVER saw wheels that look like these!)

Tonight, Mayte was on the receiving end of the weird looks.

So we went to Piranha Killer Sushi and then on to knitting. It was so great to see the ladies. For some reason, it seemed like it had been longer than a week since our last meeting. But I spent the evening laughing and, despite talking about some of the nuttiness, I still ended up totally enjoying myself.

Since it was so cold inside the coffee shop, we ended up sitting under the stars. We were able to knit for a while, but even the lights over the canopy weren’t enough to keep us going too late.

I came home at around 9:15 to see an unusual sight. A huge black caterpillar was crawling across my front step. (I’m not including the picture here because I don’t want to send the dear reader screaming into the night!) When I say “huge”, I’m not joking! Little Grump (forever bonding with nature) came out and scooped it up, and the thing was as big and long as her middle finger! Mr. Grump handed out the camera for a quick photo op, and then Little Grump set the caterpillar on its way.

I’ve done some investigation, and it seems to be a Giant Leopard Moth caterpillar. The caterpillars are active at night and appear in the Spring. I’ve never seen one before, but it’s pretty cool. Mr. Grump quipped that it was coming to our house to find the all-you-can-eat wool buffet.

He was joking, but ever since then, I’ve been fighting the urge to open all of my wool bags and shake the yarn out just in case. Does that make me paranoid?

It looks fun! And hey… It’s exercise!