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Monday, March 14, 2005

The Winner is....

Elizabeth from Three Olive Martini! An email has been sent to Elizabeth who will be receiving this in the mail:



Close-up:


Because I know Blogger has been poopy about letting people comment without a hassle, I did the drawing based on the list from my Guest Map, and used a random number generator to determine the winner :)

What I've learned from my guestmap

First of all, BAY AREA IN THE HIZZOUSE, BABY! What a wonderful bunch of knit bloggers we have going here!

I really really enjoy seeing y'all on my guestmap. It's really interesting to see how the US is divided up. Most of my readership is from along the east or west coast and there are a few that go straight up the middle of the US. What happened to people in the inbetween bits, I wonder?

I have a few international readers:

Mozemen from Israel

Ada in Holland

Jennifer, Cara, Kelly, and Jacqueline from Canada

Thank you everyone for playing!

Vote for Asha!!!
lol... unrestrained bias, but go over to the purrrfect kitty contest and vote for your favorite kitty! Asha has stiff competition!

Amazing Yarns Review
This past weekend I went with some friends from my knitting group to visit Amazing Yarns in Redwood City. This yarn shop is in the Emerald Hills area in the wonderful house of Andrea. First off, let me just say that Andrea is an absolutely inspiring woman. Besides the fact that she LIVES in her own yarn shop (what a wonderful life that must be!!!!), she weaves, knits, crochets, fabric paints, sews and gardens.

Her garden was absolutely stunning. Like Ina Garten from Barefoot Contessa, she grows her own veggies (lots of herbs and tomatoes in the summer), lots of fruit trees, and even grows wine grapes so they can make a couple of their own bottles of wine! She also introduced me to scented geraniums of which she had many (she uses them for potpouri). I was amazed to find how much the rose geraniums smelled SO much like rose! She sent me home with a bunch of cuttings so that I too may try to grow these heavenly scented things! Here's a wonderful martha stewart-esque tip I got from her regarding the geraniums. When she has parties, she loves taking the larger leaves of the Chocolate Mint Geraniums to use as coasters so that when guests raise their glasses, they get the lovely scent with their drink.

As for the yarns, YUM! Her downstairs entrance is part of the yarn shop as well as the meeting area for a knitting and crochet guild. Her 2nd floor indoor balcony surrounds the downstairs, and you can see beautiful skeins of yarns and knitted items draped across all the banisters. Going upstairs, you'll find she has a small collection of natural colored rovings (plus a few dyed ones) and some bags of wonderfully colored mohair curls (I purchased a couple of these bags). There is somewhat of an organization to the upstairs. It seems as though there are bunches of similar fiber skeins together (cotton vs alpaca), and skeins sorted by creator. She carries some beautiful skeins from various handspinners and dyers. I would definitely go here to find some of the more unusual handspun. She also carries a bunch of patterns and has many books for spinners/weavers/knitters/crocheters around for perusal and purchase. Although I do not crochet, I noted that she had an amazing stock of crochet hooks including addi crochet hooks (which I had never seen before). She also carries a good stock of Addi Turbos for knitting, and lots of other wonderful notions to check out.

On an extra exciting note, when she found out I spin fun novelty yarns with feathers she told me that if I ever wanted to sell her a few she would sell them in her store! The nice thing is that I don't need to be prolific, she says she has some handspinners who are quite regular at getting her skeins, and others that are on and off. I'm SOOO excited at this prospect, but I don't want to really get into this until after the April GRE psych exam.

spiders
With this wonderful weather has come lots of pollen (hayfever) and lots of spiders. Oh yeah, it's spider season. I point out a couple to evan almost everyday for squishing. I've been getting spider bites while I sleep too. I got complete neurotic yesterday evening as I was folding clothes on the bed. A spider cam walking over the folds of the pile of clothes straight at me (I swear he was coming for me, although ervy thinks I'm just nuts! Either way, he was gunning in my direction!). I got the heebejeebees (sp?) and forced myself to take a bath while I had ervy change the sheets.

ok, maybe i have a small case of aracnophobia. I shake out my clothes before putting them on, I shake out my towel before wrapping myself in it, I check my shampoo bottle before picking it up (once I was in the shower at my parent's house and I picked up my shampoo and a spider jumped off of it onto me, luckily I was in the shower so it just washed down the drain, but FREAKY MAN!), I've even checked under the toilet seat (I've definitely had spiders crawl out from under the toilet rim).

Anyway, all night I kept having nightmares about spiders and ants covering me. I'd toss and turn, but wake up enough to pull the covers tight enough around me as to not allow entrance to any spiders.

I'm a freak. I admit it. Sheesh, I just can't stand spiders!

sumo bunny and nikko asha update
Here's my bunny body I knitted last week, see it looks like a sumo wrestler, no? Nikko stuck his inquisitive head into my picture. But it just made it cuter!


Nikko and Asha are doing so well. They clean each other now which I find horribly adorable! In the evenings when they're super active, they like to play 'tag.' Nikko will gear up and pounce on Asha (or vice versa), then Asha will turn around and chase Nikko. They go back and forth like this until they both collapse exhausted on the floor. You can tell from their body language that they aren't fighting, they'll run away with tails in the air, happy and excited.

4 comments:

Agnes said...

I think Asha is gorgeous so I voted for her. But you're right, the competition is stiff. Asha is a "her", am I right?

Anonymous said...

I didn't think it was possible, but you've actually made me fear spiders even more than I already do. You've given me new places to worry that they will crawl out of! It really doesn't help that I live in a basement apartment!

Anonymous said...

I didn't think it was possible, but you've actually made me fear spiders even more than I already do. You've given me new places to worry that they will crawl out of! It really doesn't help that I live in a basement apartment!

ThreeOliveMartini said...

OMG>. I cant believe I am a WINNER!! woohooo! .. and i hope your little asha turns out to be a winner too.. i cant wait to get this yarn ..

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