Thanks SP!

Yay, today I got a great postcard with a cute gopher in the mail all the way from Alberta, Canada. (Which is not that far really, come to think of it. ;)
Thanks SP Tundra! whoever you may be! The card got a place in my little office nook.

We had an awesome time at Sasquatch this weekend! The weather was amazing and the Gorge, as always, made for some biblical scenery.

We arrived on Saturday and just managed to get our little tents up when the sky came crashing down on us in a giant hail storm. Can I use the word biblical again?
We'd been there for just about ten minutes, and our Miniprise (the shortbus) was loaded with people admiring its comforts --including a set of 1st class airline seats and a full size futon in the back...

As for the music, I especially loved Ben Harper on Saturday; he was spectacular! We danced and danced. Beck was fun on Sunday, but kept showing these marionet puppets on the screen, in stead of the real band. It was freakin me out!!!!
At one point they just left the stage and played two songs from tape, showing nothing but these friggin puppets. Hmm, were they enjoying a beer backstage or something? WTF?!

We also both really liked chasidic reggae rapper Matisyahu and bought his latest cd, Youth.
His speeches sometimes got a little too religious for my agnostic little heart, but the huge rainbow that appeared halfway through the show was pretty damn...uhm...biblical? Hmmm, yessss. ;)

Anyway, pics are soon to follow.
Now I gotta go get the baby pheasants set up outside! The weather is great and the little freakers are growing so fast! They're extremely speedy and are starting to fly already. There's no way we're gonna be able to catch them when they break loose. Oh well, wild pheasants down in the valley are cool too. ;)

Not much knitting news; we were to pooped yesterday to make it to the SnB, and I never really got around to doing much over the weekend. I better get on it; I got a baby sweater to finish this month! ;)

In other news...

I had a great time at the newly set up SnB in Federal Way Tuesday night. Even though Elise and I were an HOUR (!!!!) late due to a complete and utterly female lack of map reading skills on our part, Jeanne was still bravely facing the world with her knitting needles. We were also joined by Nicole, who was knitting a humongous adult sized blanket for her 16 yo daughter. Wow.....

And what did I do?
I......*drumroll drumroll drumroll* picked up the Xtreme Cardigan of Ultimate Doom!!
I'm now almost done with the second sleeve and then all that is left is the collar and sewing the thing up. I'd already done the shoulder seems, but Jeanne convinced me there was a better way to go about that, so I'm going to rip it and follow her advice. (Sorry Bert, Carla and Hilly!;) Hey, we're all in this to learn, right?!

We are off to the Sasquatch music festival this weekend, and I'll try to get some knitting in while we're on the road. I love roadtrip knitting!

Unfortunately, despite my -or maybe because of- my constant prodding of Dave to get us tickets, he never got around to ordering them until Saturday and Sunday were sold out completely. Sigh. :(

However, we are staying positive and are going to believe in the Power of the Bus and/or use Jedi mind tricks to get in there anyway.

Wish us luck this weekend! We'll need it!

P.s. Arja, ja we hebben het inderdaad over kwarteltjes gehad. ;)
Maaarrrr, die zijn zo ieniemienie dat ze door de mazen van het kippengaas kunnen.
Knuf!

---UPDATE!---
We gotst us tickets!
We managed to find two tickets for Saturday through someone on Craigslist, and a pair for Saturday AND Sunday through a buddy of Dave's, Bill Wixey. :)
Now we only need 2 more for Sunday, but that will totally work!
Noooo, no Nine Inch Nails; Dave still had to work today...
But Queens of the Stone Age, Beck, Ben Harper, Nada Surf, Matisyahu, here I come!!

Promised pics of the new bedroom!

Well here ya go:
Zee old:


Zee new:


See how I cleverly got rid of all that clutter on the bed? ;)

Homey got pheasants!

Alright, the Mormon story will just have to wait.
Dave and I actually got six pheasant chicklets last night! We've become quite the craigslist-addicts; it makes the wildest things possible! ;)

Our new tiny babies are now residing in the bedroom in a Rubbermaid tub covered by a heat lamp and they're SOOOOOO DAAAMMNNNN CUUUUUUTE!

We took way too many pics, but alas, Dave is currently at a bachelor party and took the digicam with him, so the photos will have to wait.
As you may know, the house is already a total petting zoo here, with three duckies, three chickens, two turkeys and a goose. Oh and ofcourse the two kittycats.
And now: three little ringneck and three red golden pheasants.
When they're all grown-up and badass, they'll look a little something like this:


Update!
Here they are:

Aren't they the cutest little darlings?! :)

Still all good!

Don't worry, no news is good news in MJ land.
Sorry for being such a lazy slackass blogger! I should really get over my "I have to write long, fancy blog posts with pictures"-neurosis and just feel free to also post little ittybitty notes every once in a while. See, that's what I get for being a procrastinating perfectionist eh? ;)

Well, as the title says, all is good in my little world. The weather has been amazing and I'm now officially halfway into my trip. Or our experiment, you pick! ;)
We celebrated our 2 yr meetiversary yesterday; two years since we met at the Drupa tradeshow in Dusseldorf. Wow, who'da thunk it?

So. The Seattle Knitting Expo was great! I didn't attend any courses but managed to drag Dave through the vendor booths. Lots of yummy stuff! He had a great time too:

There were beautiful handblown glass needles and buttons, and a booth selling the much coveted qiviut, yarn made from the hair of a musk ox. Hmm, don't know if I'm that thrilled about the stuff. It's so...how do I say this....brown and expensive...

A definite highlight of the show to me was the antique sock knitting machine:

A nifty little iron thing with spikes that could crank out tubes faster than you could say 'Second Sock Syndrome'.
I tried to be all smartass and asked:"So how do you turn the heel?", and the lady pulled up some of the hooks on the rotator, yanked a couple times and voila: a fancy little short row heel.
Must.GetMe.One.OfThose! (They sell them on eBay for a couple hundred dollars....Hmmmmmm....)

The main reason I went was to have my first live peek of the Socks that Rock yarn from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I love the stuff, and was drooling over the great patterns and colorways when the lady said:"If you buy the angora, I'll throw in another pattern for ya."
Dude, who can resist the power of the loud pink angora? Yes, I'm woman enough to say 'Not me'! It cost me a couple damn years of my life hearing the total price at the counter, but I think I can make up for that with some regularly scheduled private fondling sessions.
Behold the power of the mighty Angora:

Also got this beautious sock yarn and a skein of lace-weight alpacaaaahhh:


After the show, I had a meet-up with some fellow Knittyheads, but alas only Somerset (Lisa) was able to make it. She'd flown in from Toronto, and had brought some CrispyCrunch bars for Dave. Thanks again! :)
We had a good ol' Mexican snarforama at Azteca and talked of all things knitted and Canadian, and some doctory things too. She's a damn smart one, LadyLungDoc is! So here's us, in a picture that is more expensive than it looks:

(I was so vain that I actually took off my glasses and put them on the car seat while taking the pic. You know what happened after that. Oh the vanity!! And please disregard the large boobage.)
See Somerset's side of the story here: www.purlthis.blogspot.com

In other knitting news: I finished Dave's first Magic sock!

Check out the toe; it is a special Birkenstock toe that actually produces a right and a left sock. Nifty huh? You just make a few decreases on N1 and N4 first, and afer a few rows, you start decreasing on N2 and N3 as well.

So, tonight I'm going to my second SnB, this time in Federal Way with the lovely Jeanne. I'm solely going to work on The Cardigan That Can't Be Named, and I'm taking my converts Elise and Jessie with me. I'm a knitting missionary!

Speaking of missionaries: One of my next posts is all about the Mormons. Well, no, all about our trip to Salt Lake City. Maybe some Mormons. Yeah, probably Mormons. ;)

If you're still reading: Thanks! I miss you guys.... (An extra-special hug for Arja, Niek, Elke, Angelina, Evelinde, Alex, Joachim, Marloes, Anne and Sandrina. You know who y'are!)

Off to do more knitting in my little Nook: