crazy coupla days

It's been a whirlwind 2 days and I am finally catching my breath (and dumping several hundred pictures onto the laptop). I'll need to spread everything out over several posts so that I don't bore y'all to death.

On Thurs, the postperson rang but I wasn't home. I was expecting 2 parcels - some Koigu from a destash and my Monkey Swap package. So first thing Friday morning, I picked up the parcel and it was my Monkey Swap package!!! Despite being sorely tempted to rip open the box in the car, I was in a rush so I had to throw it in the trunk and open it later. I was hurrying to meet a fellow Raveller who was visiting from London, England.

We were meeting at a local quilt show. After ending up on the wrong Triumph Street (I did not know there were 2), her chauffeur finally dropped her off on the correct one. Gabrielle brought me some lovely yarn from England. How thoughtful!


We went inside and looked at a few quilts together but I turned left at the end of the aisle and she went in a different direction. It's a small show so I knew we would easily find each other later on. I saw lots of neat quilts. There was one made of 18,000 half inch (finished size) squares. Yikes! I bumped into a friend who alerted me to a thread sale at one of the vendors so I rushed over there to find out that she (and her friends) had bought all the good colours and didn't leave any for me. Oh well... I did buy some cat fabric and some variegated Aurifil thread instead:


After the quilt show, we headed over to Toko (one of my favourite restaurants) for lunch. It's a noodle factory with a tiny slice at the front of the building converted to a restaurant. Hubby and I have been eating there for years and we love it. We ordered gyoza, agedashi tofu, and the house special chow mein. Yum! I'm drooling just thinking about it.

Now the real fun began - off to the yarn shops! Our first stop was Birkeland Bros Wool. It's a very small shop but it's the oldest yarn store in town so it's a bit of a historical landmark. Gabrielle went a little crazy and bought a lot of Handmaiden yarn - Casbah sock, Sea Silk, and several hanks of thick'n thin bulky can't-remember-the-name-of-it. I don't think it's all for herself. In a moment of weakness, I bought a skein of Casbah sock, too. Could you say no to this skein of yummy superwash merino/cashmere/nylon?


I didn't think so.

Our next stop was Three Bags Full. Finally - an opportunity to open my Monkey package. Yippee! The first thing I unwrapped was my Monkey socks. I immediately put one on.


I will post more details about the socks and my Monkey goodies tomorrow. I'll just say that the socks are awesome and I was thoroughly spoiled. Thank you Monkey Pal - whoever you are.

After all the Monkey excitement, Gabrielle got down to some serious shopping.



What you don't see is her growing pile of goodies...

I had a good look at the new Lexie Barnes bags and scoped out the Noro Silk Garden Lite. While I was there, I exchanged my defective Addis for a new one so that I can finish knitting my Mom's cardi.

Gabrielle's chauffeur arrived before she bought out the store and we parted ways. It was great to meet her and I had a great day and I hope she did, too.

On my way home, I stopped at a fabric store to look for fabric to make hubby more pjs. There wasn't anything suitable but I did buy a ton of buttons (click on the picture to embiggen).


Some of the buttons are just for fun - like the frogs and the hippos. The rest are potential buttons for a knitted Christmas gift. But now that I look at the pattern, I need 9 buttons and I only bought 8 of some of them. Dang it.

I was going to blog about my Fri evening in this post (I left the house at 9:15am, was home for an hour between 5:30 and 6:30pm, and didn't get home again until 10:45pm) but I think you're probably bored by now so I'll save that for tomorrow, too. But before I go, I'll leave you a picture of what I've been knitting - hubby's Christmas socks.