Wind me up Buttercup

I got a ball winder! Wowsa...how cool is that? Okay, so what do you do when you get a new ball winder? You wind your entire stash into center pull balls and spend an hour arranging them by color so that you can have another reason to just sit and stare at your yarn stash. At least that's what I did!
I love it, love it love it love it!

So with every good things, comes something not so good...I went to the dermatologist this morning to have this strange thing on my back looked at. A little back-track, my mom says i've had this thing on my back since I was about 4 and we've always thought it was a brown recluse bite or something creepy like that. It looks like 6 little blisters and it sits at this place in my back where it gets constantly irritated by my bra straps, so I decided while I still have free med benefits (until the wedding) I would get it looked at and possibly removed. You see, I have this fear of anything sharp and pointy that might need to come into contact with my body, namely scalpels, razors, needles, you get the point. So today I go in to the dermatologist expecting to have a diagnosis-type appointment where they basically tell me to come in again in a month, nope. No such luck. I go in, I'm seen right on time (a rarity at military hospitals) and am seen by an extremely nice doc who tells me that the mystery thing on my back is not a spider bite at all, but super thick, dense skin that I've most likely had since i started existing. Supposedly they are not too common but they are benign, which was good. Then she tells me I don't need to have it removed necessarily because its not anything that will hurt to keep around. So, I leave, right? No. I think I love to scare myself shitless because I told her to take it off. So after 8 little spritzes of lidocaine (sp), which is not pleasant, holy cow, she shaved it off my back. So now i have a rather large (3 in) area on my back that is completely raw...it hurts! Eegads!
But its gone, I will have a smooth back for the wedding, how lovely! I wish it didn't hurt so much...Oh well, I have my ball winder to take away the pain :)

Knittapalooza was so much fun this weekend, it was just unbelievable, I enjoyed every minute of it. I met some great people and learned so much my brain is still bulging. The fair isle class yesterday was amazing. I figured out what I was doing wrong, apparently I never learned the proper way to carry yarn which ended up being my entire problem. Projects do tend to pucker if you just string along the yarn for 5-20 stitches! Duh!

My fabulous secret pal has asked me to explain a bit about double knitting (the tubular cast on) so I will. I am so excited about this technique, it is sooooo cool. Basically what it is: You cast on half the number of stitches you need with waste yarn (an odd number) for something like a neckband/sleeve/headband etc., then you join your yarn, and on the first row you k1, yo all the way around (we did all of this on dpn or circs). The next row (row 2, and row 4)are done by *sl 1 purlwise wyib, p1* all the way around. The following row (and row 5) is done by *k1, sl 1 purlwise wyif* all the way around. On row 6 and 7 you *k1, p1* all the way around. This created our little neckband for our mini aran from the neck down. I'm sure you could repeat row 2-5 many times and just make larger tubular knit pieces. It is so cool because it creates a hollow center! When you are done with the first repeat of row 2-5 you can pick out the waste yarn cast on. It seems so scary, but nothing unravels when you pick it out and both sides of the piece look the same! It is sooooo neat! I definitely want to play around with it some more. It makes the most elastic, stretchy thing you will ever knit, so very very cool!
Beth Brown-Reinsel's classes were the neatest things I've ever had the pleasure of taking part in. Here are some of the items she brought with her, they are just stunning.