After a small delay (I had a Thing on Tuesday, took the day off on Wednesday and had to get my pictures out of M’s laptop after he got up this morning), Yarn Miracle presents: Mr. SockPalSock Goes To Washington. There are a LOT of pictures in this one.

Here we are riding the bus to the metro station.

Once aboard the metro (subway/train/martalikething), we rode out to Arlington and then to the Pentagon (the Pentagon has lots of signs about NOT taking pictures of the building). After that, we headed into DC and visited one of Stitch DC’s three (yes, three) locations. I am a Yarn Tourist. I had to go. Besides, every single vendor at MSW was sold out of bamboo #1 dpns – I had been developing an ulcer about what would happen if I broke one and had no back up needle.

Then the tourism began in earnest. The Smithsonian(s) close(s) at 5:30 on Sundays so we decided to hit as many of those as possible. We made it to the Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Natural History, and the National Gallery before ending up in the Museum of American History. This was the highlight of Sock’s trip: he got to meet Mr. Rogers’ sweater.

He was so excited that we had to sit down and turn the heel right there in the museum.

Incidentally, the Museum of American History has a textile exhibit up right now that has several examples of hand knitting. They’ve got these mittens that have a poem worked into them and these teensy gloves are less than two inches long.

The bad part about touring DC on a Sunday is that when the museums close, so does everything else. There is no water, no food and no souvenirs. Anywhere. At all. Our last bottle of water had been consumed between the National Gallery and The Museum of American History. But did that stop us? NO! We sucked it up and walked and walked and walked to all of the monuments and other Historical Buildings of Interest. Are you ready? Here they are in order of our visit:

The Supreme Court (over my shoulder).

This was as close as we tried to get to the Capital – there was a lot of construction in the way.That is M by the lamp post.

The White House (over M’s shoulder).

We walked past the Washington Monument several times, through the new WWII Memorial (it was raining by this point), the Vietnam Memorial, the Korean Memorial and visited Lincoln with a bunch of punk middle school kids who thought it was Wicked Cool to slide on the wet marble sidewalks. I kept waiting for one of them to crack open his skull (I mean really, it’s not like the entire town isn’t made out of steep and dangerous steps or anything). The chaperones didn’t even say “Hey, Punk Kid! Knock it off – you’re going to crack open your skull or someone else’s!” M made plans to sue if his were the head to be cracked and I designed a t-shirt for my kid (who doesn’t exist yet) to wear on school trips. In bold letters it will read: If I am behaving recklessly, please call 1-888…

After Lincoln, we consulted the pop-out map KT loaned us (from now on, we will only visit cities that have pop-out maps), and plotted a course over to Jefferson. We didn’t make it. I took this picture from the bridge when we finally admitted defeat:

When we squinted, we could see him in there. At 9pm, in the rain, with no dinner and no water, we decided that was good enough.

Then it was back to the metro station (which we walked right past and had to turn around), back on the bus and back to the hotel at 10pm. It was a Full Day.

We’re sitting at Dulles waiting to board the plan, so I have to be quick. I didn’t get to blog yesterday on account of we got a Metro pass and rode the train and walked and walked and walked and walked all over D.C. so by the time we got back to the hotel at 10 we were Exquisitely Tired.

But here’s a taste of what the sock has been doing:

Claes Oldenburg made little things big.

So I went to bed around 10:30 (eastern) and got up at 6. We went over to KT’s house and met the small hollering boys (we read a book about bulldozers). M went off to Baltimore to look at the boats and KT and I hopped in the car. Everything was going swimmingly until we got stuck in traffic on the beltway. I had my sock pal’s sock and KT (who is Entertaining all on her own) so I was Fine with it.

KT is modeling the sock to keep us busy while we are stuck in traffic.

Because of the delay, many many people made it there before we did.

There is an equal number of cars to my left. Seriously.

There was tons and tons of yarn and fiber and sheep and sheep accessories. I only have a couple of pictures because it was Completely Overwhelming. I had a really hard time buying anything at all because there was just so much to look at.

This stuff is interesting becuase it’s naturally non-felting. KT, what is it again?

I did not get to touch this particular fiber, there were too many people in the way.

Alpacas!

That’s pretty much it as far as pictures go – there were HOARDS of people and I did not think that they would have appreciated me getting in the way with my phone. There were Serious Fiber Enthusists **I just watched the Kentucky Derby! Woot!** in attendance! As far as fiber goes, there was a lot of roving/fleece (goes without saying), a whole lot of miscellaneous handpaints, sock yarn, handspun, machine spun (in natural animal colors and dyed) wheels and spindles. The Socks that Rock sock yarn was SOLD OUT by 10am (no keychains either, boo). KT was very sad (not like she isn’t in the club or anything – but once you get some of that stuff, you just want more). She bought roving and a spindle to console herself. Heh. I believe I might have encouraged that a little. Just a little.

There were these amazing Orenburg lace shawls. I was Enchanted by them and I desperately want to make something that delicately beautiful. I’m going to get a book, give thought to the project and some day, when I finish the Epic CounterPain, maybe I can make one too. I would have bought the yarn (cobwebs, really) already, but it was also GONE. But I did get:

That’s some worsted in purple and grey from Fingerlakes, some stinky sample fiber (I can’t remember what it is?), some roving from Cloverleaf Farms and a swift! Yaaaay! KT ended up (the picture I took is Horrid, not worth the download time) with some roving from the Fold (Hot Flash), the spindle, some really pretty stuff from somewhere she went while I was busy fondling the shawls and some of the naturally machine washable wool in red for vests for the boys. Not nearly as much yarn as I thought I would get, but I did get my swift so it is all good.

In conclusion: I had a great day!

This is my pitiful attempt at a group shot!

We are going to look at DC monuments tonight (they are pretty all lit up)! After that I’ll see if I can’t remember my password and check my email. Thanks for all the fun comments – it’s been fun blogging as I go along!

I love KT! (I didn’t take any pictures because it was dark in the restaurant but I promise I’ll do better tomorrow.)

She’s funny. And we’re leaving at 7 in the morning. This is really 6 for me. Yarn is totally worth it.

For a quick sock update, the sock looked like this on the plane leaving Atlanta:

ilovemyphone

But when we got to the hotel, I noticed this:

Can you see it? One of these cables is not like the others.

And the funny thing is…it’s only on one side.

These are the basic cabled socks. More later. Very sleepy. So very sleepy.

PS: I used M’s iBook and Bluetooth phone to blog from the airport.

I got about an inch of the cuff done in the half hour it takes to go from Pensacola to Atlanta. It’s loud and there’s lots of people…and we have 2 hours to kill, so we’re going to go look for lunch.

I’m so very sleepy.

So I’ve packed (and re-packed once we looked up what the weather was going to be like), cleanded the house, written notes for the Critter Sitter, charged my phone and now I am updating my iPod. It’s one in the morning. WAY past my bed time. WHY won’t this book hurry up and download? I am so very tired.

I finished my Haystack Socks and Michael took a dozen pictures of them. Too bad that they are all out of focus. Every one. What good is an autofocus camera I ask you? So my only illustration today is of my travel knitting:

My travel knitting looks suspiciously like my Swap Socks for the SYAC AND like green socks for May. I’m multi-tasking.

I haven’t swatched yet, but I’ve got my needles and two patterns. My gauge will determine the pattern that I pick for my sock pal (Sock Pal, darling, think of it as Fate). If my gauge doesn’t match either of the patterns I am taking (please, oh, please match), I will make one up On The Fly (Get it? On the FLY? Because we are going in the plane? wahahaha What? I told you it is LATE).

Where are we going? ‘Member, I told you: The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival! To meet KT! Woot. I’d be a lot more animated in my excitement tomorrow after there is some sleeping.

Oh, Hallelujah. The book is finished. Night y’all.

Well. I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Good news first.

My yarn that Becky and I dyed looks great!

The second haystack Sock is almost finished

The Black Top guys are here doing the driveway!

Now for the bad news. It’s pretty bad.

The gauge was right. Honeydew was exactly the size it was supposed to be. Unfortunately, that size was not the size that would fit me. How I managed to try it on twice and didn’t notice (read: refused to admit) that it was entirely too big to be cute until I was working on the sleeves I really couldn’t tell you. I spent some time fantasizing about blocking it in hot water and having it shrink four inches (it’s cotton, cotton shrinks in hot water)! But in the end I knew what had to be done:

Sigh.

Don’t worry, I’ll finish it (May is green), but I won’t get to wear it this weekend.

I’ll end on an Up Note: Yarn Miracle’s pictures were brought to you today by my new camera phone!

His name is Mr. Pink. Naturally.

Mom needed a new phone. To get a new phone at a discount, you have to sign a new contract. Mom didn’t like any of the free phones (ugly, no colors). The only ones she liked were these. Because they come in pink. But she didn’t want one unless I got one too. So there you go. Takes a pretty good picture for a phone, I think.

PS My RSS folder (it’s like bloglines, but not as fancy) says that you guys have posted 126 new blog entries since I last checked. I thought that by subscribing to feeds I could keep up with twice as many blogs in the same amount of time. I am now willing to admit that I was wrong about that. Terribly, terribly wrong. But there is so much great stuff going on that I hate to miss any of it!