Birthday Sunrise(NOT Surprise!)

I've been waking up early this week. This is what welcomed me to my day, my birthday.



This birthday will be memorable in some ways because of how my husband could not keep any sort of secret as to what he was going to *surprise* me with.

A couple days ago I walked into his office and he quickly shut down some of his computer page screens and opened another. The one he opened up was one he was actually trying to close down. I said "oh, I'm getting a new camera for my birthday?". He said various swear words.

I have had my current little point and shoot for probably 4 years. I didn't like how whites/lights really blew out the photo. I could manage to make photos *ok* with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom but I was never really happy with the camera. I could manage to manipulate photos and make them passable which meant I couldn't justify a new camera. I was ready to get a new camera with hopes to decrease the amount of time I spend manipulating my photos.

I am going to get the new Nikon Coolpix S60 which is scheduled for release in September. I like that there are no buttons on the camera, operation very similar to the iPhone(which I love). Now the biggest decision is what color body do I want? Wanna vote on what color you like best? Go vote on the sidebar.

One surprise bites the dust!

Yesterday afternoon I hung out at my friend Jamie's. We sat out on her patio chatted and relaxed (can you believe I didn't knit one stitch?). It was a nice, relaxing, girl chatter filled few hours.

When I got home Greg and I were talking. He had just spent the day at his parents house helping his folks do some chores outside(which he does almost once a week). He mentioned he saw my car out in front of Jamie's. Mind you Jamie's house is not on the way home from his parent's house. I said "oh really?". He had to have gone to my favorite yarn store to get a gift card. I asked "oh, did you go to Village?". More swear words came out of his mouth.

Today he presented me with this card...with my, as predicted, Village Yarn and Tea gift card inside.



Surprise two bites the dust!

On the fiber front, while at Bangrila I spun up 4oz of Falkland wool dyed by FatCatKnits. This is a 3-ply in colorway called Common Cause.



I wish I would have taken a photo of the roving before I spun it.

I just divided the roving and split it into 3. Say it was 60 inches long, each section was 20 inches.

What did I learn spinning this? Well....since this is a 3 ply, the colors are going to get more muted the more plies. The yarn in person has a lot of depth and complexity but from a distance it looks fairly monochromatic.

I am enjoying playing with how you divide roving and use it will give you very different results spun up. If I had it to do over again I would split the roving lengthwise in 3 sections, spin the singles in the same color order so when they were plied together the colors would line up to preserve how the roving looked originally.

I took 'Getting the most from your painted Roving' from Janel Laidman at Madrona this year. A person has so many possibilities what can be done with a single roving depending on how you divide up the roving.

Looks like there will be a lot more experimentation and play in my future!