Coming soon from a Yarnista near you…

Five must have travel tips!

And you will not want to miss these!!!!!!

1. When you get to your hotel room, get undressed right away! It won't matter that you left your suitcase in the lobby!!! Not at all!!

2.  When you get to the airport, do not get something to eat, you'll be able to make it through on one teeny bag of pretzels if there's a three hour delay and they won't let you off the plane because you could take off at any time! You will be just fine!!!!

3. Waste as little time as possible and build no wiggle room into your travel plans. If your plane is scheduled to land at 11:00, book your first meeting for 11:15! It will work out every time!!!!

4. Go ahead, wear down your phone battery before getting to the airport, because there will always be time to charge it while waiting in the terminal!!!

5. No need to call the hotel you're scheduled to stay at directly to confirm the reservation, central booking has got everything covered! Plus, there are always more rooms available on Saturday nights!!!

I hope you will find these useful! Stay tuned for more amazing tips to make your life easier!!!

Several things. Pay attention.

And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

The first thing is that I'm teaching a class in February, and you should come. The class is at a lovely yarn shop here in Maryland called
The Yarn Spot. 

I've decided to teach about emergency preparedness for knitters.



I'm mostly kidding.


The class is called Knitting With Hand Dyed Yarn, and it will run the gamut from how to tell the difference between different dyeing techniques, what your yarn will look when knit up, how to change the look of your finished product, and choosing suitable projects for your hand dyed goodies.

Dinner will be served. Questions will be answered. The class is on Sunday, February 21st, and will run from 5:30-7:30.  There are only 15 spaces available. If you're interested, please call The Yarn Spot directly (301.933.9550), or email victoria@theyarnspot.com. If you've been reading this blog for long, you know that I recently left my first chosen profession of teaching, and am very much looking forward to keeping my feet wet with this class.

The next thing is that I'm loving looking at your projects in our Flickr Gallery. Keep the projects coming. They help me get through the day. I would love to have 1,000 projects in the gallery.

Today was club shipping day. Always busy, always satisfying. To see months of hard work fly away to new homes is incredibly fun.  The studio looks forlorn, bereft even, after all the yarn is gone.



This month's Stash Menagerie selection was a 50% silk/50% merino blend, and one of the color choices was a dynamic blue color called Mirth.



Serenity was very popular with the Sock Yarnistas.





And for good reason. It's very serene.

Frolic was born to be something in my mother's kitchen. She has an extensive collection of blue and white pottery, much of it authentic Delft. I should've called this colorway Delft.



And sometimes, when you're not looking, the skeins from Pick of the Knitter like to mingle. You can catch them if you flick on the lights really fast.



Look at that! Wexford, Lindon, Carys, and Springvale all in one bin. That is a rare sight, indeed.

I do believe this could be the single best club shipment we've ever done. The yarn is fantastic, the extra treat is doubly fantastic, and the sock pattern is unbelievably awesomely fantastic.

Sign up for the class! Upload your project to Flickr! Look for clubs on your doorstep!

Thank you for at least pretending to pay attention.

In case of emergency…

This is my in case of emergency:



I have a well thought out plan. The studio has no windows, and all the doors are toward the front of the building.  In case of a fire in the front of the studio, we could be trapped. If we are unable to make it through the flames, this will save us.



We will just chop a hole in the wall and escape. It's brilliant.



I actually used this very tool to break into my own home when I was seven months pregnant.

I was locked out of the house. I was locked out of my car. It was 20 degrees outside. I had no coat. I was pregnant. The pregnant part bears repeating.

I would also like to further note that the child I was pregnant with weighed over ten and a half pounds at birth. Just to set the scene accurately.

I tried every door and window. Like a good homeowner, every entrance was locked.  I couldn't shimmy through a basement window even without my giant belly. Most of the other windows were too high off the ground for me to climb through. It was either the French patio door, the front door, or the back door. I went to the shed and got a crowbar.

I went for the French patio door, thinking it would be the least expensive to replace, and that I could just hit the lever-style doorknob off, reach in, and slide the door open.


No.

I succeeded in bending the doorknob, but still could not get in. I went back to the shed and found a hammer. I decided to try the back door, which had nine panes of glass separated by small pieces of wood. I hit the window over and over with the hammer, to no avail.

I went back to the shed and found this ax. I was getting desperate. I was crying and still pregnant and freezing and late for an appointment. And locked out.

I took a big swing at the back window with this ax. Nothing. I swung at that back window over thirty times. It was apparently made of shatterproof glass.

Never mind that my house was on a slight hill and that every neighbor in kingdom come could look right at me on top of that hill hitting the back door of her house mercilessly.

When the glass finally broke, it splintered into forty million tiny round shards, and I then had to use a hammer to clear out the little pieces of glass from the door frame.  Excruciatingly, I discovered  that there was a second pane of glass on the other side of the broken one.

Everyone should get one of these doors, they are nearly indestructible. A cold pregnant woman with an ax can't break them.

By the time I finally was able to reach in and unlock the door, it was forty-five minutes later. My first call was to the midwife, whom I had kept waiting. I tried to explain that I was late because I had to break into my house with an ax, but gave up and just used the, "I was locked out" excuse instead. She was nice, mostly because I was crying, and because she dealt with crying pregnant women all day.


My second call was to my husband and work, where I had to inform him that I had taken this:



this yellow handled ax stored in the shed, and spent forty-five minutes smashing out the windows in our back door and damaging the handle on the patio door.

My husband is one of the good kinds of husbands.

His first words were, "Are you OK?" His second sentence was, "Don't worry about anything, I'll take care of it."

I told you he was one of the good kinds. When he got home, he laughed. He took one of only two paths available to someone like him in a situation like that: you can find it funny, or you can be furious. He helped me clean up the 60,000 remaining shards of glass inside and outside that I had trouble getting to, he taped plastic up onto the door, and he went right to the Home Depot and bought a new window.

He didn't say anything about the $400, I saw the receipt in his wallet. That's because he's one of the good kinds of husbands. By the way, he's also the kind of husband who will go to Dairy Queen for you any time at all. And he rubs your feet, too.  He also didn't say anything about the $90 he had to spend replacing the special handle on the patio door.

Having been a woman on the brink of emotional breakdown, heavy with child, I can say with confidence that I will be able to wield this ax and escape to safety into the tea shop next door should there be a fire.

I also have one of these, just in case:



And some drain opener, because you never know when a slow drain might strike.


Everyone should get this Plan B set. I should sell this Plan B set. What am I thinking? Yarn? Forget it. PLAN B is hot for spring.

Portrait of a Yarnista as a young girl.