Walt the Pocket Kangaroo goes to the Fibre Festival

After Walt the Pocket Kangaroo got home from seminary, he went to a fibre festival at the Ancaster Fairgrounds to help out there.  It was the first  year for this fibre festival, so business was a little slow, but that gave Walt a little more time to walk around and see people, and even learn some new tricks.  The fibre festival will still be happening Sunday, so if you missed Friday and today, you can still check it out Sunday.  Anacster Fairgrounds, on Trinity Road (not on the road they used to be on back in 2003. There's houses there now).  And, if you want yarn goodies (or goodles, as some might say) and can't make it to the festival, talk to me and I can point you in the right direction. I know people who know people and all that good stuff.

Walt the Pocket Kangaroo spent most of his time at the Abstract Alpaca Consortium booth (since that was where he was supposed to be helping).  You can click on the picture to enlarge it.  From left to right, top to bottom: Walt snuggled with an alpaca teddy, investigate the yarn, looked at socks (and was sad because there were none his size), looked at pretty rovings for hand spinning, admired the felted banner, played in a swing made out of yarn, enjoyed standing on the luxurious crocheted alpaca rug made from rovings, and enjoyed the feel of raw alpaca fleece.

When Walt the Pocket Kangaroo wasn't at the Abstract Alpaca Consortium (AAC) booth he was hanging out with the awesome guys from the Crochet Crowd at their booth, right next door.  Mikey and Dave were super awesome and super helpful.  They let people try out their knitting looms and showed us how to make socks on a sock loom.  On the top left, Walt the Pocket Kangaroo is posing with the baby socks made on the sock loom.  They are still a bit too big for him.  On the right, Walt picked out some sock yarn from the AAC and then bought a sock loom to take home.  He is working on a pair of socks for his human.  On the lower left, Walt is checking out a new infinity loom from DA looms.  It's an amazing knitting loom that lets you make a 5 foot wide afghan, quite easily.  He is sitting on the very first afghan made with the new loom. He wanted to take one home with him, but his human couldn't afford it, especially not after getting the sock loom. Click on the picture to enlarge

Walt the Pocket Kangaroo got to try his hand at spinning with a drop spindle.  They even had a Walt sized spindle for him to use.  Thank you for being there and letting Walt try things out Gemini Fibres!

All this Fibre Festival stuff is hungry work! Walt the Pocket Kangaroo got to have his favorite snack: Watermelon!

Walt the Pocket Kangaroo voted for his favorite entries in three categories: Fashion, Art and Utility.  It was really neat to see what people had done with natural fibres!

Walt the Pocket Kangaroo went out to the barn to see a camel.

He also saw a 3 week old llama baby.  Walt isn't particularly fond of llamas, but this baby was kinda cute.  The baby was a preemie, otherwise he would have been bigger.  He also seemed to have some brain damage, but that might have been just because he was a llama.

Saffron the house alpaca came in to the vendor fair and met Walt the Pocket Kangaroo close up.  She even gave him kisses, but his human didn't catch any on camera.  Saffron won first place in the full fleece show.

Patience is a virtue...

...a virtue is a grace, and Grace is a little girl who wouldn't wash her face.
Sometimes I am not a very patient person.  Not so much with other people, but with myself and life in general.  It's something I definetely need to work on. I want things now and I don't want to wait for them.  I get more impatient about somethings than others. Here are things currently at the top of my list:
I am impatient:

• for spring to come.  We are having wondeful maple syrup weather, which tells me that spring is close, but I want it to hurry up.
• to hear back from Western.  This will determine largely what I am doing next year and I really would like to know sooner rather than later.
• for my crayon blanket to be all the way done so that I can post a completed picture of it. I'm to a point now where I can't work on it and read at the same time so it's not progressing as far.  Here's a picture of where it is at right now...

I used this pattern as a suggestion, but added two more crayons, added rows to make them longer by about 8 inches, did the lettering differently and put them together differently. I also have plans to do another 8 crayons and sew the two sets together in such a way that when you fold the blanket it looks like a box of crayons.

• for school to be over.  Senioritis has set in a little sooner than I would have liked it to and it's really hard to stay focussed on school and homework and papers and readings..

Enough about being impatient.  It won't change anything anyways and it's time to run get some lunch before classes start for the afternoon...

Randomness

This may potentially be the most disjointed post I have typed in awhile, but I'm gonna have a go at it anyways.
- My mom is amazing.  This week she mailed me my days of the week shirts.  For those of you who haven't met them before, they are t-shirts that have the days of the week painted on them.  One shirt for each day and one shirt with question marks for when I forget which day it is (or if the correct shirt is dirty or if I just want to mess with people).  Now, ideally, I will know what day it is and actually go to the right classes/committments.
- The first eight crayons of the crayon blanket are finished and it is time for me to start sewing them together.  In this theme, I have amazing friends who help me out with colors and the order has been narrowed down to pretty much two options: red, yellow, blue, light purple, pink, dark purple, green, orange OR yellow, green, blue, dark purple, light purple, pink, orange, red.   Currently the second order has the most votes.  Opinions are welcome.  To see a picture of the colors click here (option 2 in the picture has been almost voted out...it's pretty much between options 1 and 3) (OR if you are reading this on facebook just click over to my "What do I actually do at school? Spring 2010" album to see the picture)  Opinions are welcome.
- This semester is going way too fast.  I choose not to think any further on this.
- Tea and Tales on Tuesdays and Thursdays is pretty  much a highlight of my week.  Especially when Sara reads the story to us and it has duck noises and she makes really cool duck noises.
- My last reference for Western was submitted yesterday, so now it's just waiting.  Hopefully not too much longer...
- I graduate in May and have no idea what I am going to do for the summer.  Suggestions for jobs are welcome.  Especially suggestions for cool jobs.
- Some nights you just need to cuddle and cry with someone.  Then you feel better.
- I really really miss camp today.
- Winter can go away at any point now so that it is warm enough for me to go look at stars.
- Spring break comes soon and I need to decide what I am going to do for it.
- I really should get back to writing my paper so that I can do more reading so that I can crochet while I read (I can't type and crochet at the same time)
- I love my friends.  A lot.
- Chicken broth has magical properties.  So does sleep.
- Sometimes you have to be broken before you can be healed.
- I still really want to go swimming.

Baby Blanket

Some of you, especially those back home, had asked to see pictures of the baby blanket once I finished it.  It's been done for a couple weeks now, but I wanted to wait until I delivered it before posting pictures of it.
I found the pattern in one of mom's old Country Women magazines, altered the color scheme to something I like (and thought was more practical), retyped the pattern so I didn't need to take mommy's magazine with me to school (and so I had a backup plan for when I lost the pattern), bought yarn and set to work. Instead of working the ends in at the corners of the blocks I decided to leave them as tassles.  I thought it looked cute.
I found the butterfly pattern online.  The pattern was supposed to be worked with a 2.0mm hook, but I don't have one, so I used my 4.0mm one.  I think it worked alright.
Here's the finished product:

Here's a close up of the butterfly:

Now I really need to work on my homework...I'm good at getting distracted.