Update, organize, advance!

The update: My dad is still in the hospital in Tampa, but due to schedule conflicts Mom and I came back to North Carolina this weekend.  It was a long drive but there are lots of craft stores along the way 😉  She’s flying back on Thursday for the long weekend but I can’t handle that much flying so I’ll be here on my lonesome with a huuuuuuge stash to play with!  We’ll have to go back to Tampa again to pack up his apartment by the 26th and move his stuff to NC, while he is being transferred to an Army hospital at Ft. Benning in Columbus, GA.  We may or may not be visiting him there, the schedule is tight as it is since I go back to the UK on the 30th.

Organizing: I have bought so much stuff!  I had ordered more fiber from the Homestead Wool and Gift Farm before I found out that I would be able to attend Convergence 2008.  No, not the goth one, the biennial conference of the Handweavers Guild of America.  I was only able to go for one afternoon at the exhibit hall but oh my, what a wonderful experience!  I don’t weave much yet (although that’s something I want to do more of in the future) but the vendors included sooooo much for spinners and dyers.  Dyeing, too, is something I have only toyed with really, but I hope to take a natural dyeing course through a lovely SCA lady in the UK if she is ever able to resume doing the courses.  Plus there was plenty of “weaving” (read: knitting) yarn for me to buy 🙂  So I loaded up a lot on fiber and yarn and got two new spindles, a nostepinne, a new lucet, some wooden bobbins, a sock loom from a company I’d never heard of before and several books for spinning on spindles. It was fabulous!  (And many thanks to Mom for financing it all 😉 )  Mom really, really fell in love with the Ashford Elizabeth 2 but I have yet to make up my mind as to whether I prefer a double treadle or a double-wide single treadle (like on the E2).  I just don’t know which is better for my knees.  And anyway, I want to get a drum carder before considering a wheel!  (Plus I am holding out for a reasonably-priced electric spinning “wheel” to appear in the UK, alas I can’t just get a US one because of the power/voltage issues :/)

We also stopped at 5 scrapbooking/stamping stores and one quilt store plus Michael’s had a big sale on scrapbooking stuff while we were down there and we hit a Hobby Lobby.  (No Serenity looms though, do they still make/sell those???)

So as a result of all of this wonderful stash enhancement, I’ve been spending most of today trying to organize everything so that I can get the most out of what little crafting time I will have available to me this trip.

Advance!  On to bigger and better things, I say!  I’m really gunning to get crafting, I just have several more chores and a few doctors appointments this week and then I can hopefully get my pics off my cameras to post them and also get back to making stuff!

Hope everyone is having a great week, and happy 4th of July to those who celebrate it.

PS. Don’t miss today’s episode of Yarncraft (the podcast by Lion Brand) which is on Loom Knitting!  I’m bummed that I never really got the chance to call in for it but oh well.  I’m going to go listen right now!