It's The Most Consumeristic Time Of The Year...

OMG, I'm actually knitting again! With my yarn stash gathering dust bunnies in a large section of my guest room and loads of knitting needles strewn about, with and without WIPs on them, I decided to embark on my first knitting project in about a year and a half! First I had to go out and buy more needles, not that I needed any, but I just couldn't pass up the new pink Denise Needles. I mean, it's for a good cause right? $5 of each purchase goes to help support breast cancer research. :) Once in hand, I decided to start small and work on the Lace-Up Fingerless Gloves from the book Alterknits, which I purchased from Amazon. I'm using Manos del Uruguay (#100-Agate).

Wowzers does this stuff knit up beautifully! The colors are amazing and instead of buying it, I actually pulled this one from my stash.

getting ready for burningman

well, i'm picking up the rental van from a nearby car rental agency and will be prepping it for my departure for burningman. haven't done much of anything to get things together this year.

busy as a bee...but alas still no knitting...

Wow, just finished an intensive training session through the California Motorcyclist Safety Program (CMSP). I am now a MSF-certified CMSP RiderCoach. I start "coaching" next weekend...

Check out the amazing doll that my workout pals made me for my birthday...http://www.flickr.com/photos/purlgurl
It's supposed to be ME. The balls represent all the things I juggle in my life...motorcycles, gamelan, crafts/knitting, sports (snowboarding, runnning, etc), scuba, my kitties =^..^=

not so pc yarn...

So, I feel a little uneasy about this one…

My friend L, went on a three week trip to New Zealand. He was nice enough to bring back some very nice skeins of NZ produced yarn which he purchased from a local NZ yarn shop. I was very surprised to feel the yarn was sooooooo soft and looked at the label for it’s content: 30% possum fur. Initially, I thought, wow, this is sooo nice and soft, I’ll have to think of a special project to use it for. Well, upon sharing the new finds with some knitting friends I came to hear that possums are thought of as pests in NZ and are killed and used to produce all sorts of things including this here yarn. Sigh…I’ve been trying to do some online research to find out how the fur is obtained and manufactured, but haven't found much.

http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=106593&z=195

Of course this leads one to think about yarn production in general and now I’m questioning ALL of my yarn purchases. I’ve got angora, cashmere, even plain ol’ wool has me concerned. What conditions are these animals subjected?

Anyone out there know?

I found it difficult to find stuff online that isn’t from the perspective of the fur industry…like this one…http://www.thread.co.nz/article/466

Guess I need to refine my search criteria.

for your viewing pleasure...LEGO knitting machine

LEGO knitting machine Looks like a four loop icord to moi.

I'll start posting my blog posts here as my site http://www.purlgurl.com is and will be outta service for some time.