Taaaaaa Daaaaaa!!!!

It has been far, far too long since my last REAL update. With school, Wrangler's stuff, traveling all over the place for work, and knitting, blogging has really gone on the back burner...

Summer in Fairbanks has been really fantastic so far. We've taken the dogs for walks many, many times. I'm sure they wished even more:

Lets take a closer look at these bunch of excited crazy dogs!:

That's what happens when you start going faster than the person on the other end of the leash. Oops! Silly girl. The walks are pretty darn good for the humans too! 10,000 steps is hard to get in one day without a nice long walk (hence the reason I don't make 10,000 steps usually).

With moving in together came a culmination of "saving this" and "scrapping that," we decided Bill's couch was much too small and uncomfortable to support 2 grown people and 2 grown dogs at any one time. So we decided to be ADULTS:

We bought a brand-spankin' new couch from Bailey's. It's so deep and cushy that you can sit in it Indian-style with room in front of you to spare! Knitting in this bad-boy is heavenly!

This post is going to be completely out of order, because at this point I can't even remember what I had for Breakfast this morning, never mind keeping events, trips, updates, and cool news straight...

Anyway, a couple of Monday's ago now (I guess), was Staff Appreciation Day and I went to a Worm Composting class, and a Vegetable Planting workshop, both of which were freaking awesome until the end of the day when they were giving out the Longevity awards. I always go because it makes me proud to work at a University where they have employees who have been there 30+ years. Anyway, when they got to the Chancellor's Outstanding Staff Award, would you believe who's name they called??

MINE!!!!!!!!!!
Can you believe it?!?!?! I know I couldn't. Here's a closer look:

For a while I had a picture of me dressed up as a Deadliest Catch guy for Halloween in the plaque. Then decided I'd wait till I got an official one (like the one above). Pretty freaking unbelievable. I'm still pinching myself when people say congratulations. Did I mention there's an identical plaque hanging on the 3rd Floor of Signers' Hall outside the Chancellor's Office??

On another note, I may have mentioned that I went to Missoula, Montana for a conference last month. That was super fun. NACADA was great, and I found a GREAT fabric shop, SELVAGE and an equally if not better yarn shop, JOSEPH'S COAT.

The lady at Joseph's Coat was so helpful and funny and reminded me a TON of a yarn shop version of June from Homer. I felt very much at home and knit for a while with good conversation.

The last trip I went on was to Kansas City, Missouri for SI Leader Training and then Minneapolis, Minnesota to visit Sarah, Curtis & Blake. K.C. was fantastic! I met a woman named Teri from Ravlery who picked me up 2 nights to knit with her Knitting guild then with her friends at a local knit night at a GREAT shop called MisKnits, where the shop owner Amber allowed us to visit the Chinese restaurant down the street and chow down while we knit!

Here's the gang! Thanks guys, it was a blast.

Did I mention I also went to a Kansas City Royals game while I was in K.C.?? Where I drank entirely too much cheap lite beer, ate peanuts, and cotton candy and a brat with peppers and onions. It was a "full baseball game" experience.


How cool are these seats?? So we ended up leaving at the last half of the 9th inning because they were 3 runs down and we figured, if we left now we'd get a cheap cab ride back to the hotel. Well, I found out on the news that night that they won! (Which meant that they scored 4 runs that last half an inning. Bad luck-ginny strikes again!)

Next on the agenda was Minnesota. Where I stayed with Sarah, Curtis, Blake & Tyler for 4 days.


We went on a whirl-wind crawl through all the yarn & fabric stores in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, including Penzy's Spice House, Caribou Coffee, and most importantly IKEA. I spent WAY WAY too much in IKEA. Like a new down comforter, 2 wine racks, tin cases, dish towels, new bed sheets, straws and a new pillow.

I ended up buying a ton of fabric and not so much yarn... surprisingly.

But with all the new fabric Sarah's sister Shelly and I made box bags (I made one out of hot pink car print fabric that I found). It was a bunch of fun. Not only did I make a new project bag, but I found cool bumble bee buttons for my February Lady Sweater, and finished my Leyburn socks!

...and came home to a new Socks That Rock Shipment!! Pepe La Plume is what it's called and it is FANTASTICALLY gorgeous. I started the pair of socks at knit night at the Dredge with Monica and Krista. It's a race to the finish that Krista will most certainly win.

**Please no drooling on the yarn**

All in all, it's been a super, duper, duper busy, full summer that isn't ending anytime soon. Maybe when I get a chance, I'll update you all about the Sock Summit class sign-up drama. Until next time....

...a sweet adios from Wrang-a-tang.