Ciao bellas

Well, this is it. We leave at an obscenely early hour on Saturday so tomorrow will be spent packing and getting together last minute stuff we'd almost forgot. Or, in my case, freaking out. But I think we're okay. The clothes are finished. I managed to find things to dress up the monkey. And the ipod is almost loaded. I still have to try to figure what can and cannot go in the carry-ons, but that shouldn't take long. What will take a while is me pondering how I can threaten an airplane with eyeshadow.
While I'm off touring ancient Rome and basking in the sun on exotic isles, the blog will likely not be updated. Nobody wants to come home to a three week old post that has no comments. So here's the deal: I will make sure to pick up a few extra weird and wonderful goodies on my travels and will offer them up as prizes. It'll be a random drawing from all the people that comment on this post. Make 'em interesting folks, I'm not pretty when I'm bored!
And as a final note, Sock Wars will end while I'm away. This makes me truly happy. I offed three people with Socks of Doom and will hopefully be dead with my very own pair of socks by the time I get home. I made it into the last hundred alive out of almost eight hundred and a very nice assassin in the UK said she was off to buy yarn for my impending doom today. Hooray! I can't understand why no one wanted to kill me, seems like any number of people around here would line up for that opportunity...

PS: The skeins in the pic are beast and BFL. I haven't been able to concentrate on my knitting much lately so I've been spinning up pretty coloured stuff from my stash. There's another 100g of BFL in reds, browns and purples on the wheel now and I'll ply it off before we leave. I'm really enjoying the sort of tweedy, stripey things these rovings are creating when I ply them back on themselves. It reminds me of the Trekking ombres. With 100g, I can make socks or a couple of hats or mitts, wrist warmers, the list goes on.

SP Goodies!

My SP for this round sent me this cool kitty basket for Halloween. You'll have to take my word for it that it was full of treats when it arrived. In fact, there were so many little chocolate bars in it that I didn't find the Satsuma body butter for three days! It was a pretty nice surprise when we ate down that far. So, many thanks to my SP and I love the card!


This is the pretty mystery beast fibre currently on the wheel and here is the tequila sunrise stuff plyed, but not washed:


I think I might make a couple of the hats from a previous post with it.


And this, this my friends is the motherlovin' charkha. Not only did it arrive safe and sound, but no duty! This is a very nice change after the chain of unpleasant events earlier this week. In fact, other than the yucky cold I have right now (which has turned me into a sneezy oozing mess) things are actually better.
We don't have plane tickets, but at least we have the flight info. The flights aren't great, but we get to Rome in time which was starting to look kinda doubtful. The monkey even got us seats together for all but one of the flights. And no, the travel agancy had NOT booked us seats. Thanks to the quick-thinking monkey that little disaster was averted.
My dress clothes are almost done. We had to add a fitting, but there's still lots of time and the ladies at Bernardi's (sorry, no website) doing the work have been wonderful. I can't believe anyone would ever buy a ready-made dress when you can have the dress of your dreams handmade for so little. These ladies have been simply amazing and they make you feel really good.
Some of you have expressed concern over me being gone so long and not having anything to do. Not to fear! I have wound off enough yarn for two stoles, assembled the beads for a peyote bag, bought 9 books, and I'm considering taking a cross-stitch as well. Pretty sure that'll keep me covered for three weeks. Especially since I plan to take the Italian lessons offered on the ship. The monkey also got me an 8G ipod and I've spent the last couple of weeks transferring every cd I own (around 300) onto it. Should keep me going.
And oh yeah, enough sock yarn for two pairs for knitting on the plane. I'm open to suggestions from those of you who still think I'll be bored...