Up and running!

I have a number of things that are sort-of in the works right now.
On an unrelated note, it really felt like summer today! It was pushing 90 degrees. Yuck. Perfect knitting weather *sarcasm*. :)
Despite the heat, I took my latest knitting project to City Park at the tail end of my lunch break and knitted a little bit. It was fabulous.
What is my latest knitting project?
Well, the Ravelry group Knitters for Obama is at it again- this time for homeless vets. For the general election, our latest project is to knit/crochet hats, scarves, and washcloths. They will be donated to various veterans shelters/agencies in some specific states (namely swing states). I have already finished two washcloths, and I am working on a third.
Currently, I am working on a Skrap Cloth Lace Rice Paddy from the Cloth of the Week Yahoo Group. It's really not very difficult but looks much more difficult than it actually is. I'm making it out of Peaches & Creme Article 930 Worsted Weight in Olive (but I call it Army Green). I have two enormous skeins of Army Green in my stash and I had no idea what to do with it. I also did the Fiesta Rib Cloth from K1P1 Keeping You in Stitches Studio in P&C Worsted "Earth Tone" that I had in my stash, and a regular diagonal dish cloth out of P&C Worsted in Faded Denim.

What else do I have coming up, you may ask? About two months ago (see May 1), I was talking about making the Tempest from the Spring 2008 Knitty out of that Caribbean Teal and White Lavish Alpaca I have in my stash. Well, I read the pattern again and I found out that Tempest calls for a fingering weight yarn, and my Lavish Alpaca is a worsted weight yarn. Well, I don't really want to have to try and figure out dimensions and how they differ because of yarn weight, so I went on the search for the perfect fingering weight yarn for the project. And I found it! I got the yarn from Elann, and I had never ordered from them before, but I have to say I will definitely order from them again! I settled on the Peruvian Baby Silk (80% baby alpaca, 20% silk- aka yarn sent from heaven). I picked Raspberry and Parchment (they are currently out of Parchment on the website), or basically a rich dark red and a slightly off-white. Woohoo! I cannot wait to get started, but I need to finish up some other stuff first.
I also bought the yarn (when paying for shipping from Canada, you make the order worthwhile, haha) for the Mariah sweater from the Winter 2004 Knitty. I actually might be even more excited about this because I love hooded sweaters. For this one I bought the Elann Superwash Wool in Celestial Teal (I must have a thing for teal- refer back a paragraph to "caribbean teal" in the Lavish alpaca). It is even more beautiful than it shows up on the monitor!
I can't decide what to do first. :)

Remember how I posted about doing some beta testing for Lion Brand yarn? Well, as a thank-you for testing their site, they sent me yarn! More yarn! This time it was two skeins of the new Lion Brand Sockease, I got one skein of Toffee and 1 skein of Sour Ball. I now have enough sock yarn for five pairs of socks and I have no idea how to knit socks. I better get cracking on that, because I really want to have another type of "portable" project to tote around besides dishcloths.

Stitch N Pitch with the Milwaukee Brewers is coming up!! July 9th! I'm totally psyched.
That is all for now. Pictures of my washcloths for the veterans, plus my new, totally rockin' Knitters for Obama tote bag.