More. Stash. Aquisition.

Because, of course, I needed more yarn.

See, it started with the haircut. I stretch them out as far as they can possibly go, but it was time again and since I’m on vacation this week, I figured it would be easy to get an appointment and so . . . that’s where I was at 10:00 this morning. Afterward, though, it seemed a shame to just go home. What kind of vacation day would that be? So, first, I headed over to Nonna’s, except they didn’t open until 11:00. Back to the car (since there’s only 1 or 2-hour parking in town and I didn’t want a ticket), and in moving it, I decided to drive past the other yarn shop.

Back around May, the LYS that we had closed–this was a shop which I didn’t hate, but didn’t love, either. The owners were only friendly to me about 20% of the time, and while they had some nice yarns, it wasn’t one of my favorite places to patronize. (If I’m not going to get decent service from my LYS, then I’m going to buy my yarn cheaper online because–why would I want to give rude, unhelpful people my money?) Well, they’re open again, right next door to where they were before and with a much smaller selection . . . but they open at 10:00 and so I figured I’d stop in to check it out while waiting for Nonna’s to open. For a miracle, the owner was actually friendly, even though she was helping a patron with the sleeve for her sweater, and since I really liked the colors in this sock yarn, decided to patronize the store for the cost of a skein of yarn.

Then, back to Nonna’s–which I frankly like better–to buy some Suede in that “Tonto” spring green I like so much. I don’t remember whose blog I saw the pattern on, but this is for a knitting tote bag, which is brilliant because, while it’s a beautiful yarn, I don’t see how it could “breathe” and think it would be awfully uncomfortable to wear as a garment. Now, as I walked into the shop, the owner recognized me and greeted me by name. They were in the middle of a crochet class, so the place was full of happy, crafty people, lots of sunlight . . . much nicer. I’m glad I waited to buy my Suede from them. I needed 5 skeins, but they only had four in the color I wanted, so, I bought my fifth skein in a contrasting purple (because I love purple and green together). I’ll do a stripe, or something. But now I need to figure out where I can get the handles for that bag! (If you have a link, please let me know, huh?)

Edited to add: I think I found the handles for the tote bag here. And look, there was a nice discussion about them in August on Knitter’s Review. Just in case anybody else is interested, too!

So, even after buying yarn at Rhinebeck, I got some more today. How lucky am I?

I’ve also been doing some spinning on my adorable little Golding spindle, shown here next to my Kundert so you can see the difference in size. This is a tiny little gem of a spindle, I just have to figure out how to spin finely enough to really get my copp’s worth since otherwise it fills up far too quickly. (Of course, I’m trying it with 100% silk roving, and that’s got a whole ‘nother set of issues for my fingers to get used to.) It’s adorable, though.

Now, if anyone has any tips on how to empty the copp off my bitty spindle in such a way that I can join the end from my next spindle-full . . . there’s such a relatively small amount of singles on there, it’s not worth pulling out the niddy-noddy, and while I could wind it directly to my Noste, there’s not enough for anything remotely resembling a ball-full, so I’d ideally like to join one copp to the next to the next . . . but how can I do that without using knots? Anyone?

I knitted the first finger for my Peaceful Palms gloves this afternoon–and would actually have done more except I didn’t have any spare yarn to thread through the stitches to move on to the second finger (and was too lazy to come upstairs looking for some). I’ve decided to use Meg Swansen’s I-Cord glove pattern (from “Handknitting“)–this handy-dandy pattern creates the fingers out of I-cord, rather than knitting each one in the round on tiny DPNs. Who wouldn’t love the simplicity of that? I was going to use some leftover Manos from a sweater I made in 2004, but then I figuratively hit myself over the head. “Idiot!” (I told myself) “Use some of your handspun!”

And so I am.

Tags: General, Knitting/Spinning // 5 Comments »