Think of it as practice.

So, Poem-Man and I were out on our Connecticut theater-food-and-leaves annual Combus Day Weekend jaunt. A great play at Yale Repertory Theater and Indian food in New Haven. Then a lovely autumn morning stroll, pizza lunch, and drive to Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, when we practically crashed into this sign:



WHAAAATTT?

"Honey, can we stop here?" says ewephoric.
"Yes, *secret nickname here,* we can stop," defers Poem-Man.

Then I parked the car, and saw this:



Poem-Man in his talk ewephoric down off the ceiling voice: "May I remind you that you are going to Rhinebeck next weekend?"
ewephoric, sheepish- and peevishly, "I know, I know."

But then inside, this:



Well, what is a girl to do? Connecticut Yarn and Wool is a lovely shop with Carol-dyed (ok, that's the dyer who I met at the store) beautiful yarns that I've never seen anywhere. 4 rooms and a porch full of lovely yarns. And it was all 30% off. Rhinebeck-Shminebeck. Smash the Stash. i bought some yarn:





And some undyed sock yarn that I want to dye up in "Autumn Leaves" colors and will show later.

I think of it as practicing for fondling, considering, and buying yarn at Rhinebeck. I want to be a pro, right?

Oh, and "Big River" at the Goodspeed was almost as good as the scenery outside the opera house.



BTW, I HAVE been knitting even though I haven't been blogging. Darn that day job of teaching--actually I'm grateful that I have the job and love it so much in these uncertain times!

Got Koigu?

I was on my beach vacation, blithely walking off the boardwalk into town, and ran into a LYS that was going out of business. Everything was 75% off. Did you read that? 75% off. Needles, some skeins of yarns, patterns, everything. I picked out some Cascade Tweed in a chunky weight (was going to be $3/skein) and some Addi Turbo lace needles, and a couple of patterns. But I didn't have any money with me, and by the time I found my wallet--I mean, my husband--someone else had taken the yarn and Addis that I had piled up next to the register and paid for them and left. DAMN.

Well, there were a couple of patterns and another Addi Turbo circular needle that were still left behind, so I went to buy those. Then I saw that buttons were also 75% off, so I bought three sets of buttons for some imaginary future projects . I also found a lone skein of Austermann sport-weight sock yarn with the jojoba and and aloe vera in it, so I bought that, too. My total came to $21.76! WOO HOO! A few reasonable purchases for the practically the price of ONE Addi Turbo circular. God love Delaware for having no sales tax, too!

Then I saw it. SHOOT. An entire KOIGU kit for 50% off. I wouldn't be caught dead in the mitered mishmash of a tunic that the kit would allow one to make, but what was in the kit was 2 skeins of ELEVEN colorways at about 50% off what one might normally pay and without sales tax. Oh help me, I bought it. How could I not, right?

22 skeins of KOIGU KPPPM in 11 colorways.

OmigGAWD! What have I done? What am I gonna do with all this? I spent like 10 hours on Ravelry trying to figure out what to do. Babette? Too many variegated skeins, but I would consider it if someone traded me a few solids for some of the variegated. A Charlotte's Web Shawl? Maybe. Socks. I guess--the one pair I made got holes in them, but at this price I paid for this Koigu, I won't be so upset about it. And I hate the mitered square things in this yarn.

Would you give me some advice? I know. I know. I'll give the Koigu to you if I have to...

If you knit it, it never counted....

As you've read, I've been bad about maintaining my stash vow. It's been a race between knitting and buying, and well, despite my best efforts, yarn purchased has outweighed yarn consumed.

It's not that I've not been knitting...

I've knit like crazy because I was able to this vacation week. I've knit like crazy to atone for the fact that I went to the sale at The Point at the beginning of my vacation even though I was over my stash quotient. I went to the sale and bought yarn even though I knew I was about to embark on a road trip. A road trip that would involve LYSses that were not local for me and thus were bound to be places I would have to buy vacation-yet-still-breaking-the-stash-vow yarn. I went to enable some friends of mine--not to buy anything myself.

Whatever. I went and brought home some yummy yummy way-on-sale-but-still-breaking-the-stash-vow-yarn. This yarn, I have plans for. the Bird in Hand mittens. Notice how well I've strayed from the pattern-suggested colors. harumph. I know, I know. Yarn you have plans for still counts as stash...

So off on my road trip I went. I even returned to one crime scene: Smith's Furnishings and Flooring (uh, and yarn) in Oberlin, Ohio. My college LYS and first place I really remember buying yarn. Fuschia and teal mohair yarn. So sue me. It's still there (I'm not that old...) and still sells yarn. And though I went into the store and assumed nostalgia buying would get me, I DID NOT BUY ANY YARN! Yay me. Instead, I hung out in the Oberlin Inn and knit like crazy on my Gathered Pullover.

In fact, I've finished the entire body of Gathered Pullover to go with the one sleeve (aka "swatchie") I had completed. Here's a detail of the one interesting thing in the miles of stockinette.

I also completed the legs of my Mad Color Weave Socks because I knit all the Gathered Pullover yarn I had brought with me.

Here's where Cleopatra Queen of DENIAL (about her stash vow) makes an appearance.



Feeling pretty good about my knitting and my ability to be yarn-purchase free for a whole 4 days, I went to Pittsburgh and nonchalantly told Poem-man that there was a yarn store I wanted to go to. Nonchalantly, like I hadn't been madly researching the Web and Ravelry for the best yarn store to check out. whatever. So sue me.

So into Knit One I went. I love this place. I think it's one of the best LYSses I've ever been to. Look at the picture! It's huge. It has mad love for yarn and knitters. While I was there, five people (customers and clerks) complimented me on my Juliet--some of them by name of the pattern. One Koolhaas-wearing woman even pulled a half-done Juliet out of her knitting bag! This place is NO JOKE.

I met one woman who works there and has a book coming out soon! And I met another customer who happens to live about 1 mile away from me in Brooklyn. I met her in PITTSBURGH! The two of them are my newest Ravelry friends. I love THAT!

So of course, I had to buy SOMETHING. Stash vow. Sm-tash vow. Poem-man had exiled himself to a nearby Starbucks and when he returned to procure me 1.5 hours later, I had chatted up my new friends, fondled every yarn they had, and still had NOT BOUGHT anything but was desperate to do so.

Luckily, Poem-Man remembered he wanted a new, warmer hat. Apparently a part-yak Koolhaas doesn't cut it when it's freakin' cold (like it had been in Oberlin for two days prior.) So I found yarn. Bought it. Drove immediately back to Brooklyn. The next day, I felt so bad about breaking my stash vow and was so snowed in that I knit Poem-man's hat.

YARN THAT BECOMES A HAT in LESS THAN 24 HOURS since time of purchase DOES NOT COUNT AS STASH YARN. So sue me.

Pattern: Cashmere Ribbed Hat (mad easy, yo! Thanks, Cricket!)

Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Superwash Bulky in "Jeans"

Enabler: Knit One

Knitted on: Size 6 Knitpicks Options magic looped.

Time spent knitting while fretting about the state of my stash: Feb. 21st--4 hours.

Notice that I didn't spend too much time stash-fretting. Notice I knit bulky yarn on Size 6 needles--so that it would be really thick and warm(er) for Poem-man. (Even though he has all his hair, so I don't know why his head gets so cold.) He LOVES it. Wore it today.

And the best part is that I didn't really break my stash vow. not that much anyway...

Fortunately, Unfortunately...the socks edition

Ever read this children's book Fortunately Unfortunately? It begins:

"Fortunately, Ned was invited to a surprise party.
Unfortunately, the party was a thousand miles away.
Fortunately, a friend loaned Ned an airplane.
Unfortunately, the motor exploded.
Fortunately, there was a parachute in the airplane.
Unfortunately, there was a hole in the parachute."


Ok, here's the Ewephoric Socks version:

Fortunately, One very cold post-Thanksgiving Day, Ewephoric had on some beautiful, hand-knit wool socks .(Sub-fortunately, the color was beautiful. Sub-unfortunately, the name of the patterns was, well, unfortunate.)


Unfortunately, These lovely socks had a hole!

Fortunately, Ewephoric remembered she had extra yarn to repair it with since this yarn had been put up in a whoppingly generous skein.

Unfortunately, There are holes EVERYWHERE, and in both socks. Start over from scratch? With yarn that seems a bit fragile?



Fortunately, Poem-man and I spent the day after Thanksgiving in Cold Spring, NY.
Unfortunately, Poem-man got sick of looking at antiques and at the (awfully cold, but beautiful ) view of the Hudson River, and we had to leave.


Fortunately, On the way out of the Main Street are of town we found a YARN STORE!
Knittingsmith
Unfortunately, On the way out of the Main Street are of town we found a YARN STORE!


Fortunately, The store had beautiful yarn and an appropriate sign.

Unfortunately, Knittingsmith had sock yarn.

Fortunately, Ewephoric's stash was full of sock yarn.

Unfortunately, some Paca-Peds in the colorway "Singin' the Blues" made its way into her stash...even after Ewephoric had recently received an installment of sock club yarn.

Fortunately, Ewephoric does not feel compelled to repair the holey socks since she has new yarns to knit with.

Unfortunately, Ewephoric has lost her sock-knitting mojo and keeps turning sock yarn into non-sock accessories, even though she loves to wear hand-knit socks in the cold winter weather.

Oh, well. How will the story end?

Quick! Look over there!

See the pretty flower from the garden at Emily Dickinson's House in Amherst, Massachusetts!

Now look down there--careful it's a bee!

Yes, it's true. I'm just trying to distract you from the fact that I've broken my stash vow and am continuing on my March of Shame. We've already passed the first checkpoint at Green Mountain Spinnery. The second and most lethal part of the March continues at WEBS, where I first encountered the sock yarn display...

They had lots and lots of stuff, but I was in search of one thing (which became two purchases...). I passed up the Trekking and the Kaffe Fasset and the hand-dyed house brand and finally found a few remaining colors of Shibui Sock Yarn. Woo hoo!

Details of the yarn are over there to your right in my stash list. This is lovely, lovely, stuff. 100% superwash merino but with a little more inherent strength to it (or so it seems to me) that others like it! Of course, I broke my rule that says no 100% merino socks because holes emerge pretty quickly, but the saturated colors and the feel of the yarn made me go against my better judgement. I did buy some reinforcing yarn to do the toes and heels. Look what I got's going on here! These are socks for Poem-man in the Diagonal Rib pattern. (The color variation in the toes is from the reinforcing thread.)

The other color is for me. I wanted a change from all the multicolored hand-dyed yarns I've been using. These might become Poseidon socks or Whitbys or (insert suggestion here)?

Anyway, that's the yarn from the front of the Webs store stop. After walking around totally overwhelmed by all the yarns in the front, I went back into the really major sales in the warehouse. omigod. But that's for another day.

In the meantime, the wedding afghan is further along and, well--

How is this and this going to become that (which is a gift for my mother?)

Walk of shame!

I may have broken my stash vow. duh.

I had a wonderful time yarn gazing at Green Mountain Spinnery. GPS was really tiny and felt like some artisanal kind of place, and a really nice woman named Em helped me out while I was there. It was a great chance to handle and see all of their yarns that I had read about, and it seemed that if I didn't buy it straight from there, I would be cheating somehow. (On the other hand, I didn't know that they carry the yarn at Webs, which was my next stop and at a 20% discount. Eek. But, it's the difference between buying at an independent bookstore vs. some Amazon/Walmart kind of place, yes?) Here's my purchase from there: 7 skeins of "Sylvan Spirit" (50% wool/tencel) in Amethyst, intended for Cinxia.

After about 45 minutes at GPS, Poem-man and I had a lovely lunch in Putney at Front Porch Cafe, which Em had recommended. Both the cafe and GPS would be worth another visit!

Back in the car we got and made our way to Webs, a mere 1.5 hours or so from Putney. I should have known what I was in for when the car we parked next to contained two teenage boys totally reclined in the seats playing hand-held video games and the car parked behind us had a sleeping man at the wheel. Poem-man was like, "wait, let me make sure I have my Ipod and my book." I walked in to Webs with a plan. whatever. but that's a story for another day.

Traveling beyond...

It's been a packed 5 days! I bought a NEW CAR which I love and promptly drove 800 miles though Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. As a native Midwsterner, I still marvel at being able to travel to a gabillion states in like half and hour or something. Most of the time was spent hanging out with some of Poem-man's family, so lots of knitting got done. A pair of Vinnland socks in 5 days!

Pattern: Vinnland Socks

Yarn: Yarn Love Juliet in "Fervor"

Yarn enabler: woolgirl, August 2007

Knit on: One 32" Knitpicks Size 0 Circular

Time I spent knitting these while listening to my MIL, SIL, and Poem-man carry on: 5 days.

I'm tellin' you this Vinnland sock pattern is genius and a must-knit! It's basically a 2x2 rib, but the ribs swirl and flow, and I memorized the 16-row pattern after one repeat. The ribbing makes them fit snugly and not droop. I'm still having trouble, however, with the looseness of my knitting. The yarn was pretty thin and even though I knit it on size O needles, if you look closely at the stitches they're pretty loose. The merino-tencel combo may be better for me than wool-nylon.

Vermont and Massachusetts were fraught with stash-peril for me. Geez. Here's a little taste of where I went before WEBS, and maybe tomorrow or the day after, I'll actually do the walk of shame.

Oy Welt!

Poem-man has new socks that he really likes! The colorway makes them perfect to wear with jeans, and the merino-tencel blend makes them cooler, lighter, and comfortable for warmer-than-winter weather. I'm not sure that the chevron welt was the right pattern for the colorway and color-stripey-repeat action, but Poem-man really likes them, so I'm happy, too. I want to make some merino-tencel socks for me because the drape and snugness of this blend is really nice.

Pattern: Chevron Welt from Sensational Knitted Socks.
Yarn: Yarn Love Joan of Arc (merino-tencel) in "Contentment;"
Yarn enabler: woolgirl, August 2007
Knit on: One 32" Knitpicks Size 0 Circular Needle
Time I spent knitting these when I should have been putting my conference presentation together: 10 days.


Wedding Afghan update! Woo hoo!
Time elapsed: 35 days
Number of days that S & C have been married: 12 days.
Repeats Completed: 6.5
Skeins knitted: 14 of 26.
Length: 30 inches
Hence: I am more than halfway home!

Lastly, I'm off this weekend on another little mini-vacation. While it's true that I will be visiting my mother-in-law, it's also true that I'll be headed to Vermont (a state full of yarn and cheese!) by way (either on the way there or the way back or both!) of WEBS in Northampton. And just look how many spaces I have to fill in my stash!

Discovering jewels

I found a JEWEL in the Connecticut River Valley this weekend. There were many contenders: the lovely, unpretentious B&B we stayed at, Riverwind Inn; the old school French restaurant where Poem-man and I actually got to speak French, Restaurant du Village; the fancy inn where we enjoyed the gardens and elegant food, Bee and Thistle Inn, and the lovely Goodspeed Opera House (unfortunately the production was the fake paste gem of the weekend.)

But the jewel of the trip was Yarns Down Under. Poem-man and I got lost and annoyed driving around the River Valley and as we (unbeknownst to us) neared our B & B, I saw a little sign for the store with an arrow pointing down a road! Woo hoo! Dust flew as a hung a yoouuie (as I call a u-turn) and on we went. I had read that there was a yarn store in the village we were staying in and I assumed I would find it on Deep River's small main street area, but I hadn't, and had thus decided I wasn't really going to go looking for it since I hadn't planned on any yarn purchasing during the weekend, but THERE IT WAS, the place around the next bend that would make our getting lost worth it! We drove on a small road, parked in a gravel driveway over looking a small golf course, and I turned to Poem-man and said if it's scary or small we'll leave right away. We made our way past a golfing office and down some stairs becoming more unsure that this was the right thing to do and walked into a YARN HAVEN! Really, this is a yarn store for Knitters, capital K and double Ts!

All the yarns you haven't seen in person are there, including the great Simply Shetland stuff, Bear Mountain sock yarn, Claudia HandPaints, every kind of Schaefer yarn, all kinds of Rowans--everything! This is a store for people who knit, really knit. What do I mean by that? Well, there's great quality yarn of every kind of fiber, but it's not yarn for the sake of yarn (and expensive yarn at that, i.e. Purl Soho). The store is organized by fiber and weight but is delightfully crammed full of yarn enough to feel like you'll keep uncovering wonderful yarn after yarn. Sheila, the owner (on the right), and Sheryl (Cheryl? Sherri? sorry!) were great people to ask questions of and talk to who really knew their stuff. There are kits they've created for particular projects, yarn spun and dyed (I think) of local purveyors, tons of books, well just everything! I even got a back issue of Interweave Knits (2004!) that I had wanted. I wish I had been more prepared to really shop, list of yarn needs in hand. For instance, I'm thinking my next project is a EPS sweater with a fair isle-ish yoke and this store would have been the place to put that together, but I wasn't prepared. All I bought was some Noro Kureyon for a felted purse (see in my I wanna Knit list). I would go back in a heartbeat to shop. And, they have a knitting retreat next summer---must get on bandwagon! Or perhaps an Autumn trip to this area with a few knitting chums, hmmm?

Well, the wedding afghan has seen no progress since Friday since I was away during this weekend and it is a at-home project not meant to be dragged around in the heat. More excitingly, here's the happy couple recipients-to-be of the afghan! It was a joyous, thoughtful, meaningful wedding and reception. I love weddings! I'm re-inspired to work on the afghan! On the other hand: 1. They're young. 2. It's too hot to enjoy an afghan right now. 3. They know the afghan is coming. 4. Ms. Manners says I have up to a year to give a wedding gift. I'll get it done!

And look we all got mini-wedding cakes for dessert!

Mission accomplished!

Welcome to the sunny North Carolina mountains where life is so quiet and placid that knitting gets done all of its own accord. Here are the Dungaree Socks I cast on on Wednesday (after I had finished knitting the entire back of the Donna sweater on Tuesday during the long day of delayed airline travel). These socks are enjoying the view of the Smoky Mountains from the vantage point of my parents' front deck. It's not at all like the view from my Brooklyn apartment. duh.

Ok, so in NC everything moves slowly except knitting because by Thursday night/Friday morning (while I waited for my husband to arrive in NC after a TWENTY-SEVEN hour delay,) I had this:





Pattern: Dungaree Socks
Yarn: Louet Gems Fingering in Violet and Purple
Yarn enabler: Knit New York in January, 2007 Knit on: One long Knitpicks Size O, Magic Looped. Time I spent knitting these when I had nothing else to do but talk to my parents: 3 Days

What to say about these socks. They were a down-and-dirty effort that served their purposes for me: 1) To use the Louet yarn which I am pretty much in love with for stitch-definition, feel in the hand, and color. 2) To have a small project to finish knitting quickly. 3) To work on two-color knitting. In this case, it was mosaic knitting.

Ok, let's talk about this mosaic knitting with two colors for a moment and how I am not at all a good knitter. I picked two colors that were (on sale, to be honest) harmonious but whose values (is that the right word?) were not different enough to provide sharper contrast in this wavy pattern. Also, I haven't mastered how to do the tension right for the slip stitches in mosaic technique. When I read this tutorial, it said that things should be loose, which is easy for me since I'm a loose knitter to beat the band. The other thing I got from the tutorial is that things will work themselves out in the blocking. I never block socks, but I blocked these because the colorwork looked like a puckered raisiny mess when I finished. They don't look so bad now, but the pattern is still not as sharply defined as I would've liked and the lovely definition of the Louet yarn is showing off my knitting inadequacies quite well thank you. Oh, well. That's what happens on your first attempt at a new technique, right?

In the meantime, airline travel sucks except that it provides lots of knitting time for when your head is exploding from the travel delays of bad weather, broken airlines, crazy gate agents (well, just the one who luckily went away. The other Asheville gate agent was a prince--I should have taken his picture and gotten his address so that I could send him the socks I was working on), and line-sitting while you try to get back to NY. My parents told us that there's a Chinatown bus that goes from Asheville-NYC. As far as I'm concerned, I'll take the vagaries of Fung Wah over Delta's Atlanta hellhole any day.

All total, here's what I've knit in the last week: one entire pair of socks, the back of a sweater, the sleeves for the sweater, and the feet (well, almost) of another pair of socks. Yikes--I'm a fast knitter, but let me reiterate that NC is a little slow (ie, boring) and that Delta travel is even slower.

Donna has been seamed up and is awaiting a neckline, and then I'll show you her mysteries and give you a quick insight into yarn shopping in Asheville another day.