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!

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...

We interrupt our regularily scheduled knitting...

To bring to you the most random geeky thing I could ever knit!

Last Saturday was butt-cold. Our over-heated apartment was uncharacteristically cold, and when I got into bed, I was FREEZING. During a summer trip to Vermont, I had bought a hot water bottle. I filled it with hot water, wrapped it in a linen towel, and left it under the covers of the bed while I went to brush my teeth. I came back, got under the covers, and OMIGOD!

The delicious warmth was profoundly life-changing. Now, it's true, I have Poem-Man's love to keep me warm, but let's be realistic. Sometimes it just not enough. You need not just a hot water bottle, you want a Love Supplement to keep you warm!

But this naked Love Supplement was remarkably unromantic. A little rubbery-smelling, tactically-challenge, and its heat too harsh against my skin. Love Supplement needed a sweater cozy!

So I interrupted my sweater and sock-knitting pattern-driven knitting and started knitting a Love Supplement Cozy. I made up the pattern as I went along and went top-down and in the round so that I could try it on the Love Supplement for size. I cast on for the turtleneck top, began the cable pattern from one of my Harmony guides, and increased past the neck did short-rows to make the 'shoulders" Then I knit straight down to the bottom, cast off all the stitches for the back of the sweater, and continued in ribbing down the front. Once I could kind of fold past the bottom, I picked up a stitch along the side and knit it together with the end stitches of the flap so that I wouldn't have to sew the flap to the side laster. The flap closure works perfectly--it stays closed when I want it to and opens easily when I need to slip a hot-watered bottle into its encasing. It was complete serendipity that the two entire repeats of the cable pattern was the perfect length for the cozy. Oh, the Love!

Pattern: Love Supplement Cozy that I made up myself!
Yarn: Uhuhm, um, I have no idea. I know it's worsted-weight wool. I found it in a bag of random balls of yarn. It's at least 8 years old.
Yarn Enabler: Ruhama's, one of my LYSses when I lived in Milwaukee.
Knitted on: Size 8 Knitpicks circular Magic Looped
Time spent knitting when I shouldabeen writing and correcting exams: 1 week

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?

March of Shame Concludes

Yes, I think I may have broken my stash vow. Bottom line, is yes, I've broken my stash vow, but I think I can rationalize/justify/amend my list to make it seems as if perhaps I have not busted the stash vow.

1) I am removing the Lorna's Laces yarn from my stash list because really I have only one skein. Not even enough for a pair of socks. The yarn was supposed to be for mittens, but I made the pink mittens from some leftover other pink yarn, so there--I'm taking it off the list.

2) Ms.-Met-loving knitter Nicole took the "Coral" (uh, I think it's Mets orange) knitpicks sock yarn off my hands for me. Yee ha!

3) I'm not going to Rhinebeck this year because I have to go to a wedding in Chicago that weekend, so no need to save up stash places for then. I did go to WEBS on this trip and may not be going back there soon, so the shopping opportunity was at hand. And I was so absolutely overwhelmed at WEBS that I lost my stash-maintaining mind.

4) I am now maintaining three projects:

a. One smallish project to work on while working out (socks, mittens, hat)

b. a sweater

c. The wedding afghan. (This is really a phantom project.)

YES! I only have nine yarns on my stash list! Let the shopping begin!

See, I am lacking in shame...

To continue from the other day: I finally tore myself away from the sock yarn at WEBS and walked through all the alpaca loveliness, I went back into the crazy holy grail of the WEBS warehouse there Jen had told me the real bargains begin. There are grey shelves after grey shelves full of perfectly good yarn piled in bags and in single skeins on the shelves, but they're not organized by content, brand, or weight, so you just kind of wander through mouth agape and look at anything that catches your eye. Meanwhile, you're surrounded by boxes of non-bargain yarns trapped in boxes waiting for someone to buy them. It's a scene. I went prepared to buy yarn for some sweaters I wanted to make and came up with these purchases:

This was my most reasonable purchase. Exactly the right yarn in the right color for the first project I had listed in my hands, the Swirled Pentagon Pullover (scroll down to the bottom to see it) from Knitting Nature. This Elsebeth Lavold Classic AL is a light worsted in alpaca/wool. Very lovely, straight ahead yarn.

Then there was the Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool. The color enticed me. The non-heft of this wool/silk blend grabbed me. The feel of the yarn enfolded me. Then I came to my senses and then the price convinced me, even though it wasn't the right thing for the second project I had written on my list. I bought a ton of this yarn--some 2700 yards. It's pretty thin, though. DK at 22/inch. I think I'm going to design a Aran turtleneck pullover for this or admit that I'm not smart enough to figure it out and knit it into the Weekend Pullover.

This is the final purchase I made. As I brought my goodies to the front of the store where Poem-man was napping in a chair listening to Oscar Peterson on his Ipod, I passed the racks of WEBS brand Valley Yarns, and this slight-glossed wool called out to me: "dark purple." "Eggplant." "Aubergine!"

"Grape Jelly!"

and though I had no plan for it, and it was going to push me over my self-imposed stash limit, a sweater's worth of Valley Yarn Colrain came home with me. Enough, I hope, to make the Byzantine Bazic (altered slightly to include set-in sleeves)

Let me note at this time that each of these yarns cost about $3.50/skein. $3.50 for 109 yds of wool/alpaca. $3.50 for 191 yds of wool/silk. $3.50 for 109 yds of wool/tencel. How does that bad commercial go? I'll never pay retail again! Well, probably I will, but cripes, let's just drive to Webs from time to time! Oh, and these yarns are still for sale online at Webs.

Soon, my freedom of summer will end, but I have my stash to keep my warm and busy. Let's take one last longing glance at the spoils of this March of Shame.

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.

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!

So yummy it's...WICKABLE!

Though these socks were conceived in the crucible of air travel from the Southeastern US, I think they will bring me nothing but good memories to come!

It's nice to not have to worry about moths or lack of durability with this crazy-fiber yarn (soy and vaseline? not that's not it. bamboo and cool whip? nope...bungee cord and hemp? I can't remember.) The yarn was actually pretty nice to knit with, though I may have picked the wrong needle size (basically because that's the only size, other than a size 0, that I had with me on my travels), so knitting was a little 'stiff' for this loose knitter. The fabric, on the other hand, is fluid and of a good density for socks.

And look at those toes, heels, and cuffs! I had never made socks with contrasting extremeties, and now I find the effect particularily charming esepcially with the fresh, clean, fun colorway of this yarn!

Pattern: Beaded Rib from Sensational Knitted Socks
Yarn: Wick in #429 Sea Gold and #676 Ocean; (soy and polypropolene)
Yarn enabler: Yarn Paradise in June, 2007
Knit on: One 36" Knitpicks Size 5, Magic Looped.
Time I spent knitting these while stranded in airports and sitting in AC: one week.

For a small city in a fairly warm climate, Asheville did not lack for places to buy yarn--good places. Yarn Paradise was a great store, outside of 'downtown,' but in the middle of the cute Biltmore Village which sits at the entrance to the Biltmore Mansion and has lots of great shops and places to eat. Yarn Paradise is a house filled with yarn--that's my favorite kind of yarn store! I could have spent hours in there, and I'm sure they would have let me, but I went there to find my very picky mother a pattern and a yarn that I could use to make a sweater for her for her birthday. I say that she's very picky in order to extol the virtues of this store--we must have looked at 15 possible yarns in every shade of red and in every combination of fibres, and every time she dinged a (perfectly lovely, IMO) yarn for being not the right kind of red or too scratchy, or too heavy, the proprietors were able to find another possibility for the Katherine Hepburn cardigan. Verdict? They had a lot of great yarn in a million colors. I was even offered some perfect sportweight cashmere at a reduced price, but my mom couldn't see letting me spend $200 for yarn to make a sweater, and I agreed, though I was tempted. The Wick yarn that I bought there was on sale for about $7 a skein. And I left behind tons of Colinette Jitterbug and Koigu in wonderful colors that tempted me to break my stash vow.

*Late added PS because otherwise Annie Knits and Harlem Purls will continue to think I'm some sort of stash weirdo: In addition to the Wick, I did end up buying a Katherine Hepburn Cardigan's worth of yarn. It's the "Merino Sei" that's over there to your right in the sidebar on my stash list. I bought yarn--but I had saved space for it in my stash list-the vow remains unbroken!