There Ought to Be a 12-Step Program For This

This is all I can think about today. I mean, just look at it.

No, really. Look closer.













This is sock yarn from the Hand Painted Yarn Company. I'm so sick of knitting socks that I'm casting on anything and everything just to avoid knitting socks.

But everytime I walk past my sock yarn stash, I have to pause, open the closet door, and stare through the clear plastic bin at this beautiful yarn. I have to force myself not to cast it on by reminding myself how much I loathe sock knitting at the moment. Can you blame me for this bit of schizophrenia? The yarn is so incredibly soft. And colorful. And flecky -- I adore the primary flecks against the teal and purple and periwinkle. Adore.

This yarn was the first purchase at Stitches Midwest this year. It occurs to me that I never finished telling the Stitches story -- with my precision laser-beam focus (ha!), I keep drifting from topic to topic and never really finishing anything. Story of my knitting life these days. Which I blame on socks. As we all know by now.

Anyway.

At Stitches in 2006, the first thing I understood -- when I walked in that market and smelled the wool and silk and, OMG, you could almost swim laps in the fumes because they were that dense -- was that I hadn't brought enough cash. I'd brought $200, which would be more than ample to go yarn shopping on any other day. But in the Stitches market, it was just enough to tease me and make me a little crazy.

I mean, come on. Mill packs for half price as far as the eye could see. One of a kind, never to be seen again, gourmet hand dyed yarns from indie farms who actually name their sheep. I mean, these people have relationships with their wool because it's that special. How do you begin to decide which to buy? It was torture.

I started saving for this year's Stitches right then and there. I came up with a plan. I would give myself a once-in-a-lifetime total yarn shopping spree. No guilt, no limits. I would take more cash than I could ever reasonably spend on yarn, and I would spend as much of it as my heart desired.

We should all have a day like that some day.

When Red and I walked into the market this year, the first thing I saw was a chicken wire fence surrounding mill packs of Noro for half price. I almost hopped the little fence and rolled around in that big fluffy bin, but luckily came to my senses. Good thing. It would have sucked to get arrested and hauled out of the market in handcuffs before even making my first purchase.

We spent a good ten minutes wading through that bin of yarn before realizing that this was only the tip of the iceberg. We were getting sucked into a yarn sale vortex before we'd made it past the first stall! We needed a plan, or we would never see everything the market had to offer. Shoot, even with a plan, we'd probably never see everything the market had to offer.

We started on the far end and wound our way up and down the aisles. It was perhaps the fourth booth where we found this very unique flecky sock yarn from the Hand Painted Yarn Company.

Bjorn and his partner (I think the partner's name was Mark, but could have that wrong), have started this lovely little cottage shop somewhere in Missouri. They don't usually sell direct to the public, but do wholesale only. They'd never been to a fiber show before. I felt like I was discovering a major new talent, standing there at that booth and chatting with Bjorn about his process. He does all the dying himself, you see, in bins and vats, patiently squeezing every skein by hand. He started to explain the process -- the flecky bits are dyed first and somehow never get overdyed -- but we were interrupted. A shame, because I really enjoyed meeting these two fine craftsmen and could have happily chattered away with them for half the day.

Plus, now I'll never know how he dyes his yarn.

Red managed to pull me out of their booth at last -- I hardly wept at all, and the giant sucking sound only echoed a little bit -- and we wandered into that greatest of all vortexes, that paradise for knitters, that pinnacle of splurgosity...

Webs.

Everything gets a little blurry after that. The only thing I know for sure is that 70 minutes after the market opened, I couldn't carry my bags anymore and had to walk back to the hotel to drop them off. Because, you know, it's darn hard to fondle yarn when you're carrying three hugely overstuffed bags. And I had to keep shopping!

After Webs, I focused on finding special things. Yarns I couldn't buy elsewhere, or artisan yarns, or other unique purchases. I bought some iridescent beads for a beaded scarf, and some beautiful vintage buttons. But mostly, I bought more yarn.

And by 2:30, I was bushed. Totally shopped out. I had planned on spending the entire day in the market, but as it turns out, I just don't have the stamina for it.

That's probably not a bad thing. I came home with money left over, and more yarn than I can knit in a year. Everything I bought fit into existing storage bins, but still, Stitches was definitely my tipping point. I have enough yarn now, and that's a very happy feeling.

And I think it's also why I have such wicked startitis right now. Time to stop shopping and start knitting! Whee!