Tiny Treasure

So, a funny thing happened Friday afternoon. For over a month now, my checking account balance has not matched the balance from the bank. Not even close. I mean, far enough apart to justify a bit of a panic. I figured something hadn't cleared, something big, and I went off to San Francisco believing it would clear by the time I got home.

Nope. Balance was still off when I got back. So I started poring over my receipts and my register and my statements, and I went to the bank (a small neighborhoody place, where they know me) and explained the problem to them. They printed out extra register material for me and sent me home to check again.

Still couldn't get them to reconcile, so back to the bank Friday afternoon. It took over an hour, but we found the error. Finally.

And OMG, it was a biggie, and it was in my favor.

This is not the sort of thing you want to discover the day before Stitches. The day after, yes, when you're totalling up the receipts and wondering how you managed to spend that much -- that would be the time to suddenly discover an extra few hundred dollars.

But not before. Not when there is market yet to explore.

I went in with a wish list of items ranging from the vague ("some buttons") to the Holy Grail ("4500 yards of fingering weight in a solid color for no more than $100, with a pink unicorn that sneezes silver fairy dust on top"). I knew what I could spend (pre-bank error) and figured I would stick to that, but the extra cash in the bank account might be nice if I found something truly special. You know the kind of thing I mean. Not just special as in ooh, shiny! But special as in, I will never forget this yarn, and walking away from it is painful.

Enter the qiviut.

You know, we can blame this one on those damned cashmere mittens. I knit with that cashmere and loved it so much that it made me curious about knitting with the other luxury fibers. Cashmere is on the low end of the luxury fiber scale. The non-rare end. The slum end.

If cashmere is the slum, then qiviut is definitely the penthouse.

We walked into the booth with the qiviut and qiviut blends, and pet the beautiful, tiny balls, and looked at the photos of the musk ox. We touched the scarves. We sighed over the colors.

Then we left for the next booth. Except, I found myself back in the qiviut booth while Kris checked out whatever was the next stall over -- I don't know, because every time I tried to leave the qiviut booth to join her elsewhere, I ended up right back where I started. I couldn't walk away. I was entranced. Completely and utterly entranced. Finally, after about the fifth time trying and failing to walk away, I said (literally), "Screw it. I'm buying a skein."

I still can't believe I spent that much on a single ounce of yarn. But I must say, it's worth it. I haven't knit a single stitch yet, and already this skein has given me more pleasure than any 100 other skeins combined. Petting it makes me happy. Holding it up to the light makes me happy. Rubbing it on my cheek makes me happy.

And the fact that this tiny little egg of yarn won't add to my storage issue -- that really makes me happy.

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!

Ten!

Holy Crap! I'm in double digits!
That makes ten socks.
Four pairs, two single socks.
Four more socks OTN.
In 58 days!

MB asked in the comments about the Invisibility Cloak yarn. Here's a closer picture of it, but the picture really doesn't do it justice. The yarn is 60% superwash merino, 30% bamboo, 10% rayon. It's got a light rayon sheen from the bamboo but it's a little bit fuzzy like a merino. It's soft to the touch but yields a slight crunch when you squeeze it -- I bet it would show off a stitch pattern very nicely. The colors are amazing, palest silvers and blues and mints and creams, like staring into an ice cube. Utterly gorgeous.

I had to darken the picture slightly to get the colors to show up. The yarn is pale enough not to photograph true. It's on a white-on-white tablecloth, which looks a bit grey here on my monitor.

I haven't knit it yet, but I expect good things. After all, it came from The Fold, and Toni has a real eye for quality yarn.

Mackintosh Yarns is the maker. They have at etsy shop at
http://www.knittinghawkeye.etsy.com

I spoke to the woman behind the Mackintosh. She was helping Toni ring sales on Saturday. I didn't catch her name, but she was delightful. She has an enthusiasm for yarn that bubbles out of her, and that's something I can relate to. *ggg* She has a whole line of Harry Potter-inspired sock yarns, most of which are vivid and dark and bright. Invisibility Cloak was the only pastel in the lot. (I loved the one called Tonks. Might have to etsy that one into my stash someday.)

That's everything I know about this yarn! MB, I hope that gives you enough to go on.

Man of Steel Meets Woman of Yarn

So, here's the Stitches story. Better late than never, I hope.

Red picked me up B&E Saturday morning. Our plan was to arrive in Rosemont by 9:00. We spent the whole ride up there giggling like little kids on Christmas morning. Oh, the yarny goodness that would be waiting under our tinseled trees! tee hee! As we pulled off the expressway and came within sight of the convention center, we noticed hordes of people waiting to get in the building. First thought: dear god, how will I ever fight through that horde to get to the Socks That Rock? They'll pick Toni's booth clean and leave me with nothing!

And then, with great relief, "They're not knitters," sez I. "And the reason I know this is they're standing in a long line that's not moving, and not one of them is knitting."

As we got closer, we noticed that not only were they not knitting (imagine that!), but they were almost all men under the age of about 35. And, well, let's just say that these men came from a certain segment of that population group. Not, um, gym rats. And, er, not the kind of men who have style conversations with their barbers. Or who match their shirts to their pants. Or match their clothes to their socks. Or their socks to each other.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

"Must be some kind of comic convention," sez I. "Except, maybe not, because none of them are in costume."

I don't know a whole lot about comic cons, but hey, I watch Entourage. I know Johnny Drama wears a costume to these things, and so do many of the fans. Se we scanned the line as we were driving around to the parking garage. I saw a woman or two in the line, and lots and lots of graphic t-shirts, but no costumes. We were still mystified until we parked and started walking across the tunnel into the center.

And then we saw them. The costumes. Men wearing donkey ears, goat horns, and troll feel. Matrix black jackets. Plastic breastplates and shinguards tied on with faux-leather straps. Face paint. Helmets. Horse tails -- I shit you not -- tied onto men's butts. That's one fashion statement I still don't understand. "I'm not in costume, but my ass is!" Hmm, maybe I don't want to understand it.

Not that there's anything wrong with it.

We came to a fork in the habitrail tunnels and the crowd split in two. Men to the left, women to the right, each to their own brand of geekery. Red and I collected our registration packets, found our name tags, pawed through our class schedules. All that good stuff. And then, with a little extra time to kill, we decided to try to check in early at the hotel.

By this time, I was convinced that in order to attend a comic convention -- or whatever the hell that thing was -- you have to be a certain type of male. But we walked into the hotel, and the first thing I saw was this:



Swoon! Come to momma, you big boys!

I wish the pictures had turned out a little better, cuz let me tell you, Superman was that hawt! And Batman? Ooooh, hubba hubba! I don't care if every other guy at that convention was a troll, a donkey, or a horse's ass. These two superheroes redeemed the whole thing for me.

Also, I've decided that I like men in lycra. No further comment.

We weren't able to get into our room that early, but we did meet a very nice young desk clerk who was kind to us all weekend. And then we went off to the market, where we were probably about tenth in line to get in. In fact, we were in the part of the line *inside* the doors to the market. So we got to stand there and smell the yarn for a good ten minutes before we saw a single skein.

Y'all know what yarn fumes do to me. I get a little high, and giggly, and blissed out. I want my whole house to smell like that. I mean, really, who wants roses and lavender and eau-de-baking-cookies when you can have something sheepy with the barest undertones of dead silkworms? I could sit in that scent all day, happily knitting, blissfully ignoring the world and getting a little dotty from the fumes.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, either.

Later -- the Stitches experience, part two.

Stitches Haul, Day Two

We didn't do as much shopping on Sunday, but I managed to buy yarn for seven pairs of socks just the same.

To the left is a new sock yarn called Aussie something or other, purchased from the Have Ewe Any Wool booth. To the right is a discontinued sock yarn, Jojoland cashmere/merino, which we picked up for a fraction of its retail price.

I can't remember if I've told the story here of the black cashmere socks from Target. About three years ago, I found a pair of black cashmere-merino-nylon socks at the local Target. This was long before I ever anticipated ever knitting socks, let alone becoming a complete addict.

The black cashmere socks were special. They were warm -- I have a metabolic disease and have to fight hard to stay warm in these Chicago winters, so the socks quickly became favorites. Plus, they actually fit my little feet. Most socks are too big and sort of spin around and bunch up inside my shoes. This was the first pair I'd ever owned that didn't do that.

I scoured all the local Targets looking for more of these socks, and found only one pair. I wore those two pairs until they were literally threadbare and falling apart. It made me sad beyond words to have to throw them away.

And it's because of those socks that I took up sock-knitting. So when I saw the Jojoland cashmere-merino blend, I had to buy skeins in every color. You can call it nostalgia for the Target socks. Or you can call it lack of self-control in the market. But whatever you call it, you can bet that my feet will be happy this winter.

Stitches, Day One

If you ever needed proof of my insanity, here it is, spread out on the hotel room bed in dazzling yarny goodness.

Starting at the bottom, we have a mill pack of Jaeger variegated purple and cream for a clapotis and matching hat. Behind it, three mill packs of Elsebeth Lavold AL for a FLAK aran. Next to it, three mill packs of Valley Farms merino in a luscious plummy purple for another aran. Upper right, five skeins of black Berroco Peruvian to be the background color of a felted stranded bag.

Still with me? That batch I just walked you through was all purchased at the Webs booth. 75 skeins for under $300, tax included. I'm still sort of dazzled by that. Less than four dollars a skein!

All the rest of it is sock yarn. Want the rundown? Sideways, front and center, are two skeins of Shelridge Farms 3-ply Fingering Wool in black. Next to that, two skeins of the same in a nice solid mid-gray. I discovered Shelridge Farms yarns at Stitches last year and was eager to buy more this year. It makes lovely, comfy socks.

Next to that, the big blob is some purple sock yarn from Brooks Farm, absolutely gorgeous stuff.

Directly above the purple Brooks Farm is some STR in the lagoon colorway. That's the skein I had to cast on Right! This! Minute! (The sock is currently at the heel flap. I adore it. It is singlehandedly restoring my love of all things sockish. Take that, jaywalker!)

To the left of the purple Brooks Farm and the STR lagoon is something rather special. Two Somethings Rather Special, truth be told. The first is that tight, pale skein of sock yarns from Macintosh Yarns, purchased from The Fold's stall. Even at Stitches, surrounded by scores of vendors, The Fold mojo is still powerful, and the proof is in this yarn. The yarn is part of a group of Harry Potter-inspired yarns. Mine is called Invisibility Cloak, and I fell in swoony-pink-heart love with the shimmering creams and greys. Someday I will show you a close-up of this yarn so you can all covet some of your own.

The second Something Rather Special is the big multicolored hank next to the Invisibility Cloak. See that loose mass of purple, pink and green? It's sock yarn from a brand new vendor, and it's splendid. You can't see it in the picture, but there are little multicolored flecks spun into the plies. It's really yummy. I'll knit it soon to show it off, and then we can all go crazy trying to figure out how to buy this stuff, because guess what? Hand Painted Yarn Company doesn't do mail order, or internet sales, or direct-to-public sales except for at fiber shows. (I really regret buying only one skein of this stuff. I intend to stalk their company at future yarn shows to make up for my uncharacteristic frugality in their stall. What the hell was I thinking?)

The final skein in this picture is a second skein of STR in a colorway whose name escapes me. More gray. I don't know what the attraction is with gray sock yarn lately but I couldn't resist the smokiness of this one.

OK. So that's what I bought on day one. Tomorrow, I'll either show you my (not as extravagant) purchases from day two, or will give you a little narrative of our adventures at Stitches. But I've been wicked busy since returning ... please forgive if "tomorrow" stretches a few days. I do want to share -- my goodness, I've had a new BFF Lily Chin for days now, and still haven't gloated here about it. tee hee! -- but life is basically pissing all over my parade this week. I hope to be back to a normal schedule soon, but so far, no good.

Hi-Ho!

To Stitches I will go!

Through this long and challenging week, Stitches Midwest has been the light at the end of the tunnel. Knifty Red and I have been anxiously planning this weekend ever since the last Stitches Midwest.

Last year was the first Stitches outing for both of us. Because we knew nothing, we figured we'd go for the day Saturday and get our fill. Ha! Now we know that there is no way to ever get enough of this event. Your feet might give out. Your wallet may turn to dust and blow away. And still, you'll know that there's some incredibly cool thing around the next corner just waiting to be discovered.

Last year, for example, I discovered Shelridge Farms yarns. Love the stuff. Last year was also my first time fondling Socks That Rock. I had just learned to knit socks after about 20 years of basically knitting rectangles. The STR booth was a big deal to me.

This year, I feel more on top of it. I signed up for a class with Lily Chin (gasp! OMG! THE!! Lily!! Chin!! faint!) on short row shaping. We'll see if I absorb a single bit of information during that three-hour class. The first hour, I'll probably just be dorking it up and trying to absorb the fact that I'm in the same room with Lily Chin (faint!) and that she's, you know, sharing droplets of her ocean-vast greatness. The final hour I expect to spend in a near panic because the class is almost over and I wasted the first hour being too starstruck to say anything other than maybe uhrm and ack.

But the middle hour. Ah, the middle hour. That's the magical transition hour where I stand a chance of being able to learn something and maybe even speak a language vaguely resembling English. I'm hoping for some tips on short rows that will help me finish that Silver Creek cardigan. If that magically happens, that sweater will forever be known as the one I knit after taking a class with OMG! THE! Lily! Chin! (faint!)

Side question: Is it entirely too dorky to ask her for her autograph? I figure I might be safe asking for a picture of us together. But an autograph? Maybe on one of the ninety-eleven Lily Chin patterns I have laying around my house? I dunno. Might be too embarrassing even for me, and I have very little sense of embarrassment.

I blocked out the entire day Saturday to spend in the Market. I won't tell you how much cash I set aside for the market, but it's a lot. More than I've ever dreamed of spending in a single day -- hell, in a single month -- on yarn.

Will I spend the lot? We'll see. Recently, I've come to feel that I have enough yarn. This is a sort of cyclical feeling. I feel I don't have enough and buy like crazy. Then I feel sort of yarn-saturated and stop buying for a while. Gearing up for SOS07 made me take stock of my sock yarn -- I've managed to collect more than two dozen skeins in a year despite almost constant sock knitting -- and taking stock of my sock yarn made me also think about all my sweater yarn. There's a lot of it. And I want to knit it. I don't want to just buy it and store it.

That said, I know full well that I'll probably hit that market and get high on yarn fumes and want to buy everything in the joint.

So Saturday is for the Market, and Sunday morning is for me to make an ass of myself in front of one of my knitting idols. Sunday afternoon, I'll try to swing by Franklin's 1,000 knitters photo booth and do that. Then there's all the end-of-show stuff in the market, and that fills two days.

One final quick note. Thanks to all of you who have been so kind and supportive while the family has contended with Shedir Lady's illness. She's doing much better. The doctors are astounded by her progress. One of them, in trying to convey the magnitude of her recovery, revealed that only one in two thousand people survives an aneurism like the one she suffered. But she didn't just have the aneurism, she had all kinds of other things go wrong, any one of which could have killed her. Three surgeries later, and they're talking about extubating her tomorrow. She even regained consciousness briefly yesterday. It's enough to make you believe in miracles.