resistance is futile...

when we moved into the girl house 4 years ago, we thought it would be a temporay situation.   we thought once i found a job we would find our own place.  but between a and b, life changed and we find ourselves still at the girl house.

since we thought it temporary, we never really made our room our own.  so over the years, as we collected things, we made do with putting them where ever we could.  which made the room chaotic.  a couple of weeks ago, my sweet friend organized her side of the room.  this inspired me to do the same.

this inspiration forced me to deal with all of the yarn i had purchased over the past four years.

yup.

i already have four large bins of yarn items: two actually hold the yarn stash; one holds knitting project yarn leftovers and one holds WIP's that have been momentarily shelved.  as i purchased new yarn, i either used it or put it aside until i could take a picture and list it in my ravelry stash page.

and then there is the sock yarn.  i love knitting socks and i always wanted to be part of a sock club. except i found most sock clubs wanting.  that is until i came across the three irish girls sock club.  their sock club allows me to choose whether i want their monthly sock yarn offering or not.  i really like their yarn so i find myself enticed by their monthly offerings more often then not.  they also have special sales on a regular basis.  and since i have been part of their sock club for the last two plus years, this made for a lot of sock yarn.  take a look...

though the yarn piled here is a bit more than sock yarn, the majority is sock yarn.  sigh...

so i organized this pile, took individual pictures and listed it all in my ravelry stash.  i then put the pile away in my almost overflowing bins before any one came home.  if they knew how much yarn i had, they would 1) demand i knit them socks non stop or 2) never allow me to buy another skein  of yarn.  which would not do because i just received the monthly sock club email from three irish girls. and, as to be expected,  there are a couple of beautiful color way options calling my name.  

sigh...

the beat goes on...

the last month the lys was open for business they had a sale. it started with merchandise being 30% off; then 40% off and finally 50% off. and though the end of the sale meant the end of the lys, the sale, and the lys, was pretty fun while it lasted.

i had gone into the store a few times during that last month. most of the time, just to sit, knit and chat while i still had the chance. but these visits always turned into scouting for yarn opportunities. and since the yarn was on sale, i would sometimes pick up a ball of this, a skein of that, knowing that my big purchase(s) were yet to be decided. finally, on the last week the lys was open, i purchased big.

sock yarn was my first choice but it was also the first to go, which meant i needed to get creative on what type of yarn i was willing to make socks out of. to this end, i bought panda cotton and bunny hop.

my sweet friend came to shop with me and fell in love with the "leaf lace sock" sample the owner had knitted up. only one sock was knitted which meant if my sweet friend wanted a pair to wear, i would need to knit the second sock. so the pattern was purchased as well as the panda cotton yarn it was knitted in.

i have a total jones for frog tree yarn. i also have a shawl jones. coincidentally the lys had quite the selection of frog tree. they also had a sample of "the scallop shawl" which just happened to be knit up in a frog tree sportweight colorway that was on the shelf. so to indulge both jones', i purchased the pattern and the yarn. the purple frog tree was purchased during one of the scouting visits. it was the last ball in that colorway and just to lovely to pass up!

the last yarn i purchased that day was some classic elite sprout. i love shawls and poncho type garments and had always wanted to knit stefanie japel's paris loop which calls for bulky yarn. which sprout happens to be. so there you have it.

this purchase was well within the "budget" i had set for myself. which meant i had money left over. how lucky was that? it also meant i could go back to the lys to make some last minute purchases. so two days before the lys would close forever i found myself back at the store. i decided on two skeins of raspberry/lavender frog tree which complimented the dark purple frog tree purchased earlier with hopes of pairing both in knitting some fingerless gloves. i also planned on checking if clara parkes book of yarn was available since it has a pattern for fingerless gloves i find myself consistently drawn to. much to my surprise, one copy was available. and at 50% off! score!

so with this final purchase, along with many hugs and thank yous, i said goodbye to the lys and its owners one final time. i miss them all terribly but am thankful for the time we shared together.

catch up take 2

i joined the swap on a budget group on ravelry. i love swaps. they are fun, i meet different people, i get to put together a package and i get a package. all in all, it is pretty fun.

the last swap was this past december and though my package was late, it was well worth the wait because in it was...

...a hank of mango moon tye dyed viscose, two home made knitting utensil bags, gobs of home made stitch markers in two sizes, a coffee cup holder, a dishcloth and a home made needle holder, which i really appreciated and put to immediate use. these wonderful treats were sent to me by absolute treasure from georgia.

the yarn is really pretty. both the cute husband and my sweet friend commented on how lovely it was, which says alot. not sure what i will make out of it though. it is 150 yards and i would like to make some thing that will reflect the beautiful colors. so i will have to do some sleuthing for the proper pattern.

thanks absolute treasure for a great soab package.

may i introduce...

i took a couple of days off work this week. one day i just putzed about the house; on the second day, after dropping my sweet friend off at school, i drove into the city to catch the women impressionist exhibit at the palace of the legion of honor. a true delight!

the exhibit is of four painters, berthe morisot, marie bracquemond, eva gonzales and mary cassatt, which is the painter that drew me there. since i arrived as the exhibit opened, i was able to see all the pictures up close and personal. they were amazing. i have long been a fan of mary cassatt but i found myself equally drawn to the paintings of eva gonzales whose paintings were alive, vivid and quite passionate. truly stunning work. each artist had the ability to stop me in my tracks by at least two or three of their paintings.

on the way out, i stopped by the exhibit gift shop and purchased a pack of postcards that included copies of some of the exhibit paintings in hopes of framing a few. also picked up the last copy of one of my favorite mary cassatt prints. on the way home i made a quick stop at cheap pete's frame shop and was able to turn the favorite print into this. i show it here with a hank of sockpixie bambino sock yarn in the mary cassatt colorway. couldn't ask for much more.

it started with this

i was pretty excited about going to my first stitches west this past weekend. i had enrolled in one of the hour long classes being offered which gave me a free ticket into the market floor, a yarn haven.

the tuesday evening before the big weekend i was going through various groups on ravelry to see if i could carpool with fellow attendees. in one of the groups there was mention of a special "stitch and ride" version of the capital corridor, an amtrack train which travels from sacramento to san jose (where stitches west is held).

a few clicks of the mouse later, i found the site, discussed with my cute husband the financial and logistical advantages of taking the train and decided to buy a ticket. due to the late purchase, the site said i would need to pick up my ticket from the ticket booth the morning of departure.

but on thursday there was a DHL package by the front door and it contained this...

and the excitement factor increased 10 fold. the cute husband could hardly contain me in the car on the way to the train station.

the train was about 25 minutes late, but once inside all riders received one of these:


holy moly! and all the free coffee you could drink. what could be better on a drizzly saturday morning?!

the train arrived about 11ish; the description had said the convention center was a 10 or 15 min walk away so i thought walking wouldn't be a bad option, but the shuttle buses were waiting with open doors so in i hopped and was at my first stitches west stop, the ravelry booth, within moments.


ravelry did a passport book to introduce members to ravelry supporters and businesses. it was a great way to meet some fellow ravelers and support their various yarn endeavors. it was also a great way to make sure every aisle was explored. there was some amazing yarn being offered. my personal favorites the buffalo and musk ox yarns. so soft and beautiful, so incredibly expensive.


it was suggested i have a plan of who or what i wanted to see. so i put a list together of things i needed; vendors i wanted to see, etc. so between the "plan" and the passport, i pretty much saw every booth on the floor. webs had two huge booths which were always packed. since i didn't have a specific project in mind, i didn't visit them. i was drawn to the smaller, single person type yarn vendors.

i was also drawn to sock yarns. one of the sock yarn vendors i wanted to see was blue moon yarns, which also happened to be in the ravelry passport. the colorway i was truly lusting after was rock star. there had been one skein left when i was in my lookie-lou phase. by the time i went back to do my purchasing, it was gone. fortunately that set back wasn't a deterrent. i just purchased this colorway instead. it is called peaseblossom and it is 360 yards of lightweight 100% superwash merino. rah. can't wait to knit it up.


the second sock yarn i was drawn to were those by lisa souza. this is her elektra colorway which is 560 yards of 100% superfine superwash merino. i am thinking this would make the cute husband a nice pair of socks.

the last big sock purchase was from the bins of a vendor from so cal, the yarn lady. the bins in front of this booth had bags of yarn for 70% off. with the first look-see i found yarns i wasn't interested in; a second look-see unearthed bags of 8 balls of fortissima colori socka color sock yarn all in the same color way. a third look-see unearthed this, a bag of 8 balls of fortissima in 4 different colorways, meaning a pair of socks per colorway. all i could think of was presents! at 70% off! there were very few bargains but this was definitely one of them. i was very pleased.


the only non sock yarn purchase were these two, from terilyn needleart, two sisters who like knitting lace shawls. the first time i passed by this yarn it screamed "shawl!". the second time i passed by, i just stopped and shopped. all of their colorways are lovely but these two really captured me. these are the heather yarns, the light one is colorway 5680, periwinkle and the dark one is 5751, midnight. each hank has 560 yards! i love the midnight colorway but it will be very dark to knit with. i will need very good lighting, especially with lace. but so it goes!

all in all, my first stitches west was a great adventure and i look forward to next year!

holding strong

i made it through another sunday update without purchasing sock yarn from sockpixie. i am so proud. especially since her colors were inspired by the provence region of france, i thought for sure i would get hooked. and i did, but the colorway was sold out by the time i logged in. whew. on to stitches west next saturday!

and speaking of socks, i am wanting to knit some ankle length socks for the big guy and am in need of a pattern. i am sure there is one out there, i just can't remember where i saw it. if anyone has any ideas or suggestions, please let me know. have a good week everyone.

so i went a bit overboard

this is what i have collected since the beginning of the month.

both joann's fabrics and michael's crafts had sales on sugar and cream and i just couldn't help myself. some of these were $1 a ball. how could i pass that up?! the "twist" pattern balls are for christmas gifts. i am trying to arc a connection between a washcloth/bath basket and a 1 skein chunky misti alpaca scarf. but haven't quite gotten them connected yet.

the darker solids were for a christmas gift for the big guy. about a year ago knitty.com had this great set of back to school washcloths that had 6 cloths/days of study and 1 cloth/day of party. i thought this would be a great thing for the big guy since he is off to college in 8 days (yes, part of me is in denial and part of me is sobbing). but that was before tea and cakes posted the pac man washcloth. how cool is that?! so i have some decisions to make. but by the size of this loot, i could make them all...for everybody!

yes, it was fun

the trip to new york city was great fun. i enjoyed the city much more than i thought i would. i loved being able to walk everywhere; i appreciated the subway; and i came to understand what uptown, downtown and upper east side mean. once it was explained to me and i could apply it, it made perfect sense.

since i was one of the chaperones for 43 high schoolers, half my time was spent getting them to where they had to be, going with them, getting them back and keeping track of them during their free time; minimal time was for sleeping (we were in nyc after all); the time left over was free time for me. i saw some sights, did some shopping, loved the street vendors, was enthralled with grand central station, was blown away by time square being just as bright at midnight as it was at noon and took the big guy to dinner and a broadway show. we had pasta at this great place on 8th and went to see rent. it was really fun.

but i was hoping to find a moment to myself so i could slip off to an LYS. i had taken a list of nyc yarn stores with me and had two i really wanted to see. both being in greenwich village, a couple of subway stops away, it was just finding the time to go there.

friday seemed the perfect time. a group of kids and i went to the metropolitan museum of art friday morning. though we went as a group, once there, everyone went their own way. my goal was to see the egyptian collection, the impressionists and hopefully a mary cassatt or two all of which i was able to do in about 3-3.5 hours. by then my brain was totally full and i needed fresh air. a fellow chaperone said i had enough time to get to greenwich village and back before our 6pm dinner cruise. so i zipped back to the hotel via subway, once again checked in with my kids via phone, asked the concierge how to get to where i wanted to go, zipped off to another subway, got on and just as i was about to panic thinking i had gotten on the wrong train, there was my stop.

since i was not sure how much time everything would take, the plan was to find at least one LYS and hope i could find the other the next morning. i chose to go to purl soho, whose owner is the author of last minute knitted gifts. just when i realized i had the wrong address and concerned i would not find the shop, i decided to walk one more block, and there it was. purl soho is a lovely shop. extremely compact (not a lot of room in greenwich village) but lots of beautiful yarn packed into very tall cubbied shelves, which made looking at things on the top shelves a bit of a challenge. i found it interesting that the yarn companies were the same as the ones back home, but the yarn from those companies was totally different than what i was used to seeing. the staff was friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. they carried quite a few patterns, but very few notions. i assumed it was a space issue since this was a very compact shop.

i had hoped to find some mac and me patterns. there were two in particular i wanted, the shorty ruffle scarves and the silk and alpaca wrap. purl had both of them in stock as well as the blue sky alpaca which is the mac and me signature yarn. while i was debating whether to get yarn for the shawl, a light bulb went off. i had already bought a few nyc mementos for my sweet friend, josh was in nyc gathering his own mementos and my cute husband didn't want me to get him anything at all (though i did buy him a deck of cards from the top of the empire state building which will get use.) so there i was, standing in the midst of a very sweet yarn store, willing to buy yarn just because i was on vacation. what better way to satisfy that urge and bring a token from nyc than to buy yarn to make items for others! the yarn for my shawl could wait, but i could buy scarf yarn for both my sweet friend and myself. and the boys could get socks. so nine hanks of yarn that needed to be made into balls later, i left the store completely satisfied by my purchases. my sweet friend gets the two pink blue sky alpaca yarns for her scarf, which she also gets to knit, light pink for the scarf, bright pink for the ruffle; the grey and lavender bsa yarn is for me, gray for the scarf, lavender for the ruffle. the chocolate brown and white lorna's laces yarn is for my cute husbands socks and the caramel and white lorna's laces yarn is for the big guy's socks. not bad.

while showing off my purchases to my oh so wonderful roommate, kathleen, who oohed and aahhed over the sock yarn is when the second light bulb went off. i had wanted to get her a little something as a thanks for being a such a great roommate gift. knitting her something would be the perfect thing.

enter saturday. we were leaving late saturday afternoon and checked out of the hotel relatively early. this meant we had quite a chunk of free time. a group of us, both kids and chaperones, decided to take the subway to greenwich village and walk around. the only planned site to see was washington square park and the infamous arch. once that was done, navigator pat asked if any one had any place in particular they wanted to go to in the village. well... so off we were to the point cafe, a yarn store and coffee house all in one (i can hear the sighs from ireland). since it was quite a few blocks from washington square park, we had a nice walking tour of the village.

finally the yarn store. considering the point is both knitting store and coffee house, it is quite compact. a lot of the room is tables for coffee and knitting, which means the yarn has to be creatively stowed. which it is. some in big wire baskets attached to the wall and some in cubbies in the back. both knitting stores also string yarn from the walls, like laundry drying. since i was with a group, i did not really look around. i went right for the sock yarn and bought a quirky lorna's laces colorway for kathleen who has a wicked sense of humor. the yarn i did see was once again, yarn companies i recognized, only different yarns. since the baskets are high on the wall, an employee or stepladder is needed in order to see or touch them. though i am sure this would be no problem since the staff is friendly and willing to help. being mid-morning saturday, there were knitters enjoying a cup of coffee and company, as well as a beginning knitting class going on. the point was a bustling and friendly place. a nice place to knit while visiting with friends over a cup of coffee.

the yarn purchases rounded out my nyc visit. my sweet friend and i would love to visit again so we could shop til we drop. but that is for another trip. right now, i am just thankful for this one. and thanks for asking davimack.

i didn't mean to! honest!

so i zipped into the LYS on saturday, just to say hey to jen and have a look see at what yarns were on sale during "secret saturday". since i was working at the LYS the next day, i wasn't going to stew about the yarns, i was just going in for a quick, light, look around.

little did i know i would be hoodwinked as soon as i walked in the door, because there it was, waving to me from it's cubby, the louisa harding sari ribbon...on sale! OMG! the yarn that had my heart and senses since it first arrived at the LYS available to me! i tried to be cool but failed miserably due to the very excited squeal of glee coming from the vicinity where i was standing.

i did respectfully made the rounds to see what other yarns were on sale but knew they paled in comparison to the sari ribbon. i also asked jen for suggestions on what to make with it, just so i didn't feel like i was making a frivolous purchase, heaven forbid! but in the end, it really didn't matter. i purchased two hanks, but have yet to buy the louisa harding book that has the great scarf pattern using two hanks of sari ribbon (some mental/financial blocking of having a book with the one pattern you need cost gobs more than the yarn that caused that need).

so until i figure out what to do with it, i will just admire it longingly and be thankful it is in my stash box. sigh.

yarn stash?! no, not me!

i have never considered myself a knitter with yarn stash.

yarn was purchased when a new project was being planned and about to be knit. economical and non-frivolous. that was that. so imagine my surprise when i found my non-existent yarn stash filled a whole cardboard storage box with virtually no room to spare!

my first unconscience inkling that perhaps i did indeed have yarn stash was when i needed a present for the office gift exchange. i wanted to knit something personal and realized i had two balls of crystal palace red mohair frappe in a bag in the sewing room that just might make a great flying v scarf from exquisite little knits. and it did.

my first conscience inkling that i had yarn stash was when i went to the LYS' secret saturday sale and bought two skein's of noro kureyon with a pattern in mind but no one in mind for the finished project. that was the day i thought, "hmmmm, i wonder if those various bags of yarn stashed around the house constitutes 'yarn stash?' ". and lo and behold it did.


who knew? obviously not me! as my cute husband would say, i have been living in the state of denial!

so this is what a non-existent yarn stash looks like. some of it is earmarked for a project, like the blue cotton and silk frogtree in front, which will hopefully turn into the shell game, a pattern from the garter belt. then there is the various sock yarn; in the upper right hand corner is this truly lovely lavender and green cotton and silk yarn by the name of fable from artyarns. the dark yarn next to it is rowanspun aran in a lovely navy tweed color that has hopes of someday being the bookworm vest from cheryl oberle's folk vests book.

but the rest of it is just stash. i fell in love with the ry cashsoft in various colors. also the jo sharp silver grey kid mohair. the most unusual find for me is the gray skein of fingering weight yarn from black water abby yarns in ireland (yarn next to the blue frogtee). i had read of this yarn, looked at their website and found a nearby trunk show. i look forward to knitting it up. the two bags in back are filled with leftover yarn from various projects. there is enough brown cascade 220 leftovers to knit up a felted hat from pick up sticks! yeesh!

amazing how yarn can just multiply like that! now i guess i should actually knit something with it all! so i better get to it! happy holidays to all!