That Was A Surprise

I don't think I've ever left a yarn store empty-handed, but yesterday I did. I dropped into a local yarn haunt to procure fingering/sock weight yarn for the Shawl knit-a-long I'm doing. Luckily the shop was having a knit-in and everyone was doing the same shawl I am, some were far enough along that I could see how the colors were going to play together.

While perusing the shelves I noted a few things: 1- the shop is not carrying the yarn I wanted any more; 2- yarn manufacturers seem to have changed their packaging of sock yarn from 100 gram skeins to 50 gram skeins, you need 100 grams to make a pair of socks or a decent shawl, so you now need to buy TWO packages--much of the yarn is in the $17 range, that's a big price increase NoT masked by the packaging shenanigans; and 3-my handspun has better colors and more nicely spun than the shop's yarn.

So call me cheap, but I wasn't going to pay $70 for yarn I didn't love. I left the shop without buying yarn, went home and tossed my yarn stash and found the PERFECT yarn to make TWO shawls. I call that a surprising (and mature) turn of events.

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THIS might be why I never really get ahead of my messes

I am once again participating in the Tour de Fleece, a yarn spinning event that coincides with the Tour de France. I have roughly 10 pounds of washed wool ready to spin. That 10 pounds does not take into account the tonnage of gorgeous commercially prepared stuff that is ready to spin.

I don't feel like spinning.

Today the first clue (release of part of a pattern) for a mystery knit-a-long was released. The pattern uses sock yarn, I have a number of balls of sock yarn (double digits). I have "some" handspun yarn too. By "some" I might mean more than one tub, but tubs vary in size so some is descriptive enough. Yet, even though I don't know what the mystery knit-a-long will look like (I do know it's a shawl), I am absolutely certain NoNE of the yarn I own is suitable.

So, I'm probably (definitely) going to scoot out at lunch time to get more yarn. However, as soon as the yarn is procured, I'm fairly certain the urge to knit it will pass and I'll decide to weave or refinish furniture or rearrange the attic instead.

H E L P

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New Toy

Blog posts have not occurred due to the shady disposition of my nearly 6 year old laptop and my resultant lack of enthusiasm for wasting the amount of time required to use it. Besides that, I've been too busy doin' stuff to spend time blogging.

Now however, I'm hoping to combine doin' stuff and more frequent blogging through the use of a swell app (that has probably been out for years). This post is a test to see if said app, Blog Press, will enable me to post from my iPhone.

I think the test should include a photo--here's one of me pouring the first batch of soap I made.

That seemed to work, here's a word from Chai:



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