Knitting Travels: Philadelphia

I was in Philadelphia earlier this week for the MLA conference—a huge gathering of scholars who specialize in literature, rhetoric, and modern languages. If you read our other Knitting Travels posts, you’ll see that Katie and I both love to scout out yarn shops as a way to get to know a new city. (I guess other people use similar tactics—a guy on the panel I chaired mentioned that he looks for anarchist book stores when he travels). I had some extra time on Tuesday morning, so I walked in the blistering wind to two different stores.

First, I found Rosie’s Yarn Cellar, located in a basement on Locust St.

It was great to step out of the wind and into this cozy store, which stocks all kinds of great yarns, such as Alchemy, tons of Manos del Uruguay, the Fibre Company, Road to China, and many more. It was a little hard to figure out how the yarns were organized, but it was fun to browze through them—I almost left with a single skein of Dream in Color Classy (marked down to $12), but talked myself out of it… I have too many single skeins as it is, and would rather save up for enough to make a sweater.

Next, I walked down to South St. to Loop, where I ran into another escapee from the MLA conference (who happens to be from another university in my state).

Loop also carries a fabulous selection of yarns, especially Blue Sky Alpacas, Spud & Chloe, and Imperial Stock Ranch. I bought a book here (many of their hardcover books were on sale), but left without the Jade Sapphire (marked down to $28.99!) that I was petting longingly.

Of course, I’m regretting both of the purchases that I so self-righteously talked myself out of. (You can see the Jade Sapphire in the foreground, above). However, the Loop does have a full online shop. Hmm……..

Knitting Travels: Richmond & Alexandria, Virginia

This weekend I traveled to Alexandria with my BF to visit his family, stroll around DC and some surrounding cities, and enjoy some good food.

On the way, we stopped in Richmond for lunch and a little bit of shopping. After a lovely lunch at a French cafe, we happened across the Yarn Lounge in Carytown (a fabulous shopping area!). This store is super cozy, with a beautiful selection of great yarn: Jo Sharp, Rowan, and Malabrigo, to name a few.

Once in the DC area, I made friends with this guy at Mount Vernon:

And then stumbled upon the Fibre Space in Alexandria. Another great store! The yarn is organized by weight, which is rather helpful, and they offer many beautiful yarns, including Louet, Neighborhood Fiber Company, and Stonehedge Fiber Mill (to mention a few of the rarer ones).

Plus, the Fibre Space features an awesome retro space-age aesthetic—check out their logo, below, for an idea:

I didn’t buy a whole lot at either space (my stash is overflowing), but now I’m really coveting some of the Miss Babs “Yowza What a Skein” yarn that I saw at Fibre Space. I’m definitely going back when I can!

Knitting Travels: Brier Run Alpaca Farm

Oil Springs, Ontario, Canada

My parents and I drove through the fog and melting snow to visit Brier Run Alpaca Farm this morning.

The owners, Heather Blanchard and Norris McAuslan, opened the store for us and then gave us a tour of the processing facilities.

The store includes many kinds of yarn and roving, most of them made from a single alpaca and named after that animal (i.e. McDermot, Glen Fiddich, Tukie). Some are blended with silk for extra softness. Heather and Norris currently sell hand-knit products on their website, but soon they’ll be opening an online store for their yarn as well.

They also sell roving and raw fibre for spinning. It was fun to manhandle the bumps to compare the color and softness of each alpaca.

In the processing plant, their friendly cat showed us this wonderfully soft roving from one of the cria (baby alpacas)—it felt like air.

Later this will be spun into yarn in their machines:

They also spin lower-grade alpaca fibres around a twine core to make yarn that will be woven into rugs:

Or batting for alpaca duvets:

The alpacas were hiding out from the rain and mud, so we only got to see a few of the 75 or so that live on their farm:

Thanks to Heather and Norris for the tour! I can’t wait to get some of this yarn on my needles. Oh, and did I mention that I really really really want an alpaca of my own??? Look how cute they are!!!

Knitting Travels: Gastonia, NC, and other Crafts

I've been out of town the past few days with my husband M.A.P., visiting his parents in Gastonia.

I've been wrestling with a knitting project, that must remain secret because it's off to a magazine as a submission when it's finished. I have knit and ripped this project 5 times now, which is a lot even for a trial-and-error designer like me. I had to set it down and take a walk today, and realized as I was walking that I had a bone-crunching headache--I didn't even notice the headache because I was so caught up in the project. My sister called as I was walking and I told her about the project, and she said, That doesn't sound like fun.

So true.

Question: Is knitting always supposed to be fun? If you knit a project for weeks on end and you feel frustrated, or even miserable, shouldn't you QUIT? I'm calling this knitter's angst. Has anyone else ever experienced this? What did you do to get over it?

While I've been here, I commandeered the garage and worked on some wood. A good break from yarn. Two bed-side tables that I inherited from friends, received a refinishing.

And my M.A.P., a fabulous carpenter/cabinet-maker, built custom cabinets for the laundry room we built.

That's a link to another blog I keep, where I've tracked the DIY construction work at our home. The thing is, crafting is crafting, right? So if I rehabilitate found furniture (like this) I can talk about it here, can't I? I added sewing a few posts ago, since fabric is fiber (right?). Well wood is fibrous too, isn't it? I'm kind of tired of keeping up with two blogs. Does anyone have any opinions on this? Um, like Jordynn?

My mother-in-law offered to take me to the local yarn shop one afternoon this week. It's really a yarn corner tucked into a frame shop. I bought a ball of sock yarn and some size 3 dpns (the size recommended on the ball band) but I should have bought 2s, because that's what Cookie A. always uses in her patterns. And I got to have me some of those socks.

Here's my mother-in-law shopping in the store, Things Remembered (isn't that also the name of a chain store in shopping malls?):

They have Berroco and Cascade mostly, and a few other things.

Here's my small haul:

I'm doing well keeping to my promise to support my knitting expenditures solely with knitting earnings. The paypal account looks small right now, though. I need to launch another pattern.

Coming up:
1. Durham Centerfest, where some knitting buddies and I will be selling knitting wares. If you're local come out and find us. We're called the Durham String Thing.

2. The N.C. State Fair. I'll be entering a project in the crafts category come September. (Another secret project. I hate not being able to share WIP pics on the blog.)

Knitting Travels: Bethany Beach, DE

This week my husband and I headed up to Bethany Beach, Delaware, for a week of extended-family fun. My niece brought her knitting--she's eleven now, and I taught her to knit last year. We've knitted together and watched Star Wars (the real Star Wars)--I finished Plath, and am continuing work on Desdemona (a new pattern). She's knitting the ubiquitous garter stitch scarf. And she loves it.

Here we are on the boardwalk, and me in my Plath. (Bethany Beach just did this fabulous dune recovery/rebuilding project and there's actual sand dunes behind us, with baby sea grasses.)


I found the local yarn shop, Sea Needles, on Ravelry's store search (one of my favorite things about Ravelry). Today, my husband and I rode bikes to Sea Needles. The bike-friendliness is the greatest thing about Bethany Beach. Here's a better shot of Plath, atop the bicycle.


Half of Sea Needles is actually a needlepoint shop and a frame store (see the sign?), so although it's pretty large, the knitting schtuff is only about one-third of the store. The tall shelves and narrow aisles give it a old-fashioned feel. They have some Noro, a lot of Plymouth, and bulky yarns. They have nearly no lace yarn. In short, it's an afghan-friendly yarn store. They have a lot of things that I'm not familiar with, and if I hadn't spent my year's allowance on yarn already, it would be fun to explore some of them. The things I look for first--Cascade, laceweight, Malabrigo--were not present, but as far as LYS's go, this place does the trick. Good selection of Addi Turbos, too. I picked up Rowan 42, so gorgeous! And the lady who helped me was super-nice.



Check out the gorgeous tote bag my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday yesterday. It holds my laptop, my books, and my knitting! Perfect! (It's leaning against the wall behind the bikes.)

New Joint: Bull City Fiber Loft

This month has seen the end of one beloved institution, and the start of another.

Knit-a-Bit of Chapel Hill, NC, is closing its doors after decades. The saddest part how much the world will miss seeing Alice, the proprietor, on an everyday basis.

A new yarn-friendly spot has just opened in Durham, NC (8 miles from Knit-a-Bit). Located upstairs on the main shopping strip of 9th Street, the Bull City Fiber Loft sells spindles, fiber, yarn and other great goodies. Most awesomely, they have a full slate of fiber classes, from spinning to dying, knit and crochet. The proprietor, Molloy, is up there all day, with coffee and hot choc, sofas and floor pillows, and welcomes all who would come and just hang out and knit. Check it out on the web.

Knitting in Seattle

Katie and I flew into Seattle last weekend for the Rhetoric Society of America conference. Within hours of arriving, and checking into our kick ass hotel room in the Westin, (see view from our room above), what did we do? Register for the conference? Meet up with professional acquaintances? Hells no! We got our priorities in line and headed straight for So Much Yarn, a great little shop just down the street from our hotel. Katie had forgotten her size 5 needles, which she needed to work on a secret new project she's designing, so we hightailed it to the store for our first visit. We were greeted by Ginger and Teresa, who (little did they know) were about to receive daily visits from us.



The store is well stocked and organized by type of fiber--wools, cottons, etc. The dark woods make it a cozy store, and there's a nook in the back with books to consult and chairs to sit and knit in. Ginger and Teresa were super friendly and glad just to chat. I ended up buying five skeins of Araucania Patagonia Nature Cotton in a light emerald green shade, while Katie bought some gorgeous plum-colored Takhi Sierra to make Plath.

At the conference, we tried our best to live up to the Knitty Professors name. I was working mainly on a pale blue version of Plath for my sister's birthday and Dalloway, while Katie was working on her secret project, Plath, and Desdemona (pattern coming soon). One of the surprising things about knitting at the conference was the number of people who came up to talk to us. The reactions varied, but were mostly positive. One woman came and showed us a pair of bright blue and green socks she was working on. Steven Mailloux sitting next to me at a featured session mentioned that he wished he had something similar to work on--his wife is an avid knitter. Greg Wilson--my fellow panel member for our presentation on nuclear rhetorics--mentioned that he's a quilter, an equally engaging (if less portable) activity. There were a few skeptics who wondered how we could knit and concentrate on a talk at the same time, but we both replied--truthfully--that knitting actually makes it easier to listen attentively. I'm not sure what the scientific reason for this might be, but it is definitely true. I started knitting during a long series of job talks in my department last year, and while I think some of the candidates were a little unnerved at the site of someone knitting in the audience, I definitely found that I was able to follow the talk better if I had something to do with my hands.

Our second visit to So Much Yarn occurred on the second day of the conference, when Katie realized that she hadn't bought enough of the Takhi yarn for Plath. Teresa was working on a Noro Silk Garden project, and we persuaded her to check out Xylem instead--which will look gorgeous in Silk Garden. We can't wait to see how it turns out! We also showed off some of our patterns--Plath and Dalloway, namely.

All in all, it was a happy knitting conference. I took off for the San Juan Islands on Monday and brought all my knitting projects--but unfortunately my time was taken up with hiking, biking, and swimming in the freezing waters of Puget Sound. There are tons of sheep on Lopez Island (and goats and cows), and I had hoped to come across some local spinners/dyers/yarnies, but to no avail. Had I done my research, I would've come across this. Definitely a reason to go back to Seattle/Puget Sound sometime soon!

Knitting Travels

In the last few weeks, I ventured to two cities and their local yarn shops.

New Orleans

Jordynn and I traveled to NOLA for a conference, and in order to make our other lives valuable to our knitting lives, we found the nearest LYS and popped in for a spell. We both bought some Malabrigo worsted yarn. I turned mine into my Malaclapo (a version of Clapotis), and Jordynn's is still in the stash.

I made the first venture to this store, The Quarter Stitch on Chartres Street in the heart of the French Quarter, while J. was actually working. I found some pretty wool, but it had no tags or labels. Curious, I asked the store clerks about the yarn.

The two ladies working the counter--both needlepoint experts--had no idea about the yarn I was fondling. I thought it was Malabrigo, and it was soft like Malabrigo, but the colorways were different than ones I'd seen, and there were no tags. I asked if the yarn was produced by a local company, but we--the needlepointers and I--could reach no consensus. One lady said she knew the brand, but couldn't remember what it was called.

I liked the color well enough, and the variegation of what turned out to be the "Colchina" colorway assuaged most of my worries about dye lot.

On the return trip to the store, J. selected her yarn from the kettle-dyed, single-ply worsted-ish weight pile of yarn (HOW did I not instantly know this was Malabrigo?). At the counter, I said to her, "Doesn't it seem just like Malabrigo?" And suddenly one of the needlepoint ladies said, "That's the brand of that yarn!"

Sigh.

I thought I was getting some nifty local hand-spun or something. Trying to support local business and all that.

The lady said, "The store owner is really concerned about the stock's appearance when it is on display. So she removes the tags."

I bit my tongue.

As a fun game, why don't you, fair readers, post in the comment section the possible--if impolite--replies to this statement. (Dye lots jump immediately to mind.)

Bethesda, Maryland

The LYS there, Knit and Stitch, has a nice variety of yarn. The ladies were helpful if a little standoffish, which seems to be a requirement for working in an LYS. (This must change, people! No one should feel stupid when they enter a store to shop or ask questions. It's terrible knitting mojo, and I've seen it all over.)

They did have a large work table set up, where my husband could sit and open his laptop and work while I spent all the time in the world looking at things. I bought Loop-d-Loop by Teva Durham, some lace blocking wires (since apparently I'm now a crazy lace knitter) and some Eucalan. I only bought one skein of yarn, because I knew I had a box from Webs sitting by my front door, and because their prices were steep. However, as LYSs go, this is a good one.

The shop is in a darling walkable area in downtown Bethesda. It sits above a noodle shop in an old building with lots of character. They carry Manos but not Malabrigo, which is a damn shame. But my only real complaint is that there are no price tags on anything in the store. Not on the excellent selection of Addi Turbos, not on the yarn. Every time I wanted to know how much something cost, I had to interrupt the knitting circle and ask one of the ladies to scan the item. It was ridiculous and no doubt contributed to the aforementioned bad mojo. I mean, even I thought I was irritating.

Here's the cute front stoop:



(What is up with my bushy hair?!)

Yarn Ethics

M.A.P. and I are on our honeymoon in a delightful little metropolis in the south. We stumbled upon a yarn store on our way to dinner while tromping around town, and I exclaimed, "Honey! A yarn store! Can you believe it?" and dashed inside. M.A.P. said, "I have been flim-flammed," and sat down in a chair to read Harry Potter.

I limited myself to the odd lots basket and dug out some darling Noro and mohair blends and funky Cascade, loading my shopping basket to the brim, thinking of my pregnant friend as a justification for at least half of the yarn in the basket. I called out to M.A.P. when I reached the counter, seeking his help in curbing my addiction.

Once, twice, three times I called to him. And he never came.

$111.00 later, we stood on the sidewalk; I was accompanied by buyer's remorse, M.A.P. by a rumbling stomach. I blamed him for the remorse I felt, insisting that in the ethical contraptions that shape our relationship, it is his duty to limit my spending in high-risk situations like shoe stores and yarn shops.

(Similarly, given my training as a lawyer and in the area of close-reading, and given we double-tipped the waiter at the resort restaurant last night because an 18% tip is included by the resort on all purchases and M.A.P. doesn't tend to examine receipts, it is my job to ensure that all annoying paperwork is read completely and filled out properly. See e.g. our life insurance documents.)

And he didn't fulfill his duty today. Even though I asked thrice.

Apologies were made and accepted. Shortly thereafter we stuffed our faces on half-priced appetizers at a fun little bistro and drank fruity beer.

M.A.P. then observed that it isn't like we threw the money away on the yarn--like with the double-tipping--since we did purchase worthwhile items that I will certainly turn into other, even more worthwhile items with my knitting.

Did I marry a winner, or what.