The Knitting Pirate

I will never say “…and I won’t buy anything there” ever again.

Sam, the Ninja and I went to Needles in the Haymarket, and I fell in love with a sock yarn in deep red with little bits of black and dark purple. (Pics soon.) Since I had no deep red yarn in my stash, and since there was still a little bit of money left on my gift card, I bought it. Now, this is how cool the ladies at the store are: I didn’t know exactly how much money was left on the card, but I knew it was six dollars and some change. They put $6.00 into the credit card machine and it went through… and then we started trying small change because, as they said, “You have to use the last bit of money on these cards!” Eventually they logged on to the card’s website and looked up the balance (three cents) and ran that through for me too. They are awesome.

Then we went to With Yarn in Front where I succeeded in not buying anything else, probably because I just bought sock yarn from them a few weeks ago when I was there with Janis. This is how cool they are at this store: they remembered that I was loving on the Kromski Sonata and offered me, “do you want to spin on ‘your wheel’ again?” I declined, but we admired the selection of Noro (I would love to knit another Stripey Striped Scarf) and when we were done shopping, we sat in the back and knit for an hour until it was time to head off to dinner.

I’m not sure I *can* go to a yarn store with friends and not buy anything, if there’s something I like.

In a few hours, I am taking the Knitting Ninja and our friend Sam to local yarn shops. “Do they have sock yarn?” the Ninja asked. Well, YEAH. Just a bit of it. And I’m not going to buy any, I swear!

I’ve had guests since Thursday night and we’re having a great time, but I’m not getting any knitting done. I’m okay with this. Later this weekend I’ll show the Ninja my wheel and we’ll all stare as it goes ’round. Meanwhile, we’re relaxing and eating way too much food and really enjoying life.

The second Bloo Sock is almost through the gusset decreases. I’d like to have it done before Michael comes to visit, so I have less than two weeks. If I don’t finish by then it’ll be okay, I’m sure; after all it’s still a hand-knit pair of socks for him at some point! As a result of cranking away on the socks, I haven’t made much progress on the baby blanket… and the baby is due this week! If only I had four hands, I could work on both projects at the same time.

One of the local yarn stores, With Yarn In Front, is hosting a “Knit and Flick” night every other Friday. This coming week they’ll be showing Dr. Zhivago, and I’m deciding whether or not to go. I’ve never seen the movie before and I question my ability to knit through it and remember what happened. Maybe in a month or so when I’m no longer knitting to deadlines, I’ll check it out. I think it’s a great idea!

This is Silkie Socks that Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts in Ravenscroft, a gorgeous black with hints of greens and purples. I’ll be using it to make Mom’s birthday present, a pair of gloves. Hopefully they go smoothly and quickly; I’ve never knit gloves before but I want to get them to her as soon as possible. Pirate-Husband actually bought this yarn, because I’m doing the knitting and the gift is from both of us.

On the left we have Cervinia “Forever” in awesome stripes. Forever was the yarn I used for my very first socks, which have held up quite well, and when I saw this colorway in With Yarn In Front last weekend, I had to have it. It passes the “blue jeans test” easily, that test being a single yes or no question: Will this yarn go well with blue jeans? On the right is some Universal Yarn “Ditto” that was on a serious closeout sale. It also passed the blue jeans test, and the price was too good to pass up! The cost of both was covered by the last of my pre-paid Visa, money that I’d set aside for yarn purchases, so I don’t feel at all guilty. Even though I’m supposed to be on some kind of yarn diet.

I’m quite tempted to cast on for a simple, 64-stitch, stockinette sock… but I have deadlines to meet. The baby blanket is somewhere between 75% and 80% complete, depending on when I decide to stop. I finished the third skein of yarn yesterday. The Bloo Socks are halfway through the gusset decreases. Progress is being made!

Friend Janis and I went to With Yarn In Front in Centreville yesterday to check out the yarn, fiber, and spinning wheels. I have really missed yarn shopping with her! We each got some sock yarn (I’ll have photos as soon as it’s sunny again) and tried spinning on a Schacht Ladybug and a Kromski Sonata. I’m sold on the Sonata, for sure! It spun very smoothly and was a good size. Now I just have to save up the money for it. I feel almost guilty for wanting to get something newer and slicker than the Traditional, which I haven’t even had for a year yet.

I’m doing my best to keep from casting on a simple toe-up sock with my new yarn. I’ve been knitting so much for other people lately, it would be nice to do something quick and easy for myself! But no, I have several projects with deadlines that really need to be worked on. Now.

So I went to WEBS and had a wonderful time fondling all the yarns. Michael the Enabler, he for whom the Bloo Socks are being made, carried the basket and helped by saying things like “you should buy that” and “yes, that is soft” and “wow, this wheel spins for a really long time.”

I didn’t buy the wheel (it’s wasn’t a Sonata), but I did buy two new bobbins for my Traditional, three skeins of Silk Garden for a scarf, and one ball of stripy-jacquard sock yarn for fingerless gloves that will have flip-top mittens.

I’d like to go back to With Yarn in Front and test the Sonata they have there. If I like it, then I’m going to start up my savings fund for it. And if I don’t, then I’ll know and I can stop drooling every time a used one comes up for sale! Pirate-Husband asked me if I’d ever spin on the Traditional again after getting a double-treadle wheel. I said that I didn’t know – maybe? and if not, I can sell it to someone else. It’s a good wheel and there’s no reason I can think of that I wouldn’t continue to spin on it.

My new camera should be arriving today, so soon I will be able to take pictures of everything I’ve been working on! I made some progress on the Bloo Socks while I was on the airplane, in spite of having to unknit six or seven rounds to correct a mistake that I must have made while at the wine festival. No more drunken knitting for me! (I did try to drop the stitches down and pick them up in the right orientation, but that didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, so I unknit.)

The funniest thing happened yesterday! On my way home from work, I thought to myself, “Self, you should stop at With Yarn In Front, that new LYS you haven’t been to yet. See what they’ve got!” And then I thought, “Rats, I’m not exactly sure how to get there. Ah well, I’ll go another time.” Just as I’d decided to go straight home, I looked over at the car next to me. It had big magnetic signs on its doors saying “With Yarn In Front.” I was driving next to the shop owner!

Needless to say, I followed her to the shop (and I’m glad I did, because if I had guessed which way to turn when I got off the highway, I would have guessed wrong). What a neat little place! Lots of yarn, spinning wheels, looms, roving… I will definitely be going back there. They have a good selection of sock yarn; I’m surprised that I was able to resist buying even one skein.

Speaking of yarn stores, I have a pilgrimage to WEBS planned for tomorrow. I was very careful to make a list of exactly what I want, to try to avoid any really impulsive purchases. My budget is dictated by a pre-paid Visa card, and I won’t go overboard. Really. I mean it!

Marie, from the weekly knitting group (the one I never get to go to anymore) invited me and a half-dozen women to spend the weekend at her beach house in Maryland. What a fun time we had – and what an amazing view! We knit, spun, talked late into the night, and ate *so* much food. Marie’s house is absolutely beautiful. It’s a three-story Victorian right on the water, with so many little details that I kept noticing.

I arrived on Saturday afternoon. After a wonderful lunch of lemon chicken, we knit for a while and then ventured out to a local yarn store, Crazy For Ewe. It took some serious self-control, but I didn’t buy anything. The only yarns that really tempted me were out of my budget – like some Schaefer Heather, and some sock yarn that I would have had to get two skeins of for just one pair of socks, and some hand-dyed laceweight from Ellyn Cooper’s Yarn Sonnets that glowed with color and had metal spun in with the yarn. It would make a beautiful shawl, if I could afford it! I did have fun touching all the yarns, and everyone else bought something, so I didn’t feel bad about keeping the store open after its scheduled closing time.

We had grilled salmon for dinner with potatoes au gratin and green beans, and then got back to knitting and spinning! Jinann and I both brought our wheels, and I got started spinning some of this merino. I’m planning to make a three-ply sock yarn with it. There’s eight ounces of the stuff, so no concerns about having enough. I don’t know if I’m spinning tightly enough for sock yarn, so I plan to run the singles through again and put some extra twist in before plying.

This morning, Marie made us French toast with raspberry butter, and there was more knitting and spinning before a lunch of shrimp over pasta with a saffron cream sauce. I finished the second skein of yarn on the baby blanket, which was my goal for the weekend, and got started on the third skein. The Bloo Sock did see a few new stitches, but as it’s meant to be my airplane knitting in a couple of weeks, and it doesn’t have the deadline that the blanket does, I tried not to work on it too much.

What a fantastic time! I hope that we can all get together again soon and do it again!

I know that knitters are exceptionally nice people, but it’s always great to have that re-proven to me.

After I finished the first of the Bloo Socks last week, I had the bright idea to weigh it. Then I weighed the remaining yarn. Then the sock again. Pirate-Husband came home and asked why I was cursing, so I weighed both the sock and the remaining yarn for him, being sure to zero the scale first.

The next day, I spent several hours contacting yarn stores to try to find another ball of the same color and dye lot. I’d originally ordered the yarn from WEBS, but they were sold out. There was someone on Ravelry with a ball up for trade or sale, but I contacted her mere hours after she had sold it, and she hadn’t yet updated her stash. I called all the local stores and wrote emails to all the ones on the internet which offered Trekking for sale.

Several stand out as deserving of recognition for their help:

Romana from Yarn Cloud, who called around in search of the right dye lot for me, even going so far as to contact Skacel to see if they had any more left (they didn’t, but still).

Pat from Yarn Barn, who forwarded my emailed plea for help to a mailing list of yarn store owners, so that the request would get to more people.

Judy from The Knitter, who did have the right yarn and immediately set it aside for me! It arrived today, and I am so happy! It’s all I can do to keep myself from casting on right now, but there are some non-knitting-related things that I need to take care of before I can get started. (Like dinner. Darned inconvenient, having to eat several times a day. Cuts into my knitting time.)

Pictures of the first sock will be available as soon as Pirate-Husband gives me my camera back.

Pirate-Husband was working at a job site in Bethesda today. From the top of the roof he surveyed the town. “There’s the Mongolian barbeque,” he said to himself, “I should eat there for lunch. And… I think I remember that there’s a yarn store right across the street.”

So before he went home, Pirate-Husband went over to Knit and Stitch = Bliss and said, “I’m looking for some yarn for my wife.”

“What does she like?”

“She’s bought that really soft stuff from that women’s collection in Uruguay,” he said, and tried to figure out which colors of Manos del Uruguay I have. “If you have internet access, we could look at her stash on Ravelry.” The woman was floored. How great is this guy, that he’s buying yarn for his wife *and* he knows about Ravelry?

“She’s a frantic sock knitter,” offered Pirate-Husband, and was shown over to the sock yarn. “This is so totally Pirate,” he said, picking up two balls of Jojoland Melody in greens and purples, and so he bought them.

The woman at the store told him as she was ringing up his purchase, “You get a gold star for being cool!”