Me and diets.

Food diets and yarn diets. I can't stick to either of them. In the case of food diets, I start to crave donuts (which, as anyone who knows me will know by now, I don't like -- it's disconcerting; like craving mud.) Apparently, in the case of yarn diets, I get given yarns.

It's hard to see, but there are four skeins there. For the uninitiated, that's 1,020 yards of wool and nylon goodness. Yes, the colors are that intense. Possibly even more so, because the flash has washed out the green.

One of the ladies at coven brought in 16 skeins in various flavors to give away. The other ladies each took four skeins, and, in a ritual very like a gang initiation, forced me to take the last four. I was only going to take two (because really, who can't use two skeins of sock yarn?), but they quoted the rules of Fight Club at me: No orphan skeins.

So I had to take all four.

Sigh. You know, I go for nearly four years on an inadvertent yarn diet, acquiring less than ten skeins/balls/bits and bobs per year simply because I was broke, and in the first year I have cashmoney to spend, I end up with...Good Bob, I don't even know. Let's see, the 70 I got at Yarnia, my new Wollmeise, these four....

Now I really need a yarn diet!

I can't blame this on Yarnia.

There are limits to what I can blame on the mythical, magical Yarnia. But my quest for legendary yarns continues.

And I have crossed off one more, Wollmeise.

 The color is called "Klapperstorch", which Google-Fu tells me translates to "stork". I'm not sure why a yarn that cycles from a pale, pinkish-white to black would be called "stork", but perhaps German storks are just a little different.

Anyway, I bought it second hand off someone on Ravelry who couldn't bring herself to knit it because the colors are the same as her local pro basketball team. Plus, I get the feeling she's not big into red. Which is fine and natural; we can't all like the same things.

But I do love red, and the colors are beautiful. Witness:

And this is the part I love best, I think:

Maroooon! I love maroon. I don't know why, seeing as I was abused with private education, which includes pleated knee skirts in unattractive plaids (ours were maroon and gray). Still and all, I love it all together with the other colors.


It's going to become a Clapotis eventually. I've met another Wollmeise Clapotis, and it was lovely.

I think my little stork is going to be beautiful, too.

A-HA! Wikipedia provides me with this lovely fellow's picture:

A painted stork.

Now I get it.

Dammit, Yarnia!

Yarnia's portals ope'ed wide yet once more, and this was thrown out and into my hot little hands.

Now I have to figure out a pattern that ties to both Fasching and Wiener Schnitzel.

A knitter's work is never done....

Reunited and it feels so good....

So, Yarnia is closed. It was picked clean by the coven. By and large, the coven's yarn-shaped kitty has vanished into a dozen stashes across town, and the leftovers are going to be listed on Ravelry's 'to sell or trade' pages.

But in the meantime, I got reamed by fellow coven-members. For abandoning yarn.

See, I had four skeins of Frog Tree alpaca yarn, two in hot pink and two in navy blue:

I'd actually put them on my own 'for sale or trade' page on Ravelry, but then the last trip to Yarnia netted me this:

Two skeins of slightly off-white. There were actually three in the tub, but I figured -- two of each of the colors, two of the white, right? Makes for balance.

I got told at coven last night that the last skein was crying, lost and alone, in the tub, like the last puppy of the litter. So they brought it in and made me take it home.

Apparently, there is a new rule at Yarnia: No orphan skeins. If there's one left in the tub, you're taking it home with you.

So, here you go:

Nestled up in quarantine together.

Temporarily. The two I bought first left quarantine today for the new stashtainer in the house. The new skein has to stay in quarantine until Thursday night, then it comes to visit its family again for three days, then back into quarantine for the final three day stint.

And I have another 130 yards of sport weight alpaca yarn to figure out what to do with. I'm thinking...something with panels in the colors, borders of the white. Double knit scarf? Perhaps?

C'est fini.

The Milkrun Shawl, Adapted.

I apologize for the state of the room behind the chair, I tend to...stack and pile things.

Anywhoo, it's done. I've washed it and dried it (which I won't do again, I want this thing to sag and I think I'll need to air-dry it if I want to accomplish anything like that) and worn it. Heck, I've even taken a nap in it. Super-squishy comfortable.

In other news, I slipped through the door into Yarnia again. I went for one thing. Just one skein of yarn.

I walked out with $23 worth of goods. Granted, $3 of that was in needles (I got a couple pair of square needles and a set of hand-made needles that are as soft as kitten ears), but the rest was in yarn.

Oh, I am sooo weak.

Here's the highlights:

Peter Pan from Wendy Yarns. Softest acrylic I've ever touched, and no lie.

This is what I went for, more of the Colinette Giotto ribbon. It's not the same color as the other skein I bought, but it's still super sexy. I love this stuff. I may have a new addiction.

Schaefer Yarn Lola. It's even superwash. Good yardage. Pretty soft, too. Me likey.

MORE ribbon yarn. I bought another skein of this stuff (Judi & Co Galaxy) in a slightly different color (this is called "Calypso", the other is "Mulberry" and slightly darker).

I'm not even sure how to use ribbon yarns, to be honest. But I seem to have fallen in with them.

Other than that, I got some workaday Frog Tree Alpaca and some wool that I'm going to knit then felt into a cat cave for Yoda boo... I foresee a lot of knitting in my future.

And this, for a sweater for me:

Aww, yeah, baby. Merino and Mongolian Cashmere.


$8 for enough merino/cashmere yarn for a sweater. Heh. I'd laugh maniacally, but I'm fighting a chest cold and don't want to hurt myself. I might be unable to knit if I strain my ribs, after all. 

Poppin' tags

Have you ever done a thing that was both so awesome and so wretched you simply didn't know whether to jump up and down for joy or smack yourself with a shovel?

It's like that.

Four years ago, one of my coven found a yard sale at which were being sold luxury yarns for $1-2 per skein. Skeins that, mind you, bore price tags marked upwards of $40. And not just one or two skeins, no, bins of yarn. Boxes of yarn of identical dye lots. Heaps and piles and bunches of yarn, nice yarn, soft yarn.

She went nuts. Then she called other members of the coven, they went to the sale house, and they went nuts. One of them went away to get more money, and when she got back was informed that someone else had arrived and carried off the rest of the yarn she had in the garage that day, alas. But there was more! Garage Sale Lady said, her mother in law had owned a yarn shop, and there were scads more yarn where this had come from. But it was not there that day, she would call us when she was ready to clear it out.

Over the past four years, this yarn and yard sale have taken on the tone of legend in our coven. We'd go along for weeks or months before someone would say, in hushed tones of reverence, Remember the garage sale lady? I hear she's getting ready to sell the rest. The coven member who found the garage sale tended to stalk Garage Sale Lady's house on the weekend of the community garage sales. In a totally non-creepy way, of course. She'd just cruise by to see if the tables were out or not (always not.)

Oh, we who did not attend the first sale did not believe! They couldn't have been all that nice! Not for $1 per skein! Who does that sort of thing?

Well, after four years of rumor and speculation, the garage sale lady re-emerged from the darkness. She contacted us and said she might be available soon. Not one to let a good thing go, our coven leader emailed her, asked what she wanted for the lot, and bought it all. Our coven now has it's own mini-yarn shop, and they DID NOT LIE. This yarn is...it's stuff I've only ever heard of on Ravelry, through other knitters, through foreign blogs. Silks and super fine merinos and ribbon yarns that look like candy, more and more and more. It's Mythical Yarn. We have our own doorway to Yarnia.

I went last night to the private Coven Store, and paid $43 for over $540 worth of yarn (if I go by the price tags). There's antique yarns and foreign yarns and yarns I've never heard of anywhere. I'd show you everything I bought, but I think I'd break Blogger. Here's some highlights:

This yarn? IT'S FREAKIN' CAMEL. And wool. But CAMEL!!

I am...without words. This stuff is beyond awesome. Now, I just have to figure out where I'm going to store it all!

My love/hate relationship with clearance endcaps.

I seriously love clearance endcaps. You know what endcaps are, don't you? They're the short shelves at the ends of longer shelving systems at grocery stores and shops? They face the main aisles instead of looking inward?

Anyway. I was at the grocery store today getting some necessaries (make up and graham crackers) and passed this beauty on an endcap, discounted 30%:

A pudding basin! Well, being as this is America, it was labeled "Mixing Bowl", but it's actually a stoneware pudding basin/mixing bowl.I can now steam my own puddings at home! Hurrah!It is always a good day when you can add a little more sugar and fat to your life, isn't it?

Of course, I needed this basin like I need another hole in my head, so I sort of hate clearance endcaps. They prod me into buying stuff that I want a lot, but don't really need, and only because it's 30% off.

Love/hate. All the time, people, all the time I get in trouble with these things!


Next weekend is my half-birthday. As I turn 39 and 1/2, which you must admit everyone only does once, I thought I would celebrate the event by starting a new project for myself, with my luxury yarns.

I'm thinking of making a Pebbly Mesh Shawl out of this yarn:

And a Rose Window Shawl out of this yarn:

I'm not sure which one to do first, although I'm thinking of using the silk thread first. It's a simple design (if you can't access the Ravelry page for it, I'm surely sorry for you) so the colors of the yarn will be front and center. The Rose Window Shawl has a far more complicated pattern, and the mild variegations of the reds in my Touch will work well with it.

I'm just trying to remember if I already started a project with that red yarn. I can't recall -- and I think it was my Kaalund yarn, instead. Maybe.

I might just maybe have too much red laceweight in my stash.

Ooops.