Random bits for Labor Day

Right. I'm just back from 10 days in the northern climes of England, and have waaaay too much energy to sit still and blog in a useful manner. However, I have several items of interest that are time sensitive, so here they are, for your edification:

Number 1: The Great London Yarn Crawl

This is the last week of ticket sales, so if you are intending to come and join us on our wild and wooly tour of London's LYS scene, you need to get your tickets before midnight London time on Saturday, 7th September 2013. Three of the routes are almost completely full (i.e. only 2-3 spaces left), so hurry over to the registration page to get yourself booked in.

Number 2: The Small Wool Gathering

After the fabulous P3 retreat last autumn (and spring, for that matter), it was with much sadness that the attendees learned that this year's event was canceled. Some enterprising P3 alumnae and their compatriot have taken it upon themselves to organise a smaller, simpler retreat occurring the same weekend (11-14th October 2013), featuring Amy Singer as the guest instructor for the weekend. Although all the residential spaces are filled, there are some day tickets available, so if you are interested in joining us, we'd love to have you!

Number 3: Because I need another project

One of the organisers of Number 2 and another P3 alumna have been clogging my Twitter feed with jabberings about a baby sweater knitalong. Because I do not have enough on my plate at the moment (see Number 1), I have succumbed to their entreaties. I do not have the correct yarn. I have not swatched. The knitalong starts on Wednesday. I do, however, have a wee nephew who will need a Christmas sweater. Right?

OK. Time to go for a run. The next post will feature updates on my wooly adventures in Yorkshire/Northumberland/Cumbria and far too many sheep pictures.



(told you so...)

Why late night trans-Atlantic lace knitting is a problem

Because, if you're me, it ends a week later in muttered curses and wool/silk spaghetti. Bah!

Hopefully I am now back on the right track, as this design needs to be done soon!

Some things are just made for each other

Like this lovely Romney Ridge Farm yarn in "Cranberry Bog" and entrelac. I've got deadline knitting to do (laceweight, cables, a big boo boo to go back and fix - ugh), but I can't put this down. My other entrelac projects have been terribly fiddley, but worsted weight yarn is so much faster and more satisfying! The plan is to keep going until I run out of yarn, and then do a three-needle bind off to turn this long strip into a cowl. And these colors are going to be the perfect Christmas present for someone.

In other news: I am completely swamped by GLYC organisational stuff/another impending trip/the start of school/general life. So things are going to be a bit sparse on the virtual ground around here for a bit. I'll be Tweeting and updating Ravelry fairly regularly though, so you can always find me there. Ta!

Mother-enabled stash enhancement

My mom knits. Kind of. She likes to get some yarn and start up on a project, or plan for a project, but then she tends to run out of steam. I arrived in Maine to find her eager to get rid of some stash that she had acquired by wasn't going to use any time soon. She used to live around the corner from Windsor Button, which recently closed down, so she had a bunch of yarn that she'd picked up from their going out of business sale.

Noro Kochoran,

and Ella Rae Lace Merino - this is going to become a sweater for the purchaser.


She also had a couple of cones of mystery yarn lying around that she donated to the Cause of Enhancing My Daughter's Yarn Collection.

These have since been determined to be acrylic (hello melting burn test results!), but I plan to weave a table runner or something with them for her.

So herein ends the stash enhancement portion of the US visit. I'm going to ignore the fact that I am glossing over the pound and a half of Hello Yarn fiber that I had sent here so I could save on postage because really, there's no reason to over do it. But the new possibilities are very enticing - it's going to be a fun autumn!

Holiday stash enhancement

So, after all my agonizing over what knitting projects I was going to bring on vacation, and worrying about whether it was going to be enough, I probably just shouldn't have bothered.


I may have mentioned in the past that my parents' house is not very far away from Spunky Eclectic. On Tuesday afternoon, it was raining, so JoAnna and I went on a little mini-yarn crawl. First up was Amy's lair of wooly goodness, where I had a bit of a problem showing any restraint whatsoever.

Wool-flax in Lobster - I've been wanting to try this fiber blend for ages, and am really looking forward to it.

Some lovely, squooshy Targhee in "Bunny Kisses" and South African Fine in "Cowering Blueberry",


6 oz of some gorgeous Panda ("Winged Insects") that is destined to become a shawl,

and four cones of Cottolin for some weaving.

Then we headed up Route 1 to Romney Ridge Farm, a place I had never heard of before but which popped up on Knit Map. We had a fabulous time chatting with Kelly (the dyer/shepherdess) and I came home with some of her yarn in the colorway "Cranberry Bog".


In fact, it was so irresistible that I wound it up yesterday and cast on for an entrelac cowl.

Finally, we headed back home via Halcyon, where I picked up something that is going to keep me busy for a very, very long time:

I am sorely tempted to buy a couple kilos of Falkland and work my way through this book from beginning to end, trying all the variations she describes. I think it would make me a much better spinner, and be huge fun. But I've got to make a list of all the yarns first - I think it's going to be a huge number!

So that's it from the East Coast of the US. Hopefully next week I'll have a new cowl, and a few more posts before I head off into the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. Summer vacation sure is fun!