And Part III (Yarn Shop Hop)

Kamille's is located at Gardner Village, a fully restored pioneer town in West Jordan, with Archibald Gardner's 1853 flour mill at the center. West Jordan isn't exactly my favorite neighborhood, but Gardner Village is charming and Kamille's log cabin just gorgeous.

(Just imagine this in sunshine and green trees. Cute, huh? Yeah, I can't wait for spring either.)

Now, the inside is just as beautiful: the logs are visible, there's antique-y furniture, original art, and--yarn! Kamille's specializes in Plymouth Yarns, which I like, and yarns by Crystal Palace and Feza, which I don't like. Those three brands are the most prominent. There's a little Noro, a little Kraemer, some Berroco. The store carries plenty o' books, booklets and notions; there's a cozy sitting area downstairs and a classroom upstairs. Classes? Yes, very soon Ann Budd is going to teach four workshops here.

After an adventurous drive to a residential neighborhood way south, I arrived at my last stop, Three Wishes Fiber Arts. Once at a mall that got depressingly empty, the store moved to the backyard of the shop owner's house: Kristine built a cottage behind her house and, voilà, made it her new LYS.

Looks weird, is unorthodox, but it works. The inside of the cabin is a real yarn shop: there's a table large enough for the group of knitters who were happily stitching 'n' bitching when I arrived, and the floor-to-ceiling shelves are full of yarn: lots of Ella Rae, Thaki, and Manos del Uruguay, some Elemental Affects, St. Denis, and Fiber Optica, some Zauberball, Lang Yarns, and Filatura. And tons of stuff for weavers and spinners! Kristine wants to add a patio soon for happy summer knitting. If her cottage weren't so far away, I'd join!

Wasatch Yarn Shop Hop: Part II

Who can resist a challenge? Today's weather was crazy snowy yucky, but that didn't stop me, a still relatively unexperienced driver, to take our brand new car and drive it through the snow to unfamiliar areas in Salt Lake Suburbia.

My first stop was at Unwind, a LYS in Sandy (think Big Love) that shares a space with a funky jewelry/art/furniture shop.

Don't mind the gloomy atmosphere; that's just the weather. The interior is bright and cheerful and happy, and so is owner Corinne, who is totally into the Yarn Shop Hop's book theme and chose Dr. Seuss's Lorax. One of the free patterns is Lorax himself, made of Berroco Vintage and Katia Baltika:

I thought him so fantabulous that I got the yarn. When I mentioned that my gauge is usually off, Corinne gave me a few extra feet of Baltika (the fuzzy stuff), just to make sure I wouldn't run out. Now, that's cool! I enjoyed talking to her, and I liked her store. Corinne's definitely got a love for Cascade and Berroco yarns--there were more different yarns by each company than I knew existed, which doesn't mean all that much: I'm a faithful 220 and Ultra Alpaca knitter and don't usually explore beyond those staple yarns. This may change though. (I have my eye on Cascade Alpaca Lace. And Cascade Pure Alpaca. Just hand over an alpaca herd, please.) Corinne also likes local yarns, and besides Cascade and Berroco she keeps smaller batches of local or otherwise interesting yarns (such as hemp yarn, recycled silk yarn, and very artsy ribbon yarn, all by Darn Good Yarn). She has a variety of Katia yarns, but those are leftovers from before a recent store makeover, when she carried more novelty yarns. Now she is expanding on spinning supplies and even carries silk hankies! (Perhaps you vaguely remember that during one hot summer month in 2010, while getting more pregnant by the minute and thus more hormonal, I picked up a drop spindle and some fleece and gave it a go. It didn't go too well, but now I'm thinking that I wouldn't mind taking a class and learn it properly. Unwind would be a good place to do so.)

While in Sandy I also visited the other LYS there, Unraveled Sheep.

Unraveled Sheep's theme this week is The Wizard of Oz, and many yellow bricks took me through this well-stocked store to a bunch of happy knitters and a fluffy little dog curled up in front of a fire (the dog was curled up, not the knitters). Mary Triplett is the designer-in-residence, and it is perhaps of her love for colorful fair isle tams that the store has a wide selection of Elemental Affects yarns. Also present: Cascade (lots of it!) and Berroco, Rowan, Sublime, Debbie Bliss, some Noro and some Koigu, Filatura di Crosa, and Elsebeth Lavold. And a lot of other yarns. And magazines. Booklets. Books. In sum: this is quite the store.

Stay tuned to hear about my trip to Kamille's and Three Wishes Fiber Arts (I won't mention how lost I got. Suburbia is evil)!

Yarn Shop Hoppin'

Just in case I haven't mentioned this often enough yet, the SLC knitting scene rocks! The latest and greatest that our local yarn shops are doing is to host a one-week "Wasatch Front Yarn Shop Hop." Just think: seven yarn stores, two free patterns per store inspired by favorite movies and/or books, and a prize drawing at the end.

Not knowing any of the yarn shops but my beloved around-the-corner, greatest knitting community EVAH, Blazing Needles, I hopped to two stores yesterday, despite a 60% chance of heavy snowfalls. In sunny weather I arrived at the Black Sheep Wool Company, very conveniently located in downtown Salt Lake, just a few blocks from the Temple (i.e., should you visit SLC for touristy stuff, you're really close to this LYS):

This is quite a lovely yarn shop, with a large, open browsing and shopping area and an adjacent room for classes. There's some sock and baby yarn, but mostly the store seems to feature heavier, sweater-worthy yarns. There's lots of Berroco, Rowan, Cascade, Debbie Bliss, and Sublime, and yarns of other companies, and the store carries a large selection of pattern booklets (which makes me happy--I love pattern booklets).

Then there were a few dress forms wearing Miriam Felton designs. Yay--a trunk show! So I asked, is Ms. Felton coming to the store anytime soon? Em..., the saleswoman said..., Miriam works here. Really?? Really.

That just blew me away. I mean, the Icarus Shawl was one of my very early projects, and since then I've collected many of Miriam Felton's designs. I love her stuff! She's frequently teaching classes at the store, and blimme, I'm signing up for one.

(Do I feel stupid for not having known that Miriam Felton is a local? No more so than when I discovered that Susan Lawrence spends a lot of her time at Blazing Needles...)

By the time I made it to The Wool Cabin, the clouds had gotten seriously dark, and the temperature had dropped by 10 degrees:

The Wool Cabin is a large store, with a separate room full of comfy chairs for knitting groups (in 2011 the store won the title of "Best Social Knitworking"). The store had been described to me as a store for "Mormon grandmas" (said without any judgment, by a man Mormon himself), and sure enough, the store is very baby-oriented: lots of cotton and acrylic blends in pastel shades, samples of baby patterns are everywhere, every available baby pattern collection is in stock (or so it seemed). There's Debbie Bliss, Rowan, and Sublime again, but also some Madelinetosh and (very little) Lorna's Laces. My verdict: it's not my kind of store, but I'm glad it exists and serves its community well!

After two stores my baby-free time was up, and I went home. If all goes according to plan, I'll visit two more on Tuesday. I'll be sure to report back to you....

PS: The snow never came.

Two Years

We traded cold & snowy (rainy?) Boston for warm & sunny Mississippi to visit a newly minted set of grandparents (the Hubs's parents). It's been in the 70s for the entire two weeks we've been here, and I just love taking the Bean for walks through the hilly forest that is my in-law's neighborhood. It's good for both of us: Conrad is getting his much-needed dose of vitamin D and I'm walking off a few of those pregnancy pounds.

Yesterday I remembered that the last time we were here, Christmas 2009, I picked up the knitting needles after many years of neglect. I don't remember what triggered it, but it was with some urgency that I went to a Michaels store, picked up a bulky yarn and knitted a scarf, all in stockinette and with rolled-up edges. That's how I got hooked to knitting. The following March I began blogging, and once I remembered that, I realized I had forgotten about my second blogiversary, which was a few weeks back. Argh! To celebrate the occasion appropriately (if belatedly), I strapped the Bean into his car seat, took my FIL along to babysit the offspring, and went to the local yarn store (Mississippi's largest), The Knit Studio. And lemme tell you, The Knit Studio is making it on my list of favorite LYS. It's a spacious store with lots of room to walk around and daydream of future projects (as well as tables and chairs if the knitting bug bites you right there); the yarn selection is awesome and ranges from basic and affordable stuff (think Cascade 220 in a gazillion colors) to more luxurious and rare goods; and the owner is lovely and very helpful. The library is impressive, and if you have a husband in tow (or any other non-knitter who's rolling his [her] eyes at you for stepping into a yarn store), there's a "media room" where you can park your companion to read the news or watch TV. I'm totally won over by The Knit Studio.

Which is why I brought this home:

That's a lot of fuzzy stuff (angora! mohair!) for pre-summer knitting (who am I kidding?) and some cotton for (baby) knitting during the summer. Hooray!

***

Thank y'all for leaving such nice comments. Conrad is doing very, very well, and so am I. I love being a mom, and I seem to be doing a pretty good job, since the Bean is mostly happy and smiles and coos a lot. He's got some stomach issues, but supposedly (hopefully!) that gets better soon. In the meantime we take his mind off of his tummy by standing underneath his grandparents' ceiling fan--which he just *loves.* He gets a total kick out of watching the fan move.

Kim and Dale

By 7 pm, when I returned home last night, the temperature was still a whooping 89 degrees. The high had been 90! That just as a post scriptum to yesterday's post.

On to something else.

I stopped by my LYS last night (BTW: my LYS has its own Ravelry group, at last. Check it out!) to see if the new Kim Hargreaves book Misty was already in. Because I reallyreallyreally want to make this:

Jess is a waistcoat made with Rowan Lenpur Linen, and me like it very much. (This is the first time I uttered "waistcoat" and "like" in one sentence. I'm usually not the vest-y type.)

Upon closer inspection I'm also liking Sage and Chalk.

Truth to be told, I like everything in Misty. (Funny. Last summer I felt very meh about cotton and linen and summer knits in general.)

So, anyway, to the store I bike, just to find out that Misty hasn't been released in the US yet. It makes me want to order it from the U.K., but perhaps I should practice patience and simply wait a couple more weeks. Or perhaps I should just order it. (Especially since 16 pounds sounds harmless compared to 34 dollars. Ignorance [of currency conversion] is bliss!)

I did buy something else, something I need for a secret knitting project:

Three skeins of Dalegarn Heilo--what do you think it will become?

New York Yarn

Dude, it's good to be home! It doesn't matter that our frat-boy idiot neighbor trashed the plumbing so that we don't have any water today--it's still nice to be home. I spent the weekend conferencing in NYC, and although the actual conference was a one-day affair I had been in conference mode the entire week leading up to it (mean: stressing too much, sleeping too little). After the (successful!) delivery of my paper I spent two days with the Hubs' NY family, who spoiled me rotten with very good food, walks along the Hudson, and the chance to sleep in. Still, I was glad to get home last night: traveling without the Hubs ain't as much fun.

You may have already guessed it: conference mode does not allow for knitting. (The little I knit I undid again: I'm still experimenting with a sock design that features multiple rows that consist of eight 8-stitch cables. Hopeless endeavor; I just don't know how to stop.) In lieu of actual knitting I went to two special places in NYC to at least think about knitting:

That's Habu Textiles' showroom. I was surprised to find not a store but an office on the 8th floor. It doesn't look like much in my photo, but I enjoyed how different it was from what I had expected. I didn't leave empty-handed either:

My next stop couldn't have been more different from Habu, but I wanted to go there to see for myself its sidewalk fiber art:

This is outside the Lion Brand Yarn Studio. The inside looks pretty awesome too.

In spite of its appearance, the store was a bit of a disappointment: it's full of mostly acrylic yarn. In all fairness, Lion Brand has a cashmere yarn and also offers organic cotton, among other natural fibers. Still. The acrylic was too scary. And so was the crochet talk between customers. And the staff's advice to check out Michael's for knitting needles.

Originally I had planned to check out Purl, too. In light of the rain and my wet suitcase that I had been pulling behind me for 27 blocks already, I discarded the idea and headed for the train station.

And the Hubs? How he spent the weekend? Cooking and baking, of course. Cinnamon rolls, for instance:

As I said, it's good to be home again... :)

Picasso's Moon

While in Sarasota I visited two yarn stores. Following online recommendations I tried Spinning Wheel first (no website), which was celebrated as well-established business with a great variety of everything you need. The name led me to believe that this might be the place where I could make my first purchase of roving, which is exactly what I needed that day, since I had decided I wanted to give spinning a try. Rather than drop spindles, spinning wheels, or roving, many cotton and novelty yarns in either pastel or über-bright colors greeted me. Not my kind of store, I quickly decided (which doesn't say much, since the store actually was quite packed with happy customers).

Next on the list was Picasso's Moon, and oh boy! would I have loved to gather my knitting and sat down in one of the mega-comfy chairs and started chatting with the knit'n'bitch group that was in session. The store isn't just a lovely yarn store that has, in addition to yarn, plenty of beautifully dyed roving, but it's also a fibery art gallery, a coffee/tea/wine bar, an antique shop with wonderful curiosities, and a place where friends meet. If it hadn't been for my step-dad waiting in the car, I think my mom and I would have wanted to stay there all day.

Debra, the incredibly friendly owner, saw me looking at the roving, and when I had picked something beautiful and casually mentioned that I knew nothing about spinning but was going to try it, she respectfully took the roving out of my hands and told me to start with something easy. BFL, for instance, in plain ol' natural:

Lacking a spindle and being tied to the bed still, I haven't played with it yet. It's a big mystery to me how this cloud becomes yarn, but I hope that after this summer I'll have some time to figure it out. And in the meantime I thought I should mention the store to you: if you're ever in Sarasota, do visit!

A surprise! Rachael, whose blog I love to read, had a wonderful give-away a couple of weeks ago. In exchange for book recommendation she gave away knitting books that she no longer needed, and yesterday's mailman brought this book of hers to my door:

Thank you so much, Rachael!!