Mink Yarn, Nose Jobs and Bras

Knitting friends and I went to Stitches South yesterday and spent EIGHT hours wandering around, looking at yarn and knitting/crocheting-related, uh, stuff, accessories.

The find of the day was this yarn which is, be still my heart, 100% MINK!  Yes, mink!!!  It is s.o.f.t.  and then soft some more.  When I was paying for it, I asked the vendor if she was sure that this was the 100% mink, and not the mink/cashmere blend, because, well, THAT wouldn't be 100% MINK. Cashmere-pah.

I've done research this morning and found that the mink yarn is made from the fur that comprises the undercoat of the mink animal.  That's why it doesn't look like a mink coat.  And depending on whom you listen to, the mink like being combed/brushed occasionally to relieve them of the undercoat, or the mink are sedated in order to be brushed.  Also I have learned that mink yarn is fragile, and really should be knit up with a fine yarn---silk or ....cashmere.

I could have bought the mink/cashmere blend and saved myself a little work...

And lest you think that a yarn convention must be a snore, full of boring, little old ladies,we met these two interesting? women.

One (a vendor) asked YarnGurl if "that is your real nose."  Well, yes, she answered.  Then followed a ten-minute monolog about her life.  She is having a nose job.  She would have had one earlier in her life, but she just wasn't "superficial" then, but now she is.  There was a lot more, but we were rescued by Sallyknit who came looking for us.

While we were eating lunch, a woman in her 60s or 70s at the next table opened her shirt so that her friend could take a picture of her bra.  She explained that she never wears one, but had that day, and she wanted photographic proof that she does own one and does occasionally wear one, when she didn't want to look as if she "was swaddling a bunch of puppies in my shirt."

Alrighty then.

Oh Dear

Stitches South has come and gone, and we went and did some damage, although not as much as we did last year. We arrived at the opening bell, stayed till closing bell, and probably could have stayed longer. But like a moth to a porch light, I was drawn to the Fine Points booth, over and over and over... And now I am making another skirt. This skirt:

Ugly, isn't it?

Yes, it is, but I am not making it out of the yarn called for and am instead using more of the beautiful Claudia Hand-Painted linen yarn that I used for the Sasha Skirt. I don't have it yet; the booth only had two of the six skeins I need, so Claudia herself is dying six skeins for me and shipping it to me. How special am I!!!???

The colors are deep and rich, and change gradually. Claudia was wearing the skirt, so I do know that it won't look at all like this when I am finished with it. I have studied the pattern though, and I haven't a clue what it is talking about. I hope that I will understand it when I start working on it, and also the nice people at Fine Points gave me a written tutorial to help with it.

I have (sort of) sworn to knit nothing else until I finish the Summit Shawl, but that may not be what happens. I can hear the Juneberry Triangle sighing from time to time from the closet where it resides, safely away from Baxter's teeth, but I am starting to feel brave enough to pull it out and try the next chart pattern. And I know I will want to start on the skirt once the yarn arrives.

Mission creep has already begun, however, because I loved the boots that Claudia wore with the skirt.

Now I NEED cowgirl boots!

Sisyphus is I

I feel as if this Summit Shawl should be called the Sisyphus shawl instead. I knit and knit, and the ball of yarn never seems any smaller.

I received the "half" dollar in a stack of ones that I was handed as change somewhere in the Florida Keys. Nice. I think that since it is more than half, if only by a little, I can exchange it at a bank for a whole dollar bill. I just keep forgetting to take it to the bank. So here it is, showing how much yarn remains. I would swear that it is the same amount I started with.

In a couple of weeks, Stitches South comes to Atlanta, and I will be there for the third time. Last year I ended up with yarn for the Satan Skirt. And last year SallyKnits ended up with 1800 yards of raw silk to make the Summit Shawl; after the show closed, I decided that I wanted to make one too and ordered the yarn from Tess Designer Yarns. I love the yarn. I hope that I will love the shawl, if it is ever finished. And I will bee-line to the Tess Designer Yarns booth this year. But if I even mention the words: Oooh, pretty colors. Maybe I'll make another Summit Shawl, I hope my friends will shout: Step away from the raw silk!

OK? Sally, Lucille, Anna and Deanna??? Promise?

Whew...I made it.

Last week, as my friends and I were innocently wandering through Stitches South, minding our own business, bothering no one, suddenly out in front of us appeared The Most Beautiful Skirt Ever. We asked the woman wearing it if we could take a photo of the skirt, and she said that we could.

She turned out to be a saleswoman/enabler for Fine Points Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio. An hour and a half later, two of us had bought the yarn required to make the skirt.

These are the best photos I have found of the skirts, but they really do not do the skirts justice.

The short version:

The long version:
Making this skirt involves knitting an underskirt with Louet Euroflax (100 % Wet Spun Linen) which is a whole lot like knitting with waxed dental floss. I am not exaggerating here. It's stiff, bendable and not at all nice to knit with. It also tends to spring off the needles when I'm not looking. However, after it is washed and dried IN THE WASHER AND DRYER! it is soft and drapy.

The underskirt is all knit in stockinette except for the occasional purl row which is used to pick up stitches from to knit each of the tiers. Each tier is made from a different Claudia Hand Painted Yarn. The colors are gorgeous and it took an hour and a half to go through the various color combinations. The bonus? Claudia herself was there to help.

But yesterday, I started the project, and spent last night at knit night so immersed in struggling with the waistband that I barely knew what else was going on around me. And then this morning, more of the struggle.

Notice all the needles..........

We sock knitters always try to convince those would-be sock-knitters that you only knit with two needles at once, so they should not be intimidated by the porcupine-like mess of four double pointed needles they see us working with. This part of the project involved three circular needles - with their six points - each needle of a different size (no idea why, I was just following directions) and because I had had to take the live stitches off of a provisional cast-on length of waste yarn, I had to hold a crochet hook in my mouth to pick up all the ^&*() dropped stitches that manoeuvre had caused.

It was a mess. The goal was to knit the two long sides of the band together to form a casing for elastic. It took me over three hours to finally accomplish this. Did I even know if I had the same number of stitches on each needle? Did I even know if I had the required 205 stitches when I finished? Did I bother to count???

No, I did not. It was all I could do not to throw the whole thing into a very long time out.

But I persevered and this is the result:




The rest (until I tackle the tiers) is brain-dead easy (and probably just as boring). Just stockinette stitch on size 4 needles for 40 inches.

NOW I'll count the stitches.

And with any luck, there will be 205...but if not, I know how to increase or decrease...(in other words - cheat!)

Stitches South

Stitches South 2010 is in Atlanta this weekend, and I spent the day there yesterday with fellow knitters from our local LYS. There were more wonderful, beautiful fibers and yarns there than you can imagine.

However, what happens at Stitches South 2010 stays at Stitches South 2010.

(Right , S and L ?)

And Now For Something Completely....Weird???

I have come across a much larger version of this opossum on my deck. It was dark out and I was letting the cat in. The cat, however, wouldn't budge and was staring at the far end of the deck. I turned to see what he was looking at, and there it was, a huge opossum staring back at me. It was creepy. He stared and stared and didn't move for awhile, and then s.l.o.w.l.y climbed the post to the arbor.

I learned that the opossum is the only marsupial in north America and that it has lots - maybe even fifty - teeth, very sharp teeth. Not something to tangle with.

So it was a surprise when I came across a vendor at Stitches South who was selling possum yarn from New Zealand. That stopped me dead in my tracks. I asked the vendor "You can shave a possum?"

She hesitated, and then said, "The yarn is recycled."

Huh? Recycled from what? Oh....

She could tell that I had figured out that recycled meant killed and quickly explained that opossums were introduced to New Zealand and that since they have no natural predators, they overrun the country. She said that they are very destructive to vegetation and therefore, people are allowed to kill them.

Oh. The yarn is blended with merino to make it soft and pliable, and did feel quite nice. But they shouldn't have displayed a photo of a mother possum with babies riding on her back. Just makes the whole thing feel wrong, somehow. Fifty sharp teeth or not.

Stitches South

Stitches South - the first one ever - was held this Friday, Saturday and today at the Cobb Galleria outside of Atlanta. I went on Friday with a group of my LYS's knit-night knitters. As we walked into the convention room, those of us who had been to SAFF in Asheville, NC, last fall, said, "Is this it?" We had heard tales of how huge Stitches events were, how great they were, and this was just one room with booths in it.

However, because it contained just yarn and yarn-related accessories (no sheep, alpacas or any other animals, no weavers, only a few spinners), Stitches WAS huge: all of the space was for vendors - hundreds of booths with all sorts of exotic yarns and lots of tools for knitting and crocheting. As we left, eight hours later, we carried bags and bags of new supplies. And if we had been brave enough to deal with what were probably very large crowds yesterday and today, I'm sure we could have come away with more bags and bags and bags....

One of our biggest scores was free - these Ravelry pins. They are scarce, but we accosted a knitter wearing one to find out the source: a nice vendor had bought lots of them from Ravelry and was handing them out to those who knew where to ask.

Unfortunately, one of my purchases was these socks. The group I was with decided that we should all buy them and wear them Thursday night. I remarked that we knit socks; we don't buy them. I was out-voted. I'm wearing them with Birkenstocks. That'll teach 'em...

At one point, I wandered away from the table where we were all taking a break, just sitting and knitting. I found a basket booth, and this basket just jumped out at me.

I bought it and took it back to the table, where, when I glanced at the socks I was working on, I realized WHY the basket had jumped out at me:

And of course, I bought yarn: two different sock yarns, and another yarn (the large hank) that was part of a kit for a feathers and fans pattern wrap. I would like to have bought lots more, but I decided to be realistic about having a large stash of projects ahead of me. I may end up regretting this decision.............but there is always more yarn.....

Stitches has signed the contract to come back next year, and if the dates are better, it may be even larger. One of the vendors told us that next weekend is the very huge Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, and that some vendors just couldn't re-stock and organize two events so close together and chose the Maryland event because it is so well known and successful. Sad for us (well, not really), but we managed to have a great time anyway.