LYS Envy

I was at the theatre yesterday, working on the interminable tech production that somehow doesn't do anything technical in its tech rehearsals, when one of my friends gave me a little card. There is a yarn shop a pleasant walking distance from the theatre. Naturally, I went there, even though I probably won't need anything from a yarn shop for a year. It was amazing. Hip, lovely, lots of space, great couches, great help, okay prices. It was very cute. I resisted the urge to buy all sorts of fabulous, unusual yarns from places like France and South Africa. I bought patterns and darning needles. You can never have too many darning needles. Hell, it feels like I can never have enough, as I keep losing them. As I was leaving, I thought, why can't this LYS be near my house? Why do I have to have the somewhat unhelpful, old lady LYS near my house? My actually local LYS doesn't have velvet couches or wine tasting nights or even an appealing layout. However, if the hip young knitter LYS was near my house, I would never have a cent. So, maybe these things happen for a reason.
My Indiana LYS (actually only 20 miles away, according to my trip odometer) is having a big sale, as I mentioned before. Well, I had to go see it for myself, and ended up leaving with another project. It was on sale, though, an excellent buy. That's how knitters justify these things. This really was a steal. I had previously salivated over the t-shirt sweater pattern in the Ella Rae book (currently being knit by the lovely lady of Blue Blog).It's knit in hand-dyed alpaca, in perfect Piscean shades of blue, teal, and aqua. It looked kind of strange in its skinny little hanks, but I can make that leap of faith. Look how lovely it is once it is wound up! Well, I'd thought long and hard about buying it at another LYS which I will call Markup Central. It was on sale there too, except it started off with a $10 markup. Shameless! Well, I didn't buy it them because I was planning to buy all sorts of fiber on my trip (which I did). Good decision, since I snapped it up for $4.50 a skein and $6 for the book of patterns instead of $14 a skein at Markup Central. That's a cheap project for such a fabulous fiber!
I also picked up the Chicago-based hand-dyed yarn that I wanted to make another Classy Drug Rug. The colors are a little outrageous, but I think that I will like the end result. It is a little hard to envision an entire sweater out of it, as you can see here. So much for my denying a love of the color pink. Really, I love blues and greens; I'm a total Pisces. But pink makes me happy. It can be very flattering to my rosy cheeks (or tired, hungover eyes). So, I own a lot of pink things, but I'm not a pink person. Maybe it's a phase. I'm really rediscovering color after so many years of black. I wasn't a Goth: it's a professional hazard in theatre. You may end up with a closet full of black clothing.

The Update Update

Here is the denouement of all the dangling ends of my posts of the last few months. Not that it has been all that suspenseful...
* Yes, I eventually finished my Olympic Sweater. I even wore it to England and back, as sweaters take up a lot of room in a suitcase. When I wore it to work this week, one of my knitting coworkers recognized the sweater from its pattern. Very impressive! That had never happened to me before. We had a long conversation about flaws in the pattern, including the difficulty of fitting the collar to the body. When I was riding home on the train, I realized that the sweater was an excellent illustration of that problem. Somehow, part of the collar seam had come loose and I had live stitches just hanging out, waiting to be rescued by my darning needle. When I get around to it, of course. I like the sweater a lot, but it does that hateful, slouchy cotton thing. Still, it's a much better fit than the last one.
* That show I was doing before I left for Europe is plugging along without me, just as I like it. The designer paid me for it when I got back in town. We occasionally discuss the project, but we're both finished with it. This is what I missed about design while I was working exclusively as an engineer: designers get to leave after opening.
* I bought a ticket to see Sir John in Love at ENO as a sort of pig in a poke. I like opera and I like Falstaff, I reasoned. Margaret the musical director assured me that it would be beautiful as it was composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. She was absolutely correct. My previous exposure to his work was hymns, hymns, and more hymns. They're lovely, but not terribly exciting. His orchestral work, though, is amazing. Naturally, iTunes doesn't have a recording of the opera. Sure, it's fairly obscure, but they have forty-odd recordings of his hymns, folk songs, etc. Maybe iTunes isn't such instant gratification after all.
* My phone changer did work in Europe. So did my ipod charger, though I hardly used my ipod that week. While I was walking around Paris, on a beautiful rainy evening, with my ipod stowed away in my bag, I began to wonder how much we lose with our ipods. Not hearing loss, but things we don't hear because we're too busy listening to the Gipsy Kings. Don't get me wrong, I love my ipod. It makes public transportation bearable. But what about all that ambient noise?
* Hey, everyone waiting for a postcard from Europe from me. Don't hold your breath or swear at the post office. I forgot to mail the cards that I spent two hours composing at a cafe and found them at the bottom of my bag the other day. I was sick, I was busy, post offices in Paris keep weird hours. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But, if you ask nicely, I can give you your beautiful French postcard. Sorry, no naked ladies.

How long will I be satisfied by the contents of my stash and not tempted to buy more fiber? Well, until the sales fliers from a couple of LYSes arrived in the mail today. Yes. I am ashamed. I resisted the temptation to purchase deeply marked down Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky to make a fantastic shrug. The shrug would be chunky, and I don't need chunky anything anywhere on my person. Also, I just bought yarn to make a shrug from the lovely people at the Phildar counter in Le Printemps. Shrugs are not like handbags: one can have too many.
However, I will probably head over to my actually local LYS during their sale this week to look for a couple of skeins of Lorna's Laces sportweight. I bought three skeins of it a couple of months ago, planning to make a Clapotis scarf (resistance is futile!). Except, it's not the silk blend called for in the pattern (and probably not a clever substitute) and has really great yardage. There are 225 yards to the skein, which makes three skeins for a scarf, no matter how wide, overkill. A bit of math revealed that I'd only need two more to make another of Lewis's Classy Drug Rug. That pattern, which has a completely different name in its published form, only calls for an astonishing 1,080 yards. That's in worsted weight yarn, and for an adult size! And they're having a storewide sale, which ought to include the usually excluded hand-dyed yarns. Does this reek of validation? It would maximize the potential of yarn already in my stash...
Work continues on the Giotto funnelneck pullover, despite my return to work today. The back piece is finished, and I've done about seven inches of the front. When I bought the yarn, I saw all of the skeins come out of the same mill pack, so I know that they're from the same lot. Except it looks like they're not. Hand-dyeds are like that, so I've been working alternating rows from different balls. Somehow, the back still looks pinker than the front. If it wouldn't be a total pain in the ass, I would tear it out in order to more equitably distribute pinkness through the garment, but I think this is one of those things that only I will see in the finished garment.

I read the new Vogue Knitting yesterday and wasn't tempted to make a single thing. None of the featured yarns or ads in the back inspired me. That is very, very rare. Oh, there was an excellent article on the state of the British Wool industry. I had no idea how hard the economies of production (over there) are on sheep farmers. No wonder English yarn is so expensive! But other than that, I just leafed through the magazine. Maybe I am currently immune to new projects because of my recent European acquisitions. It's just all too fabulous for competition. This may be the first time that this has happened in my memory, but I feel completely satisfied with my stash. How many people can say that? And how long will it last?

Stash is usually a dirty word for knitters, though some people are coming out of the wool-hoarding closet. Wendy over at Knit and Tonic has an incredible photograph of her in her stash, bathing in wool like some crazy knitting porn fantasy. She's really amazing, that Wendy! I'm not sure that I am ready to come to terms with the contents of my stash. I still have a lot of questionable yarns in it that were bought out of the sales bin when I first started knitting. I've still not learned to resist the siren song of sale yarn, but I'd like to think that I buy a better class of it now. I should weed it out and give it away, but to whom? There are also the beloved, projectless yarns. What will I do with 1300 yards of nearly lace weight charcoal alpaca? It is so wonderful that I am afraid I will never find the right project for it. I rarely buy yarn without a project anymore. Whether or not the yarns end up becoming what I'd originally planned is another matter entirely.

Yesterday was a blah day. Jet lag is not nearly so glamourous as it sounds. I have to wait for hours for my friends to wake up before I can call them, then I'm off to bed at the ridiculously early hour of ten. This is clearly an opportunity for self-pity. Well, I was supposed to have a gig yesterday. The production manager and I had discussed it three times. Yet, when I called him yesterday morning to inquire when he wanted me to come in, he told me that he had hired someone else for the gig. Argh! I played it cool, but really felt shat on in this situation. I was looking forward to seeing my work friends and instead I was at home watching the latest Law and Order spin-off. Not exactly a high self-esteem day. I just need one really sunny afternoon, to reset my clock and my outlook. But, being a Chicago spring, that is unlikely to occur.

At least my knitting is going well. My Giotto pullover is just flying off the needles. Yes, I have other projects languishing on the needles as I type, where my attention might have been better directed, but how could I resist this Giotto yarn? It was a real bitch to wind, possibly because I was using a wooden swift and it is a ribbon yarn. Giotto isn't hateful like your typical ribbon yarn, though. It isn't slithery, and at the pattern gauge, makes a fairly firm, cushy fabric. I am already to the armholes on the front piece of the sweater. Well, the adapted front piece. I can't ever follow a pattern without meddling, so I decided that I do not want a twenty-seven inch long sweater. I got out my trusty tape measure and measured one of my favorite sweaters. It's only twenty-one inches long. The Giotto sweater will be 23 7/8" long. Too-short sweaters drive me crazy, so I hope that this will be a happy medium. I look forward to wearing it soon!

Why Do the Wrong People Travel?

I love to travel, but I hate traveling. I hate the crowds of people pushing each other at the airport, having loud discussions as though no one else could hear them. I don't think that plastic bags should be used as luggage. And just because you can shove more stuff into your bag doesn't mean you should. Oh, and to the woman who cut in front of me in the customs line at Dublin Airport: wear less perfume. The effect of half a bottle at once is more likely to be vomit than delight.
I sound so bitter, and I'm not. I've just gotten back from a fantastic biennial visit to my cousin Stephen in England. That's a fancy word, isn't it, biennial? I last visited there in September 2004, and tried to do everything. Trying to see/do everything in one visit is a great way to tire yourself out and not really see anything well. This was a shorter trip, but almost entirely free form. If I'd been clever, I could have blogged as I went, but I was on vacation and therefore didn't. I didn't check my email either and was rewarded with a hell of a lot of spam when I opened my mailbox this morning.

Here's a brief look at what I did on my vacation:

Yes, my trip to Europe was a stash enhancing expedition. I bought so much yarn while I was over there, that it seemed a miracle when I managed to squeeze it all into my bags. A couple of Stephen's friends are knitters, and they recommended a wool shop called Loop in Islington. We're pretty spoiled here in the States, or perhaps just major cities in the States, because we have loads of yarn shops to choose from. That is not the case in Europe, apparently. Loop is a little shop, very similar to Purl Soho in New York. I was keen to find a shop that carried Colinette yarns, since they're hard to find in the UK, but only 50% the price that they are over here. Well, Loop had enough Giotto to make a big turtleneck sweater (which is called something else entirely in England, can't remember what), as well as gorgeous purple Point Five to make a gift scarf.

I also went to the yarn section at Liberty, which has heaps and heaps of Rowan yarn and books, but no shop assistant in sight. I ended up going to haberdashery to be helped, where I bought a meter of beautiful orange french velvet ribbon to weave into a hat and a couple of Liberty print hankies. Yes, it even said "hankie" on the tag. This turned out to be an excellent impulse purchase, as I later came down with the upper respiratory creeping crud. Those hankies really are handy! I bought some lovely RYC cashmere blend yarn to make Anna Bell's Jemima. I might add a bit of waist-shaping, I'm not sure.

There was also a shopping expedition in Paris, via the Eurostar. The chunnel is pretty amazing, and incredibly mundane as well. The train is only underwater for twenty minutes. It's like taking the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan. I'd hoped that they'd put a half-way mark in the Chunnel, as there is in the Lincoln Tunnel, but it isn't lit inside. Nothing to see there. There were a lot of beautiful Norman churches standing in the middle of fields on the way into Paris. I saw a lot of countryside that I would have missed had I flown to Paris. When I remarked upon the churches to Stephen, he pointed out the number of old churches in England. Europe is chockablock with old buildings, castles, and history. What do we have over here? Gas stations and shopping malls. Yawn.

I went to La Droguerie, an excellent yarn shop in the 1er, near L'Eglise St Eustache and Les Halles. I really hate that Metro station, and I'd sort of forgotten how long it takes to get from the platforms to street level. Worth the effort, though. I've read a lot of other American knitters online writing about how hard it is to get waited on at La Droguerie. Well, I had to wait a long time. After about twenty minutes of idly admiring their wares and getting hard, Gallic looks from the cashier, I began to think that I might join the ranks of Americans who couldn't buy anything there. Well, the reason the wait was so long is that they're short of hands (perhaps permanently so), and lavish a lot of attention on their customers. I bought the makings of a cotton wrap cardigan, with lace edging and silk ribbon belt, from an in-house pattern. The yarn is a sophisticated green that is new to La Droguerie this season. I know, I keep swearing off knitting with cotton. But it's just so lovely. I also bought a kit to make a mohair cardigan with mother of pearl buttons in a color described in French as supermarine. Seems as good a description as any in English.
And, to make a scarf, this wool and mohair combination, to be held together. They showed it in a really chic little collared cape, but I don't think I can carry that off in Chicago.
Did lots of other things as well, but I'm still pretty jet lagged. Due to the creeping crud, my ears aren't back to normal. They don't hurt or anything, but it feels like my head has been packed in a jar of cotton balls, like a bottle of aspirin. I probably need more mucacin (or however it's spelled) and a bit of relaxation. Will update again soon.

Holy shit, I leave for Europe in less than two weeks and I haven't finished any of my knitting projects. I just keep working and working on, well, paid projects instead of knitting. Still, I think I'm in good shape as far as my vacation is concerned. My tickets for the concert at the Barbican have already arrived in the mail! No sign of my opera ticket, and I cannot remember if I asked them to hold it at will call. That's a little troubling.
My show is closed now and it's on to another show. Maybe that's what I'll keep calling it.... So, the old show closed on Sunday. It was just another show to me, but there were the usual teary goodbyes in the dressing room. It was a little strange to think that it would be the last time that we do the show, but I was ready for it to close. So, I've had a couple of days of only working one job, which is oddly luxurious. Then, yesterday, I started on Another Show. Or I was supposed to, but discovered that the sound designer had left two hours before my arrival (without calling). Oh, and the production is four days behind. And there's no board op. The pay is so paltry that I wouldn't think for a minute of taking it, and the producers want to make it more complex. Ugh. Why must all producers suffer from a case of short arms when it comes to the sound budget?
Today, I took the day off. The plan was to work on Another Show, but they're way behind. I could have put in a few hours at the straight gig, but instead I had my first day off since January 30th. Thank god. I didn't run a bunch of errands like I should have. I read a book. I knit. I took a nap. Life is good.