Yarnia is My Narnia

After I got the last of my Christmas knitting books in the mail the other day, I decided that I wanted to knit a sweater. Really, I've been wanting to knit one for a long time, but the arrival of all these great patterns cemented the idea from a want to a need. So, I went in search of some yarn. Unfortunately, if I bought yarn either in person or on the interwebs it would wind up costing between $60-70 to make something sweater-sized. I can't justify spending that much on an already made sweater let alone the raw materials for one that I make myself. I put everything on hold, until I found Yarnia. I think it was through craftzine.com. Maybe not. I can't remember. In either case, Yarnia blew my mind (as many things yarn oriented seem to do these days!). When you go to a yarn store in pursuit of yarn, it is generally sold in skeins. Each skein is between 50-100 grams which is generally enough for 1.5 hats, .33 scarves, 1 pair fingerless mittens, 1.25 pairs of socks, etc. To back it up even further, yarn is (generally) comprised of several threads, twisted together to make one larger piece of yarn. Yarnia, on the other hand, sells a couple thousand different kinds of single strands that you can then choose from and the group of strands is then combined to form a unique yarn, just for you! Make sense? Essentially you pick out, ohh... maybe three different kinds of thread and then you take them to the nice lady and she loads them on a machine and they get wound onto a cone and voila! Yarn! Plus they're sold by the pound. Unlike piddly things like mittens or hats, sweaters generally require between 1 and 2 pounds of yarn to make so this system is absolutely beautiful. Plus when you buy anything from food to yarn in bulk, the price tends to go way down than if you buy it in pre-measured increments.

Anyway, Mom and I made it down to Division and 42nd yesterday to check yarnia out. I had two or three sweater patterns in mind before I went and the minute I walked in I settled on the perfect one. It's from my new Vintage Knits book. Mom and I spent about 15 minutes oogling all of the spools before deciding on two wool strands and one acrylic strand to give it some shine.


Here it is being wound on this incredibly crazy machine she's had custom made from older machine parts. It looks a bit like this vintage sock knitting machine I saw online a while ago. That process is also very neat from a mechanical standpoint. I took a video of a portion of the process but it was a little boring if you weren't there. And you can't see much because, in one of my genius moments, I was standing right behind her back. So, bummer, you'll just have to do there for yourself and order up some yarn.

And the final product! It's very nice (a little rough and not so stretchy, hopefully that'll be just fine in the end.)The yarn and the pattern. I started knitting with it last night so you can see it starting in the corner there. Oh, and it wound up costing $40.04 for 17 ounces (1 pound 1 ounce) yarn.. much better than $60 or $70 and well worth watching that process! And since it's all about the weight, if you picked lighter weight yarns than I did, it would cost much less. Oh and if you bought less than I did as well!

Good Day

I was picking out my twice weekly groceries at Twelve Mile on Saturday when I found these lovelies! The eggs are called Girls-a-Layin' (P.S. don't type that into google for a search... it will only end with naughty things. Who'd a thought? Geeze...) and they are local. I think I'm in love! The lady was saying that she has forty some-odd chickens and she always knows which ones are laying and which aren't because each egg is unique to the chicken (and she doesn't just mean the really obvious color difference, that's how good she is). I love that.

And on the way home on Saturday I decided to keep my eyes peeled for a Goodwill. I knew there used to be one in the area and sure enough there it was! I popped in with a very specific idea in my head. I wanted to take an already made sweater and deconstruct it for its yarn ever since I saw this tutorial. This was a cotton (I think) Large sweater. Ok, in the end it took me about 5 hours to pick the damn seams out without tearing the yarn and about 4 hours to unravel everything, but now I think I have enough for four pairs of mittens and a pair of socks or something. It's about the journey... right? Anyway, my fingers are sort of purple from picking at little threads for hours and hours but it was so worth it.

At least that's what I'm telling myself, and don't you go contradicting me either.
Oh, and the photo above is of the sweater with the arms already detached and unraveled and one side open with three more seams to go. Sigh....

Someone Hand me a Paper Bag Before I Hyperventilate!

Our friend Lisa was here last week. She knits just as much as I do and she recommended this website called Knit Picks. However, when she mentioned it she was talking about the knitting needles they have on there. I went and scoped it out but knitting needles don't really do anything for me. For some reason I wound up on that site again this morning and glanced at their yarn. This is where the heart palpitations and erratic breathing come in.

THEY'RE PRACTICALLY GIVING IT AWAY!

Now, I know I get excited about little things. Like buttons. Or cupcakes. But really, this is fantastic. I ordered a boxful of 100% wool yarn hand woven by poor Andean folk for $3 each. And a book. Ok, I'm exaggerating a little. I ordered four skeins of really REALLY nice yarn and my favorite knitting book Vintage Knits (found that for pennies as well). Have you ever seen that Austin Powers movie where the femme bots' heads explode? Well, if you have then you could draw a pretty good parallel between Powers' mojo = Yarn and Femme Bot exploding head = Hannah exploding cranium.

Oh, and on top of that I got the two knitting patterns from Hansigurumi on Etsy that I'd ordered around Christmas!The Garden Snail

The Jackalope

Star, I wish you were here. I think you'd understand the magnitude of this amazingness. All that's missing is some fresh baked cupcake to make this day coma-inducingly good.

But wait, there's more! My Grandmother Joyce was here last night for a New Year's Eve dinner and she recommended this site called paperbackswap.com. You list any paperback books you don't particularly want on their and people can request them. So you pay for the shipping out and for every book you send you get one credit and you can then order any book you want and receive it for free. Each regular book costs 1 credit to order, audio books are 2. By listing ten books when you sign up you get 2 credits to play with. I did that last night and I ordered the Forsyte Saga. I just got an e-mail telling me that my request had been filled and I'll be getting an e-mail in a couple of days saying the book has been shipped! I'm pretty excited.

I Made it Myself!

I went downtown yesterday to deposit my second (meager) paycheck in the bank only to realize as I was yanking on the clearly locked doors that they were closed on Saturdays. Who does that? Anyway, as I was talking to my sister Jessie on the phone and wandering around downtown Oly. waiting for the 3:30 bus to leave in an hour, I found myself inside of Canvas Works. Funny how that works. So I decided that while I was there anyway I should check to see if they have a drop spindle. I've been hankering to try spinning my own yarn (since it would cut my costs in halvsies). I bought the very very last one (it's like fate right? When a place has the last one of something you're looking for? So you have to buy it. Right? RIGHT?). No matter that my bank account is in a steady decline, I'm going to teach myself how to spin yarn dammit!

So that's what I did last night between the dinner that Katherine and Peter made and our Monopoly game that lasted into the wee hours of the morning. This is the fruit of my labors (ignoring the mess I made out of a particularly hideous color of wool roving I bought to practice with. THAT one is getting tossed as soon as I remember to). I'm quite pleased. I think I'll get one more baggie of that wool and then knit a hat or something.

Today

Today started off alright. It wasn't great, nothing exceptional, just ok. I had my oatmeal, put Monty in the yard and read five chapters of The Fifties by David Halberstam for class.* At about 2:30 Star told me to meet her at the Olympia Transit center at 3 so I threw some clothes on, scooped Mr. Monty up and put him away and then walked into town. I took a different way through my neighborhood than I usually do and as I got to Eastside road I spotted two VERY cool things in people's yards. On my left I spotted a bunny cage with a very large and very happy looking black rex rabbit, so we have rabbit's in our neighborhood! And I also spotted someone with two chickens in a pen, happily chirping to themselves about all the tastey bugs the rain was driving out of the ground. Both of these things made me very happy. My day was slowly moving up to "pretty good". I made it to town exactly when it started to rain for serious which bumped up my mood from "pretty good" to "I'm pretty damn talented" because it takes talent to out walk imminent rain in Oly. I met Star outside of The Reef diner and we headed south towards Canvas Works (which was the whole point of this little journey). On the way we stopped in at this little shop called the Tea Lady that sells all things tea. I saw this (I almost died, trust me) white tea pot in the shape of a chickadee. I love it so much that I think I might have to go back tomorrow and get it. I won't use it, which is what kept me from getting it instantly, but I can't stop thinking about it which is a sure sign that I think I need it. I really do. Sigh...
Anyway, we went in so I could try to oogle the price and I saw this little white ceramic piggie pourer. Star got him for me for a birthday/helping her move present and now I have the beginnings of a nice little ceramics collection.
All of this bumped today into the "unreal" realm. After all this we went to the yarn store. I really want to make this sweater (photo 1, photo 2) so I went a-hunting for the yarn. Turns out the yarn that works is about 8.50 per skein. I need about 8 skeins. So.... as much as I want to and as badly as I want it, I just can't justify that right now. Maybe if I get the library job I applied for, but between gas and other things I have to wait. The good thing about knitting is that the yarn doesn't really go bad, and I'll always have the pattern so I can come back to that dream another day. I did get two balls of yarn though because they were gorgeous colors and the only two left, THAT was justifiable, I guess. I also got some more wool roving so I can make some more critters and maybe put them up on etsy.
I visited Star's newly unpacked and arranged room at her new house. I got to play with Mitmit (I think that's the cat's name (one of four)) who is a very tiny and very angular kitty. I took the bus home, got a little wet but it worked out well. I got in the door and remembered that I put some of the bananas I'd stuck in the freezer when they went past yellow out on the counter for banana bread (I don't like them once they pass green, but since Monty is such a big fan of morning bananas I've been putting them on my cereal so I don't taste the non-greenness as much, but these had gone past yellow into the brown/black range so I froze them, hoping they wouldn't self-destruct in the freezer) and just left them there to go meet Star. The bananas had melted and turned into weird slug/flaccid nastiness in brown water in their bag. I was a little squimish but it's nothing compared to cleaning out the shower drain for the first time in about eight months (something else I did recently, but let's just say that that wasn't something that needed to have its picture taken, so no blog). I sucked up my courage and closed my eyes as I dumped what looked like banana-scented intestines into a measuring cup and mashed away. I put in the two eggs that the recipe called for and got a bit of sick delight as it turned into a crazy science fair experiment. The mad scientist in me comes out when I'm baking so as gross as the bananas looked, I kind of wish there were more to play with.
The banana bread is in the oven, I'm in my cozy socks with a hot cup of chai + cocoa and marshmallows next to me, Monty is napping on top of my feet, licking my ankle occasionally and I have my new favorite song Sentimental Heart by She & Him playing.
It's been a good day.

*this book by the way, is amazingly detailed and easy to read. Who knew so many things happened in the Fifties? Well, they did.

Spin Me a Yarn

Three balls of this...
And two balls of this (so far, that is).

I finally summoned up the courage to go into the yarn shop I pass on the way to the Duomo. I get goosebumps every time I go by it and after seeing the yarn Cynthia got a couple of weeks ago I decided any embarrassment from not being able to speak Italian would be totally worth it. Side note, the imperfection of my Italian has stopped me from going into shops and buying things that I really like so far. It's a little ridiculous and I've been telling myself that the worst that could happen, should I try to speak Italian, is that I look silly, and that's not so bad in the grand scheme of things. But, I still get a little nauseous... so it's a work in progress. I've always been like that with things I'm not perfect at, but here in Italy just communicating brings it out, while in the U.S. it takes a bit more to bring out that fear of being wrong. Ah well... a learning experience.