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!

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.

50's Pipe-Swank

I've discovered that while most knitting books are full of terrible, weird and mostly really boring knitting patterns I can usually dig up one or two good patterns. To get my hands on these while avoiding the rest of the filth, I turn to my handy-dandy local library. I can order books from most of the other Oregon libraries and have them here really fast. For example, Knitting America: A Glorious Heritage from Warm Socks to High Art is a great book if you're looking for a giggle and some really interesting history on knitting, but I really didn't need to own it. However share from it's recently rented pages, I will.

There's something about vintage knits that mean they either have to be terribly kitschy or super cool, but there's never really an in-between with vintage. Let's start with the "terribly kitschy" end of the deal:

I feel like I have the host of that show about Birds they like to show on OPB whispering in my ear "The youthful knitter could express her patriotism by knitting sportswear in patriotic colors". AS IF! This is soooo air-hostess-meets-cheerleader that it screams wacky.
But then you get Mr. Pipe Swank. He is total cool, right down to his "Hey, ladies" eyebrow cock. All of the ads featuring men, wearing knitted things (which are also made by the little ladies in their lives) also involve pipes. How else are you going to let the world know that you are a swingin' fella? That sweater sure isn't going to do it.And lastly, the best part of vintage knitting is the sheer usefulness of things. Like this awesome mitten (perfect for golfing or... riding bikes? I don't really get the situations they're giving) which would be great for smoking, giving a little "pew-pew!" gun hand to someone, pushing elevator buttons, holding onto a mug, really the options are endless. Now, if another, saucier finger were left independent as opposed to the utterly useful first finger, then and ONLY then would this pattern graduate from being a utilitarian vintage knit to a kickass modern knit. See the difference?

But if you're actually looking for a book of absolutely gorgeous knitting patterns, Vintage Knits is the perfect book. They're inspired by vintage knitting patterns and the movies Amelie and Chocolat and then regurgitate the amazing patterns (I can see myself knitting just about all of them over a long period of time).