Archive for the 'California' Category
Last week, I’d promised a write-up on the other of the two LYSs to donate a prize to my Blogiversary Raffle and here, at last, it is. The Golden Fleece has added a big (900+ yards) skein of Kauni in the purple-to-indigo (EL) colorway to the group of prizes.
The Golden Fleece is located at 303 Potrero Street in the Sashmill Complex. The baskets of discounted yarn call out alluringly from alongside the door.
The store is housed in two large, well-lit rooms: a front room full of delicious yarn and books and a back room with big tables for classes.
When I need a break, I often stop by to sit and knit a few rows. The company is wonderful and the “yarn fumes” do wonders for my creativity.
The Golden Fleece carries both an interesting mix of new yarns and a large selection of staples. Their newest yarn, Royal Llama Linen, is insanely delectable. I expect to be succumbing to it any day now (it’s just a matter of deciding whether I’ll be giving myself to the light green or the copper colorway). They carry Dream in Color, Eco Wool, and some wonderful large-skein imports from South America, including llama marls (I have a shrug in mind for some of these). You’ll also find shelf after shelf of Cascade 220, Galway, and Encore.
When you visit the shop, remember to look up—you’ll see all sorts of sample garments to inspire you.
The Golden Fleece has the biggest selection of Malabrigo I’ve found anywhere—a whole wall of it—and they order it regularly, so there are always new colors to tempt a knitter. I haunt them when I know a shipment is coming in: I love seeing the new hues and smelling that wonderful vinegar-y scent that results from the way they set their dyes.
As you might have guessed, The Golden Fleece also has a huge selection of Kauni.
If you’ve been having trouble tracking this yarn down, they’ll be glad to ship it to you.
Margaret and Carol, the shop owners, are two of my favorite knitting people. Margaret knows more about knitting than I could hope to learn in ten lifetimes and shares it all with a sense of humor that makes things doubly fun. Carol knows just what skein to wave under my nose when I’m faltering; when I call her an enabler, I mean that in the best, knitterly sense of the word. The shop hosts community knitting every Sunday afternoon and in the evening on the first Friday of every month (TGIF at TGF). If you get the chance, come on by!
February 20 2008 | California and LYSs | 4 Comments »
In case any of you are thinking Melissa is a brute for denying me the opportunity to buy yarn, allow me to clarify. She did get me to promise to hold off on buying more (with my inserted list of exceptions), but only after I’d been both celebrating and bemoaning the fact that I’d purchased a nice lot of Soy Wool Stripes and other basic wools that I found on sale at Michaels (thanks Mrs. H!). The celebrating part needs no explanation, of course. The bemoaning has to do with not having sufficient funds in checking and deciding to put everything on the credit card. I will pay it all off at the start of the December, but I’ve worked long and hard to get myself to purchase yarn with cash (or the equivalent) only, so this was a slip-up for me.
Melissa is actually quite understanding about my sudden, desperate needs for new yarns, needles, etc.—just as I am understanding about her sudden, desperate needs for paints, canvases, gigantic rolls of watercolor paper, and the like. We’ll save money by buying cheaper food and fewer cleaning products, thank you.
At the The Golden Fleece’s community knitting on Sunday, Carol showed me the new Smooshy Sock yarn, and I was instantly smitten. I am happy to report that she, Margaret, and I have worked out a deal: I’m designing a pattern for them in Smooshy in exchange for some of the yarn. So, if you’re local be on the lookout for the results. Here are two hints: I’m making a hat, and I’m using two colors, Cloud Jungle (370) and Gothic Rose (340).
Melissa will verify that I have been absolutely rapturous about Smooshy. The Cloud Jungle colorway, which is a warm, but unassuming grey grey at a distance, is marvelously rich close up—shot through with plums and greens and deep teals. It takes about thirty seconds of working with this yarn to relieve my nastiest post-work headaches. (Carol and Margaret were probably wise to work out this swap with me. They’ve created an addict, and I won’t be able to stop with the two skeins I currently have in hand.)
This has been a wretchedly busy time at work (see headache reference above), and to distract myself I’ve begun working on my queue on Ravelry. I try to knit from free patterns when I can, so my queue is essentially becoming my own customized on-line pattern book. I can click on the project, then go from there to fetch the pattern or to see what results others have had with it. I’m trying to be reasonable, so I’ve managed to keep my queue down to only fifty-eight projects thus far.
November 21 2007 | California and Design Projects and Free Knitting Pattern Sites and LYSs and Ravelry and Smooshy Sock and The Golden Fleece and Yarn Reviews | 4 Comments »
I’m afraid this may be a visually boring week, as Melissa and I didn’t get together and I wasn’t able to take advantage of her artist’s eye and digital camera. She’s painting like crazy for a show she has coming up in Mill Valley that will feature her landscapes. Meanwhile, I spent the weekend here in Santa Cruz, assisting with negotiations among the members of my newly expanded cat household. We still have some hissing going on, but it’s getting much more pro forma. Saturday night, I imagined writing up minutes: “Let the record state that Bea wanted to sniff Sparky’s butt, but Sparky objected, tabling the activity until an unspecified date. On at least sixteen occasions, Penny raised the issue of not being allowed outside, repeatedly labeling Sarah-Hope’s references to her stitches [the vet found out the hard way she'd already been spayed] irrelevant.”
I wish that I could show you my lovely Wrapped in Comfort malabrigo shawl. I worked on it Friday night at a stitch-along at The Golden Fleece. The owners had the swatches out for the entire malabrigo line, which was both thrilling and frustrating: thrilling because I could touch everything, but frustrating because the swatches are so short they don ‘t really give a clear sense of any of the colorways. In a masterful enabling ply, Carol, one of the owners, said, “I can get you all the malabrigo you want. Just give me a list of the colors and how many skeins of each.” Oh, it will be a long list, I can tell you that, but I have made a promise to myself that I will not hand off the list to Carol until I have saved the money to pay for the yarn when it comes in. Meanwhile, I will be visiting the malabrigo web site and drooling uncontrollably (the cats may have to start wearing little Wellies).
Drops Designs has some great new (free!) patterns up. This cardigan looks comfy as all get-out, and I appreciate the complete absence of areas of stockingette wasteland. This jacket is a bit longer than I’d like (and the bustline bobbles have to go), but again cozy, cozy, cozy—and decorative enough to dress up or down. And here’s a pretty little shrug.
Take a minute to check out the Turkish Delight Hat at Black Purl. The genius of Donna Druchunas’s design is that she’s taken a traditional mitten pattern and transformed it into a hat, which opens up all kinds of possibilities for those of us who are “thumb phobic” (or just too lazy to work a thumb). I may soon be wearing Hello Yarn’s squirrel mittens on my head.
October 22 2007 | Art and Beatrice and California and Cats and LYSs and Penny and Spartacus | 1 Comment »
Have you been to Vogue Knitting’s web site and checked out the free patterns from their 25th Anniversary cover series? A great many of them lean toward the shapeless, but I am absolutely in love (don’t worry, Melissa knows, and she’s confident it’s no threat) with Debbie Bliss’s “Silver Belle.”
The construction is fascinating, if a bit daunting. The peplum is knit from the hem up, with cable extensions at each end that wind up just inside the button bands. There’s also a cable extension up the center back. Then each sleeve/body side is knit from the wrist inward and they’re joined to the peplum, after which come the button bands.
I spent a bit of time yesterday trolling about the discount yarn sites (Little Knits, Webs, KnitPicks) looking for some bright moss green (like Oregon) or grey solid-colored alpaca or part-alpaca, but no luck. I want alpaca because that feels good to me, so I know I’ll really wear the sweater once (if?) it’s done; I want discount because this sweater takes about 2,000 yards in my size, so if I make it I’m looking at buying 2+ bags of yarn. If you have any hot tips or suggestions, please let me know.
The weather in Oakland is lovely just now—sunny with a breeze off the bay that keeps things from getting too hot—so Melissa and I headed off to an Oakland A’s game in the afternoon. It was a give-away day, and we each now own a Nick Swisher belt buckle.
They are large and very, very shiny and will come in quite handy if either of us decides someday to take up steer wranglin’.
Since I am a knitter and this is a knitting blog, I took my yarn to the game—a one-pound cone of apple-green Peaches ‘n Creme. I tried to get my knitting into this shot taken by the “Game Day” photographer, but didn’t hold it up high enough. Sorry to let our side down.
By the way, that is an Albuquerque Isotopes hat I’m wearing.
I finished one dish cloth and got most of the way through another, and the A’s won 2-1, despite getting only two hits to Anaheim’s eight.
I kept going on the knitting last night, finishing up my Phoenix scarf (pic and pattern tomorrow) and the first of a set of four variations on a theme for a pattern I’m hoping to find a home for once they’re all done. This afternoon I’m off to a “tasting” of Uruguayan yarns at Article Pract.
August 05 2007 | Baseball and California and LYSs and Washcloths | 5 Comments »
