I am back from our whirlwind 5-day journey, and it was amazingly restorative. If any of you out there have ever worked in the ministry, then you know how badly I, a newlywed and a complete n00b in the church-work field, needed a break. And to take a break that involved listening to brilliant, experienced people discussing ministry, theology, ecclesiology, and (at least once) yarn, well… it was like mead and beef to a starving soul.
Recovering my mAd SkIlLz from college, I took notes and knit throughout most of the seminars. The subject of my stitching was the offspring of the swatch you see in the previous post; it will become a long sweater-jacket-y thing for my crazy sister Leah. In exchange she’s making me a comic strip (she’s mad amazing; I’d link to her if I wasn’t lazy).
Aside from this brief frogging incident, when I got to the armholes of the back without the pattern and decided to have a guestimate at it (a small tragedy and well-assuaged by yellow tail Shiraz, thanks to Tina Lockett, our lovely host), the sweater has been a joy – repetitive enough that it doesn’t require constant attention, but with long-repeating, unusually shaped cables to hold my attention.
Not least of the delights of this stage of the journey was the chance to spend serious time with one of my dearest friends, Seretha. Apparently sitting next to me and my needles for two and a half days worked a kind of osmosis; she’s picked up her needles and decided to re-attack a scarf she left off a good while back. See you on Ravelry, Seefa!
I know very well that one oughtn’t move to a new place before checking out the local yarn scene, so my friend and hubby cheerfully accompanied me to the little town of Sewickley, about 15 minutes south of our hopeful future residence and about five notches higher on the economic scale. That one had me scratching my head.
After a terrific gyro that lasted another meal later and that gave me farts that smelled like a dead animal, we rounded the corner to Yarns Unlimited. This place about knocked my socks off. Everywhere I turned there was some fantastic new brand that I’d only read about in Vogue Knitting – Misti Alpaca, Opal Socks, Lorna’s Laces – Plus the good old standbys of wonderment like Noro, Rowan, and the rest of them. I about passed out when they had a special little table dedicated to this show-stopping silk yarn, hand-spun in contrasting two-ply, fingering weight and studded with a variety of little rocks, that retailed at 105$ a skein. I mean wow. They had a scarf knitted up out of it that would have outshone Kiera Knightley if she’d worn it. Then the nice associate led us upstairs to the “sale room” (they have a SALE ROOM!) where discontinued yarns in shocking quantities spilled out. I was so bowled over that I completely forgot to take a picture. Unfortunately, the stuff was expensive enough that we managed to walk out of there empty handed, though I think we whet Seretha’s appetite for self-striped socks.
Being a fairly conservative person, I thought that 500 meters of yarn would be enough to keep me occupied for a weekend. But after we left the conference, by the time we reached Ohio, I had a very major problem.
Apparently I underestimated my superpowers. The story of the adventure it took to resolve this crisis will have to wait for tomorrow; I need to wind up more of that wool now that I’m finally home…
Osborn Fiber Studio 