When we left off, our intrepid knitting heroes, J and R, had just left Pittsburgh and their new best friend (well Rebecca’s, anyway).
(his name is Max, and he sat perfectly still on Rebecca’s frogged sweater back without moving or jumping all over her, posing nicely for the camera with NO bribery at ALL.)
The team took turns between the seat with the wheel and the seat with the needles for the 4.5 hour trip to Cedarville, OH. Upon seeing their friends Justine and Trego, R immediately decided that Justine looks so amazingly cute while pregnant that it as a testimony to her self-control that she did not offer to knit their baby (gender-ambigiously nick-named Mookie) an entire wardrobe out of recycled cotton. She had about a foot of wool left on the back of her sweater when, after church on Sunday, J cheerfully conceded to R’s request that they find a LYS before R decided to try filing her toenails with her teeth.
R experienced a heart-stopping moment when they drove up to the home of her favorite LYS from her residence there, Fiberworks, and the building was ominously vacant. Her heart attack was prevented when they spotted a little sign in the window, not only stating that they had only moved and not closed, but also providing their new address! Thanks to the team’s trusty TomTom, a few minutes later they stood before the store’s spiffy new location.
(J looked particularly dashing that day. And possibly like he was going to kill someone.) J & R were thrilled to find that this little store, unique in its wide selection of rovings in addition to the usual yarn, had greatly expanded! R oohed and ahhed in a fantastic tizzy, and J found a roving worth waiting for next year’s tax return (scroll down to the “purple people eater” colorway). Sock yarns and silk yarns and lace yarns, oh my!
After an immense amount of waffling, and batting down a rather severe case of retail guilt, R decided to break down and get some lace yarn, of the “Alpaca with a twist” variety that ended so successfully in a cabled skirt last time around. At J’s suggestion, she found a copy of Lace Knitting of Estonia, which she already owned, and got permission from the very accomodating owner to run over to the Sunoco next door and make copies of the pattern she wanted. After this little excursion, she sat down to pay for the yarn and size 4 bamboo circulars – and discovered that Fiberworks does not yet take credit cards. Since our team shares the check-writing responsibilities, the checkbook is sitting about 8 hours away on their desk in between the Wii and a mug full of highlighters. And lets face it – in MD, for the most part, you just don’t have to carry cash.
Unflapped, R was already out the door to the nearest ATM when she remembered – Visa recently had a data breach. This required they get new debit cards. This meant that they had new pin numbers. And neither member of our team had any idea what that number was. Deciding to see how the “cash advance” thing worked with credit cards and ATMs, she scooted back over to the Sunoco, where she found a homely, handwritten little “out of order” sign on the ATM. Out again, blithely crossing four lanes of traffic, she made it to a CVS, where after a long argument with an ATM (involving several embarrasingly loud beeping noises (from the machine)), she left with no cash.
But this story does not have a tragic ending! Arlene, the endlessly gracious owner of Fiberworks, offered to let our sheepishly cash-less heroine take her wares with her, with an envelope, a receipt, and a promise to send a check when she got home. Humbled and thrilled (I didn’t know until last week that anyone still did stuff like that!), she wound the magnificent skein into a ball and started on her first-ever lace shawl.
After spending an evening that learning to knit lace at the same time as learning to play Worms on Playstation 3, she got to spend 4 hours the next day in the Needle Seat, producing this on the other end:
She was a little worried about starting yet another project in off-white, but never fear. She finds the pattern, with its interesting shaping and enchanting little “nupps” wonderfully engaging, and an alpaca/silk blend would make any reasonable person want to break into song when they touch it. Magically, it even provided R with the patience to not say anything particularly nasty when, after blowing out a tire on I-68, the lovely mechanics at Sears did not call them and our team wasted an hour in the God-forsaken Morgantown Mall.
But now she’s home, and must again submit to the demands of the project-that-shall-not-be-named. Thankfully, she’ll have a four-hour round-trip to Hershey Park on Friday to chip away at it!
Osborn Fiber Studio 