Monday, July 1, 2013

MISSING: The Month of June

It’s July 1st.  I don’t mind July.  It’s in the middle of summer, which is my favorite season of the year, so I’m good with it.  My only question is:  can someone tell me where June went?  Seriously, it’s like I dropped off the planet after June 7th and missed the entire rest of the month.  Well, at least two weeks of the month.  After the first week, I can only account for the third week.  The second and fourth week?  Yeah, I’m pretty fuzzy on exactly what happened to the time.  The only plausible excuse I have is that I spent the second week preparing for a road trip on the third week and spent the fourth week recovering from it all.  Clear as mud, right? 

So about that road trip…

I traveled to Indianapolis for a church conference.  This, in and of itself, (although it was pretty good) would not require a post on a knitting blog, although I did KIP at the conference.  See?

Basket Weave Rib Socks in Malabrigo Sock, Color: Eggplant

But stay with me; there are three totally cool things I can share here related to this trip.

First, I got to see my son and daughter-in-law (they live in Indy), and my mom, who converged on Indy from Ohio because she knew I was driving up.  My son had to work quite a bit, which is totally okay, as it gave us girls a chance to spend a little time running around.  More on that later, but one of the places we landed the day before the conference started was at a little restaurant in Zionsville, IN called Serenity.  It was a lovely place to have some very yummy food:


The item on the upper right of the plate was a delicious peach/white chocolate scone.  I could have eaten an entire plate of those.  If I worked at this place, I’d be huge.  Really, really huge.

Second cool thing about the trip was getting to see some friends at the conference that I hadn’t seen in a while – mostly ones I knew from when I lived in Ohio.  It is always nice to see some friendly faces who “knew me when” and love me anyways…

Dave & Linda!

T.J.
(otherwise known as my brother from another mother that harasses me continually
and mercilessly even though I have three older brothers already and don't need the extra trouble)

There were more wonderful friends (Mike, Kenna, Scott, Billie, Jeanne, among others) but I didn't get a picture of all of them, or if I did get a picture, it includes me and since I decided while on my trip that my hair was a disaster, I shall not display the awfulness here and you can't make me.

And lastly, a very cool thing about this trip was that I did have some extra time to visit…

YARN STORES!  WOOT!  And here is a picture of my haul:

Yeah buddy!

I managed to visit three shops while in Indy.  The first was in Zionsville, the same town where I’d had the excellent lunch.  It was called The Village Yarn Shop and it was very cute.  Not huge, but the owner and/or manager was very nice and I found some Malabrigo worsted in some colors we haven’t had in my LYS, so I snapped up a sweater quantity in one and enough to do a hat in another. 

The second shop we visited was in an area in north Indy called Fishers.  The whole area is WAY upscale and the yarn shop, Knit Stop, was no exception.  The place was absolutely huge – like, three times the size of my LYS – and was filled with yarn.  In fact, it was a little overwhelming. 

Look at all those buttons...
And this is just one-third of the space they had with yarn

They had a TON of cashmere and cashmere blends, including one brand of pure cashmere that was priced at $81 for ONE skein (who ARE these people?).  They had a few brands that my LYS doesn’t carry, so I picked up a skein of Rowan Fine Art, some Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere (of course) sock yarn, a skein of Manos Serena because I liked the color (although I have no idea what I could possibly make with one skein), and two skeins of Terra by The Fibre Company.  I have to say, in spite of the vast quantity of yarn and the overload of cashmere, this shop has nothing on my LYS.  My LYS has Lady L.  There just is no substitute for her.  Actually, my favorite thing in this store was a sign that was hanging at the register:

Lady L. - we totally need one of these!

I sent this picture to The Husband while I was there and I’m not sure why, but he was not amused.  No sense of humor…

The third yarn shop we visited was in a little burb north of Indy called Broad Ripple and the shop is named accordingly:  Broad Ripple Knits.  This shop was in a converted older house and they had a nice selection of yarns – mostly stuff my LYS already carries.  The only bad thing was, this shop was quite small and there were some ladies there knitting at a table in one of the rooms.  That wouldn’t normally be a bad thing, but not only did NONE of the ladies at the table speak a word to me (this would NEVER happen at my LYS – everyone is smiled at and spoken to by whomever happens to be there), but the table was so big and the room so small, it was next to impossible to maneuver myself around in this room to even look at the yarn which is a shame because they did carry Madelinetosh and I might have purchased some if I’d been able to get in front of it to look at it.  All that said, the one great thing I found in this shop was some locally made yarn called Good for Ewe.  What the shop carried was several different colors of their Claddagh yarn that is a blend of Merino, baby llama, and…DONEGAL. 


I have been looking for a really nice Donegal tweed blend for a while and most of the ones I find are kinda scratchy.  While I understand that there is a time and a place for scratchy yarn, I have to confess that since I’ve knit with the yumminess of Malabrigo and other assorted soft and squishy yarns, I have a really hard time buying anything scratchy.  Well this stuff is SO not scratchy.  My only complaint might have been that most of the colors are less “grown up” than I’d have liked, but that didn’t keep me from buying a sweater’s worth of the purple and a couple of skeins each of green, gray, and white. 

My mom got in on the action and managed to find this:


It is Classic Elite Yarns Premier and it was 50% off (it’s a discontinued yarn).  My mom really liked the color and the price was right so I have four skeins of this (all they had left) to make something nice for her.  She thinks she might like a vest – maybe knit with some white.  So, while I found a pattern that is a possibility, I'm not in love with it, so I am still WIDE open to suggestions and ideas.  What do you think? 

Maybe I should design something myself.  Oh yeah!  That’s how I spent part of June – fiddling around with designing.  But that’s a topic for another post…


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10 comments:

  1. Sounds like a great trip, especially those yarn stores! I LOVE the sign, my husband wouldn't have appreciated it either. Your sock is looking great too!

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    1. Thanks Sarah! LOVE the Basket Weave Rib socks (your pattern is awesome)! Can't wait to finish them!

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  2. What a great yarn haul and that sign is brilliant!

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    1. Thanks Nicky! Only problem is, now I just keep staring at all that yarn and fighting the urge to cast on ten projects in one day... : )

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  3. No wonder you haven't had time for blogging! That's quite a yarn haul. I must say I am very intrigued by the $81 a skein cashmere. At that price it would be cheaper to buy a plane ticket to China and buy it there. How I know this would be the subject of a blog post. :-)

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    1. Right?!? I cannot fathom who would spend that amount of money on one skein of cashmere. I have three store-bought (I know - dirty word, but they were acquired before my knitting days) cashmere sweaters that barely add up to $81.

      If you decide to go to China on a cashmere quest, let me know. I'll join you!

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  4. Visiting yarn shops while I'm travelling is one of my favorite things! I completely lost the month of June too. And, I don't have an excuse.

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    1. Let's blame it on the month! Shifty, sneaky June...

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  5. Oh, I wish I had known you were in Indy! I could have taken you two of the best yarn and fiber shops in the area - The Trading Post for Fiber Arts (Pendleton) and Starstruck Cat Studio (Greenwood). And, yes, Knit Stop is out of most of our budgets, but it's nice to go in a pet the pretty stuff once in a while.

    Holler the next time you're here!

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    1. Benita, if I'd known you were there I would have hollered for sure! Next time! My son actually lives close to Greenwood. Can't believe I missed a great yarn place there!

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