Wednesday, March 21, 2007

If you don't have anything nice to say......

I've been feeling a little jaded for the past few days. As most of you know, this past year (or couple of years, but who's counting) has been filled with various unforeseen stresses and I, as would be expected, have been more stressed out than usual. I have big time wander lust and usually get the opportunity to travel at least 3 times a year. In October I was supposed to go to Atlanta and was sooooo looking forward to the trip. That got cancelled because my dad died maybe a week before we were supposed to go. Then I was supposed to go to Pittsburgh in January. Not a huge deal there, but Pittsburgh isn't here so it's good enough. Then I was supposed to go to Toronto maybe a week or two ago. That was another that had me excited. Toronto = hometown of various wrestlers, the Yarn Harlot, and Lettuce Knit, which conveniently carries STR. So I've been feeling stressed, stressed, stressed and claustrophobic about the DC/Baltimore area with no real option for escape.
This, being my Spring break, was supposed to be some sort of great, relaxing event for me. I like to believe in the "work hard, play hard" mentality....but have been finding that it's more "like work hard, then work hard some more.....and maybe sleep some" for me. My Spring Break, until today, consisted of working, cleaning, hiding from family, driving old people around, sitting in our lawyer's office for hours upon hours.....you get the point. Last night though, a plan was born. It had occurred to me while I was trying not to nod off at the lawyers that I should have just taken off for the yarn shops in Rockville. Since it was too late to do anything about it then, I decided to go today. Soon after that I recalled that a Dog the Bounty Hunter marathon plays on Tuesday nights, which I usually can't watch b/c of school. That made all the crappy Spring Break stuff fade into nothing. Anyhow.....onto to the yarn stuff. I guess it kind of makes up for the not going anywhere.
First, I went to Wool Winder's in Rockville. I had done some research on them last night and found that they had a great deal of yarn listed on their inventory and had their prices listed as well. I drove for quite some time to get there, and got lost only once. Keeping with the title of this post, I was very impressed with my parallel parking skills. I was not aware that my parking skills would be called upon like that, but I took on the challenge and was victorious. One may say that it was the trip highlight. Additionally, the owner of the shop was very nice to me. I came away with much less than I had anticipated, but one thing was way worth the trip.
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Silly me hadn't realized that this bad boy was out on the shelves yet. It's way cool......and I almost choked on my own tongue when I flipped it over and saw the price of it while I was pumping gas on the way out of the city. Yes, I like to stand there reading knitting books while I get gas. I also picked up these, which I have mixed feelings about.
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I have been regularly eyeing Koigu in the Patternworks catalogues. I had marked some colors that I wanted to order and was very excited that Wool Winder's carried it. To tell you the truth though, the colors weren't so hot in real life. Personally, I've never seen the stuff except for some super fug that was at the awesome shop in Texas. Even they said it was nasty and told me to chew out the company people for them at that years MS&W. Also, and I'll go ahead and say this because I talked about it with the staff there, they had maybe 7 colors. The reason for this is that they get in a huge, massively massive order once a year around November and it just trickles away from there. The company i not the best at sending out yarn, but at least they're very honest about it.
I was feeling a little let down about my day and I hadn't found some of the yarn that I was quested for, so I decided to go somewhere else......that I just won't name so I don't get any dirty looks. There, i picked up these.
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The greenish/yellowish stuff is this killer Trekking XXL that I've been hunting and hunting for. In the middle is some Claudia Handpaints fingering weight in Pink Cloud. I have better representations of the color below. On the right is some of Colinette's new sock yarn. I'm not secure with the yardage, but the colors are very interesting and rich. This particular one was just so wacky that I had to take it. It's way more circus-y than I would usually choose, but I like it. Here's a close up of the pink cloud.
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You know how much I paid for the Trekking, Colinette, and Claudia?? $20. Yep. Twenty smackeroos. You know how much I paid for at the first shop? Many, many, many. Granted, I got a book. Still.....many, many, many. Not so much what I was looking at price wise on the web.
Okay, so I obviously have quite a bit of sock knitting to do now for the rest of my break. I blame this whole shopping binge on the lovely ladies as Blue Moon Fiber Arts. Perhaps if my account information showed a sent icon instead of an order pending message, none of this would have happened. Hmmmrphhhh.

4 comments:

Nittany Knits said...

I'm sorry... did you say three pairs of socks for $20????????? And that looks like wicked cool Trekking at that! At $20 for three pairs, I could have upgraded from dail-up! Then again.....

Lindsay said...

I'll tell you what....that is some wicked cool Trekking. I'd seen it knit up in a Skacel ad awhile back and spent a great deal of time searcing first for the ad, then for the yarn. Then there it was today , right before my eyes. Also, super yay for store credits!!

Jody said...

Only one word describes my feelings about all this gorgeous new yarn...

jealous!

Nittany Knits said...

I saw that Skacel add!!!!!!