I Knit Day, part 2

More photos.

But first - Anne and I appeared on the Yarn Harlot's blog!! Scroll down for the "washcloth" part of the parade - thanks, Anne, for letting me accompany you and your washcloth...

And here's a photo taken by the lovely E-J of us meeting Stephanie - this is possibly the best one as neither of us look too actively deranged or stalkerish at the time...

Also, note Stephanie's co-ordinated Manon and waterproof jacket. That's classy and shows forethought. E-J's also managed to capture Gerard checking in at the bookstall, illustrating how much both of the I Knit guys were darting around on the day making sure everything stayed organised, and it really did, so much so that you didn't really notice (except for noticing how fast they were moving around the place)...

The rest of the photos (of shopping) are less good - we're getting into the time of year where I don't get much natural light at the best of times either side of the working day, and the weather yesterday (all weekend, really) was atrocious. So imagine these yarns and then please think of the colours as 2000% nicer. The only as-yet-unphotographed item (I'd cast on socks onto them by the time I got home) was a set of Quills 3.5mm DPNs from Gill at Woolly Workshop which was the second thing I bought. The first thing I bought was this, which has photographed almost spectacularly badly; a skein of Fleece Artist Somoko - no idea what the colourway is (anyone who's bought this - is it always a one-skein-0f-a-kind yarn?), but it's much more autumn-leaves in dark woods than this somewhat... turdish... photo shows.

I have another skein of this, bought at The Naked Sheep in the Beaches in Toronto (appropriately enough) in May, which is in less neutral but (my spidey-colour-sense tells me) toning colours (the other skein's in the sock-yarn-bin in the attic) - so I'm thinking some sort of ripply long scarf. These days, I have to wear suits for work, and as my suits are, like the rest of my wardrobe, mainly black, making nice long scarves in atypical colours is fun...

I was then Good for a long while; until about 6pm, actually. Then I made my way among the leavings of the Serious Shoppers, and found this:

Yes, the name sold it to me as much as the colours

Haven't encountered this one before. In fact, the basic yarn has a real resemblance to the Blackberry Ridge yarn I bought for E-J's baby's shawl, baby now being newly 2 and having opinions of her own (the yarn's definitely a heavy laceweight, very slightly slubby in places. Not my usual colours, but I seem to be starting to branch out...) I'm likely to make one of these out of it.

[I'm also realising that at the time I bought the yarn for Baby M's shawl, Woolly Workshop was the only place I knew in the UK which had any sort of laceweight, and Gill hadn't then started carrying Zephyr as a plain lace yarn. How times have changed... it's stunning, really, both in terms of what's available and in terms of the knowledge of what's available.]

I'd been quite moderate, really, until then. But then right at the end of the day I saw these in a bucket under the table at Loop, which had been concealed by shoppers and queuers until then;

these are for a Jeanie and I was actively looking for 3 skeins of sock for that.... It seems to be my Misti Alpaca Year. The last skein I acquired passed through the hands of Laura Chau who was at the till on my visit to Lettuce Knit (she was apparently at I Knit Day too but I didn't spot her); the ones before that were bought in Montreal...

I'm not going to Ally Pally this year. Saturday was such fun, and I felt I was walking among friends every minute of the day. And nobody raised the classic Ally Pally Art-Versus-Craft Debate ONCE. Knitters knit (and of course, crocheters crochet). That's what we do. Some people, when you say "what are you making" will haul out the pattern; some people will say "well, it's basically [name of pattern] but I'm making it shorter"; some people will say "well, it's sort of [name of pattern] but I'm working it from the top down, making it scoop-necked, and I don't think I'll be doing the ribbing; I'll see how much yarn I've got left for the length of the sleeves; some will say "well, I think the pattern I made and charted myself is going to work in this laceweight" (diviknitty raise a hand); some will say "I'm making it up as I go along"; and some will simply say "I don't know yet" (caughtknitting is my personal fave in this category)...

And most knitting and crochet groups have everyone all together, stick-wielders and hookers, obsessionists and occasionalists, and nobody cares whether we're making art or craft.

The Art-Versus-Craft Debate always raises its head at Ally Pally, and just for once, I'm tired of fighting that battle, and even watching that battle being fought from the sidelines... Saturday was just about perfect (the bits which weren't are the responsibility of the train company and whoever you choose to blame for the weather); that'll do me.

Yarn crawl...

I can't believe how long it's taken me to do this post. It's about yarn, for goodness' sake.

However. Blame taxonomies. And laziness. And doing some actual knitting... here's a teaser...

And also apologies for the quality of the yarn photos in this post - they were some of the first I took with the new camera (to replace the one I lost in Canada), and I really hadn't got the how-to-focus thing sorted out...

Anyway:

Stage 1: Montréal

Tony evidently thought I was a bit of a nutter to consecrate one of my scarce afternoons in his adopted city looking at wool. But I was really glad I did - both of the shops were also in areas not generally visited by tourists, and therefore dead interesting...

Shop 1: Effiloché, 6252 St-Hubert. Métro stop Beaubien

It's just occurred to me that these double-nicenesses happened to me a couple of times in Canada - there was also a Bellefair on my trip to match the Beaubien here... Anyway; here's the shop; and here's the street it's in, all arcaded with a real mixture of shops from what looked like the Canadian equivalent of Iceland (who, I see from their homepage, are delivering to Privet Drive), to cafés and greengrocers, to hardware shops. I could quite happily live in that neighbourhood and never move out of it...

Anyway. The shop was mindboggling. Large for a UK shop, open-plan; big cutting tables in the middle... They offered help a couple of times but weren't intrusive, and I was terribly British, and I then regretted that once I got to the counter to pay because the owner Ginette was so friendly and invited me to knit night (Fridays, if you're interested), and I could have been having a nice conversation all the way round!!

Canada = Fleece Artist for me; so I picked up some Casbah (I can has cashmere??)

and some Noro sock (unphotographed; and yes, I know it's not Canadian, but with Noro, seeing it is all, and I don't know anywhere I can get to that's selling it)...

And a crochet hook to avoid the Lack-of-knitting-desert that was the trip over. I was too honest, both ways. If I'd just packed my knitting needles and said they weren't sharp items (which let's face it, they aren't), and not admitted I had them, I'd have been fine. As was the lass who sat next to me on the way home who hadn't even thought of declaring her Denises.... I crocheted on the way back. Granny squares with Noro are curiously exciting. But I can only crochet for a couple of hours without burning the skin on my thumb... (Yes, I know; I'm evidently doing it wrongly. Next time I come down, Jan, I think I need Remedial Crochet lessons...)

Stop 2: Mouliné, 2679 rue Notre-Dame Ouest. Métro stop Lionel-Groulx

Thank God for public libraries; this shop was in a bit of a desert. I got there in the dead time after everything had closed after lunch but before it opened again for dinner; knew I wasn't going to be able to concentrate on yarn while desperate for the loo; and finally spotted a sign for a public library. (It was also a really nice public library...)

I also forgot to photograph the shop (on the way in I was still bathed in gratitude to public libraries, and then the yarn fumes got me...). A little smaller than the first, but no less packed with goodies. I picked up this sock yarn on sale

and three skeins of this Misti Alpaca, which is slightly variegated pink-and-purple and seemed extremely cheap...

And two balls of this Zara DK; which is now a pair of Socks of Doom, and the smooshiest yarn I think I've ever knitted with. And it's machine-washable. Should have bought more - that was pretty reasonably priced as well...

Here it is knitted up - not sure who these are for, either - two pairs of socks all knitted for Christmas!!

Stage 2: Toronto

I think another excuse for the delay was that I was still hoping to retrieve my Toronto photos and have the one of Mary, Mary's friend Pat and my friend and host Martha outside a Certain Famous Yarn Shop. You'll have to make do with the souvenir beer-cap I brought back!

Shop 3: Lettuce Knit, 70 Nassau Street.

It was a blisteringly hot day, and the shop looks very much like it does on their homepage; but with the addition of Laura Chau behind the counter. I was sort of sure it was her when I first saw her but the original of Serrano hanging on the shelves was also a giveaway... I managed to get over my usual paralysing Britishness and said how much I liked her patterns and that Serrano and Thermal were both in my Ravelry queue... I don't think I gushed too badly - she didn't look scared or call the police or anything. I'd seen quite a lot of yarn by then, and actually although it's a wonderful shop, Lettuce Knit was the least utterly spectacular in terms of things-I'd-never-seen-before; five years ago you'd have had to crowbar me out of there, credit card blazing, but we have some pretty good shops in London and some excellent mail order places now. There were, of course, a couple of total-irresistibles...

Misti Alpaca Laceweight again, this time in variegated and in an 800m/100g skein.
And I'd heard of this stuff, but hadn't encountered it anywhere. Lovely long variegation. For some reason on this trip, autumnal colours appealed to me most.

Shop 4: The Naked Sheep, 2144A Queen Street East.

This is in the very beautiful neighbourhood of The Beaches, where I was staying, and was a very nice shop in a street of interesting shops - they had a good mix of reasonably priced yarns like Cascade and Freedom Wool, and some acrylics, alongside some more special stuff. More Fleece Artist, in fact. Somoko, to be exact. All the Fleece Artist sock yarn I saw in stores was their "pot luck" selection - no shade names on it, all one-offs. I think the bulkier stuff had shades on it, but I didn't want to tempt the Fates of Excess Baggage by falling in love with sweater yarn...



This is a merino/kid/nylon/silk mix and feels glorious...

General impression - gosh, they have some gorgeous yarn shops in both cities... I didn't go berserk because the pricing wasn't that advantageous compared to the prices in UK shops - you'd save maybe a couple of pounds per skein, which given that the UK traders have had to pay import duty etc... Except for Cascade 220 which was ridiculously cheap! Everyone was really friendly (but everyone on the trip was!). Wish I'd bought more Zara. And wish I'd bought some of the Fleece Artist Angel Hair at Mouliné - they had some in semi-solids and I was looking for more variegated colours, but the basic yarn is so wonderful and the price was so good I should have bought some and overdyed it!

Anyway, that was the yarny part of my trip. I'll blog some knitting next!