bah bah black sheep

There's this store in Seattle called the Weaving Works. It is an exceedingly good store and anyone who hasn't been really should go. I drive many many miles out of my way to get there its so good. Anyway, aside from just yarn they have roving and cones for spinning and weaving. These items take up a good third of the store and while I always knew they were there I always thought of them as things for spinning or weaving. Not so my friends, there is no rule that say you have to be a weaver to buy yarn off the cone. The beauty of this is that you can buy just a little bit of yarn, say $0.42 worth any have more than enough to knit a swatch and see if you like the yarn and how it works. Buying off the cone also means you can buy small amounts of many colors and create whole projects, providing morre money for future projects and less leftover yarn in colors you don't really like because the project was a gift for someone else. Today I bought some linen and some cotton/linen blend. I spent about $5 on the whole lot and have three different yarns to try. The downside is that I have now begun to discover the glory of yarn on the cone and will have to amp up my efforts to find a wealthy husband/sugar daddy/benefactor so that I don't have to work and can spend all my time knitting.

Am I the only one that sometimes finds yarn stores depressing? I go in with nothing in particular in mind and a recently deposited paycheck sitting in the bank. Then, on every wall I find yarn I want to buy for a million different projects. Then I think about all the yarn I have at home and the unfinished projects and I get depressed that I simply don't have enough time to do all the things I want to do. This really only happens when I go to the yarn store without a clear project in mind, but it sometimes hits when I am mid-project on a few things and with I could just finish them now and start something else. It is for this reason that I am not much of a stasher, I actually find it depressing to see all that yarn sitting there unused, just waiting; it bogs me down with all its expectations of glory and a life outside the stash. I am a blend of a process and product knitter, so while I enjoy the process I also want the product, which means I find it hard to start a project and just leave it unfinished. I have one such sweater now, a Dale of Norway sweater, that I love and desperately want to wear. I just have to be bothered to finish it. Then when I do I can go get some of those fabulous Norwegian clasps I saw today that reminded me of my unfinished sweater and how much I want to finish it so I can get those clasps so I can wear it. Bah. It's bogging me down, but then I have so much else I want to start, finish and wear.

Truly a horrible disease, to not go into and come out of a yarn store in a good, woolly mood. At least I'll get to try this whole linen thing and see if it's for me. I also got the Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting by Marianne Kinzel that has a fabulous doily on the front. Luckily I now know that I can just get the yarn for any project in the book off the cone. Or in one humongous hank of alpaca or other delightful lace weight. A whole new world of yarn opened up and not enough time in the day to do it all.