Well, my mini yarn road trip was a blast. Our first stop was in Solvang, CA at Village Spinning & Weaving.
They had tons of nice yarn like these beautiful hand painted skiens
And these...
And a big pile of fiber that was off to one corner. My one complaint is that the woman who works in the shop (sorry, but I did not get her name) was a little rude. I almost didn't buy anything because she was really not that into helping us with our purchases. After we had been there for a while John came out (who was really nice by the way) and answered a bunch of our questions and then she seemed to warm up a little bit. I bought a pound of punta roving, some addi circulars, a lendrum niddy noddy (scroll down for picture) that has a stick to make a 1 yard skein or a 2 yard skien (nifty!) and that's is, LOL! My friend bought every 47" addi circular they had in stock, haha!
After strolling around Solvang for a while we hopped back in the car and headed to Santa Barbara. While there we stopped at a little yarn shop called BB's Knits. This was a great store with great ladies. They were very helpful, but not to the point of being pushy. If you are ever in the area I highly reccomend dropping by.
They had a big wall of yarn...
And another wall of yarn...
They were also having a Greyhound fest while we were in Solvang (forgot to mention and I just had to include this picture of the pretty doggies). The whole town was overrun with these beauties and all of the business were allowing the dogs in the stores. One merchant had even put out water for the dogs which you see them enjoying here. These are really great dogs, they were so gentle and nice. I want one!
On the drive back we went past La Conchita and looked at the devastation from the slides. There was still a lot of mud to be cleared away because as you can see here, most of the hillside slid down into the city. A very sad sight.
On the knitting front I have been working on a beanie for my BF using some Nature Wool that I picked up at BB's Knits. I love this yarn. I was affordably priced and has 249 yards in each skien. The hat is almost done and I doubt I've used half this ball of yarn. I must also tell you that the lovely ladies at BB's Knits wound this skien into a ball for me before I left and I didn't even have to ask. Can I say enough great things about this store? No? Ok, I didn't think so either *smile*
I also finished DD cardigan. Here it is doing the happy dance. Now I just need to get the damn zipper in! Ugh! I'm really thinking I might find a seamstress and pay her to do this for me. It's my first garment made from my own handspun and I don't want to kill it. If you know of either (a) a really good tutorial for installing zippers or (b) a seamstress in the Pasadena/Arcadia/Azusa/Covina area, PLEASE let me know!
I also learned how to navajo 3-ply in my spinning class this past saturday. Here you can see a selection of yarn preparations. First, there is a 1-ply skein, then a 2-ply and in third and fourth place my new navajo 3-ply! I love the way this yarn feels with the 3-ply. It's true that you have to spin way more yarn in advance because what ever the yardage is of your singles, your navajo plied yarn is going to be 1/3 less. But it's so much fun and the results are so great that I don't mind a bit.
Here is a shot of just the two 3-ply skiens
And here is an extreme close up of one skien.
Ok, so it's late and I'm still at work right now posting this so I'm gonna go now. Plus I just had to manually post the links to all these pictures from flickr because picassa f*cked up all the pictures I posted using Hello. Ugh! I hate blogger, I really need to get my own web host and learn how to use typepad.
Remind me to tell you about the Gedifra Highlights 51 Spring/Summer 05 pattern book, cuz I just ordered it and it looks great! I also need to tell you why I might not start Rogue yet and what I plan to do instead *smile*
P.S. I want to open my own web store to sell my yarn etc. eBay fees are just getting way out of control. Any tips, hints, horror stories?
2 comments:
Ah Solvang...I miss Solvang...looks like you had a lot of fun.
Your yarn looks so beautiful...as does DD's sweater...good job! Maybe your LYS might have a lead on a seamstress for the zipper? I did hire some fairies to come and help you with the zipper, but called me a little while ago saying they were lost, cold and hungry. Since Starbucks was already closed, they said they'll try again later...and next time they'll use Mapquest like I told them. Your prayer to the knitting gods helped me out a ton. I owe you one.
DD and her sweater are both beautiful! Congrats on a good job! I've been selling antiques and books for awhile on-line and have just set up a web site for both, along with fiber and my own yarn. Biggest horror has been that after a month the server went down and has been down for over a week! Hope to have it back this weekend. The profit margin is better with your own site; you do have to hustle to promote it but it's nice to not pay most of your income out in fees. Best of luck; enjoying your blog!
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