Yarn crawl

I played hookey most of Friday. Went on a mini yarn crawl with Kristie and Denise (sadly blogless). I picked Denise up at our regular Monday night meeting place, then drove on to Kristie’s house. From there Kristie drove. She has OnStar, so we never get lost any more. Yea! We piled into Kristie’s car, and away we went. Traffic was horrid. It took forever to get anywhere that day. In spite of the fact that we left Kristie’s house at almost exactly noon, we didn’t get to our first stop until after 1:30 pm.

First stop: Wildfiber in Santa Monica. This is a beautiful store. They have a great picture of the inside on their home page. Because of a mix-up in the store, Denise had a store credit, and was supposed to get a little free yarn as an apology. We opened the door, went in, and just stood there and looked around. So much yarn! So many wonderful colors. And they were having a sale. Hard to argue with a yarn sale. Denise went straight to the counter, and told them why we were there.

That’s when the problems started. I won’t go into details here, it’s Denise’s story to tell.

Suffice it to say that the shop employees weren’t as nice as the owner was to Denise in her email message. Accusations were made to Denise, stone walls were thrown up, the employees exhibited unreasonable behavior. I’m certain that if the owner had been reachable, she’s currently out of town, that everything would have been fine. But she wasn’t. And it wasn’t. If I’d actually heard the shop employees be contrite or apologize just once, it might not have been so bad. But I heard no such thing. If the Koigu hadn’t been only $11/hank I don’t think Kristie or I would have bought a thing. As it was, other yarn that was going to be purchased was put back on the shelf, and we left with the yarn that they granted to Denise, plus enough Koigu combined for two pairs of socks. Total. I know. Sad, isn’t it? I’m delighted with my Koigu, color 4000, a wonderful deep olive, but I would have been more delighted with another couple hanks in another color as well.

By now it’s after 2:30, getting on toward 3:00, and we’re all famished. We found a Chipotle restaurant on the way to our next stop, and ate there. If there’s one of these near you, and you like Mexican food, go there. Eat. It’s good! Everything’s made to order, so if you don’t want beans, you don’t have to have them, if you want extra beans, guacamole, cheese, no cheese, whatever. You can have it. Yum. I ate my entire burrito. Which is saying something. They’re big. But it was nearly 3 pm and I hadn’t had a bite to eat since 7 am. Can you say, “hungry”? Yeah. That’s why I ate the whole thing. Can you blame me? It was enough food to carry me through the rest of the day, though. I never did eat dinner. Didn’t need it. Everything balanced out just fine in the end. Food-wise, anyway.

Our appetites sated, we continued on to Twist in Manhattan Beach. Cathy has a cute little storefront in a small building. Unfortunately, that’s as far as we got. You see, we should have called ahead. The store was closed for a party. We couldn’t get in. Drat and double drat.

At this point Denise pulled out her iPhone and got on the web. She went to the KnitMap site, entered Twist’s zip code, and searched for other knitting stores nearby. Found one that was basically on our way home, called them to verify they were open (slow, but teachable), and headed over.

The third shop of the day, Let’s Knit in Gardena, is a store of Japanese yarn, including a garden of Noro yarns. There were a few books that weren’t from Japan, but not many. The shop lady and the one customer sitting at a table knitting were both Japanese, one born here, one not, were cute as buttons, and very, very nice.

We all bought some Japanese yarn, Make-Make from Olympus, to make small projects with. Since I have short feet, I think I might be able to get a pair of socks out of my three small balls. These tiny balls, 68 yards each, are dyed with a lovely combination of browns, and are a blend of wool and mohair—super soft. It comes in other lovely colors, too.

Team Bob

Have you heard? Ravelry is playing host to a knitting event they’re calling Ravelympics. I wasn’t going to participate at first, I don’t want to commit to starting and trying to finish a new project within the confines of the games. But then I saw that there’s an event called WIPs Wrestling. Though I don’t have a huge pile of works in progress, I do have one that has stagnated, that I really do need to make some progress on: the dress for my neighbor. Okay. Sign me up.

Next I had to find a team I wanted to knit for. Though a couple things would work, nothing really fit. Until I saw Team Bob. Perfect. Someone had even created a few Ravatars for team members to use. I chose this one.

Now that I have an event and a team, I’m chomping at the bit to get going. I’m going to get as much done as I can on the second Friendship shawl and on the Algernon socks before the start date. Go team! Go!