Saturday morning dawned cold and frosty. I texted I. immediately to say "It's
totally fine if you are 10, 20 minutes late." She arrived late as promised, we picked up D., and drove to Wicklow. On arriving in Ashford, it took three trips up and down the main street of the village before one of us spotted the distinctive black shop with the familiar 'Yarn Room' logo done in beautiful mosaic on the front. Then we parked, fell out of the car, and plonked ourselves inside the warm shop, demanding service in every way.
I. and D. have long had a shared fantasy that possessing a loom would help them decrease their stash substantially. Imagine their excitement when Stephanie propped one up on the table and let them have a go. (Can you spot the handknits being worn in this photo? Aren't they gorgeous!)
We poked around shelves of yarn and shelves of roving.
I chose to sit near this beauty so I could feast my eyes while we drank the lovely coffee that Stephanie made us. Covetcovetcovet. Looms may use up wool, but wheels
make more wool and that is infinitely cooler in my book. Covet.
I had stayed up late the night before baking these nommy vegan chocolate chip cookies to go with our teas and coffees. Everyone liked them (or at least said so to my face :p) but the recipe is Elana's so direct your queries there plz!
Hmmm, now, onto the goss from The Yarn Room part of our field trip. We met
Nic there as she taught a class and got to compliment her on her gorgeous
Ashford Cowl pattern in person. We met two lovely knitters as they sat and knit on the couch there, one doing a gorgeously complicated long Icelandic coat - the other doing fingerless mitts, if I remember rightly. D. and I. sat and worked on our owls, and you can see pics of our sleeves shaking hands in her post about the day
here. I. took fancy-schmancy photos that 'play with light and such' and they are
here (I'm so jealous.
I want to have nice photos!).
After Yarn Shop #1 of the day, we headed to Yarn Shop #2. This one was a little bit different, as it is an online yarnshop only, but Generous Proprieter Rosemary allowed us into her stockroom for a few hours of glorious rummaging.
The Constant Knitter mainly supplies Garnstudio stuff, but hey, that's enough for me! I
love their yarns. We pushed mercilessly past poor Rosemary and ruthlessly pulled everything out of boxes, passing it around and making little piles of purchases. This is where a new knitalong idea was born, as we all bought 2 balls of Alpaca 4-ply in contrasting colours. Watch this space!
Last Yarn Shop (#3 - keep up!) of the day was into
This is Knit, so I. could stock up on knitpro cables and so that we could tease Lisa by arriving into the shop, en groupe, at 5 minutes to closing time.
SWAG! These are my ill-gotten gains! Every one of these was carefully thought about and there are plans for each ball *insert smug face here*. OK, let's get down to description. The huge packets of purple and orange roving are going to be spun by moi in a chunky manner, and then knit into a homespun lap blanket for reading. The multi-coloured greeny roving is actually Ashford 'Cinnamon' and is to top up my 50g bag which I'd bought at our last field-trip, out to
Craftspun. This is probably the only stuff I don't have plans for as yet - I bought it because it was just too beautiful to leave behind. The white ball of Kidsilk is for a
Party Lace Scarf for my mother; the blue ball is for a lace scarf I'm going to create for myself. The two sock yarns were bought after a conversation whereby we all realised that we constantly wear the same colours, over and over. Here are some colours that I don't wear that much, therefore, as a gentle easing in. The Alpaca is for that as-yet-secret knitalong that we have planned. The Clover cutting pendant makes me feel like a Ninja.
So there you go.
Driving - cookies - roving - weaving - kidsilk - cables - spinning - ninja.
.bmp)
(From The New York Times, Friday 2 August, 1918 - click pic to make bigger and more readable)
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