Sunday Tale

There once was a knitter who was full of early Spring. The sun was shining, the daffodils were blooming and she thought a new handknit Spring scarf might be just the thing for those days when there's little chill in the air.

She went digging through her stash and found that she already had a Spring scarf on the needles. However, she was puzzled. What was the pattern? It was scribbled on the back of a work memo from last year. No name. No stitch count. No needle size. And why was she using straight needles? The knitter juggled her knitting memories and there were no straight needles there.



Whatever. A scarf had been started. Why not continue? But the knitter quickly realized the reason why the project had been abandoned. Those awkward, heavy, potential eye-poking-out straight needles.

She switched over to circulars. Same size as the straights. However, the cable were ginormous! The scarf was only 20 stitiches but an afghan of 500 stitches could have fit on the needle.

So she went down to a very small cable. And had a go up a needle size because that's all she had.



But the smaller cable was too small and hurt her wrists. Besides, the stitch pattern began to look like macrame. The knitter's days of tie-dye and VW vans were long, long behind her.



So she frogged the whole thing.



The end.

A Match!

Playing around this afternoon with some yarn, needles, stitches, patterns for a spring scarf. But what struck me is how well my nail polish goes with the yarn.



Now to find a good pattern match for this yarn, this ribbon yarn, that is so far out of my comfort zone!

Sheep and Wool Festival

Yesterday I took Amtrak to Philadelphia. It's such a short trip--90 minutes--only completed five rows on my secret project, didn't read much on the Kindle and was only able to take a quick glimpse through the newspaper.



Arriving at the 30th St. Station, I noticed this sculpture



But what really caught my eye was the lower left corner



Sheep! SInce I was in Philadelphia to meet up with two New Jersey knitting friends, it seemed only right to be greeted by sheep.

Our destination



Loop! What a terrific yarn store! Look at all this wooly (and cashmere and alpaca and cotton and bamboo and linen and silk and angora) yumminess--





We walked around. Fondled all the yarn. Pulled skeins out, put them back, pulled them out again. Checked patterns. Noticed yarn we hadn't seen before. And I ended up with



Zara Chine--I can't resist black and white tweed, wear-like-iron Trekking Maxima, and Oh my gosh--I love this yarn--CashSock

I also can't praise the owner of Loop, Craig, and the staff enough. (I'm so sorry I didn't get their names.) We were helped not only with the yarn--but they also made a wonderful lunch recommendation.

After a tasty lunch, we returned to Loop. One friend needed an extra skein of yarn. I was just going to sit at their comfy table and wait. But you know that feeling. Ooooooh---pretty yarn---must have now!

I never knit with this type of yarn--but won't it make a couple of fun, cute scarves?



And with that, we said good-bye to Philadelphia and Loop--but we'll be back!

Many thanks to the lovely women at Loop who made our visit to Loop so enjoyable!