Yarn Crawl

This weekend I did one of my favorite things: hang out at yarn shops and knit.

On Saturday I went with my mom to A Tangled Skein. I spent time talking to Jennifer, who works there and who used to attend my Tuesday knitting group at Adega Wine Cellars. We talked about old friends and new knitting trends. It was just us three until about 2pm when a swarm of people came in, some who were new knitters and had never been to that LYS before. As I heard them sigh and gasp happily over the large and diverse selection of yarns, I remembered myself doing the same thing the first time I had walked into the store. I sat there knitting my Aramis top and spinning some crappy roving I am trying to finish up. I enjoyed talking to the newbies (one was Happystrings on Ravelry) and giving tips on good projects that are easy but will add new skills (comme le Multidirectional scarf). That night while seeing an excellent production of Evita at RMT, I made loads of progress on some socks:

On Sunday I did my now routine of going to The Yarn Spot to spin on my new best friend, the SpinOlution Echo. I had wonderful conversation with the ladies there and was super productive- I plied like a pro, finished spinning the crappy roving, and finished my socks, which are currently blocking on my new fave knitting tool, wire sock blockers.

Here is the yarn I just finished. It's really soft and you can't tell here but the colors remind me of a mermaid.

Here are some purchases from this weekend:

Flexible lace blocking wires, another skein of Malabrigo lace because it's just awesome, a lace shawl pattern, two skeins of Rock Creek Yarn sock yarn in Cherry Blossom for the lace shawl (to add to another skein I already bought), and Norah Gaugan's 7th Berocco book. I also (finally) got Lily Chin's Knitting Tips and Tricks and picked up a new needle gauge which Jennifer said is the best.

When I got home just now I plied and skeined the crappy yarn, which turns out to not be so crappy after all.

Now I just have to "set in the twist" of these two newly plied skeins, which I don't know how to do yet and which will apparently marry the two plies. It's the same in concept to blocking. Just makes everything more even and stable.

The most awesomest thing about this weekend was what was going on on Ravelry. They asked the users to help classify all 166,000 patterns by type and attributes (design elements, construction, etc) to make searching easier and more standardized. And for every pattern you either classify or double check you get entered to win one of 17 amazing prizes. Not cool, not awesome, but totally amazing prizes. Of course there were those people who only were doing it for the prizes, but for the most part people were really putting thought into it. Reading the threads about the massive project I finally realized why librarians have to go to graduate school. I classified 240 patterns; while I am crossing my fingers and toes that I will win something, my OCD and appreciation for Ravelry got me to this number. It feels good that I can classify some of these lonely patterns from a rare book that I happen to own.

Anyway, I obviously had a good weekend and I hope you did too!