Life without a LYS

Abilene, Abilene,prettiest town I've ever seen...

...has NO YARN SHOP!!!!

Now, there are places to buy yarn in town. You can get yarn from Wal-Mart. You can get yarn from one of the two craft stores...Michaels or Hobby Lobby. However selling yarn does not a yarn shop make.

At first this was disconcerting to me. I was going to have to drive at least 2 hours into Dallas to find a "local" yarn shop. (Can one call it local when it is over 100 miles away?)

There were solutions. I adore KnitPicks. Jimmy Beans Wool is also nice. I could order yarn and have it shipped to me. I could make sure and ALWAYS find a local yarn shop to visit when I traveled. But what about when I just wanted to squeeze a skein of cashmere? Yarn shop trips are major stress busters for me!

Then I unpacked.

Hmmm...

I guess I do have a local yarn shop.



My stash!

Techno Knitting

I have an iPhone.

I love my iPhone for many reasons: the built in iPod, the built in GPS, constant email access, remote facebook access, internet at my fingertips, high quality camera, etc.

But now I have a NEW reason to love my iPhone: the "EweStash" app.

This app allows me to not only catalog and keep track of all the yarn in my stash by color, fiber, gauge, and yardage...it is also fully searchable, AND lets me take a picture of the skein with my phone to save with the record. It also has a section to catalog knitting needles and crochet hooks.

Needless to say, this is a library knitter's dream come true.

Now when I am out at the store, if I come across a pattern I can make sure I don't already have the yarn at home. And, once I use a skein, I just delete it from the stash!

I am in love.

Moving Moving Moving

I missed a day of posting...I never know what to do on months with 31 days, since I try to post on odd days. Do I post two in a row? Do I skip a day? Which day do I skip?

I feel justified in skipping this weekend, since I moved. I am up to my eyeballs in boxes. I forgot that I owned most of the stuff that I've been unpacking...storing everything for nearly a year will do that I guess. On the plus side...I have ALL of my knitting, scrapbooking, and quilting supplies in one handy dandy place again...and an accessible place no less! They get their own closet! (My sewing machine. I have my sewing machine back. I can hem my pants finally, instead of using scotch tape!)

Moving also means reorganizing. I have a lot of "display" baskets and bowls that I keep leftover balls of wool, sock yarn, etc in...not to mention the project box and basket that go in my living room. I am going to be forced, to sort through ALL of my yarn in order to determine what goes where now! What a hardship!

(And by the way...I am almost done with the last bunny blanket buddy for the library commissioned baby gift. I will hopefully be posting the pictures on Wednesday sometime. The downside to moving is that I don't have internet at my apartment yet, so I will have to upload my pictures and posts on breaks at work!)

If Only I Had Some Cotton...

I was sorting my stash during a school lecture today, so that I could take a chunk of it back to the storage unit.

While sorting I came across enough cotton to make dishcloths for an entire subdivision and burp rags for an entire maternity ward:



I think I can put the kibosh on cotton purchases for a good long while.

On the other hand, I am teaching another knitting class at the library in June. This time it is for adults, and this time we are making dishcloths. So, see? These aren't impulse buys, these are work related purchases! (Isn't justification a wonderful thing!?!)

UFO Sightings

There seem to be a lot of UnFinished Objects lying around my room of late...

I have so many projects with deadlines that I keep trying to work on all of them at once, rather than finishing one as quickly as possible and then moving on to the next.

If I finish them one at a time, the worst thing that will happen is that the last due one or two won't be finished and I will give an IOU.

However, the way I'm going, they will all be ALMOST done and everybody will have to get an IOU.

I need to get organized!

Forced Purchases

Confession: There are times when I have purchased yarn, not because I liked it, but because it was the least offensive yarn I could find in a store.

When I go into a new yarn shop for the first time, I often feel as though I am intruding on someone else's territory. All eyes turn to me, and I feel as though I am being judged. Part of this stems from my own personal insecurities and anxiety issues, but part of it is based on fact. I am younger than a lot of knitters, although that is changing as I age and knitting becomes more socially acceptable. Also, as B1 pointed out at Stitches West, I don't exactly look like your run-of-the-mill knitter either. I have been followed in shops because the owner thought I was going to shoplift, I have been questioned, I have been informed that the shop only sells yarn, etc. I have developed a wee bit of a complex.

As a result, now when I go into a new shop, I feel compelled to buy something...anything...to justify my presence there. This isn't easy to do since I am very picky. (Do not laugh...I admit I have a lot of yarn, but I love all of it...imagine how much I would have if I was less discerning!). In the end, I buy yarn that I don't really care for. And it's hard. If I am guilt buying, then I look for yarn that is fairly inexpensive, but not so inexpensive as to be obvious that I am only buying under compulsion. I also look for yarn that comes in skeins large enough to make a scarf, but small enough as to leave NO leftovers.

My most recent forced purchase occurred when I went into the yarn shop in Dublin. I had just moved here, and already had a delightful experience at the Pleasanton shop. Unfortunately, the Dublin shop was a dud. I got the judgemental stares, the following, the constant "can I help you find something?". (Advice to store owners: If I tell you I am just browsing, let me walk around and squish the skeins. I am more likely to impulse buy by touch than by your constant pestering. Asking once is good customer service, asking repeatedly is just annoying.)

On top of the behavior, the yarn just wasn't what I like. Also, it was organized by brand rather than type. Brand organization is even less accessible to me as a knitter than organization by color, which I also dislike! (Note: I don't intend on going back there. I love Knit This, Purl That! which is closer to my house anyway, so why make the effort?)

I had to buy something. I didn't like anything. They didn't even have a good needle selection...so I ended up purchasing this:

Its ok, but not really my thing. I ended up making a scarf out of it using a simple pattern from "Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair." The scarf turned out pretty well. The variation in the weight and texture of the different yarn elements made the stripes droop in places as heavier parts pulled it down. That is annoying. Also, the style of the scarf isn't really my thing. It is going into the gift stash, or perhaps to a consignment shop or something. We'll see. At least I finished it, and my stash now has more room for a wanted yarn.