I continue to be intrigued, entertained, and delighted by the names we choose. How we identify ourselves by them goes way beyond what our parents came up with for the birth certificate. We have nicknames (not always our own choices), business names and sometimes we just change our names to fit ourselves.
Last week I wrote about yarn names. Today I want to share with you some of the yarn company names. I looked through my stash and found, along with more “normal” names, several that make me smile and curious. There are a fair number of animals used in these names but I don’t have anything from anyone who has channeled their puppies; cats yes but no dogs. Hmmm.
I won’t go into detail about them. I’ll let you browse as I have been doing all morning. These folks are in Texas, Arkansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Colorado, Vermont, New Jersey, Missouri, Louisiana, Montana. Some I have written about in more detail in other posts. Most everybody tells their story on their websites. It is a fun read.
And who knows, maybe you will find some yarn you can’t live without. I did, but didn’t order any. Earlier this morning I discovered a way to export my Ravelry stash into an excel sheet and tallied up the yardage of said stash. Kind of scary. I have over 75 thousand yards of yarn….
At any rate, here’s the list. And really, it’s a given that having clever company names goes hand in hand with clever yarn names. I hope you enjoy browsing as much as I have. Course if you can pet their yarn while you read their stories, it’s that much more fun.
And because I find it really difficult to have a post without any photos… These are some of the glitter shoes Tina and I made for our parade last week in New Orleans. Youtube has many options for viewing part or all of the parade if you so desire; just search for Krewe of Muses 2019 parade.
The story. Or it can be. Even my giant, super-size Crayola box (and yes, I still have one) doesn’t have enough colors in it. Think about being a yarn dyer and wanting to make the most perfect colors for your seasonal offering to the yarn addicts among us. You can’t just go with the yellow, pink, red, or purple. You must have sunflower, rose, lipstick and amethyst. But what if your bestie, who also dyes yarn has already used those?
Where do you get your inspiration? Maybe you think about where you saw the color you just dyed. Maybe you’re watching your favorite movie and absolutely love the costumes or hair colors or scenery therein. Maybe you look down at your dinner plate and find the right color combination for a shawl pattern. Would you name it Pasta Primavera? Perhaps. So many places for inspiration. What would you name a yarn color-way based on these pictures?
Mural Rekjavik airport
Fredericksburg peaches
Isek Kingelez Exhibit MOMA
Turkish carpet
Summer Hat
El Paso garden
I think you can get to know people a wee bit by the names they choose for their yarns; not just the colors but the yarns themselves and the collections of those yarns. It could be you are a geologist in your non-yarn life and so your colors are named for minerals. Or maybe you like the chemistry involved so you name them using the periodic table. Or just maybe your dreams are so vivid and full of color you find their names there.
Some of my favorite yarn names have come from Dr. Who, New Orleans krewes and events, Harry Potter, and places I’ve visited. I’ve also bought yarn simply because once I picked it up to look more closely (so, you know, I was already drawn to it), I had to buy it because of the name.
Many things, can be unique experiences to each of us. A piece of art will speak to each viewer perhaps in a different way than intended by the artist. A piece of music sounds different to each person who listens to it. I have yarn in my possession not because I know the backstory but because the name (or the color itself) has triggered a memory unique to me. These are a few of them.
Sleep Paralysis
Sock Monkey
Dr. Strange
Granted, I have also bought yarn that I absolutely love but cannot for the life of me tell you what it’s called. But, just as in life, names matter and have a power of their own. So, I try to get them right and they intrigue me because they tell a story and connect me to the human who created them.
Yes, indeedy. The official name is Vogue Knitting Live but since I’m not a knitter, I prefer Yarn-a-palooza :). I thought the DFW Fiber Fest was big but oh my goodness, this was amazing. And Vogue has these shows all over the country. ‘Twas probably a good thing that I didn’t know about it ahead of time and I only had a few hours to explore and Tom was with me to ground me. Twice as big as the one in Dallas; two full floors in the Time’s Square Marriott – the ballrooms and filling up the hallways around them. The shops we had visited that same week in the city all had booths, we saw booths for places that had been on my list of possibles, yarn companies big and small that I recognized and so many more.
One of the first booths we saw was for the Vineyard Marketplace from Texas (see my earlier post on October 25th – Making a Difference). Since Tom hadn’t been with Tina and me when we visited them last Fall, I enjoyed introducing him to their yarn and their mission.
We tracked down the dyers of some yarn that I had acquired earlier in the week from Knitty City. The yarn company’s name is Nooch Fibers (named after their cat) and it’s a husband/wife team. I bought two colors of their yarn; one is a burgundy color called Sorry, Snake and the other is called Sleep Paralysis. I had to buy the latter because, a) it’s purple and b) Sabrina gets this…and that’s another very funny story but not for right now. So, anyway, the folks at KC did not know the back story of the SS moniker. Darn. I was oh-so-curious. However, the Nooch folks were scheduled to be on site at the yarn-a-palooza. That said, we knew we had to talk to them because there is always a story and I wanted it. Anyway, the name comes from an old tv show on Amazon Prime called Peep Show. If I found the right series, it’s kind of an odd couple sort of premise. And if I get the next part right, this phrase was in part of a story where one of the characters who happens to be a snake (the reptile, not a slimy person) gets left behind because he/she wasn’t there when the rest of the posse left somewhere …. My eyes sort of rolled back in my head during the explanation because I don’t watch tv and had never heard of the show, but, now I know. Lots of ifs there. At some point I’ll track down this show so I have a visual.
After talking to them, we walked around while I tried not to succumb to all the yarn calling to me on both sides. Not easy. I just kept reminding myself that there was only so much room in the suitcase. And I had to have my viewing fairly quickly before Tom lost patience. There were martinis calling to us along with oysters in the near future.
My spidey sense had me stop at what was most likely one of the very few crochet-centric booths there: designer Janie Crow from the UK. I bought a scarf pattern from her that fits in with my mandala fixation (and yes, I’m still trying to finish the afghan) except the parts to this scarf are shaped liked lanterns. Hence the name of the pattern: Mystical Lanterns.
Next we happened upon the ladies of Twisted Fiber Art who came from Michigan for this event. They were great fun to talk to and looked like they were enjoying the event…course it was only the first couple of hours into an entire weekend of excitement. Again, Tom wanted a picture of the sign they had posted and one of the ladies graciously agreed to pose. You can see some of their cakes on the table along with a few of the samples they made to show off the yarn. Truly yummy. The cake I brought home is a merino/cashmere blend with a hint of sparkle. It is the unique color way they dyed for the event called Kama and ranges from dark grape in the center to a merlot on the outer edges.
Kama Evolution
Our last stop at the event since they were about to kick everyone out for the evening was at the booth of a fiber farm: the Long Island Livestock Company. They raise fiber animals and process their fleece/fiber into rovings, yarn and other products. This might have been Tom’s favorite spot; he had a very long and detailed conversation about, you guessed it, llamas. Raising llamas, llamas vs. alpacas, how many you need; well you get the idea. And no, no llamas for us, although we might go to LI, to visit the farm on our next trip to NYC. There are a couple of Fiber Fairs up that way; one in May at the Hallockville Museum Farm and the Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY in October. They both list sheep herding demos on the list of events so that may mean we would get to see herding dogs in action! Yippee. Probably won’t happen this year but maybe next year? Who knows.
Fun times, but it was after 9 and we hadn’t dinner or cocktails yet. So. Into the cold and a brisk walk back to Wayfarer for the above mentioned martinis and oysters. What a great end to the trip!
You can keep singing if you want. It certainly is a H@@**$#^ town. It is also a very yarny, fibery town. Tom and I were there in January for our annual trip. Cold, windy and not as full of tourists. Our timing also quite often is during tax free shopping weekend. Whoopee! And now I know it also, happily, coincides with the Vogue Knitting yarn-a-palooza. Bigger Whoopee!!!
This trip we didn’t make plans to do anything, well almost anything. Very different approach for us. We usually see shows, have dinner rezzies at fun new and old spots, and have big museum plans for lots of things to see there. We planned to take it easy. We did see a concert at the Morgan Library. It is a very small space, quite intimate. The couple performing were a cellist and her guitar playing husband. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Their performance handle is Boyd meets Girl. His last name is Boyd….
The other plan ahead was to buy tickets to see the History of Magic exhibit at the Historical Society. ‘Twas all about the magic in Harry Potter and the history surrounding its origins. Hogwarts wanna be’s all over the place; of all ages too, many dressed in their preferred house colors. I’m not giving you a link here because the exhibit is over now.
And then the last minute add on was a piano concert at Carnegie Hall. Again, wise choice. The pianist, Jonathan Biss, is a Beethoven sonata expert. He teaches a course on Coursera about understanding B’s sonatas and is on his way to record all of B’s sonatas. Kind of a big goal for those who are familiar with them. Any who, we loved the concert.
And on to the yarn part.
Knowing we didn’t really have an agenda, I had done the “yarn shops in NYC” google search and made note of places that might be interesting to scope out if we were in the vicinity. Of course. I think I might have mentioned this to Tom. We ended up having our own mini yarn crawl over about 3 days.
No Opium smoking allowed
Knitty City
The first stop was Knitty City. They are on the upper west side not all that far from the Historical Society. See, the stop fit right in to our path. The shop is long and skinny. And jam packed full of yarn and people shopping and/or working on projects. Tom made me take the picture on the left. Cracked us both up. We didn’t see anyone smoking regular cigarettes either.
The folks there were quite friendly. When they found out we were from out of town, they asked if we were here for Vogue Knitting. I had no idea what that was (neither did Tom :-)). So, it’s a Fiber Fest. This year it was at the Time’s Square Marriott. Two floors of yarn. OMG. And that was partly why there were so many boxes sitting around the shop (and most other shops we explored). Everyone was getting ready to go set up their booth.
The next day, in the rain, we wandered to the upper East Side. Had a great lunch at one of our preferred spots (Fig and Olive) and then checked out String Yarns. Again, friendly and busy. They have their own line of yarn that looked lovely but I fell in love with some more or less one of a kind yarn (more on that in another post).
Downtown Yarns
And then Friday we took to the subway down to SoHo, West Village, Chelsea area to wander around. Three yarn shops there. The first was Lion Brand; big name, can buy anywhere but they do have some things there that are unique and not sold online. ‘Nuf said. The second place, Downtown Yarns is charming and, they have a shop dog. Again, very small and packed to the gills. I selected yarn to take home with me from a small dyer that the gals there really liked; the yarn and the dyer.(Again, more later). Their website has a full schedule of classes listed. I have no idea where they might hold them…maybe there’s a hidden room.
The third was Purl Soho. I had totally forgotten about it and we stumbled upon it as we explored the area. Lovely yarn, lovely people and very, very busy. Nothing that isn’t available online so I didn’t make a purchase. If you haven’t seen their website, they are really great about putting kits together and have their own line of yarns. Their focus is mostly on knitters.
There were a few other shops we did not check out since they weren’t in our flight path during that trip. And then, there was the yarn-a-palooza in Time’s Square to make up for it. Of course, the official NYC yarn crawl would be fun to fly up and explore. I believe it’s in September of every year but this year’s is not yet posted on their website.
Why is some yarn scratchy and some not? Some of it has to do with the kind of fiber used for the yarn. Mostly though, it has to do with the width of those fibers and that can vary even within the same species; different breeds of sheep have different widths of fiber. It’s not just that alpacas have softer fiber than sheep and angora rabbits have the softest of all.
Are these not the cutest?
Side note here, angora rabbits originated in Turkey hence the name. The breed was named after the city of Ankara, the capital of the country. And no, I haven’t gone completely off into the deep end and started raising rabbits, I found these pics on google. Sabrina (the dog, for those who don’t know) would love it if I did though…bunny stew, yummm!
But I digress. Microns, my friends, are how these fibers are measured. One micron is equal to one thousandth of a millimeter, or one millionth (pinky to lips here please) of a meter. Amazing. Difficult to imagine being able to measure something so tiny.
Here’s how they rank by species. The overall range is between 10 and 40 but can go up as high as 100 for some of the courser outer coats. Not all animals have a double coat that’s used so I’ve ignored that in my list. I won’t list the micron ranges but if you are interested in reading more, I will put a couple of links at the bottom of the post.
Angora Rabbits
Qiviut (Arctic musk ox) – Looks very Yak like to me
Vicu̱a РWild alpaca cousins. If you want to learn more, go to this link but do it quickly as their site says it is going away mid Feb. Arkive
Opossum…I know, weird hunh. I have a sweater, socks and hat made from possum…it’s a thing in New Zealand. I haven’t see yarn available to purchase. These opossum are not the same breed as the ones we usually see Stateside but are still considered vermin.
Kashmir goat – See photo below…there’s a Pinterest board full of pics if you want to look.
Camel – We all know what they look like, yes. Who knew they have enough fur to even make yarn.
NZ Opossum Cuter than our domestic ones
Qiviut
Kashmir goat Look at those horns!
All the above start between 10 and 15 microns. The next group is 16- 20 microns.
Merino Sheep – The different sheep breeds run the whole gamut in the micron measurement test but from what I have learned, Merino is the softest, i.e. smallest.
Alpaca – Ok, so the weird thing to me here is that the numbers are about the same range for these guys as the merino but the yarns I have felt and used feel so much softer to me.
This last group is the list of the courser ones. Microns that is and every time I say that word, my brain wants to link it to Mycroft for some reason. Can’t tell you why, it’s a mystery.
Angora goats – Remember my Curly post?
Llama – And no, Tom does not have a llama, not one that walks and talks anyway…although he chatted with a woman who has a fiber farm in upper New York when we were in NYC recently…. and I did make him a beanie out of llama yarn.
Yak – The yarns I have in my stash and have used have all been mixed with other fibers like merino and bamboo.
Here’s the take away: While it’s interesting to know this, I have never seen this information listed on a yarn label. The first time a fiber person said the word micron to me I rushed home to research and learn, convinced it was vital for me to know all about it. It is interesting but, I have decided that the numerical specifics are not vital if I can remember the basic order of things. There is only so much room in my brain.
Any who, if you want to learn more about the various fibers, I recommend you go to this site: Wild Fibres. I found a plethora of information on other sites as well but most of it was way more than I needed to know in order to buy yarn at my local yarn store. This alpaca site has lots of info and cute alpaca pics and they’re in Montana…Alpacas of Montana.
To close, I will share with you two photos…one of my newest stash addition, and one of the reason I had to buy it. The yarn is called Sleep Paralysis…
She really does get sleep paralysis. It could be she was protesting the fatal penalty screw-up in the Saints playoff that most probably cost them the game. Or maybe I just wanted to see if she’d stay put once I covered her up (and she did).
A couple of years ago when I succumbed to the allure of the hook and skein (how ’bout that for the name of a bar…brew and yarn, I can see the sign swinging in the wind now), I looked for yarn in Fredericksburg. Google gave me a few places to look up but alas none were still in business (except Walmart of course). So, I gave up on that. I found the Tinsmith’s Wife in Comfort, brought my projects with me when I went down and knew if I needed anything I would just have to put it aside until I got back to Dallas.
Quick trips down did not leave me with time or energy for random trips to Comfort to pick up a different hook or more yarn. Walmart, while it does have some yarn and supplies was not always sufficient. Unless you count my dishcloth and scrubby project. Those yarns they do have.
Fast forward to this last holiday season. My in-laws were in town and we were on Main Street walking around looking in shops and exploring. Tom and I don’t go downtown often, especially when it’s tourist season. We wandered into what looked like a bar…it was…and then noticed a sign that instructed us to go through the bar, out the back door, proceed through the courtyard and into the shop behind. How fun. We’ve known of bars that you enter by going through first a shop or restaurant but never the reverse. Looks like a great bar too.
We did as instructed and entered Lauren Bade. Clothing, accessories, home decor; nice but not what we were looking for (whatever that was). However, there was a cat and apparently a dog (who we found out was away for the day). So, I followed the cat through the store (it’s deep). Tom, meanwhile had been moving quicker and had already been to the back room. He finds me and says, “You need to see this” but won’t tell me what “this” is so I left the cat and followed him. I thought it was going to be another cat or maybe the dog. Nope. It was yarn!
And not yarn I’d seen before. And they had llama yarn. And camel yarn…who knew there was enough fiber on a camel to make yarn. I was all aflutter. I’m sure the ladies thought I was nuts. And my in-laws didn’t quite know what to think. Jim and Tom found a sofa to sit on and Emily wandered with me.
The shop ladies told me they had been stocking some yarn for about two years and most of the folks who found them had googled. Sure enough, I googled and there they were. They must have come on the scene shortly after I went on my quest and since I don’t venture down Main Street all that often (read almost never) I hadn’t seen the yarn in the window, outside the bar, that advertised the store. I checked on that when we left because I sure didn’t see it beforehand. Too enamored with the bar I guess.
So, there’s the don’t give up part. I should have tried again to find a local store. I seem to be able to find the bathroom no matter where I am but I guess my yarndar isn’t as in tune.
The yarn I took home that first day is from Illîmani in Peru. Amelie is the yarn name and it is silk, baby alpaca and a tiny bit of merino. It is every bit as soft and light weight as they say on their website. It almost looks like its a tiny mesh tube (it’s white, may be the silk part) enclosing the other fibers (that carry the color). Mine is hunter green. I haven’t used it yet. It’s still in my stash but I do love to pet it (I miss Rooster, my cat, who was just about as soft as this yarn).
I had to go back. Of course. I hadn’t asked all the questions I usually ask. I found out:
There are local dyers.
The shop owners will be turning the entire back room into a yarn stash.
There’s a weekly yarnathon that happens in the shop if only a few folks show up or in the bar if the group is large.
And, one of the ladies also works at the natural grocery story that’s been a standard in my shopping route: the Peach Basket.
This time, I brought home yarn from one of the local people (and then drove by her ranch to see if they welcomed visitors). It’s a fiber farm. ‘Tis a new term for me but pretty accurate. Lone Wolf Fibers is located close to Fbg. According to their website, their flock at the moment comprises three kinds of sheep (Blue Faced Leiscester, Gotland and Cormo), a few angora bunnies and a flock dog.
The timing wasn’t right for me to visit. Their farm store is only open Fridays or Saturdays unless you call ahead. I will make that happen on a future trip. They also say they have a guest house/b-n-b.
Back to the yarn. My take home is a sock/fingering weight tweedy look made from Blue Faced Leiscester and has Donegal nep. Another new term. its the nubby bit that makes something tweedy. It’s a plum/claret almost merlot color with the nep sort of a twine shade. Again, in the stash waiting for a project.
Off to glitter shoes…part of one of my other lives. Happy last day of January to everyone.
It all started with mandalas. Really. I’ve been fascinated with them as symbols, as maybe a garden maze, as a tool for meditation, and perhaps a placemat. I have learned mandala means circle in Sanskrit and it is usually used as a symbol for the universe. And since food is the center of my universe, a placemat is appropriate.
I participated in a class back in April of last year at the DFW Fiber Fest in Irving that was about making them in yarn. There were several reasons to be in that class, not just for the mechanics. I wanted to understand how to design them, what stitches to use; you know, the deeper yarn meaning of it all. So apparently it’s a bit like gumbo, or couscous, or paella, or…you get the idea. To each their own….design.
Renee’s first mandala
And it was a fun day. After introducing the course format and herself, the instructor, Molly Andries, pulled up a box and started removing awesome examples of the mandalas she had made. It was like a circus car or Mary Poppins’ bag; they just kept coming out. And colorful and all different. I didn’t take a picture of that but here’s one I made in the class. One of the fun parts about making them is the different stitches. Soo many. So many I’d never used. Yippee! Different stitches in different combinations make for many different textures and visual effects. And I just looked at the class schedule for this coming April and another class is being offered!
Anyway, when I got home I started thinking about what I could do with them if I made a whole bunch. Google, Pinterest, Ravelry were all involved in my thought process. Somewhere in the middle of it all I stumbled upon the post from one of the crochet bloggers I follow. Or maybe this is how I started following her…I really don’t remember. Tamara Kelly at Moogly.com. Anyway, she does a CAL (that’s crochet-along for those who aren’t familiar with that acronym) every year and the goal is an afghan. That sounded like a great thing that I could build upon with my mandalas, except, they were round and for this project, they would need to be square. So. I kept reading; the post, the patterns, and then of course clicking on to the websites for the individual designers. Time Suck. But of the good kind.
She asks a number (twenty-four to be exact) of designers to come up with a pattern to share as part of the afghan. They are all squares and the ones I saw when I discovered this all looked sort of mandala-ish. They started out round and morphed into squares. Then came the rabbit hole…or in my case, the armadillo hole (they’re bigger). To join in here I would be playing catch up. The CAL began in January and it was now end of May. Of course.
Caron Simply Soft Acrylic
Step one, buy all the yarn, over 4000 yards in 6 colors. Total…not 4k each color. Done. Used the inexpensive stuff…unbelievably soft and on sale so not as huge an investment as it could have been. Filled my car up…well maybe not but it was a-lot. There was eye-ball raising when I came home from Joann’s with multiple bags of yarn. And then had to go back for more. Oops. If you are interested in seeing my takes on the various squares in the CAL and you have a Ravelry account, you can view them on my Ravelry project page. I will post some on my instagram feed as well for those who don’t frequent Ravelry since I believe you have to sign in to Ravelry to view my page.
These are the first six of twenty-four
Step two, start crocheting. I had ten squares to make to catch up to the schedule. It took awhile. I had other projects in the works after all. I ended up finishing the last square on time in December but am still hooking them all together to make the afghan. I will post that on my instagram feed when I am done. Probably not until end of January.
I did end up replacing some of the listed patterns (felt kind of guilty here but they didn’t match my “look”) with others that I found online; many from some of the same designers I had already used from the CAL. All told I think I changed out eight of the twenty-four. The three above are part of those substitutions. And then I decided that, really, twenty were enough for the size I wanted to make, so I have four left over.
I did not use the original mandalas I made in the April class but now I know how to turn them into squares if I decide what to do with them. And, also, I need to come up with a plan for the four left over squares. Hmmmm.
Back in December, before my annual art show and before things got stressful, I was at the Randy Brodnax Christmas show that is held each year not far from home. We have several friends that have been part of this annual event and usually meet up with several others who are there as patrons of all the art. It’s a great opportunity to jump start the gift buying season. And of course, what usually occurs is that we bring home just as much for ourselves as we do for gifting. Some years it becomes more of a social event! There were folks missing from the selling side that we usually spend time catching up with and we went first thing on Saturday morning before any of our other friends got out and about. Those two things combined meant we were able to peek into booths of folks we hadn’t met before or seen their craft.
That is a very convoluted way to begin the yarn part of this story. I have never seen yarn at this show even though there have been a few textile artists over the years. Of course it’s only been the last three years that I might have been interested and looking for it, so there’s that.
Fiber Art Landscape by Audrey Legatowicz
One of the first booths we stopped in was a textile artist named Audrey Legatowicz. I had seen her booth in years past but the reason we stopped in was to look at some of her woven towels. Really pretty and yes, took home a couple towels for gifties. Then I looked up and saw a wall piece that she had done using, you guessed it, yarn in a free form really cool way. This is my picture of her work. My brain went into overdrive. I turned around to ask her about it and almost stumbled on the basket of yarn. I swear, it must have stalked me like a puppy does when it wants attention.
I admit it. I don’t know why but when I find these unexpected delights, I get kind of giddy. So, if I remember correctly, she gets the fiber from someone she knows and also from farther away. Then she hand spins the yarn and dyes it according to what she wants for her art pieces. The yarn she was selling, I think, were the extra bits she has left after the art piece is finished.
My mag glass with Audrey’s yarn.
And it came at a great time for me. My show was the following weekend and I had been struggling to find a way to put these oh so cute mini magnifying glasses (on the handles of which I had put some of the glass beads that I make…one of my other lives) on a necklace of some sort. I wanted a crafter to be able to wear it while they crafted and still be able to find it when they needed to use it. And the glass part is tiny, kind of like a jeweler’s loop.
Her awesome yarns, so different every one, were perfect for that. I could loop, drape, crochet, tie the yarn and then add the magnifying glass. So, an artsy craftsy look and feel; soft and functional.
And it’s January. December really is mostly a blur. But, the sun is shining here at my house so it’s difficult not to smile. I love the sun. Now if it was just as warm as it looks on the other side of my window.
In my post on November 22, I wrote about finding the missing component for a project using the Twisted Owl yarn. Still a “yay” but have not unboxed my german dictionary yet (you’ll need to read that post if this doesn’t sound familiar). What I couldn’t mention then, because, spoilers, was that I also discovered a new yarn dyer named Ali, who is based in San Antonio (I think). Her company name is Savvy Skeins. And the Marvel in this is that I found a yarn to use to make really warm and comfy fingerless gloves for a friend for Christmas. So, see, spoilers; couldn’t write about it then because said friend reads my posts :0)
Now I can. Write about it, that is. I love this yarn and the names Ali chooses for all of her yarns. Karla’s mitts are made using Doctor Strange (Marvel, get it?). Said mitts were well received and I have just finished a beanie to go with, using the rest of the yarn. No pic yet since I haven’t given it to her. She knows it’s coming but I will post pic on instagram after I gift it to her.
The other yarn that I have been drooling over from Ali (haven’t met her but hope to), is one she calls RIP Sock Monkey. It has been calling to me for several weeks now and as soon as I finish writing, I’m going to order me some. Nope, no idea what I’ll do with it but it will look so nice nestled in my stash. Yep, I have a sock monkey, actually two. Aren’t they cute? And the twisted part of me likes the RIP part…sort of a like a deconstructed stuffed animal, as it would end up being, if I gave the dog a sock monkey of her very own.
I’m still singing it and it is a good song. I was not able to finish the scarf while my dad was still with me. I was sitting with him, crocheting on this scarf, when he embarked on his final journey. His was a peaceful end even though the journey there wasn’t always so. I am thankful for the time we shared and I will most definitely remember him when I wear this scarf.
Dad’s Memory Scarf
As you can see in the photo, Â the ending section is all in solid grey. Most of the scarf is made from two skeins of Nako Arya Ebruli yarn; one in grey and blacks, the other in shades of pink. My first thought was to just stop crocheting when he passed, Â wherever that might have been but Karla suggested finishing in a different color. So, when I picked it up to finish it a couple of days ago, I dropped the pink and just continued the last 18″ in the grey, made a border on one side and then the tassels; again, all in the grey.
Why did I choose this particular project in this particular yarn? To answer that, I need to tell you another story.
Last year, I went to Vegas, got off the plane and dragged my friend Robin straight to Sin City Knit Shop. I had of course looked up yarn shops in LV before we left. The owners at SCKS dye their own yarn and give it names like “Roll the Dice”, “Lucky Tokens”, “Megabucks” and “Vegas Lite”. How fun is that?! I knew I had to have some. They also carry other local yarns. Â Amongst the skeins that jumped into my bag, I brought home the yarn pictured below…Roll the Dice…in pinks and purples (of course).
Roll the Dice DK purples
Roll the Dice DK pinks
I had taken the pattern I wanted to make with me, the Nituna Shawl that I purchased at Annie’s catalog.com. The yarns I fell in love with for this project at SCYS, were DK weight(No 3), not Sport weight (No 2) as was specified in the pattern. In yarn terms, Sport weight is lighter/smaller in diameter than DK weight. For you non-yarn folks, I’m sorry but this turned out to be important. We returned home after a fun trip and at some point that fall I made the shawl/scarf. Pattern says it will be 66″ long and 15″ wide at the mid point.
Mr Ed, my favorite model
Mine is 110″ long by 13″ at the midpoint. Hmmmm. Not unhappy though. Actually really happy as I can wrap it multiple times, wear it backwards, forwards, as a shawl, as a scarf… Hopefully you get the idea. It’s got heft too. And it’s soft. And purple although the pink pops more in this photo but I’m ok with that since it’s in-your-face fuchsia, not pastel.
But. I did start wondering what it would be like if I used the yarn the pattern called for. Would it crochet up to the correct dimensions? There’s that whole pattern/stitch gauge thing. But really, I wanted to see just how much difference the yarn makes.
Here’s the two of them next to each other. The one I just finished is 72″ long and 13.5″ at it’s widest point. And check this out. The LV shawl weighs in at 339 grams while the Memory shawl is only 132 grams. Wow.
So, to sum up, does the yarn weight really matter? Is gauge really important? And the answer is: It depends. Just how much you adhere to these isn’t so important on something like a shawl/scarf but hugely important if you are making a garment!
