Tag: Spincycle Yarns

Hannah and the CoalBear: Sock Season Arrives.

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you see how calm I am? It has been quite the week.

It has been a crazy week. There have been thunderstorms. The Mother of Cats decided to move a bunch of furniture. The Mother of Cats replaced the broken television in the downstairs room with only a LITTLE help from me. Then the washing machine broke during a big thunderstorm. Strange men took it away and installed a new one on Friday while the CoalBear and I hid the whole time (Hello… strange, scary men… hey, we helped with the television, right?) Then the Mother of Cats decided to reorganize all of the yarn in the craft room. Yay!!! We went crazy wild helping her with that!!! She says that it is time for Fall Knitting!

Listen, I am a fan! I loves the yarn!!!

There is a lot of yarn for socks, so the Mother of Cats decided to focus on sock knitting for a while. She is also concentrating on a shawl (while ignoring two other ones), and there is yarn for a new sweater, too. Do I believe her when she says she is going to concentrate on socks? No… not really. But it is cooler now and she is wearing socks again, so I guess it is sock season.

She finished one pair and is making progress on a second pair. She says that the yarn on the purple sock is purple zebra yarn because it has black stripes in it. Whatever. Who cares about zebras? Cats are better right?

After looking at several different pink, grey and purple yarns the Mother of Cats picked this pink to be the lace trim on her new shawl.
The Mother of Cats also chose this berry-colored yarn to go with her new Spincycle yarn that she will knit into a sweater.

While the Mother of Cats was deciding on yarn color matches and taking the pictures the CoalBear and I looked for bunnies. No bunnies! No raccoons!! The backyard is getting pretty boring now that the weather is getting colder. Good thing there are still birds and squirrels…

So that was kind of the week. Lots of things moving around and general commotion as the new television went up and the washing machine left for a new home. There was some knitting, and we got to play with yarn. The Mother of Cats moved all of our cardboard boxes around so the CoalBear thinks that they are new toys (not too smart, that boy!) and I mostly helped with the knitting and tried to chomp yarn.

The Mother of Cats is also thinking about working on her new quilt again now that the octopus is done. I love the smell of freshly ironed fabric, don’t you?

This is Hannah, signing off.

Time for tuna!!

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

  • The shawl is Age of Gold by Joji Locatelli.
  • The sweater that I am making with the Spincycle yarn is Antipodes by Andrea Mowry. I found that berry-colored yarn in the stash and I’m hoping that it will knit okay with the bouncy Spincycle yarn as it is a slightly lighter gauge. The Spincycle’s name is Dirty Little Secret. 🙂
  • Those are Frankensocks made from a mish-mash of other patterns and tricks picked up over the years.
  • I had to take a couple of down days in the middle of the week because of a covid-vaccine triggered flare. This time the shot hit me pretty hard, but the upside of a new covid vaccine should be a couple of weeks feeling pretty good as my autoimmune disease usually calms down: Vaccine Holiday!! Why does this happen? I think that triggering an immune system response with the vaccine disrupts the sad little inflammatory feedback loop that is part of my chronic autoimmune disease (systemic sclerosis). It doesn’t last more than a couple of weeks, but it is nice while it is happening!! For some reason the covid vaccine works the best.
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Road Trip: My Sister Knits

Every Wednesday I go to a local yarn store to knit with a group of ladies who have become my friends. Okay, let’s be honest, they are one of my main support systems. I love the ladies in this group, and last week we all headed out on a road trip to the yarn stores of Fort Collins, Colorado. We visited three stores and treated ourselves to a fun lunch. It was a great (if a little exhausting) time, and it is always exciting to explore new yarn shops, but one store in particular was a huge hit with me.

My Sister Knits is located in the carriage house behind a lovely home on a street shaded with mature trees. We drove by twice before we figured out that there was a discrete sign under a tree out front; the low profile might be due to its presence in a residential section of the city. I really don’t know about that, but it is totally worth the extra time to locate it! To get to the shop you walk through a bright and inviting gate to the side of the house and…

Yard
you enter the sweetest yard with brick patios and walkways, tables and benches for knitting, sparkly lights and lovely plantings. I was struck with envy.

chickens
Then there were the chickens… these pampered chicks have this lovely house for their coop, and the metal and wire structure to the right (which is much larger than shown in the photo) is their courtyard. So cute! I want chickens for my yard too. I want these trees and the decorations, and maybe that birdbath while we’re at it. Do you think a bee hive would be over the top? I got great ideas for my yard before I even made it to the yarn shop!

My Sister Knits
Oh, there it is. The store is located in a converted carriage house that used to be a two car garage with upstairs storage and an office used by the previous owner. Now it is a lovely yarn shop. Let’s go in…

Yarn
OK, the shop isn’t huge, but everything that is there is JUST PERFECT!! Seriously, I wanted everything. Yarn that is hard to find, too wonderful to ignore, and in a great selection of colors. I felt like I had gone to heaven!

Shop Owner
and I met Julie, who is the most positive and helpful owner you could hope for. No wonder her shop is so appealing.

Yarn
Upstairs you find all the fingering yarn…Madelinetosh and Hedgehog Fibres in every color and weight you could wish for, along with knitted samples, patterns, and cute kit packaging. There were other yarn brands, too, but I never made it that far. 🙂 This table had kits to make Melanie Berg’s On the Spice Market Shawl along with kits for the shawls you can see. You know I bought the yarn to made one of these shawls… There was a Stephen West The Doodler hanging on the wall, with every color of Hedgehog Fibers yarn lurking nearby just waiting for you to put together a three yarn combination… The shop has a license to sell Ravelry patterns, so anything you wanted, they printed it for you and you were in business.

So I got silly and bought yarn. I bought some of the kits that were shown, the yarn for some shawl patterns that have been waiting patiently in my Ravelry shopping cart, and some yarn that was too beautiful to just leave sitting on the rack. I have put together the kits to make seven new shawls (lucky seven… can you feel a new post coming on?), and launched into some small projects that are rich in color and learning. Here is the one that I started first.

Yarn kit
Downstairs on a high shelf these little kits were on display: brioche knit cowls. Hey, I always wanted to learn how to knit brioche…

Brioche cowl
Look Mom! I can knit brioche!! Look at how nice these two colors go together. Even the little stitch marker came with the kit. This is the Hawkshaw Cowl by Kate Burge and Rachel Price. That yarn is a single worsted weight merino yarn. Yum!

I-Cord Cast O
I even learned how to do the i cord cast on that Julie recommended I use. Thank you You Tube!

Today it is cool, overcast and threatening to rain. The Olympics starts tonight, and I have lots of yarn on hand and visions of shawls dancing in my head. Forecast: major knitting.

What a great road trip!