Monday, August 17, 2015

Inexplicable

I can't explain why I keep failing to buy anything from Miss Babs in Vlad's, but it happened again this year.  There's history here.

The first year that Miss Babs came to Stitches Midwest I saw a worsted weight Blue-faced Leicester yarn called Northumbria Aran in a color called Vlad's (Yes, as in Vlad Dracula.  It must have been the first of the big vampire-craze years).  It wasn't eye-searing or stop sign-ish, or washed-out or anemic. Put simply, it was, I thought, the best red I had ever seen.  I was determined, before that Market closed on the last day, I was going to get that yarn. Except I didn't. I got cold feet, or pre-emptive assumptive buyer's remorse, or something.

I regretted it for a whole year.  The next time Miss Babs came to Stitches, I went into the Market with the rock-hard determination that I would get me sweater quantities of that yarn. Except I didn't, again. That might have been the year someone got there ahead of me.  Yarn delayed is yarn denied, so I came up with a clever plan. I would order it from the website. I ordered Navy instead.  It's a wonderful yarn and a beautiful shade of blue.  Admittedly I haven't knit anything out of it yet.

Back to Stitches the following year.  I had given up the plan to buy vast quantities of the Northumbria Aran, but I was sure, sure, I would buy something in Vlad's, probably in Yowza! Whatta Skein!  That was the year almost every booth had a Color Affection Shawl on display.  The designer had used red in one of the pattern samples.  This was going to be easy.  So what did I end up with?  Yummy 3-ply in Denim, Wheaten and Deep Sea Jellyfish. It is my most favorite winter scarf.

This year?  Failed again, despite setting my sights a little lower.  I wasn't looking for sweater or afghan quantities of Vlad's in any weight this year.  This year I decided to finally treat myself to a replacement of the Knitspot  Les Abeilles Shawl I knit with one skein of Handmaiden Sea Silk in Ruby.  The one that it seems I alluded to only once and that briefly, and which came out approximately the size of a folded cowboy bandana. So yes, pretty much unwearable. I came to Stitches with a really unshakable plan to get two skeins of Vlad's in a wool/silk fingering weight so I could make the largest Les Abeilles that Anne Hanson had included in the pattern (800 yards).

I came away with two skeins of red Shiruku, a lovely 50/50 merino/silk fingering weight, just not in Vlad's.  It's called Scarlet Letter (so not my favorite 19th Century American Novel).  


And not for Les Abeilles. For that I bought two skeins of Seda Sock (also merino/silk fingering) in Petals from Grinning Gargoyle.

Maybe next year?



Saturday, August 01, 2015

Red Letter Day

Important Day here at Chez WoolGathering. We've been counting down for months (since Christmas, really), then for weeks, finally for days.  Now it's here. The Pirate turned 26 today.

It's always been all about the party with him, hasn't it.