Shopping – Page 2 – The Knitting Doctor

Can You Hear Me Now?

Actually, that should be, “can I hear you now?” More on the title as the post grows. First, I have had just the wildest week on earth.

I got to meet Dorothy again. She came and stayed at my house last Saturday and Sunday, so we could knit together and go to Seattle to hear the Harlot. Saturday we invited all our bleeding-heart-liberal-neighbor-friends over to meet Dorothy and impress her with their liberal jokes (I’m not sure it worked, but she was very gracious and put up with them nicely.) Actually the real reason that I invited them over was to prove to them that y’all aren’t really just my little imaginary friends. I’m not sure they believed previously.

Dorothy brought along several of her completed lace projects so I could drool on them. Now I truly have something to aspire to. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of them, but go to her blog and check back through her archives and photos. She does absolutely amazing stuff with needles and yarn.

Sunday we got up early to get to church before we headed off to the city. My mom always claimed that it was more or less acceptable to party on Saturday night, as long as you got your butt out of bed and went to church the next morning. My first clue that something was amiss was that I could hear Dorothy singing in my left ear (lovely voice, by the way), but I couldn’t hear myself sing. I just figured it was the allergy season, didn’t think too much of it, and we went on home after church. We collected Kris for the trip to Seattle, then went on a little yarn-shopping expedition. Here are my partners in crime at Weaving Works:

Note Kris clutching that yarn like I was going to steal it from her. I couldn’t have, I had my own hands full. We also went to Acorn Street yarn shop, and did a bit more shopping. Here’s D & K perusing the sidewalk sale. Sad to say, it was mostly really sparkly bizarre novelty yarn. They did have very nice stuff inside, though.

Here’s the stuff I bought:

More lace yarn, like I need more lace yarn.

Mountain Colors Bearfoot, like I need more sock yarn.

This, I needed. I still am on a mission to do knee highs, and found the pattern that I just need to make. This yarn is just the softest stuff on earth. Here’s a picture of the pattern, not the greatest, but you get the idea. It’s from Socks, Socks, Socks.

I might decide that those are a little ambitious, but what the heck.

After we cleaned out the yarn stores, we headed to Bothell to hear Stephanie. She was a total hoot, as usual, though my right ear was driving me crazy and I was starting to get a terrible ringing noise, along with progressively worse hearing.

Here’s Stephanie at the book signing table:

She was very gracious, and took a picture of me with her sock. I am so honored, and if I died now, I would be a happy woman, let me tell you.

By the time we got home, the noise in my ear had turned into something very annoying. It sounded a little like I was sitting in the middle of the runways at Seatac. When I woke up Monday, the noise was gone, and so was everything else from my right ear. I couldn’t hear a thing. We got Dorothy off on her journey home, and decided to skip the Bumbershoot festival that we had planned to attend. Being as it was Labor Day, I couldn’t do much about the hearing thing, but did manage to do a little google search for “sudden hearing loss”. Nothing particularly comforting there, but I still wasn’t panicked. Probably the funniest comment that John has made in a long time, however, was to nicely suggest that I “call somebody” and get an appointment Tuesday to check it out. No, I just thought I’d wait until the other one went, too.

Tuesday, I started my wild work week, made additionally entertaining by the fact that I could only hear out of one ear. I did get an appointment with an ENT specialist late in the day, and after some testing, discovered that it unfortunately was not some simple ear infection, or even better, wax. And that I had rather profound hearing loss. He put me on high dose steroids and an antiviral drug, and sent me back to work, with an appointment on Thursday to retest.

The good news? My hearing is MUCH better. The repeat audiology exam Thursday shows that I have regained quite a bit of function. It’s not even close to back to normal, but I’m extremely encouraged.
The bad news? Steroid side effects. My particularly lovely manifestation has been that I am totally emotionally wrecked. I am normally not a crying woman, but I have been just crying at the drop of a hat. Nurses call me to ask if it’s ok to send somebody down to xray without a nurse? I cry. My boss is nice to me? I cry. You get the idea. Combine that with some very lovely drug-induced wild dreams, and a truly wildly busy work week, and it has just been a weird time. I go back Tuesday for another evaluation, and only have to take these damn drugs for a total of 11 days, so I suppose I’ll live.

Oh, and one thing that really made me cry today. I don’t normally talk about patient-related stuff here, for all sorts of reasons, but I got called for an all-fired emergency consult this morning up to the labor and delivery ward. Without giving up too much confidential info, a young woman was in the middle of labor, pushing, baby about to be born, had a medical issue rather acutely, and they called me upstairs. Everything turned out OK, medical issue got resolved, and mom and baby are perfect. (9 pounds 14 ounces perfect!) I got to see the little guy get born though. That was truly a gift, as I don’t normally have much to do with the OB ward, and haven’t seen a baby born in years. And I was even able to hear his first cry. With both ears.

Home Again

And I know what you all REALLY want to know about is the yarn shops in New York City! Never mind all the lovely tourist things to do, and the lovely restaurants, and the excitement of the city. You wanna see YARN!

Cara escorted me on the yarn-shop-crawl to beat all yarn-shop-crawls on Tuesday. It was a total blast to meet her, after reading her blog for so long. If you go to NYC, you have to talk her into showing you around. I used Tuesday as my “free” yarn buying day*, after nearly a month of abstinence. I was pretty good, though, and only bought a few things. No doubt the house project expenses figured into that. I did also get online that morning and buy some yarn for a sweater from Elann. This stuff, if you’re curious.

But, the shopping. Back to the shopping. We went to School Products, Habu, Purl, The Point, and Seaport. I think. Am I missing any, Cara? They are all fabulous. School Products is upstairs in an office building, and has more Karabella yarn than I’ve ever seen in one place, Purl is a beautiful sight to behold, Habu has some of the most creative yarns I’ve ever seen, and the Point has a cafe and yarn in baskets on the walls. Seaport is an office, not just in an office building. It’s a working marketing firm with yarn stuffed in every corner. You’ll be looking at a rack of yarn and some guy is at a computer at a desk behind you, working. It’s probably the most unique yarn shop I’ve ever been in.

Jen from Two Purls, and her charming little son Xavier, joined us, as did Kay from Mason-Dixon Knitting. Kay even autographed my new copy of their book, which I bought for the occasion.

Two stinking yarn shop photos are below. Unfortunately, I’m much better at my day job than I am at photography, and most of the shopping pictures either didn’t turn out or were unflattering. It’s written in the Knitbloggers Code Of Honor that you will not post unflattering pictures of other knitbloggers, especially when they are lovely ladies like the ones I was shopping with. And I completely forgot to whip out the camera at most of the shops. Here’s Cara at Habu:

And here’s Seaport:

Trust me, Jen and Kay were there, I wasn’t imagining it, and we went to all of those places, I didn’t imagine that either. I apparently was drooling too much over the yarn to take pictures.

And here’s what I bought:

From right to left: first is a cone of cotton lace weight tape, from Habu. The color may not show very well in that photo, but it is a pale mint-sea green. I think that will be a shawl. In the middle is a cotton-viscose blend from Garnstudio Yarns, purchased at Seaport. It will be perfect for a scarf, maybe the Branching Out scarf from Knitty. Last but not least is Euroflax linen, for a handtowel, inspired by Kay and Ann’s book. Never mind that I already have a bunch of this in the stash, I didn’t have any in this color, and apparently the mood of the day was green.

Oh, and I bought this, because I couldn’t resist it, and because you can never have too many tape measures.

All in all, a great day! Thanks girls–I couldn’t have imagined doing this any other way!

Next post will be knitting project photos, house project photos, and maybe a few scattered NYC pics. I leave you with a picture of someone who was very glad to see us come home:

*Remember, the Yarn Focus doesn’t prohibit yarn buying; you can buy yarn on one day a month, on a day of your own choosing. The ticker doesn’t need to be reset for that day, only if you succumb and buy yarn on a second day in any month.

Yarn Focus Challenge

Rebekah of KnitKnack (Basil and Abner’s mom) has started this challenge. We’re not buying yarn for the next three months, except on one “free” day per month, when we can go crazy. The point is to focus our yarn buying, rather than just hitting that “buy” button in every online yarn shop we find. We’re all going to donate yarn to a “yarn pot” at the end of the three-month period, and the winner will get the whole pile. April 1st is “Day Zero”.

This is perfect for me. I am the worst impulse shopper. I see yarn and patterns on other blogs, and just have to have it. The internet makes this incredibly easy, and the credit card bill here unfortunately takes the brunt of the damage. I will say that I have an unfair advantage in this one in that I have enough yarn in my yarn closet to last for about ten years of “yarn focus challenges”.

So in preparation for this, as soon as Rebekah announced it, I went and bought more yarn. No use taking any chances, right? And in fact some of it was necessary. I am probably going to run out of the “Bold Red” Lorna’s Laces for that two color sock, so I bought another stinking ball of it. I figured my license to shop would probably be revoked permanently if I ordered yarn and only got one stinking ball, so I ordered some Madil Kid Seta in lemon, for this scarf. One little skein of that, too.

If any of you are Lorna’s Laces fans, and aren’t on a Yarn Focus Challenge, Angelika’s, where I bought this, has the world’s best LL collection. You name it, she has it. And great service; after you order, you barely have time to put the credit card away, and the UPS guy drives up.

Speaking of which, somebody should probably let Alan, my UPS guy, know that I haven’t died or anything. And yes, I know my UPS guy by name. Doesn’t everybody??

I already know where my April “free day” will be spent. We’re going on a little pleasure jaunt to New York City later this month, and I have never been there. We already have tickets to a Yankee’s game, tickets to see “Sweeney Todd”, and tickets to Van Morrison’s concert at Madison Square Garden. And reservations for dinner at the Rainbow Room. We’re staying near Times Square; where are the best yarn shops? Any reader suggestions?

Prescription for the Blahs

If you want a good laugh or two, go to Cara’s post from a few days ago and read all the jokes in the comments. Thanks, Cara!

It seems like everybody is talking about the blog doldrums. I have them, too, I guess. It’s not that I’m not knitting, because I am. I’m tired of talking about the same old projects, though. The lace scarf is a few inches longer, the sock looks about the same, and it’s been too warm still to sit with a pile of Rogue wool in my lap. The remodeling is nearly done, and the hand is pretty much where it’s going to be. So what to write about?

Shopping, that’s what! Nothing like a good shopping spree in the lace yarn section to get those creative juices flowing. Have any of you noticed that most brick-and-mortar yarn shops don’t carry much in the way of lace yarn? At least the ones around here don’t seem to. The internet comes to the rescue again!

First up is this little collection, all from The Knitter.com. This is a good store, by the way. Lots of yarn choices, reasonable shipping, and the site is pretty well organized. My only complaint is that the little tiny photos of the yarn colors are a bit hard to see. I ended up going to other sites that show better, bigger yarn photos to choose the colors. Oh yeah, the colors. Here they are:

There is Zephyr, in Vanilla and Dianthus, and Misti Alpaca in Sea Mist.

Next up is Alpaca Cloud in Tidepool, from Knitpicks:

I also bought this, though not online.

I already have her Knitting On the Edge, and couldn’t resist this one. I discovered a disturbing thing while in the bookstore browsing the knitting section: It’s finally happened, I have more knitting books than Barnes & Noble.

That yarn will all be shawls at some time in the future. I have patterns for several shawls, and have a master plan to work up from simpler to ridiculously challenging.

Here, last but not least, is the ridiculously challenging:

What hooked me on the Wedding Ring Shawl was the little disclaimer on the website “Once gone, this design will not appear in print again before 2010”. There are only 500 copies that will be sold, and I got Number 37. Don’t even ask what possessed me to buy these, since I’m having trouble with a small lace rectangle in fingering weight yarn. All I can say is that lace knitting appears to be like crack for me. Go to the website, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. You also might want to put a protective cloth on your keyboard to keep the drool off.

Wall of Yarn

My favorite part of the San Francisco trip was the little foray out to ArtFibers. All I can say is that it is probably a good thing for the sake of my credit card bill that I don’t live near this place. (Yes, I know they ship, but it ain’t the same…)

For those of you who have never been there, here is the Wall of Yarn:

I sat through FOUR whole days of medical conference just waiting for the chance to get done and go to this place. I learned many new things, and didn’t fall asleep once, thanks to my trusty knitting project. The conference had perhaps 400 attendees, pretty well mixed half and half, men and women. (Oh, I remember the good old days, when I was one of a minority of women physicians! “Lady Doctors”, we were called way back then.) I was the only person knitting, although there was one other woman doing needlepoint. I found it rather amusing that the only people that commented on my knitting were a couple of men sitting near me that said some favorable things.

Here’s what I worked on:

I figure I’m about a third done with this. It was great conference knitting, with those miles of stockinette that I didn’t have to pay any attention to.

Oh, I suppose you want to know what yarn I came home with??

The ribbon yarn in both of these pictures is called “Houdini”. The first one really is as red as it looks. The red shiny stuff with it is Baccarat, which is a nylon sequin ribbon novelty yarn. The red combo will be a long skinny scarf.

The other combo is the Houdini ribbon in a fall color blend, along with Kyoto, a silk/mohair/wool blend in a lovely gold color. This will be a wide rectangular shawl. The women in the store are unbelievably helpful in assisting you with pattern and color suggestions. I sort of had an idea what I wanted for a pattern for this, and the woman helping me sat right down and hand wrote a pattern for this yarn combo that I think will be perfect.

I’ve decided that as an incentive to finish that Birch shawl, I will NOT start either one of these until I finish that one. I tried to work on it while watching the VP debate last night, but got a little worked up and lost track of where I was. Maybe I won’t really try to finish it till after the election.

Shopping Cart

I’ve done a little knitting-related shopping in the last few weeks, and thought I would summarize it all here for you to drool over.
First is the gadget and tools category:

These are bamboo needles from S R Kertzer, ordered from Handknitting.com.

After I received these and took them for a test drive, I went back and ordered more. They come in 16″ lengths, which are sometimes very hard to find.

Here’s a heap of good stuff:

The little tool that looks like a dental tool is called just that. It has a tiny crochet hook on one end, and a pointy end on the other for picking out little knots.

And pins:

These have glass heads, so you can steam over them when blocking without melting them. What will they think of next?

And a variety of stitch holders.

And yes, those are crumbs on my dining room table. You want me to knit AND clean??

Then there was the little foray to Barnes & Noble yesterday. I came home with four books:

Knitting on the Edge, by Nicky Epstein
1000 Great Knitting Motifs, by Luise Roberts
The Knitters Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, by Ann Budd
Color Works, the Crafter’s Guide to Color, by Deb Menz

Where do I shop? Well, mostly online, though my neighorhood B&N actually has a pretty good knitting book selection. Other than Handknitting.com, I found these goodies at Angelika’s and Patternworks. If you’re looking to buy knitting books online, Needle Arts Book Shop has the best selection, hands down.

I’m starting two new projects, and still working on the Birch Lace shawl. I’ve done a couple of repeats of the pattern and it is starting to look more like a shawl and less like a big red fuzz ball. My next post will have details and pictures. I know you can hardly wait!

Weekend Knitting

Here’s what I did most of the weekend:

And Willie’s main activity:

He likes to sleep in Riley’s crate. Sometimes he even sleeps in there when Riley is in the crate.

I finished the second sleeve on the “Audrey” sweater.

This went relatively smoothly, after I screwed up the first row after the cast-on about 4 times and had to start over. Don’t even ask how one screws up the first row of a pattern 4 different times.

Here is my “gadget” photo of the day:

Somehow I ended up with an extra music stand in my house. This one got put to work as a pattern stand.

I started the second “Audrey” sleeve today. Now that I have figured out where to do the increases and decreases, this one should go fairly quickly. (I know, I know; that’s tempting the knitting gods again.)

A nice little package arrived in the mail today as well, from here.

This is Phildar Aviso, a cotton/acrylic blend that is just as soft as the Rowan Calmer. I had trouble getting this red to photograph correctly; the true color is a crayon/lipstick red, and not as orange-y as in the photo. I finally broke down and ordered this to make the “Kate” sweater from Phildar Famille Spring 2004. Here is a photo from the Kate Along blog.

I’m not too sure when I will do this. I want to do one more lightweight sweater before winter gets here, then start on the Rogue sweater as my main winter project. How to choose, how to choose?? I think this calls for a glass of wine to aid in the decision making process!

Ikea, The New Knitting Store

I made my first foray out to the local Ikea store over the weekend. What an adventure! That place is just amazing; I won’t even go into the Swedish meatballs in their cafe. I made one knitting-related purchase. For some time now, my stash has over-run the storage containers I have. Mostly these are a variety of Rubbermaid-style boxes in different sizes and shapes. Then there were the shipping boxes from several months of online shopping.

Those are the empty boxes that I finally threw out after I bought these cuties at Ikea:

Aren’t those just adorable? They have lids, they stack, and you can buy casters for the bottom one so you can roll the whole thing around. Please note the other storage thingie off to the side, full of yarn also; and the yarn in a bag sitting on the top. That’s the Beaverslide yarn intended eventually for Rogue.

And here is a shot of another storage solution I found at Target some time back:

And a wicker basket full of a variety of things:

There is just no way I am crawling under the bed to take a picture of the three plastic storage boxes in hiding there. I call that the Yarn Protection Program.

As you can see, I am well-prepared for when the Big Earthquake hits the Pacific Northwest. I can pack all this into the car with a couple of gallons of water, and head for high ground. The yarn shops could be closed for years, and I wouldn’t run out of knitting projects. Well, OK, I would need an RV to pack all of this anywhere; it’s really sort of a rhetorical discussion.

I am still working on the front of Audrey; I’m into the armhole shaping. Work is getting in the way of knitting this week. I have a man cooking my dinner tonight so will get a little knitting done while the pork roast is cooking on the barbecue spit. Now, what kind of wine goes with barbecued pork roast??
(That’s actually also a rhetorical question; the answer is “whatever bottle you have handy”.)