Yarn. More of. Yessssss.

 

I should have stayed home today and focussed categorically and unconditionally on finishing SHADOWS.*  But when Fiona and I decided we were going to have a Yarn Adventure today it was after Nadia had gone on maternity leave** and I could pretend to have Monday afternoons free since I’m used to taking them off to have voice lessons in.  Sure.  That’s logical.  It was certainly before Gemma rang me up yesterday and suggested I ring a quarter peal at the abbey and then come back to her house for tea followed by handbells. . . .

            And I didn’t want to DISAPPOINT Fiona, did I?  Not to mention disappointing me.  Fiona had found a new Hampshire yarn shop.***  We totally had to investigate it.  Of course.  Had to.  Our honour as hand knitters was at stake.†

            So we courageously set off this afternoon despite the Sudden Heavy Thunderstorms Which May Cause Flash Floods in Some Areas.  Fiona had driven here through one, and there was another one racing to meet it across New Arcadia, so I was watching the rain beating the paint off the walls of the cottage and thinking ummm . . . But by the time we arrived†† in Greater Opprobrium there was SUNLIGHT.  Clearly this was a SIGN.  It was even more of a sign that despite neither Fiona nor I having written down either the name or the address of the knitting store we found it with . . . distressingly little trouble.†††

            We walked through the door.  We were surrounded by yarn.  This is not going to end well, said Fiona.  Of course this depends on your point of view.  The proprietor seemed to think it ended very well.‡

Fiona's new stash. With hellhound butt. Hellhound felt I'd been gone ALL DAY and should be paying attention to HIM.

Now a lot of the yarn in that photo is sock weight.  And Fiona says it’s a well established fact that sock yarn is not stash.  This would be almost enough to make me start collecting sock yarn too . . . but I think of those horrible little 2 and 3 mm needles and . . . no.  At least not until I can knit like I have fingers instead of semi-articulated giant cucumbers on the ends of my wrists. 

Yeep.

Fiona, however, is making a BLANKET out of SOCK WEIGHT YARN.   I may have posted a photo of this once before.  It’s getting bigger.

 

Mad. Beautiful and mad.

THIS IS ALL SOCK WEIGHT YARN.   EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

See? This is mine. I hardly bought anything.

And none of it is sock weight.  NONE.  There are two pairs of leg warmers on the right.  And the rest of it is a single jumper or cardigan-like object.  There were only five of the striped yarn, of course.  Life is like this.   You can’t do anything useful with five little skeins of fat yarn.  I perceive not merely stripes in my future but arithmetic.   I’m already failing on the latter however.  I meant to buy eleven skeins.  I seem to have come home with thirteen.  Fiona has suggested helpfully that perhaps they’re breeding. 

           I told Fiona that she had to bring her yarn in with her when we got back to New Arcadia because I wanted a photo.  Okay, she said, but I know the real reason you want a photo.  It’s because I make you look restrained.

            Well, yes.‡‡ 

* * *

*  Any minute now.  I’m so near the end . . . really . . . I’m just . . . not . . . quite . . . there . . . yet.  . . .The sound here is heavy gasping breathing as of someone not fit enough for marathons approaching mile twenty-six.  Or possibly mile thirty-three.  Or possibly mile four thousand six hundred and twelve. . . . 

** IT’S A BOY.  

***  And I found another one so we have another Yarn Adventure that we really need to go on.^  Not to mention return visits to successful previous Yarn Adventures.  

^ Google is a danger to society. 

† Or possibly at needle.^ 

^ Also I haven’t seen Fiona in way too long.  Back when she was coming once a month or so to sort out some of the secretarial-assailable detritus in the Hellhole I Call An Office+ we had an excuse to waste a little additional time around the edges of the work-related in hanging out etc, which I admit got a lot more drastic when I started knitting.++  Work still offered a kind of fig leaf for our expeditions.  But I can’t face everything else that that Fiona could help me with till I get back to the almost-year-old auction backlog and clear out the 1,000,000,000 doodles and assorted extras that are sitting around in heaps.+++  Which she will then parcel up and send out.  Which will happen as soon as I finish SHADOWS.  Siiiiiiiiiiigh.  And I wonder why my tension level keeps trying to burst out of my skull and start taking over the universe. 

+ But what would you expect a hellgoddess with hellhounds to call her office? 

++ She insists I asked her to show me how to knit.  I distinctly remember being tied ruthlessly to my chair and having knitting needles BRANDISHED at me. 

+++ Mostly the hellhole is a nice friendly hellhole.  Not so much this last year. 

†† Possibly by a somewhat indirect route.  I claimed to know how to get there and then I allowed myself to become distracted by telling her bell tower stories. 

††† Yarn fumes.  Bloodhounds have nothing on a knitter picking up that delicate aroma of knittable stuff.^ 

^ Speaking of irresistible, smells, and dogs, and lowering the level of this blog dramatically, hellhounds and I met a lady out with her Very Large and Ill Mannered Labrador yesterday.  I was watching the performance and thinking, do you do this every day?  Maybe it’s a friend’s dog and you’re swearing you’re never going to do this again.  It was on a lead—a short lead—and we were giving the two of them plenty of room.  Even so I thought it might have her over.  She eventually stopped, braced herself, and waited for us to go on by.  I thought the dog was going to turn itself inside out. 

            She’s not usually like this, panted the woman.  She’s on season.  And yours are. . . .

            Entire.  And clueless.  And I plan to keep them that way.  —I don’t think they were any more interested in Salome than they are in any fresh new exciting dog.  But I took an extra grip on the leads and we sprinted past. 

‡ She also told us about this:

http://www.twistedthread.com/pages/exhibitions/viewExhibition.aspx?id=39

http://www.alexandrapalace.com/whats-on/the-knitting-stitching-show/

You should go, she said.  We take a coachload every year.  It’s wonderful.  You’d love it.

            Yes, that’s what worries me.    

‡‡ AND THIS WASN’T ENOUGH.  Then we went to an old-books store.  Which was nearly across the street.  It was like it was waiting for us.  You know there still are old-books stores.^  With shelves and books and . . . um . . . glue-dust-and-paper fumes.  

^ Other than in New Iceland.