Knitting News and Rescues

Well, it seems I have been doing a lot more reading than knitting lately. (And, as little knitting as I am doing, I am doing a lot more knitting than blogging.) But I did churn out this in record time.

Felted bag in Feltro and Feltro Caipo

It's going to be a felted bag, made from several balls of Feltro and Feltro Caipo, acquired on sale recently at Shall We Knit.

Lots of changes happening in the local knitting arena. Local yarn store Shall We Knit in New Hamburg is moving to a new location in Waterloo. (Distance-wise, the Waterloo location is closer, but driving-wise it should be about the same, due to the peculiarities of access routes.)

Another local yarn store, Main Street Yarns in Milton, is winding down operations and won't last out the summer. This makes me sad in so many ways. It's a small shop, but for the size of the shop the Noro selection has always been very good, as are the sale prices. It's probably my second most frequently visited yarn shop, and I am really bummed that it's closing. It's where I bought some Colinette Point5 and a matching skein of Cascade 220 to make this lovely creation, my self-designed Bumpy Cowl.

My Bumpy Cowl, with yarn from Main Street Yarns

Even the yarn section at Len's Mill is being gutted. (We won't talk about the state of the yarn aisle at Wal-Mart, where I recently rescued a couple of balls of Mosaic. Yes, that's what it felt like when I purchased them. I was rescuing them from ignominy. One didn't even have a ball band. Sigh.)

Ball of Mosaic yarn from Wal-Mart


And speaking of rescuing, I feel like I rescued a fellow Noro fan in Lima, Peru. See, she was looking for (ISO - "in search of") a particular colourway of Noro sock yarn, and I happened to have recently acquired just what she wanted in a trade with someone in Texas.

Peruvian yarn...

You're probably thinking, just like I did, "Wow, Peru! All those lovely yarns!" But no. All those lovely Peruvian yarns are for export only. Poor Peruvian lady could barely even get natural fibres in her own country. So I traded her for some Baby Alpaca. Yeah, I am not a big fan of alpaca. But I asked for red, so maybe I can knit a charity scarf for the Red Scarf project.

...I got in exchange for this Noro

Anyway, I felt like I was rescuing a fellow knitter from Lack-o'-yarn Hell by sending her some Noro that I probably wouldn't have used for myself anyway, not being a fan of sock weight yarns (especially not ones with olive green, orange, and mustard as a prominent part of their colourway -- though I do like the purples, and you can't really see it but there's a bit of lime green in there too).