A Knitting Day Trip: Tolt Yarn and Wool

Yesterday I wrangled two of my good friends into my car and took a little day trip out of the city and into the wilds East of Lake Washington. After about a 45 minute drive we arrived in Duvall and had breakfast at the Grange Cafe. This place is delicious. The coffee was tasty and appropriately strong and there were plenty of vegetarian options - my veggies benedict was cooked to perfection and served on a homemade biscuit. Yum! After lingering over our breakfast we made the short drive to Carnation (about 15 minutes South) to attend the Grand Opening of a new yarn store - Tolt Yarn and Wool.

 There was quite a crowd! I think the owner and employees were a little overwhelmed but they were cheerful and smiling and happy to see so many people make the trip.  The store is open and airy (well, it would be open and airy on a normal business day) and smells like freshly cut wood and sheepy wool. In a word, heavenly.

 The fixtures holding yarn were beautiful and inventive. I was particularly taken with this old p.o. box unit. Those are tiny balls of Rowan Fine Tweed.

There were tons of samples throughout the store. This is a Lopi sweater displayed next to Lopi and Peace Fleece yarns. The store is thoughtfully curated with basics like Cascade Yarns and Malabrigo interspersed with interesting and harder to find yarns like Jill Draper, Sweet Fiber, and Spincycle. I came away with some Imperial Stock Ranch Tracie Too in Navy Blue and a heavy duty Tolt mug for my morning coffee. The line to check out was looooong but the little bag of swag they snuck into my bag of purchases and the opportunity to knit while in line made it worthwhile. I'll definitely go back soon!

Swap

BFF socks
Originally uploaded by ErinBirnel

My knitting group recently completed a second round of swapping projects. Have you done this before? Someone (as in me and my co-organizer) takes a poll as to who wants to participate, takes a poll as to the type of project people want to make, assigns secret partners, creates a deadline, and then you all swap projects with the appropriate people on swap day. It's great fun when everything goes smoothly - so far this has been a mostly smooth process for our group. In any case, I received these beautiful socks from Sharon in my favorite sock yarn, Hazel Knits Artisan Sock.The pattern is BFF Socks by Cookie A, a pattern that I've been wanting to knit for a while but never have gotten around to knitting. Thanks, Sharon! They're already getting all day wear!

Happenings

The past few weeks have been busy, busy, busy. I don't feel like I got much of a break from the holidays even with being quite ill for about a week and not having class in the evenings anymore. Life continues to happen whether I'm ready for it or no and there are groceries to be purchased and work to do and travel plans to be made (Stitches West anyone? Let's meet up.).

 

I was contacted by a certain designer to do some sample knitting under a tight deadline for a new line of yarn. The yarn is lovely and tweedy and soft and round and even after knitting with it for about a week straight I'm ready for more. The photo shoot was Sunday so as soon as the whole shebang goes live I'll share them with you!

 

My bestie came to visit and attend the ALA Midwinter Conference at the Seattle Convention Center. We've been spending as much time as possible together between her all day attendance at the conference and my having to, you know, work and spend time with the family. In fact,I worked a half day Monday in order to spend some quality time with her which may or may not have included the eating of cupcakes.

 

I'm feeling encumbered by my smallish hoarde of WIPs left over from last year. For whatever reason I'm not able to shut them out of my mind like in previous years and it's driving me a bit bonkers. I like to start off my knitting year with a clean slate and even though I'm not starting a ton of new projects I don't feel like I'm making much progress on the current projects. Everything feels a little stagnant and I'm not sure how to resolve that feeling except for casting on a new project which only exacerbates the problem. Any solutions for me?

This & That

I realize I've been pretty quiet lately. Maybe that's because now that I'm done organizing our move I've been organizing a crap-ton of other stuff like Knit Night at the Rat City Rollergirls with some of my awesome knitting group. Yeah! I had soooo much fun and got a little over zealous reenacting jams with Stariel who was injured in my..um..excitement. Next up is my housewarming a la People's Pub which is in my new hood and a visit from my BFF at the end of the month. Now that Old Moldy is out of my life I've been doing quite a bit more knitting including my Mom's birthday sweater (Mom, pretend you didn't see this!). When I asked her what she wanted she sent me a picture of a big, woolly, cabley, collared sweater but with added text for something "summery". Ignoring the picture I immediately went to some organic cotton/milk fiber yarn that I've been wanting to try and hit up the ChicKnits patterns we have at the store. I should finish tonight with plenty of time for blocking, drying, and mailing before birthday time.

Unexpected

I received a lovely and unexpected gift in this afternoon's mail. It cured my recent homesickness for the time being. My best friend sent me some honey made by a friend of ours, a pear shaped candle & holder from the local Mendocino Bounty store, and an awesome kids' book called "The Tenth Good Thing About Barney". The card in back is a woman holding up a sweater with a heart/thought bubble that says World Wide Knitting. Awww. Ever since the little one has arrived I miss my hometown more and more, which is weird considering how ready I was to leave when I moved to Seattle. However, the incredibly hot summers are not missed nor the even-more-depressed-than-Seattle job market. This cheered me up big time. Thanks, lady!