Needles & hooks

New Definition of Torture

Last Thursday, I ordered a few books, a few needles, and a small amount of yarn from Knit Picks. Because express shipping wouldn’t get me the package by the weekend, I just chose the free shipping. It shipped on Friday and I’ve been watching the tracking. So I know that on Saturday afternoon, the package arrived at the sortation center at LAX. The place I’ve been working is right across the street from all the cargo centers at LAX. I could walk to my package. It’s right there! Why are they holding it hostage?!

Comments: 4 — Posted under: Uncategorized

Los Angeles Yarn Safari

My extended stay in Los Angeles continues and I didn’t have any specific plans for the weekend, so I decided to go on a yarn safari. I had a rough idea to get some sock yarn to make the Bee’s Knits Ruby hoodie but other than that, it was just an adventure. And it happened to be an odd rainy day as well, so I wasn’t giving up any sun soaking time. My hotel is near LAX, so I mapped out a handful of yarn shops on the west side (Manhattan Beach to Santa Monica) and set out. These are my travel notes:

1) Beach Knitting, Manhattan Beach. A few parking spaces in the back with an entrance through the stock room. Open airy store. Several couches and a big coffee table for a nice knitting nook in the back. Good selection of books. Modest selection of novelty yarns, several hand dyed sock yarns (Lorna’s Laces, maybe Claudia Handpaint), nice wools. Staff introduced themselves to me when I entered.

2) Slipt Stitch, El Segundo. Free 2 hour street parking. Crowded small store with stock to the ceiling, square bins piled with yarn, hard to see full selection. Small knitting table at front for stitch and bitch that greeted me when I entered. Tiny amount of Koigu, a few other handpaints. Nice selection of Cascade. More acrylic and novelty yarn than I would like. Knit samples all over the place. Some books and patterns crowded in near cash wrap. Didn’t look them over as I felt somewhat claustrophobic.

3) Azalia’s Yarn, Culver City. Storefront empty.

4) A Mano Yarn, Mar Vista. Free street parking. Small shop, densely stocked, cluttered feel. Boxes of unpacked stock shipment all around. Large table in front for stitch and bitch that was hosting a sweater class when I was there. Was greeted when I came in. Knitted samples everywhere. Huge selection of Koigu KPPPM, large Cascade selection, lots of Lorna’s Laces (not just sock yarn), Karabella. A wide variety of yarns I’ve never seen before. Good color selections in all carried. I found the sock yarn for Ruby here. And also walked away with some Lorna’s Shepherd Worsted and Karabella Chameleon in an odd purple/pink/lime green mix that I couldn’t put down. Don’t know what I’ll do with it. Got the Lorna’s for another EZ Baby Surprise. Was feeling motivated to start working on it ASAP, so I wound the yarn at the store and started asking around for the pattern at the shops I visited.

5) Yarns Unlimited, Santa Monica. Metered street parking (4 mins per nickel). Well stocked shop, tall walls. Room in back with large knitting table. Tons of novelty yarns. Most other yarns are acrylic blends (Bernat, Patons, Lion Brand). Honestly don’t recall if I saw pure wool at all. Pattern selection seemed to be mostly magazines and leaflets. Didn’t bother asking about EZ pattern.

6) Wild Fiber, Santa Monica. Metered street parking (4 mins/nickel). Large open airy stylish store. Very inviting, space to wander and fantasize about projects. Seemed to be mostly organized by manufacturer. Large island of Manos. Wall of Rowan. Wall of Koigu. Also Karabella, Debbie Bliss. Balls of bright colored roving stored decoratively on tops of shelves. Huge book and pattern area. Knitting/class area in back room behind a curtain. Didn’t see what was going on, clearly not a drop-in kind of thing. Had to interrupt employees at cash wrap to ask about EZ pattern. They didn’t have it.

7) L’Atelier, Santa Monica. Tiny parking lot, street parking. Small store, table filled with stitch and bitch. Store packed with people. Felt somewhat cluttered. The stock was all novelty yarns and luxury cashmere blends. No workhorse yarns at all that I could see (no Cascade or other wools, no simple cottons). I asked about the EZ pattern and the woman had no idea who I was talking about (I had to repeat “Elizabeth Zimmerman”). I visited this store 5ish years ago when I still lived in L.A. I recall they had better stock then and more of it. The table replaced several rows of shelving that they used to have. Shame. Because I found nothing appealing in this store.

8) Knit Knacks Plus, Santa Monica. Address didn’t exist.

9) Stitches from the Heart, Santa Monica. Metered street parking (4 mins/nickel). Small open store, stitch and bitch table at front. Was greeted when I entered. Mostly acrylics. But also tons of Alpaca bulky by several manufacturers. Small amount of interesting handpaint Manos-like yarn. Also had a Noro look-alike. Seemed to be randomly stocked. As it’s a store-front for a non-profit yarn charity, the wealth of acrylics made sense. Lots of discussion about all the charity projects the store had done.

10) Needlepoints West, Westchester. Street parking and large free lot down the block. A small disclaimer. I saved this store for last because I used to frequent it a lot when I lived in L.A. Back before I learned to crochet and knit, when I did a lot of cross-stitch. And it was my mecca. Lots of patterns and supplies. The storefront moved a few doors down while I was there and then the owner sold the shop just before I moved away. So when it popped up on my search for “yarn stores”, I was hesitant. It never had yarn before. Well, it does now. It still focuses mostly on needlepoint and cross-stitching. In fact, I think the supplies and stock for these crafts may be better and more nicely organized than ever. Although I thought the pattern section was less than it used to be. As for yarn, there is a small but respectable stock. What used to be the classroom at the back is now a yarn room. I noted a lot of alternative yarns - soy blends. I almost bought a ball of Tofutsies just because it’s made with chitin (shellfish).

As it was still sort of early, I went back to the first two stores to see if they had the EZ pattern or a solid yarn to match my sock yarn for Ruby. Slipt Stitch had an EZ book, but not the pattern. And they had some solid sock yarns, but none a good match. Beach Knitting had closed at 4pm. On a Saturday.

Summary
I’m spoiled.

In Boston, I have several stores I rely on for the basics. And they are well stocked. Wild and Woolly in Lexington satisfies my needs for anything but sock yarn (they never seem to order more than a pair’s worth in any “sock” yarn). I rely on A Good Yarn in Brookline for that. Now, I know that the Los Angeles climate isn’t suited for heavy wools. But no wools at all? And a poor selection if any? (Someone should tell L’Atelier that novelty yarns are out and felting is HOT!) I saw a decent amount of mercerized cottons at most places. But I didn’t even notice lace yarns anywhere.

I saw Artyarns and Malabrigio somewhere. Several places had a variety of Noro yarns. No one had any Dale yarns (and I was really hoping for Dale Baby Ull for my solid Ruby yarn). Most of the baby yarn I saw was DB Baby Cashmerino. That was stocked just about everywhere.

I tried to imagine which stores would serve me if I were to move back to L.A. I think A Mano is up there, despite the cluttered feeling (reminded me a little too much of Woolcott & Company in Cambridge which always puts me off with the clutter and struggle). Although this was the only store that compelled me to really look at things. I picked up a bunch of stuff that I didn’t buy. The owner clearly had a good eye. I think I’d also visit Wild Fiber again. But neither store would be the first place I’d head to when starting a project like Wild & Woolly is. The list of L.A. yarn stores is still quite long, I guess I’d have to keep looking.

Comments: 6 — Posted under: Retail Therapy, yarn safari

Adventures in Travel and Not Much Knitting

I’m back from my cruise. First, the disclaimer. It was this cruise. Yes, a cruise featuring Barenaked Ladies (the Canadian band). I’m a huge fan, I’ve seen them perform close to 50 times (I have to do a new count after the last tour and seeing them 4 times on the ship), and a pile of my friends and I were on the cruise together. It was non-stop fun. So, the projects I worked on recently all had to do with the cruise in some way.

First, there is this cross-stitch piece for a couple I know (glamour shot in the hotel room):

Close-up:

As you might have guessed, it’s from Subversive Cross-Stitch. I planned ahead before I left home and brought the floss and some spare Aida 14. A trip across the street from my hotel to Bed Bath and Beyond got me a frame. A wash in the hotel sink, lay out to dry on a towel while at work (wonder what the maid thought?!), and the room iron and board and it was all done. And the recipients loved it.

There were a few other gifts to give on the boat, not all of which I remembered to photograph. I made a silly wire and bead pendant that was very much an inside joke kind of thing. I made a neat spiral crochet bag for a birthday gift (and I should be getting the photo soon). But the best was my agony in air travel novelty fur scarf.

I needed to flesh out the gift of the silly pendant, so, seeing as Michael’s was selling most of their novelty yarn at steal prices, I decided to make a long boa scarf out of Bernat’s Boa yarn. 12 stitches wide and 2 skeins long. I cast on the night before I left and made sure I liked the width and then packed it up. But let me back track a bit.

As you might remember, I’m in Los Angeles on an extended work stay. The Friday before my cruise was my last day working. I checked on my flight to Miami and found that American Airlines’ website had no record of it! I called my secretary who called our travel department who said that something had screwed up but that it was all fixed and I should see the flight on the web in 30 mins. I did. So on Saturday I went about packing and getting ready. I spent some time getting the best seat assignment possible, and then I shut it all down and dropped some stuff off at a friend’s house for storage. Then I woke up early on Sunday for my flight from Los Angeles to Miami.

When I got to the airport, the computer wouldn’t let me check in. The self-service agent said there was a problem with my ticket and had me wait in line for a real agent. Fortunately, I’m Gold on AA, so I had a short line. The agent told me that I didn’t have a ticket. “But I have a seat assignment!”, I replied. After some tears (on my part), some heroics (on the agent’s part), and a Platinum MasterCard (on my part), I was in my assigned seats on the overbooked flight with no time to spare. While she was processing my charges, she had me run my large suitcase down to the other end of the terminal to leave it with TSA before they closed out the flight. I ran through security (also a Gold benefit), made a quick panicked call to my secretary, and got on the plane. I finagled the seat next to my best friend and we watched The Queen and Arrested Development and I worked through one ball of the Boa.

We landed in Miami and made our way to baggage claim. Now for the moment of truth. My bag was one of the first off the plane! Yay! So I camped out with our stuff and pulled out Boa, ball 2, and kept knitting while K looked for her bag. And looked. And looked. And I finished the 2nd ball. And her bag wasn’t there. The sum of the story is that we waited for the next flight from L.A., we went back in the morning before the cruise and checked the two red eyes, we called AA and they can’t trace the bag because despite putting 12 bar codes on it, they don’t actually scan bags as they get on and off planes. No more planes are due in before we have to get on the boat, so we go shopping for K and buy her new clothes and toiletries. AA only agrees to pay $75 because they’ll have the bag to us tomorrow; “um, we’re supposed to be at sea tomorrow”. We had one port of call, AA didn’t get the bag there. Fortunately, K bought clothes for the whole cruise. And her bag was in Miami on Friday when we returned.

Okay, so that was a long digression. Anyway, I knit a few stitches on the boat. A scarf I’ve been working on. No great “places I’ve knit” photo with the Atlantic in the background however. Didn’t want to get sunblock on the yarn. I didn’t start the project I’d intended to. But tonight is new Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars, so maybe then.

Comments: 5 — Posted under: Knitting, Cross-stitch, Almost Random

A Real Post.

This one includes pictures.

First, last I posted, I mentioned I was doing Weavette squares for this year’s ornament. And so I did. Here it is on the tree.

What I did was make two squares, one including beading, and then crochet them together with some stuffing. The beading was the trickiest part. I made a blank white square first and then I used markers to note which top strings I wanted to put beads on. Then I made sort of a pattern on paper per vertical string:
- String 1: (down) 2 green 2 red
- String 3: (up) 4 green 2 red
- String 5: (down) 1 color 4 green

And so on. The things you have to note are that there are two sets of vertical strings, even numbers and odd numbers, so I had two sets of lists. Further, you’re winding up and down, so that’s why I listed which direction the strings were going. Finally, I strung all the beads onto my yarn before I started winding the weavette. Making sure to swap which order I loaded the beads depending on whether the string was up or down. Then, with my loaded yarn, I wound the Weavette. When I placed a vertical that had beading, I slid those beads down. When I did the final weaving, I’d move the beads into place before running the needle. Took a bit of fussing, but comes out neat.

Here’s a close-up:

And here’s the back (my initials and year in backstitch):

On Jan 2, I came back out to L.A. for more work. I’m away from home until Mid-February working on a project out here. The days are long and tedious. I’m on site by 8:30am and I usually don’t get back to my hotel until about 7pm every night. I’ve done a little knitting, but not nearly what I’d hoped.

But there is a break in site. Tomorrow I leave for a cruise! So I’m in the middle of putting everything on hold while I’m gone. I’m sorting things for “leave behind” and “take on cruise”, I’m doing a ring check of my section of the knitting blog ring, I’m doing a gauge swatch for a project I want to do on the cruise, I’m listening to vintage Madonna, and I’m playing the very addictive FizzBall. Somehow I’m not good at focusing on any one of these activities, so I click on a blog, knit a row while I wait for slow hotel downloads, then play a round of Fizz.

And I have to give up my laptop in an hour so that I can stash some stuff at a friend’s house while I’m gone. See you all later!

Comments: 4 — Posted under: Knitting, Almost Random, Weavette

Did you get in on the SCAM?!

If you look at knitting blogs at all, I’m sure you heard about the Socks That Rock sock yarn club scam. Well, I was one of those scammed. I so enjoyed being scammed last year that I decided to be stupid and do it again. Imaginary yarn never looked or felt so good!

Comments: 1 — Posted under: Rockin' Socks