I am overdue...

for an update!

I wasn't really motivated to sit down and blog after the Yarn Crawl. I ended up being pretty tired and cranky on Sunday, and all I can figure is that it was due to a lack of sleep. Not even Starbucks can overcome enough late nights and early mornings and transform me into some merry happy sunshine girl. (Which everyone knows that I am not anyway, even if I tried. I am more the calm, serious, inflappable type.)

Last Friday I went to Thimbleberries and picked up my house kit for this month. I washed the fabric yesterday, but I have not started on it. I have also washed the fabric for the table runner, so I hope to start on that sometime soon too. I also picked out some way cool fabric to make drawstring pouches for my husband and my sensei for Christmas.

Note the cool dragons, red and orange fabric that looks like fire, and the blue script. The red fabrics are batik. Too cool! This is my first batik purchase. I adore the stuff.

On Saturday we did the Asheville Yarn Crawl. We could have seen even more stores, but honestly, I did not want to drive us all insane running around at a crazy pace trying to hit the stores farther out from the city.

We started with the mandatory stop at Starbucks before our ~45 minute drive. Then we went straight into yarn shopping!

Our list of stores:

1. Earth Guild - 33 Haywood St., Asheville. 828-255-7818

2. Purl's Yarn Emporium - 51 College St., Asheville. 828-253-2750

3. Asheville Home Crafts - inside Grove Arcade, Asheville. 828-350-7556

4. Yarn Paradise - 6 All Souls Crescent, Asheville. 828-274-4213

5. Yarns to Dye For (Hendersonville) - 927 Greenville Hwy., Hendersonville. 828-697-0630.

All of these stores are great, and for different selections of yarn. Some of the inventories overlap, but there is not so much overlap that visiting all of them is pointless. As a testament to that fact, group members bought items at each store. Each carries sock yarn, so you are covered if you are into that. If you have questions, let me know as I do not feel mentally equipped to handle detailed store reviews of each. We ate at the Tupelo Honey Cafe, which is great and a highly recommend it. We also stopped by The Chocolate Fetish, and I do not have any pictures of my chocolates because all but 2 have been eaten already. I love their European style truffles, much lighter and more enjoyable than the more dense American style truffles (They have those too, by the way. So you can get either!).

I can't really show most of what I bought, because it is for various swap partners that I have. I can share a skein of heavenly laceweight malabrigo (what a deal at ~$8 for 470 yds!)

which I will use to make a branching out. My knitting group pal Sara and I split the last two skeins of the black malabrigo, since the remaining colors weren't really "us." We should each have enough to make a branching out.

I think my squeeing over malabrigo just shows you what a sucker I am for merino wool. It is my absolute favorite thing in the world. Then I guess alpaca.

I also purchased some Brittany Birch dpns to try them. I just want to ask y'all one thing...the next time you recommend that another sock knitter stop using dpns and instead switch to the magic loop or two circs, please don't act like it is the only way to do it and the dpn knitter does not know anything. (Just how it annoys knitters when they are told that whatever knitting style they use is wrong.) Keep in mind that the dpn knitter may have already tried the other methods, and still likes dpns. For example, doing the magic loop is usually best on metal circs. But metal circs aggravated my carpal tunnel. So I tend to return to dpns alot! I only say this because it happens so often! And if you only knew how impossible it is to find size 6 wood dpns in this town, you would jump at the chance too!

I also finished one Inside Out (the ends are not woven in yet, in case I need to rob it for more fiber to finish the second one). But I screwed up on the needle size for the second, so I have to frog that and redo the short row foot. I ended up doing 3 cable repeats on the leg, and I think it results in a good length and nice cabling.