Still lovin' Knit Picks

So, I alerted the folks over at Knit Picks about this issues I had with the ball winder, and even gave them the link to that pretty scathing review that I wrote last night. I really commend the folks there for being able to read something that harsh about their product, and then to come back and send me a lovely reply. Here's what they sent me:

Dear Karen,

I read your review, it sounds to me like you got a defective ball winder, I'm happy to replace it.

That is the advantage of the Knit Picks ball winder, if you ever have any trouble with it we will send you a new one at no cost. If you are willing to give it a try let me know, otherwise I'm happy to give you a refund and you can toss that one in the garbage.

Sincerely,

Jeanine
Knit Picks Customer Service

I really have to say that made my day. It absolutely, totally, made my day. I let them know that I would prefer to take the refund and just get one like I used to have, but other than this one time, I've never had a problem with any of their merchandise. In fact, I usually love their stuff: I love my Options needles, my Harmony wood dpns, the needle case that I got (still need to take pics of this), and all the yarn I've bought from them in the past. And now that I know they've got such good customer service, I have to say that I'm pretty happy to keep shopping with them.

So, lovely knitters, please don't take what I wrote last night as a reflection of what I think of Knit Picks in general. It may well be that I ran into the defective winder in the lot, but I have to say that I'm unfortunately once bitten, twice shy, and so I went ahead and got myself a Royal ball winder again. However, will I be shopping at Knit Picks again? Absolutely.

Hmmm.

A few months ago, Woolgirl was having a sale on a whole bunch of different worsted weight yarns. So I bought some Madelinetosh Tosh Worsted in the colourway "Seaglass":



I knew it was going to be a bright, vibrant green from the photo on the website, but somehow I wasn't expecting quite this degree of electric neon-ness. It's in the process of being turned into this:



Will I be able to pull this colour off? Am I carrying my love of green too far? Will it be a fun awesome sweater or will I end up blinding passers-by? Stay tuned! =)


P.S. I totally fell off the yarn diet wagon. Some Calmer at >50% off was calling my name. I couldn't not do it!

Lorna's Laces Sale (again)

Remember last year's Lorna's Laces tour and sale? It's hard to believe that it happened over a year ago, especially since I haven't touched the yarn that I bought that morning! Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that I shouldn't have gone out and bought MORE yarn this year, right? =)

Last year I was #40 in line, so this year I was determined to be one of the first 20 into the yarn room (oh, the things we do for yarn). I'm not a morning person at all, but having to get into work at 7 am some mornings recently really served me well, because I made it over there just before 8. I was #15, so there are 14 people who are crazier than I am. =)

I've been on a yarn diet since April 1, but I knew that I'd be going to this sale before that so this is the one exception until at least the end of June. Maybe that's why I went way over budget!



That's 7 skeins of Green Line DK in a one-of-a-kind colourway, 4 skeins of Lion and Lamb in Pine, and Shepherd Sock in Montrose and another one-of-a-kind (it reminds me of Annie Modesitt's Roadside Gerry). I was really hoping to get some Green Line DK today, so I'm quite happy about that. The Lion and Lamb is a bit of a luxury, and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but it's a yarn that I've always loved from afar.



I'm also seriously loving the Montrose colourway.



And now my stash has officially reached ridiculous proportions, and I may need to extend the yarn diet beyond the end of June.

Lorna's Laces tour and sale

One of the perks of being a member of the Windy City Knitting Guild is the privilege of being able to attend their annual Lorna's Laces tour. Not only do you get to see where all the magic happens and see a dyeing demo, but part of the event also included a mill-ends sale. Whee, sale!

The sale started at 10 am, but people got there good and early. Only 20 people were let into the sale at a time (space issues, it's really hard to believe that ALL of Lorna's Laces comes out of a few not-particularly-enormous rooms), so everyone got a number in the order of their arrival. I didn't manage to wake up early enough and got there at 9, so I was #40. To be in the first 20, I would've had to get there around 8, or maybe even earlier.

The sale was....rather overwhelming. While waiting outside for my turn I saw all these people walk out with bags stuffed full of the most beautiful yarn. By the time I made it in there, most of the stuff was pretty picked over and it was hard to find sufficient quantities of colours that I liked (i.e. lots of single sock yarn skeins, argh!). Which was probably a good thing, I went in telling myself I wouldn't spend too much money and I did manage to stick pretty well to my budget.

So, what did I walk away with? 4 skeins of Shepherd Sock in Child's Play and Glenwood, and 3 skeins of Shepherd Worsted in Aslan. I LOVE the Aslan colourway, and the Shepherd Worsted is the softest yarn ever. I have no idea what I'll do with it, perhaps yet another Clapotis?



We also got to see some yarn being dyed in the Lakeview colourway (which I must get some of, since that's where I live after all!), here's a rather bad photo of the yarn on the dyeing table.



And after the yarn is baked and rinsed, all the skeins get hung up to dry.



It was a fun morning, although the weather left much to be desired (cold, rainy). Spring, where the heck are you?

Retail therapy

I've been feeling a bit down lately. I'm not sure what exactly it is - if it's the weather, work, or something else that I can't put my finger on. But whatever it is, I felt that I deserved a little pick me up, and went for some retail therapy. I have to say that I was very, very good, and didn't buy any more yarn. After my huge trip during Lettuce Knit's sale, I have told myself that I need to use up at least 2/3 of that yarn before I get more. I let myself pet new yarn, and yearn for some, but I didn't get any. Here's what I got for myself.



The wallet on the left wasn't bought at Lettuce Knit, but in another store in Kensington Market. It's not that I needed a new wallet; it was totally an impulse buy. But I still love it, and have already moved my stuff into it. The book is pretty self-explanatory. I suck at finishing, so I thought this would help me out a bit. And I always wanted one of those shawl/sweater pins, so I gave in and got one.

I know retail therapy isn't really a good solution, but man did I feel happier after buying all that!

Slightly spendy, but resolutely un-guilty

So I've REALLY fallen off the wagon this week. Since the yarn splurge last weekend, I've done a bit more shopping. I went back to the store that was having the moving sale (twice even, but once was purely just to keep someone company) and bought a bit more Noro and some Elizabeth Zimmerman books (gotta see what all the fuss is about, after all). The Yarn and Fiber Company was having a 15% off sale and I picked up some Kureyon colourways I had my eye on. I went to another yarn store to pick up a pattern. I saw some very very discontinued Silk Garden on eBay, made a modest bid, and won (to my utter surprise, I was completely expecting to be outbid).

Normally I might be feeling terribly guilty about all this, as though I were spending away my future or being totally reckless, when I had specifically told myself I wouldn't buy any more yarn until Easter. But really, it wasn't that much additional money, I am far from dipping into savings/credit to finance it, and all the yarn/books were on sale (well, the pattern wasn't). All the yarn is also earmarked for specific projects that I had in mind beforehand, not projects that I made up on the spot in the store.

I think I've gotten a lot better at not buying yarn on impulse, at not saying "oooh, here's some pretty yarn....quick, what could I make with this?", or justifying a yarn purchase by saying "I guess I could always just make a scarf out of this". I have a lot of "this is for a random scarf" yarn in my stash, and I'm tired of it (I love all the yarn of course, it's just that I and my family have a lot of scarves now). The Silk Garden is for a large-ish project-in-progress (I'll blog about it soon, I swear, but there's been a lot of other bloggable knitting these days), and the Kureyon is for a smaller version of a log cabin-y blanket that I saw on Ravelry (damn you, Ravelry!).

Anyway, I'm sick of looking at yarn now. Unless one or two very very specific opportunities come up, I'm more than done for now. =)

In other news, I've finished the front of my Nothing' But A T Shirt (I have no idea why the picture looks so weird and swirly, click to see the actual photo on Flickr).



Immediately after casting off the front, I threw both body pieces into a Eucalan bath and pinned them out. They are drying on the blocking board now, and once they're dry I'll sort of pin them together and see how they look on me. I pinned them out to the correct dimensions, but I'm terrified that the yarn will snap back and create a lot of body-hugging negative ease. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I'm no longer the underweight-to-the-point-where-people-were-telling-me-to-please-put-on-some-pounds girl that I was 6 months ago, and I'm not sure how flattering it would be. =)

I did the shaping for the neck using short rows, instead of doing the step-wise bindoffs (like I did for the back), and you can kind of see where the stitches look a bit wonky as a result. I hope that will disappear once I pick up the stitches for the neckband (I was kind of hoping they would even out with blocking, but it appears you can still tell).



And on a completely unrelated note, I love that Daylight Savings Time is so much earlier this year. More light, hooray! I have a feeling that it will be hard to wake up tomorrow morning, though. =)

Oopsie

I had a little falling down today. You see, several yarn stores were having sales. You'd think that, being on a yarn fast, I'd know better than to even contemplate setting foot in a yarn store, but what can I say, I'm lacking in willpower these days (although I've managed to avoid buying yarn online, even though I nearly succumbed to the virtual sale bin at Purl).

The first store was having a massive moving sale. Everything at least 30% off. I bought an armful of Silk Garden (colourways 245, 247, and 255), a skein of Kureyon (colourway 95), and a skein of Colinette Zanziba (to be knit into a scarf together with any Zanziba leftovers from my mom's Ab Fab throw). The Colinette was 75% off, the Noro 40% off. How could I not?



Aside from the Kureyon and Silk Garden, they also had Blossom and Cash Iroha and Iro and Silver Thaw, it was really really hard not to sweep entire shelves of Noro into my shopping bag (I won't even get into the Rowan and Manos and everything else). I may have to go back there.

Then at knitting group afterwards, we discussed the fact that another yarn store nearby was having a sale, so we packed all our stuff up and took a little walk. This store was selling Tulip Sweater kits, using some of the new Dream in Color colourways.



I know I haven't even started my first Tulip yet, but I figured that this would be the most economical way for me to try out several Dream in Color colourways at once. These colours are mostly different from the ones in the kit I bought from Lettuce Knit.

So, so much for Lent! Ravelry will really be the death of me, that's how I found out about both of these sales. It's an entire community of enablers. =)

Lenty

Hey, did you know that Ash Wednesday is NEXT week?? That's really really soon. You're wondering why I care, right? Well, every year I give something up for Lent. Yes, I know I'm the furthest thing from Christian or Catholic or whatever, but I do it anyway. Sometimes people give me funny looks when I tell them.

For the past couple of years, it's been chocolate in all its forms. One year it was doughnuts (Dunkin' Donuts = evil. Not to mention not really tasty at all). This year? I'm thinking it should be yarn. Yarn shopping, specifically. Mostly because I'm in one of those moods where I just want to buy up all the yarn in the world, and also because giving up chocolate right now would probably kill me. Not that I'm incredibly stressed out or anything, but you never know how things will go from one day to the next (today I moved from the depths of despair (everything I do turns to crap!) to being super-duper elated (yay! I made purple cells! Pretty purple!) in the span of a couple of hours. I'm glad it wasn't the other way around) and I don't want to be without my coping mechanism. =P

I haven't decided 100% yet, but I guess I should soon. In preparation, maybe I should buy some more yarn as a last hurrah? =)

(A later thought: Hey, do you think that this could be offensive to some people, like they'd think I was trivializing something that was a serious thing for them (i.e. using Lent as an "excuse to diet")? I've never really discussed my Lenten habits with any devout Christians, so I wouldn't really know. On the other hand, I suppose people can choose to be offended by just about anything.)