yarn

The Race to Finish a Jumper for Skye

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 1 Comment
Nick walking on the pier at Broadford
Nick walking on the pier at Broadford

My husband and I have a thing about Scotland. Actually, he does and I’m getting that way after years of visiting with him. While Scotland as a whole is a great place, Glasgow where he was a Visiting Researcher, and the Isle of Skye, where his father took him hiking growing up, have made a lasting impression. So every year or so we go back.

The Isle of Skye is a lovely place and we like to stay at a climber’s hotel, called the Sligachan, which is nestled in the Cuillins where we do most of our hiking. However last year we missed booking it (needs advance booking for high season) and ended up in Broadford. While the hotel smelled reminiscent of an elephant enclosure, there was very good espresso and cheese board (two of our life staples) at café called Beinn na Callich and excellent seafood at the Harbour Restaurant (El Puerta)—both can be reached on foot.

A heron fishing in the evening
A heron fishing in the evening

Across from the seafood place is a tiny little road leading down to the water, which hosts a few artisan shops. One of them is a fabulous wool shop called Handspinner Having Fun.

Blue Faced Leicester DK from Handspinner Having Fun
Blue Faced Leicester DK from Handspinner Having Fun

Since I’m drowning in wool, I tried very hard to avoid the place and rightfully so because they have so much lovely wool (and silk), it is nearly impossible to leave empty handed. As the name implies, they spin and buy wool locally. For instance their Hebridean Wool is from sheep within 2 miles of the shop. I picked up some Blue Faced Leicester dk in a faded denim blue to create a warm, yet lightweight sweater Nick would be able to wear year-round, as opposed to his Orcas Isle Sweater which would sustain him in a Nor’easter.

Chain on the jetty behind our hotel
Chain on the jetty behind our hotel

Nick’s sweater is coming along, albeit slowly, which is why my last blog mentioned I can really only do one major project a year. It would help if I were a bit more monogamous in my knitting, but big projects make me antsy for the feeling that comes with finishing. My goal is complete it so Nick can wear it into the shop when we visit next month. If that’s going to happen I need to get on it! At this rate I’ll be knitting it right up to the door.

I’ll be sure, in May when I visit, to take pictures of the shop.

So Much Yarn–So Little Time

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 2 Comments

Confession time. I’m drowning in yarn.

I have a huge cache of yarn. And that’s an understatement. Oddly I lust for more. And “How did you acquire so much?”, you might rightfully ask. Two reasons:

  1. My grandmother purchased most of it
  2. I purchased yarn myself that I wanted, but didn’t have a project in mind for (at the time).

I’m about to attend the first Stitches West that I’ve been to in 10 years. And why haven’t I been going? To avoid acquiring more yarn.

Let me first explain the grandmother bit above. She was an avid knitter. If you saw her without knitting needles in her hands she was either drinking coffee or making/eating food. Every year I got between 4 and 10 sweaters, most of which I donated to goodwill when I went back to graduate school and divested myself of most my worldly belongings. Meanwhile, grandma was slowly losing her wits. And one day in a moment of clarity she asked the yarn be boxed up and given to me. Why? She’d forgotten how to knit. Alzheimer’s can do that to you. She remembered I’d picked up needles in my 20s to deal with my stressful travel/work schedule, but only for those few hours.

Mercerized Cotton
Mercerized Cotton

I flew back to Boise, Idaho to get my truck, drove to Pocatello (my place of birth) and bagged up closet, drawer and attics bursting with yarn. Nine 32 gallon bags completely stuffed, compressed and thrown into the back of Ford Ranger. When these were unpacked, sorted, and stacked Tucson, I realized I had more yarn than a yarn shop. Piles and piles of it. Some already partially knitted. Some of it water/fire damaged. Some of it only odds and ends. Much I recognized as leftovers from sweaters she’d knitted. She effectively bought out store closures of their entire stock.

Several reduction ideas immediately occurred to me. I boxed up many of her notions and some of the colors I couldn’t bear to look at—especially if they were in unable to be dyed fibers—and sent them to a women’s correctional facility in NJ who was specifically asking for yarn and tools to knit with—four boxes of it. Another two boxes—mostly of singleton skeins and the rest of her Boye aluminum straight needles I gave to a local nursing home when I moved to Seattle. That left me with about 2/3 of the original.

Taking advice from Sally Melville’s first book helped be do away with quit

Acrylic and woll
rylic and woll

e a bit more, but time was ticking and I wasn’t really making a dent in it. In the Fall of 2014 I got laid off of work. I was rehired, but took a two month leave to “recover”. During that time I photographed the yarns and started posting them and my more recently completed projects on Ravelry. I’d always been a casual user until those two months, now it is rare that a day goes by without me being on it or introducing someone to the site.

My first mistake was not adding prices. This got me bumped from a group where you could post. Then, not having a blog (as you can see this one is recently addressed) worked against me. I needed a place to post my designs and yarns where they could persist. So here we are. What prompted me to move on this was that I found ANOTHER box of yarn in a clear plastic container that I had not catalogued, photographed and posted in my stash. Might there be more? Anything is possible.

Mercerized cotton
Mercerized cotton

I’ve had pretty good luck just posting on my stash under ‘will trade or sell’. But this site I plan to dedicate to designs I’ve created myself to use up the stuff and to the yarns themselves—several of them may pre-date WWII. Some so old, they just say “Ribbon Yarn” rather than having a name. Most from foreign countries. Many, simply one offs. What is left is beautiful and what I want to do is share. Enjoy!