Life as a Spectator Sport

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Saturday, September 29, 2007

Too much knitting

Never thought I'd say that! I'm used to knitting in ten or fifteen minute spurts, a few rows or rounds, and then an interruption of one variety or another. Today I sat and knitted for a couple of hours without much of a break, and my wrists are telling me that was too much.

But it was fun, and I'll probably go again. I'm not good with crowds, and would have enjoyed it more if I had known anyone else or if there had been fewer people. But it was still a nice break from my usual day.

One odd thing occurred. The organizers had multitudes of door prizes, and periodically called out badge numbers and gave away interesting fiber-related things. At one point, the woman with the microphone said the next door prize was a knitting bag from Mosaic in Blacksburg. Mosaic is the closest thing to a local yarn store for me, and I was thinking how nice it would be if I won this time, when she called my number! I leaped up, accepted the bag, gushed something about how much I had hoped I would win that, and returned to my seat to examine my prize. To my amazement, what I was holding was not a knitting bag at all, but a plastic shopping bag imprinted with the name of a completely different store in Roanoke, with a bunch of business cards and a ten dollar gift certificate inside. I stammered something about having been given the wrong thing, but no one paid any attention, and I decided it would be a bit churlish to make a scene over it.

So I have a gift certificate that expires at the end of this year for a shop that was closed when I drove by on the way home, and that I will probably never get back to. I'm not going to use five dollars worth of gas to drive to Roanoke to redeem a ten dollar gift certificate. If I'm lucky, I'll have work up there on a day when I can take time to run by the store again, but otherwise that door prize was a bust.

field_berries_topBut I did score some yummy bright red, blue and purple roving from Misty Mountain. I've never spun up anything quite this loud before! I have eight ounces so I can make socks, or a scarf, or a hat and a pair of gloves, whatever strikes my fancy.


misty_mountain_sockI also bought two skeins of their lovely sock yarn to make a Clapotis. The pattern calls for worsted weight yarn, and it had never occurred to me to use anything lighter weight. But several people today had brought Clapotis' made from sock yarn, and I loved the lacier look and feel of them. 800 yards of any really nice worsted weight yarn would have made a substantial dent in my budget, but the same amount of sock yarn was a fraction of the cost.


claudia_bearded_irisFinally, in the goodie bag handed out, there was a skein of Claudia hand painted merino sport yarn in the Bearded Iris colorway. This is something I would be unlikely to ever buy for myself, so it was a truly lovely gift.


knitivity_carinaAnd when I got home, there was the yarn I had ordered from Ray at Knitivity, some very pretty fingering yarn in his Carina colorway (named for its resemblance to the colors in the Carina Nebula). That was just for stash, because I liked it.

So in spite of the foul-up with the door prize, the day turned out very nicely, and I'll certainly take part in this again next year.
posted by Liz @ 5:35 PM     |


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