Piss and Vinegar and Yarnocopia

Warning, image heavy post.

Yes, I am in a mood. First, let’s get the niceties out of the way. Even though I am in a dark, dark mood, I am very excited about this. It’s the uber-beautiful Sarcelle Shawl by Kristie. I ordered my pattern today, and I hope it will be here by next week. Not that I have time to make it, mind you, but just knowing that I could if I had the time is enough for me.

I do have this, which arrived in the post some weeks ago, but since it’s the beginning of the semester, I haven’t had much time to do anything but fret over syllabi, passwords, meetings, email, and such. Plus, I wanted to save the pics for Eye-Candy Friday.

Several bloggers have been raving in equal amounts about the circ needles and the sock yarn from Knit Picks. I have a ton of circs and dbl pts, and right now I don’t need more of either, but that didn’t stop me from ordering back-up dbl pts for this reason: just because. Since I was ordering dbl pts, I decided to go for the free shipping, which meant adding some more to the order, so why not try the sock yarn, which after all, is dirt cheap. Yes, I paid more for potting soil for the garden this spring than I did for all this sock yarn.

The colors are quite lovely, even the confectionary pale Hawai'i, which I would not order for the color itself, as I find pastels a bit sweetly sickening or sickeningly sweet ~ I can’t decide which, but I got it for the name, having lived on the islands in my youth. Good grief!!!! What kind of absurd reason is that to buy yarn?


This color in no way resembles any memory I have of the islands, unless they are trying for some sort of sunrise effect, still, pastel landscapes/seascapes were not memories of Oahu for me.

The problem is, that after using Koigu for my hubby’s KTC socks, I am spoiled, spoiled, spoiled, and fear I can never go back to another yarn, which means I am going to have to force myself to finish my Merike sock, which is equally lovely in color, or perhaps even superior in color to the Koigu, but not quite as splendid to work with.

I have been swatching this Knit Picks merino and looking at patterns and designing patterns and begging this yarn to work with SOMETHING, but to no avail. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

But look, the colors are quite lovely and superbly named. The blue for hubby (Yukon), the reddish brown (Redwood Forest) for me. The Yukon is a perfect metaphor for cold, blue, icy winters ~ it reminds me of one of my VERY favorite short stories “To Build a Fire,” by Jack London.

The Redwood Forest appeals to me because of my newly found love for deep, crimson reds and because of my environmental consciousness.

Okay, so yes, I do have my hubby’s KTC sock to finish. One sock is not a pair. But I can’t find the stupid spiral note pad that has all my modifications in it no matter where I look. Did I leave it in the office? In a classroom? In my backpack? On a plane? I plan to make two socks that are at least somewhat similar in size and shape, and I modified this pattern’s length and shape, so I am stuck here where I can go no more until I find the mods. Plus, this is a slow-going pattern, and I really do want to move on to something else, you know, the whole second sock thing.

I have been trying, albeit very unsuccessfully, to purchase this yarn (Handmaiden Sea Silk) in the Pale Autumn colorway. There are only two stores in Michigan that carry Sea Silk, one is two miles from my old house (but 22 miles from our new house ~ grrrrrrrr) located inside, yes — inside, the hospital where my niece works. The other is on Mackinac Island, which is 286.9 miles away. Not quite my local ys.

Although I would trek to the hospital and deal with the insane parking structure issue and the absurd cost for parking, the shop never, I mean never, answers their phone. WTF!?!?!? Do they want business or not? They don’t even have the decency to have a recording that says “Hey, sorry we are at lunch, or procuring more yarn, or knitting, or fighting our way through the insane parking structure and rummaging through a purse for absurd parking fees money, or we’re assisting with a code blue or red or whatever cardiac arrest is,” or any of a myriad of things they might be doing at this present moment other than answering the phone to tell prospective customers who are hungry to spend cash money, actually salivating, drooling, losing their minds, in a fit to have a cardiac arrest to shell out money that could be used for absurd parking structure parking fees to buy some yarn that is pretty much impossible to find within a 1,000 mile distance of my house.

My actual LYS has never heard of Handmaiden Sea Silk. Indeed they have not heard of Handmaiden Yarn at all, not even Artist Fleece. WHAT?!?!?!?!?! And they are a yarn shop? And a high-end one (overpriced) at that?!?!?!!? Staffed by the absolutely most currish, uptight, long-nosed people they could find in the county. You can see why I don’t frequent there, and why I am compelled to drive across counties to buy yarn from hospital shops that don’t answer their phones or from shops that are literally not even on the same part of the Michigan mitten that I’m on. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

My other option is, of course, to procure said yarn online. But as you can plainly see, Knitty Noddy, which is even farther away, as it is in Oregon and I am in southeastern Michigan, does not have the colorway in-stock, and indeed it will take 4 to 6 to 8 weeks for the color to arrive to them or me ~ it’s a bit confusing here ~ even if the yarn from Nova Scotia, which is closer to me than Oregon, can get through customs in 4 to 6 to 8 weeks, get to Oregon, then get back here to southeastern Michigan sometime before Christmas or New Years. By then the yarn will have more miles on it than my car, and I will have moved on to my next, new obsession that I got from reading someone else’s blog. Shit.

Plus, it's a humid, overcast, hot, blek day, and M. won't go to the movies with me on my last weekend of free time for the next four months. But, oh, he'll take me to see STUPID movies, like Mother __ucking ________ on this Mother __ucking ________!!!! Double shit!