All Your Yarn Are Belong to Us

OK, first a confession.

I’ve finished my Ravenclaw scarf.

So I need to weave in some ends, or hack them off, or whatever I’m going to do with all the ends. Since I’m currently annoyed with the recipient, I’ll probably just snip them off. I received my order Saturday, and finished it Monday evening. Completed, the scarf roughly measures six feet long.

I did not follow a pattern, but eyeballed it all the way. I cast on 35 stitches, and knitted until it ‘looked right’ then changed to the grey, then blue, then grey, then blue again. I followed the more sophisticated scarf pattern, which involves a large block of blue, skinny grey stripe, skinny blue stripe, another grey stripe, then another block of blue. The picture will explain it all, and I’ll included the ‘pattern.’

However, since the scarf is finished, I’m already bored and restless.

And today, I finally walked into a real yarn store.

Without revealing my top secret location (a bunker in the side of a mountain, only accessible by helicopter, naturally) I’ll say that the closest yarn store is the Market Street Yarn & Crafts store, W.V. Feeling slightly intimidated, I walked into a place, with a feeling like you’re walking into a church. An ornate, hushed Catholic church that your cousins attend, while you’re the lonely Protestant off-shoot.

Oh. My.

I was immeaditely greeted by two friendly ladies, names escape me now, I want to call one of them Pam, but I’m not sure. One ducked out a few minutes later. I was on my knees much of the time, not exactly in reverence, but sort of. They had every kind of yarn that I’d heard of, but never gotten the chance to actually examine in this Red Heart Wasteland. Noro, Lorna’s Laces, Debbie Bliss, Blue Sky, Cascade, , luciously soft alpaca whose name escapes me, Elizabeth Lavold, tweed this, and tweed that, yarn with Teflon in it, sock yarn, lace yarn—I nearly keeled over. However, it was kind of hard to stroke the soft alpaca silk while lying on the floor, so I didn’t.

There were also books, everywhere, on racks, on turnstile ‘thingies’ books all over. Books plus yarn. It was enchanting. I kept coming back to this lovely, slightly fat yarn with alpaca and something else in it; the plum and yellow colors just screamed Hufflepuff. Perfect for the scarf I wanted for a friend. It also felt dreamily soft, but not fragile.

However, I still need to consult with them on exactly how this scarf is to be made, so, reluctantly, I left it behind, as well as this lovely soft hank of alpaca in a pure, crisp, natural white. Wah. I’ll come back to you, my darlings, I promise—-and you, too, “Pam”!