I am supposed to be stashing down, so where did all this beautiful yarn come from? Well, that's a story . . .
May 2 was Yarn Shop Day in the UK, but one of the local yarn shops (This is Knit! to be exact) decided to celebrate, too, with goodie bags and special sales. The Dublin Knit Collective decided to organise a yarn crawl of the city centre, starting at This is Knit! before heading over to Accents Café for the City Centre S 'n B from 12-2pm. Then we would pick up lunch at Duck before crashing at The Constant Knitter for some knitting, shopping, and a workshop on making your own stitch markers. It was all set to be a great day, especially if the notoriously fickle Dublin weather decided to cooperate.
Well, we had a few hiccups. Dublin Bus went on strike from May 1-2, so unless you lived within walking distance of the city centre or some other form of transport (LUAS, DART, or bicycle), getting into the city wasn't easy. Then the Dublin weather conspired against us by pouring down rain all day on the 2nd. The allure of yarn is enough to bring me out even if it means riding my bike in pouring rain, but we were worried that no one would show up.
We were wrong. Not only did several brave souls drive, ride, or walk in, we even had a group of knitters from Maynooth come in on the train! We were enough to form a queue outside of This is Knit! before they opened, which tickled the TIK ladies pink. We even tromped merrily through the rain, high on yarn fumes and tea. It was a great day and we are already planning next year's crawl. Hopefully there will not be a bus strike next year and we can hit Winnie's Craft Café, which is south of the city centre.
I ended up high on yarn fumes, so I blew my stashdown and got three skeins of Hedgehog Fibres Sock and a skein of Artesano Alpaca Silk Lace, plus yarn from This is Knit!'s goodie bag. So what am I going to do with all this yarn? Well, I already have started a project with a skein from the goodie bag.
This Studio Donegal Tweed will grow up to be a Tea House Theatre Tea Cosy for Titania the Teapot. The yarn is a little light for the pattern, so I am holding it double to get the right thickness. It's coming out very dense, so I can't work on it long without my hands hurting, but the tea will stay warm!
These two of the skeins of Hedgehog Fibres Sock want to play together.
These were an impulse buy. I do love me some Hedgehog Fibres and I just wanted to plaster myself to This is Knit's Wall O' Hedgehog on Yarn Shop Day. These two looked beautiful together and reminded me of the Dublin sky. I think they will become a Salacious shawl. I originally thought it would be cool to throw in some clear beads in the sections with Tremble to imitate raindrops, but I'm not sure I'll go through with it.
I got the this skein of Malabrigo back in February because it was beautiful and Solis doesn't often come in as a semi-solid. I thought it wanted to become a shawl on its own, but it kept coming up to me singing, "I wanna dance with somebody!" in a poofy '80s hairdo and rollerskates, so I decided to find it a dance partner. I thought it wanted to be bold and play with an orange yarn, but comparing it to the skeins at This is Knit! did not yield any suitable partners. I requested assistance in being enabled from the very helpful Lisa, and we decided that darker was the way to go, especially with this dark version of Vengeance. They are still not entirely sure what dance they want to do together. Perhaps another Salacious or perhaps try Dissent by the same designer? How about a Byatt? We shall see, but I want to make a shawl that has bold blocks of colour so the variegation in the Vengeance is well-displayed.
The vivid purple is Artesano Alpaca Silk Lace and I think it wants to be a Rainshine so it will go with a purple skirt I have. Clear beads, I think. If you haven't guessed already, I have a thing for alpaca, so I couldn't leave it behind.
But why buy this yarn anyway? Aren't I supposed to be stashing down? Well, yes. I'm keeping tabs on how much yarn I'm buying and I know how much yarn I can knit in a year, so I know how what my limit is before I can't make my 10K net stash loss for this year. (Let's just not mention how close I am to that limit, shall we?) That doesn't answer the question, though: why buy this yarn anyway? Two of the projects I can somewhat justify, but the other one seems pure decadence. Why bring it into the stash?
Two words: cuddle yarn.
I may be inventing this phrase, or maybe it's out there already, but the way I define cuddle yarn is that it is yarn that is meant to be cuddled and help reduce stress. Things are rather crazy here at the moment and I am feeling really stressed, but when I look at these skeins of yarn and think about what they are going to be or could be, I calm down a little. They are so soft to the touch that it's hard to stay angry. I'm sure other knitters take care of these feelings through casting on projects for themselves, but I'm up to my eyeballs in gift knitting at the moment and can't cast on much else or I won't make my deadlines. This is probably contributing to the problem, but I want to continue with the gift knits since I already have the yarn and plan differently for next year. Next year, oh next year shall be glorious. I'm still debating what plan of attack to take for next year, but both plans are very, very exciting.
Until then, viva the cuddle yarn!
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