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Monday, August 27, 2007

Merino: The Gateway Fibre

Yesterday, a good friend of mine got married. I'm very happy for him - they're a great match, and in the 12 years I've known him, I've never seen him look as happy in his own skin as he has since they met. The wedding was small and sweet and very laid back, especially for being in such a posh location. We shared a table with 3 other couples, 2 of whom we knew, and we really enjoyed our conversation over the hundred or so lunch courses (and liberal pourings of wine...oops!) One of the wedding favours they gave out were these sweet little tins with M&M candies, printed with their names:


"Great stash boxes!" opined one of the table mates whom we knew. It later came out that the fourth gentleman at our table is an RCMP officer. Gulp. Well, we all know that we could only mean to use these little tins for stashing stitch markers. Or beads, yeah, that's it! Which was entirely plausible, since one of the women at the table is also a knitter, and we had a fine discussion of the merits of merino vs. bamboo; top-down vs. toe-up socks; etc.

After a very fine afternoon, we said our goodbyes and headed east, our old, decrepit, dented grey van belching its way through the Mercedes and Jags in the neighbourhood. Heheheheheh. Having had several glasses of wine (and finishing Mr.Q's champagne, purely selflessly as he was driving. Mmm hmmm.) I thought it would be a good idea to go to the yarn store. Because nothing is as fun as drunken yarn shopping! (Unless it's drunken yarn shopping with a gal pal, and a pool boy to carry our bags and massage our tired feet after the ordeal. Oh yeah, and to pay for it...)

(oops - was that my outside voice? Mr.Q, avert your ears!)

The yarn store drive-by was indeed successful, and probably a lot safer than trying to actually knit in that condition. There was a giant moose wearing knitted stockings in the window, which was briefly disorienting. Until the owner mentioned that it was there on purpose. (I didn't think I'd had that much wine!) At any rate, I found exactly what I was looking for:


I have no idea what the red stuff is. Merino something, I think. I'm not sure. I left the ball band on the counter. Ooops again! However, I'm very excited about it, since it's the perfect colour for these. And the orangey-bluey stuff from Indigo Moon (Which knits up beautifully, a friend of mine started her first pair of socks with the stuff!) will be a pair of Horcrux socks. (Yes, I've got a Harry Potter theme going on...and your point is? But you have to admit, they're cool patterns.)

Meanwhile, I haven't posted kittie pics in awhile. Brigid helps herself to my glass of water:


When that method proved less-than-successful, she got creative:




No, I didn't finish drinking the glass when she was done. I'm not that weird!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ooh, I saw that moose, too, and I wasn't even drinking! I thought it was a horse at first because it's so tall that from outside the store you can't see the horns.

While there I bought some sky blue alpacas organic cotton to knit up some baby clothes for a vegan knitter friend. She'll love them; it's so soft.

Marina from Coquitlam

Little Knittin' Kitten said...

Brigid is the same breed as my cat, Spirit. Spirit likes to drink the bathwater while I'm in it (human soup!) and has used that same paw-scoop method when she gets tired of hanging over the edge like one of those cutesy shelf ceramics.

Stella said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Stella said...

Let me try this again.....

It's me, the fellow knitter from the wedding. Just had a little sock yarn "accident" myself earlier today. Should be seeing them in about a week.

I'll drop my email here in hopefully non-spammable form:

li(DOT)stella(AT)gmail(DOT)com

Now back to knitting the bamboo/soy bolero that was supposed to be completed for the wedding!