Knitch, Atlanta's Purl

My favorite yarn shop, Knitch, moved to a new space, a storefront that's right on N. Highland. It's one big open space, with white shelves packed with yarn lining the walls. It reminds me of Purl in NYC.

Their inventory is a little thin right now. I imagine they held off on getting more yarn until after the move. Still, I had a 15% discount about to expire, so I got a skein of Malabrigo in the Oceanos colorway. It's a varigated blues and oh so soft, as Malabrigo is. I was drawn to the laceweight first, but figured I'd be much more likely to knit it up as a scarf before I'd make anything out of the laceweight. Still, the varigation in the laceweight was so, so pretty.

Orange dyeing

A few weeks ago, my favorite yarn shop, Knitch, was clearing out their Cascade 220 wools, to make way for Shepherd's Wool yarn. I noticed that Shepherd's Wool has more yardage than Cascade, costs more, is softer than Cascade, but not as many colors.

Anyway, it was $5 a skein, how could I say no? So I didn't.

In thinking about my new Hillary orange kick, I looked for oranges and yellows and thought if I hold them together, they might give me the color I want.

I picked Gelato (yellow) and Mimosa (orange) and this is what I got:

Uh, no.

So I took the yellow and overdyed with Orange kool-aid and got this:

Better.

I didn't have any particular cardigan pattern in mind, so I swatched to figure out gauge, see what the colors look like and got these:

Gelato-overdyed-with-orange-koolaid and Mimosa:

Gelato-overdyed-with-orange-koolaid, Knitpicks Bare undyed yarn, and Mimosa:

I really like the results. And now I have this much dye left over:

I have more KnitPicks Bare yarn, so I can dye some more but not sure that I want to have that much orange yarn. I believe this will be a case of me holding on to this until my husband gets tired of it taking up space in the refrigerator.

It's only about 3 packets of sugar-free koolaid, 2 cups of vinegar, and 6 cups of water. It probably costs a total of $2 so there's no huge cost if I toss it out, but still, I'm reluctant to toss it out.

I'm going with the Gelato-overdyed-with-orange-koolaid, Knitpicks Bare undyed yarn, and Mimosa and starting a Long Coat with Chevron Lace, referred to here.

eta: to include recipe:

• Pre-soak yarn in warm water for 30 minutes. When ready to dye, squeeze out most of the water so it is just damp.
• In large ceramic bowl, mix 3 and 2/3 packets of orange koolaid, 9.5 cups of water, and 3.5 cups vinegar.
• In glass bowl, scoop in 2 cups of the above dye mix and 4 cups water.
• Lay in one skein of the presoaked yarn, making sure that all of the yarn is submerged.
• Cover with plastic wrap and put in microwave for 2 minutes on high.
• After 2 minutes, heat for another 2 minutes on high. All the dye should be soaked up and water clear or just cloudy white.
• Using wooden chopsticks, remove yarn from glass container and squeeze out water.
• Hang up yarn to dry.

Orange

For ages, I really didn't like the color orange. But somewhere in the last few years, I've warmed up to it, but only certain shades.

I'm a winter, so I like cool colors, like tangerine and the lighter sharper oranges. Autumny oranges are not for me.

When Hillary Clinton took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in her head to toe orange pantsuit, I thought "I have got to make something orange."

Just finished Sarah Palin give her speech at the Republican National Convention and thought "She's no Hillary Clinton." and again thought "I have got to make something orange."

This weekend Knitch is having a sale, $5 for Cascade 220. Last time I was there, I didn't see any oranges I liked, but Friday, I'm going to leave work early and scope it out again. If I don't see the color I want, I can always dye my own with Kool-aid.

I had started the Opulent Raglan from Knitscene in the Rowan Felted Tweed I got on sale at another yarn shop, but just am not excited about it.

What does excite me? A chunky-knit, Emerald sweater from Knitty for fall. Just finished one in blue for Sister, just ordered the yarn for a red one for Best Friend, it's time to make one for me. In Hillary Orange.

First time at Knit Night

As much knitting as I do, I actually doing it alone. But last night I went to a Knit Night for the first time.

It was at Knitch, my favorite yarn shop. I went, by myself, not knowing anyone and just sat down where I found space.

It was with a group of 4 women and as others have found, conversation veered from knitting, to beauty tips, to love lives, to politics. It seemed that people were Democrats and wavering between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama.

As one person said, if Hilary was the Democratic nominee, she'd vote for her, but Barack was more appealing. Another person said that Barack Obama made her feel least sleazy after listening to them campaigning.

Not quite a ringing endorsement, but I think that's how politics are nowadays. We're all cynical and want to be inspired and believe, but also think that politicians will say anything to get elected.

Personally, I'm leaning toward Hilary Clinton and would love a ticket of Hilary Clinton and Bill Richardson.

I took one of those online campaign matching quizzes and got matched most with Mike Gravel and least with Fred Thompson. This was the first time I heard about Gravel. He hasn't been doing so well, getting about 0% in the caucuses and primaries.

For the first time, on February 5, Georgia will be having a primary. I better do some research.

In the course of chit chatting, we talked about what we do and where we work. It turned out that onee of the women had heard about my organization. I went prepared with business cards and newsletters so I got a little networking done too.

Knit Night was fun and I'll have to do it again sometime.

Sotto Sotto

Tonight Husband and I went to Sotto Sotto restaurant to celebrate.

But first, we stopping at Knitch where I bought a skein of Malabrigo in Ocean and the book Knitted Toys: 25 Fresh & Fabulous Designs by Zoe Mellor. I had store credit just burning a whole in my pocket.

Sotto Sotto is in Inman Park, Atlanta's first suburb, at the outer limit of the trolley car line. Tells you how far back that was. It's full of grand old Victorian houses, some antebellem mansions, and just nice big houses. When we first moved to Atlanta 13 years ago, Inman Park had fallen into hard times but now in the past 5 years, it's coming back up. Sotto Sotto's in a part that has new restaurants and condos and is really been part of the intown revitalization. Now with the subprime mortgage bust, I don't know how the area will be affected but it was really nice to visit.

Husband and I have been talking about moving to a condo and maybe we'll consider Inman Park now too.

Anyway, dinner was great. We had a bottle of merlot, and started with an antipasto plate with hams, cheeses, olives, and marinated mushrooms, and a plate of tuna carpaccio. Yum. As Husband ate the olives, he arranged the pits into a smiley face on the bread plate. We talked about how 16 years ago, we went to McDonald's and somehow he got a hold of a Ronald McDonald's puppet and tore a hole in the puppet to make Ronald a bit more anatomically correct with his finger. And he also picked out 2 bits of the bun to make his burger a puppet too. Husband would make a great dad.

Anyway, for dinner, Husband got the pasta with balsamic vinegar and I got spagetti with seafood. Both were very good. For dessert we got Pan di Spagna, which was a little round of vanilla pound cake (smaller than a cupcake) with whipped cream and roasted plums. All in all, a great dinner.

We also reminisced about past anniversaries. Last year we went to Miami and Key West. The year before, to Sedona, Taos, Santa Fe. Maybe next year we'll go somewhere too, but this year, work has been stressful and hectic, plus we're saving for me to buy a new(er) car.

And now, the Malabrigo is calling me. So soft! I plan to make Argosy out of it. But when that will happen, I don't know.

Heard the Yarn Harlot, finished Honorine

I tried to explain to Husband who the Yarn Harlot was, and why I was going to see her. She doesn't teach people how to knit, but it's more knitting commentary, like all those sports analyst shows where 4 guys will sit around and talk about sports and not actually play the sports.

Yesterday the doors to the Hilan Theater opened at 5pm. I got there at 5:30ish and there was a line out on the sidewalk. It was all women, all white women, as far as I could tell. Out of the crowd in the theatre, I saw only one black woman. And there was me.

Before Stephanie Pearl-McPhee aka the Yarn Harlot came on, Knitch raffled off some prizes. As I knit on Honorine, I balanced my raffle ticket on the knitting and tried not to knock over my wine. I was concerned that someone in the row in front of me would win, jump up, knock over her chair at the thrill of winning 2 skeins of Malabrigo, and knock over my wine. Didn't happen. Nor did I win anything.

The Hilan Theater seems to be more set up for live music performances because there were three levels, 2 bars in the open space, concrete floors, a rail for putting drinks, and they had to set up rows of folding chairs for us. I sat in the upper level, three rows back, and couldn't see anything. Which in the end was fine, because most people had their eyes on their knitting, not on Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. The e-mail from Knitch said that there were 700 confirmations sent out, but it looked more like 250. But I'm no gauge of crowds.

I'm looking forward to seeing what she posts about on her blog about her trip to Atlanta. She did mention at that the Atlanta airport, in the ladies' room, she ran into Vickie Howell of Knitty Gritty. Makes me wonder what she was doing in town.

YH was funny, and talked mostly about how people don't understand knitting and knitters. A lot of what she talked about has been covered in her books and her blogs, so I won't discuss too much of it here. One of my favorite lines was "There are no machines that shear sheep, so every single skein of yarn started with a man with a seriously pissed off sheep between his legs. In my mind, he's a sweaty, shirtless Australian named Mick."

I really liked her discussion about the ability of knitters to change the world, using the example of Knitters Without Borders, her effort to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders. It brought tears to my eyes because as the primary fundraiser for my organization, I really would love to be able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual donors, as she has.

And I had to laugh as she compared fundraising to knitting, each requiring small gestures repeated over and over and over, ad nauseum, to create a beautiful, useful, and larger whole.

The first shift of book signing was changed to occur at the theater and the second shift at Knitch. I was in the first shift, but didn't get her to sign my books. It was getting late, I hadn't had anything to eat, the space was crowded and confusing with people trying to line up for the book signing, people trying to leave, people trying to get to the bathrooms. I got crabby so left. To go to Knitch to shop.

The store was full too, which didn't help my mood. What did help was fondling all the yarn. I did buy some hand painted sock yarn (don't remember the company now) to make another So-Called Scarf, nevermind that I haven't finished the first one. I'm really liking the stitch pattern. Mainly, I was there for some bamboo circular needles, which they keep behind the counter, so if I have to stand in line for needles, I might as well buy some yarn and make the wait worthwhile. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

When I got home, I showed the yarn to Husband who saw that the skein of 450 yards of machine washable, hand painted yarn was $20.50 and asked what are you going to make with that? I said a scarf. The colors are pale but not pastel, mostly light blue with some pink, light green, and then blips of chocolate brown. I'm trying to branch out from my usual jewel tones and primary colors.

Then I finished Honorine before bed. Now all that remains is to send it through the washer and dryer and it'll be ready for wearing. Pictures next week.