A few weeks ago I took a quick trip back to Colorado to visit family and friends. I stopped by my old LYS, where I’m pretty sure I ended up leaving Maggie Casey with the impression that all Montreal knitters are drunks. She asked me to say hello to Sally Melville and her daughter Caddy when I got back to Ottawa, which I happily did at their recent book signing at Workshop back in Ottawa.
I also went with my dear friend Naveen to check out the two yarn stores in Boulder that have sprung up since I moved away in 2007. One is Gypsy Wools, at the corner of Broadway and Pine (I think?)–doesn’t have a website yet but the owner assured me one is in the works. Almost all of their stock is unique to the store, from hand-dyed yarns to local fleece sold as batts, with an emphasis on rare and heritage breeds. I snapped up the following batts, made from a prize-winning Merino/Teeswater fleece:
Then there’s this, which excited me almost as much as the fibre:
That’s a salvaged bobbin from an old mill. At a mere $2.50 apiece, I knew I’d found the perfect nostepinne I’d been looking for! The ridges do a great job of holding the yarn and I love that it’s a reclaimed piece (the mills of North America are a fascinating, if often rather dark–child labour laws were enacted partly as a response to the conditions in those mills, part of textiles history). Here it is with a center-pull ball of some organic Shetland wool from Ontario:
Next up, I spin horse hair… really!