CYTSE Part Two

After a very long delay in my blogging (having to do with getting on a cruise ship to Alaska and being away from internet among other things), I hereby present part two of our Canadian Yarn Tour for Stash Enhancement! About time!

As promised, I did locate the name and website of the cool weaving/knitting store in Thunder Bay, Ontario (mentioned in my last post), Threads In Time. Do visit if you live near the border, it's worth the trip.

Moving on to the province of Manitoba, our tour wouldn't be complete without making a stop at Ram Wools in Winnipeg, which we nicknamed "little Webs". What a great store! It's located in an industrial section of town, but we really lucked out as we happened to hit it on a day in which everything in the store was 25% off! What could be better? There were a half dozen women working that day, buzzing around the tall shelves with their baskets, filling all the phone and internet orders they were getting for the sale. So they pretty much left us alone to browse the shelves, which we thoroughly enjoyed!

Here's some goodies little knitter picked up:


I have most of EZ's books and love them. This is a GREAT book! I would highly recommend it if you're an EZ groupie like most knitters are. By the way, I happened across this blog...a blog full of Zimmermaniacs! Haven't yet joined, but I'm sure I will one of these days.

The bright green Sisu wool is destined for a Bee's Knee's sweater, not sure which one yet. And I couldn't resist some more sock blockers (after all 25% off is tempting). They're not as fun as Chappy's, but useable. Fiber Trends brand, feels like they are made from some type of plastic composite:

The alpaca sock weight yarn will hopefully be some socks someday. It's amazingly soft and will probably need reinforcing yarn on the foot and heels. But that's for another day.

Which brings us to the burning question from last post:
If YOU saw this on the side of the road, would you not screech on the brakes and make a hard left turn into this place?

I thought so.

Well, here we found Egli's Sheep Farm and Animal Park, which had a store, which sold all sorts of sheepskin and wool. (and even some manufactured yarn.)
I must admit I was a little bit creeped out because of all the sheepskin products inside and the sheep farm outside, but I perservered and it really was a lovely shop with some very friendly sales people. I found a manufactured wool, zippered sweater vest that was amazing and warm, but couldn't bring myself to pay the price (which was well worth it...) since I knew there were so many yarn stores ahead in our travels that I knew I would need to purchase something from!

I did pick up a neat little sheepskin hot water bottle cover, though. And off we went.

Coming up next: Calgary, Alberta.

Canadian Yarn Tour [for Stash Enhancement]

Hello from Up North! We have been traveling across Canada all week and checking up on some yarn stores in our travels. But first, I should fill you in on the rest of the New England and upstate NY stores we stopped into before crossing the border.

First up, the Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney, Vermont where we not only browsed the store but were treated to a little impromptu tour of the spinnery from the owner. GMS processes and spins their own yarn and also does custom processing for wool growers. One thing we didn't know before was that they don't do their own dying. It is sent off site. I really liked the organic wool/cotton, which is greenspun (no harsh chemicals in the processing) and I picked up a couple of skeins for a baby sweater.

Next was Saratoga Springs, NY where we stopped into Saratoga Springs Needle Arts. I felt odd vibes in the store, maybe it had something to do with having been directed to the sale bin as soon as I entered the store (hey, I know I look a little scrubby, we're camping here...but no need to jump to conclusions!). But big knitter said he didn't feel the vibe, so maybe I was just having an off day. The two salespeople didn't seem to like each other is all. They did have a large selection of yarn and of wool.


Later that day, we caught a little place called Indigo Yarns in New Hartford, NY (no web link)that really had that "hole in the wall" feel to it. The owner was so friendly and so genuine that we thoroughly enjoyed the visit. Big knitter picked up some lovely green Debbie bliss cashmerino aran for a blanket for our "green loving" granddaughter. I picked up a tiny skein of Debbie Bliss pure silk in pink, I'm thinking baby bootees for that. And then some funky orange and green Stork from Dalegarn for socklets or socks without cuffs or whatever those are called. I will call them cuff-less socks. Then, after a full day at Niagara Falls, which I highly recommend that you see at least once in your life (I have some photos and stuff on my bear store blog about that stop), we headed into Canada. And that's where our Canadian Yarn Tour for Stash Enhancement, aka CYTSE, began.


We by-passed Toronto, which I'm told has some amazing yarn stores. But it also has millions of people who all love to drive their cars around the city, so we took the widest swath around that traffic that we could. By the way, just west and north of Toronto are about a billion wineries, so if you are into wine, it would be a great place to visit.

Being the weekend, we had to wait until Monday for our very first yarn stop in Thunder Bay, on beautiful and BIG Lake Superior. As it turned out, there were two yarn shops in the same block in downtown Thunder Bay. And the street is torn up around there, so you have to hoof it in there, which isn't too good for business. But the first store we stopped at was called Caryll's Yarn Shop. (no web link that I know of) She carries a wonderful supply of Mission Falls 1824 wool and Big Knitter picked up his next TWO new projects, a blankie for our new grandson in navy and light blue and a new blanket for our oldest grandson (Big Knitter will add some red to that one.) Here's the progress so far on the little blankie:

I picked up a skein of wool for felting along with a free felted baby bootee pattern:

I also picked up a Mission Falls pattern book which has a lovely cabled baby sweater in it. But I just couldn't bring myself to buy the yarn for another baby sweater, since I'm smack dab in the middle of my Puddle Jumpers Sweater. I have slaved over this one. (Well, not really, but it's challenging!) I finally got the gauge swatch done. I did a topic search on the knitlist to figure out how to swatch in pattern. What I did was: I knit the 26 stitches of the pattern for about 4 inches, then, since I couldn't steam it or wash/dry it here on the road, I just sorta let it hang off the needles for a day and then I measured it. It seemed to be about 4" on a size 6 needle, so I called it good and cast on the 12 month size sweater on size 6 needles. Here's what I've got so far: (the color is off in my photos tonight...this is a bright green)Oh, also, since I usually knit socks on circs, I thought how hard could it be to convert this pattern onto one big circ? Am I not a glutton for punishment? Noooooo. Crazy? Maybe.

I decreased my number of stitches by 4 on the body and 2 on the sleeves to make up for not having seams. An added bonus is that I don't have to purl as much since I will always be knitting on the right side! One down side is it's hard to do the sleeve increases in a k2,p2 sleeve (more about that at another time, after all, there's only so many hours in a day).

I have about 3 inches done, the sleeves will be 7" and I will stop knitting in the round on the body at 7", at which point I will have to knit the front and back seperately (unless I want to do steeks, which I don't think will work on cotton...and I don't want to experiment on this particular item!)

I'm not sure how I will sew the sleeves in yet and what I'm going to do with that inevitable hole under the arm, but I will have to cross that bridge when I get to it.

But, getting back to the tour. Our second shop in Thunder Bay was a serendipitous find, in that we were leaving Caryll's and spotted an organic food store that offered hot organic coffee and we stopped in for some. There was a great open sitting area in the back of the store and I mentioned to the owner that it would be a fabulous place for a knitting group to meet. We said she should talk to Caryll about sharing some business. Then, she asked if we knew that there was yet another yarn store in town that specialized in natural fibers and that the owner was a weaver? No, we didn't know that. Well, it turned out to be just around the other corner. And, as you can guess, we trucked right over there.

I picked up a couple skeins of Regia silk and a lovely hank of Lucy Neatby Celestial Merino Dream in the "Sugar Maple" colorway. (again bad color; trying to photograph without flash)
And Big Knitter ordered a blanket sized supply of a beautiful colorway of Fleece Artist worsted weight hand dyed merino. And I didn't get a picture of it. But the owner will be mailing it to us when she gets it in. And I might have to claim that blanket.

I can't for the life of me remember the name of that wonderful store, but the owner is a super talented weaver and has some of her large weavings adorning the walls of the shop. I will remember the name, I promise, and include a link in my next post.

And that's about it for now. Stay tuned for the next installment!

Until then, here's a question: if YOU saw this on the side of the road, would you not screech on the brakes and make a hard left turn into this place? I thought so.More CYTSE coming soon!

I really don't like swatching anyway!

A little disappointed with my gauge swatches. For the Classic Elite Provence, I should be getting 6 ½ stitches/inch IN CABLE PATTERN. I got 5 in stockinette, but I don’t really know how to do a gauge swatch in cable. I will turn to the Yahoo knitter’s group to see if anyone knows how to do it.

The swatch for the Blue Sky handspun cotton is also problematic. I got 5 ½ st. using a size 1 needle. Then I tried a bit of I-cord to see what that would feel like. It’s so stiff and unstretchy, I just think I’d never ever get the sock up over my ankle if I did the pattern I wanted.

Tonight we are camping somewhere in the woods about 130 miles or so north of Toronto. Today, we visited Niagara Falls for the first time ever. (totally worth the trip.) See my bear store blog for some photos, etc.

Road Knitting and Yarn Shop Browsing

Here's a baby boy's sock, ready to finish off (yarn from last post):
I was thinking about getting some navy blue ultra suede and sewing some kind of sole on this sock, kinda like the store bought ones they have for babies now.
We made a stop at Webs on our way out of Massachusetts yesterday. Here's the haul!
This really nifty bag from Lantern Moon, it has loads of inside pockets and is soooo soft. The straps are adjustable too.

And:1)Reynolds Soft Sea Wool, destined for some sport weight socks. The color is actually eggplant; 2)Blue Sky Alpacas alpaca/silk, destined (maybe) for my Embossed Leaves Socks from Favorite Socks; and last but not least, 3)Blue Sky Alpacas handspun cotton, DK weight, which I will swatch and hopefully use Favorite Socks' Austrian Socks. I wound the first ball of the handspun and it feels thicker than I thought it would be, so we'll see how the swatch goes.

Oh, and:

The booklet is Puddle Jumpers from Classic Elite. The sweater is the Provence Cable Pullover. The yarn is Classic Elite Provence cotton. For little knitter, this project is classified as HUGE. But I will attempt the bittiest size, 12 months. I originally saw the sweater on the back of Knits magazine and fell in love with it. So, when I saw the booklet at Webs, and then the yarn in the same colorway as shown, I just couldn't resist.