Tag Archives: Spinning

So, I recently went to several Latin American countries (and one Caribbean island) to speak about database technology. For those that are interested, I spoke at a conference and a 6-country tour. I had long plane flights and plenty of waiting, as well as some relaxing time, so here is what I got done:

I participated in the Tour de Fleece.

I worked more on my top-down Cecilia raglan cardigan. Before I landed in Boston I was able to get to the point where I put the sleeves on hold, so I’m down to the armpits:

I finished all the yarn I had for Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf. Unfortunately, it’s a bit too short, so I’ll have to find some other wool to ply with the Louet Black Diamond, that will match the purple, and then knit on it some more:

I made a baby sweater for an impending baby girl that my friend Linda is having. This is made out of Universal Yarn’s supreme cotton batik, which is the softest cotton ever:

Also out of cotton batik, I made another hoot cardigan for my friend Nathan’s son, who was recently born. I have to sew on the buttons and

And I made a pair of regular stockinette socks, with a sweet tomato heel, out of Mind’s Eye yarns amazing merino/tencel hand-dyed yarn. This yarn is wonderful, it feels like the socks hug my feet! The top pattern is just a knit/purl basket-type pattern (repeat 4k, 4p for 4 rows, then 4p, 4k).

And I made some hexipuffs in my spare time:

That’s it for travel knitting, for now. Tomorrow I depart for the Sheep’s Ahoy knitters cruise, so I hope to get a lot of knitting and spinning done then, too!

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, more about not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.

Note: I hope this article is helpful! Due to spam reasons, all articles on this site have comments disabled after a short time. If you want to leave feedback, you can tweet @sheeri or e-mail me at awfief at gmail dot com. (replace “at” with @ and “dot com” with .com to get the real e-mail address).
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, more about not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.

Note: I hope this article is helpful! Due to spam reasons, all articles on this site have comments disabled after a short time. If you want to leave feedback, you can tweet @sheeri or e-mail me at awfief at gmail dot com. (replace “at” with @ and “dot com” with .com to get the real e-mail address).
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, side effects not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra buy I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:
subway car – IMG_0247.JPG

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, more about not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.

Note: I hope this article is helpful! Due to spam reasons, all articles on this site have comments disabled after a short time. If you want to leave feedback, you can tweet @sheeri or e-mail me at awfief at gmail dot com. (replace “at” with @ and “dot com” with .com to get the real e-mail address).
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, side effects not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra buy I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:
subway car – IMG_0247.JPG

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, recipe not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra sale I counted 15, web and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, more about not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.

Note: I hope this article is helpful! Due to spam reasons, all articles on this site have comments disabled after a short time. If you want to leave feedback, you can tweet @sheeri or e-mail me at awfief at gmail dot com. (replace “at” with @ and “dot com” with .com to get the real e-mail address).
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, side effects not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra buy I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:
subway car – IMG_0247.JPG

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, recipe not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra sale I counted 15, web and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, more about not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.

Note: I hope this article is helpful! Due to spam reasons, all articles on this site have comments disabled after a short time. If you want to leave feedback, you can tweet @sheeri or e-mail me at awfief at gmail dot com. (replace “at” with @ and “dot com” with .com to get the real e-mail address).
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, side effects not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra buy I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:
subway car – IMG_0247.JPG

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, recipe not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra sale I counted 15, web and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, apoplectic not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, more about not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.

Note: I hope this article is helpful! Due to spam reasons, all articles on this site have comments disabled after a short time. If you want to leave feedback, you can tweet @sheeri or e-mail me at awfief at gmail dot com. (replace “at” with @ and “dot com” with .com to get the real e-mail address).
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, side effects not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra buy I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:
subway car – IMG_0247.JPG

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, recipe not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra sale I counted 15, web and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, apoplectic not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
I participated in this year’s Tour de Fleece. It was particularly difficult for me, was Sat 30 June through Sunday, 22 July – 23 days, and all but the last 5 days, I was abroad.

I did not make a ton of yarn (I spun up about 2 ounces total), but I did spin on 22 of the 23 days, which was pretty good. This was mostly all spindle-spun, because I did not take my wheel with me – I traveled from Argentina to Colombia, to Ecuador, to Trinidad, to Guatemala, to Honduras, to Costa Rica, and finally home to Boston.

If you want to see the picture progressions, you can see them on page 1 and page 2 of my Tour de Fleece photo album.
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, more about not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.

Note: I hope this article is helpful! Due to spam reasons, all articles on this site have comments disabled after a short time. If you want to leave feedback, you can tweet @sheeri or e-mail me at awfief at gmail dot com. (replace “at” with @ and “dot com” with .com to get the real e-mail address).
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, side effects not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra buy I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:
subway car – IMG_0247.JPG

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, recipe not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra sale I counted 15, web and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, apoplectic not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
I participated in this year’s Tour de Fleece. It was particularly difficult for me, was Sat 30 June through Sunday, 22 July – 23 days, and all but the last 5 days, I was abroad.

I did not make a ton of yarn (I spun up about 2 ounces total), but I did spin on 22 of the 23 days, which was pretty good. This was mostly all spindle-spun, because I did not take my wheel with me – I traveled from Argentina to Colombia, to Ecuador, to Trinidad, to Guatemala, to Honduras, to Costa Rica, and finally home to Boston.

If you want to see the picture progressions, you can see them on page 1 and page 2 of my Tour de Fleece photo album.
I participated in this year’s Tour de Fleece. It was particularly difficult for me, was Sat 30 June through Sunday, 22 July – 23 days, and all but the last 5 days, I was abroad.

I did not make a ton of yarn (I spun up about 2 ounces total), but I did spin on 22 of the 23 days, which was pretty good. This was mostly all spindle-spun, because I did not take my wheel with me – I traveled from Argentina to Colombia, to Ecuador, to Trinidad, to Guatemala, to Honduras, to Costa Rica, and finally home to Boston.

If you want to see the picture progressions, you can see them on page 1 and Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

And that’s it! For now. I look forward to making more socks, finishing Tony’s scarf, working more on the Cecilia, and
It has been almost a month since my last post on my crafty goings-on. Since then I have gone to Finland (click for pictures) and Charlotte, North Carolina, to speak at conferences. I bought yarn in both places, and have done a lot of knitting and spinning while on planes, in airports, and generally in the cities themselves.

Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf has gotten bigger, and while it’s not quite finished yet, it is over 32 inches long and you can see that the ball of yarn is getting smaller and smaller:

The scarf is done when I run out of yarn. Next week I fly to Buenos Aires, so I think I will be able to finish the scarf on the plane.

While in North Carolina, I went to some yarn stores, and picked up some Universal Yarn’s Cotton Supreme Batik yarn. I was very excited to find this yarn again, I had found it a few years ago when I was in the Raleigh-Durham area and visited Shuttles Needles and Hooks. It’s very very soft, feels more like a microfiber acrylic than 100% cotton, and was perfect to make a baby sweater out of. So I bought some more for some more baby sweaters….

I bought the cotton batik at YarnHouse, where I bought a skein of ribbon yarn, that made this scarf:

The yarn was difficult to work with, and I’m not in love with the final product, but I am sure there is someone I know who will love it, that I can gift this scarf to.

At Charlotte Yarn I helped my (new) friend Carrie Stokes pick out some yarn for a Mobius shrug, and helped her with the pattern for it – specifically I helped start it. I also got out of my comfort zone and bought some ribbon yarns.

I bought some leopard-print ribbon yarn, to make a scarf for my friend Victoria:

If you look in the middle of the scarf you can see the ribbon itself (there was some left over at the end) and you can see the holes cut into it. I feel like I could re-create this yarn, with 30 meters of wide yarn and a hole punch. This yarn cost $20, and for 30 meters I find that somewhat expensive (although for a whole scarf, it’s totally reasonable). The yarn itself is called “tecido trico”.

Also for $20 I picked up some purple ribbon yarn, which I am making a scarf out of (but it is not done yet):

While in Finland, I bought some amazingly colored sock yarn, from Novita, a Finnish yarn company. I have already made a pair of socks from half of one skein, and I have several more skeins which I think I want to make a Color Affection with. Here are the socks I have made (well, I am *almost* done making):

In this picture I really played with the settings of my camera, and I love how it came out:

Here is the other, completed sock:

I went back and played with the settings, lowering the F-stop as I did for the in-progress sock. I love how this came out:

Compare and contrast the two photos….I think I’m learning how to take some great photos! If you are curious about the pattern, it’s just a regular stockinette sock, with a Sweet Tomato heel, and 2×2 ribbing with an i-cord cast-off for the leg of the sock.

I also finished the Monkey Socks. Here is the 2nd sock:

You probably don’t remember what the first sock looks like, which is OK, here’s the picture I took a while ago of it:

As you can tell, they do not match….but they are from the same yarn! (Superwash Correidale….)

I have been on a bit of a sock kick – I started and completed a pair of socks from Mind’s Eye Yarns, hand-dyed by Lucy. It’s 75% merino, 25% tencel, and they are extremely comfortable socks…again, the pattern is just simple stockinette, with ribbing at the leg, and the Sweet Tomato heel. At $20 for 100g, I can get 2 pairs of socks out of one skein, so it makes me happy:

I have been spinning a fair bit, too. I got some BFL from Spunky Eclectic in the “More Coffee” colorway a while back, and decided a few nights ago to spin on my wheel while I was home. I have spun up about a bobbin and a half, and probably am about halfway done with it:

Also from Spunky is the May 2012 fiber club – also BFL, in the “Big Bang” colorway. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to spin it, so even though I still have not spun the clubs from December through April, I went to work on the May colorway right away. I’m still in love:

While in Finland I started to get back in touch with my spindles, spinning some of the Falkland mini-braids I bought at the Wild and Wooly Festival in April in Vermont, from The Spun Monkey Fiber Shoppe. I have spun just about half of one package – which is 2.5 mini-braids:

I also spun some of the fluff I received in a Phat Fiber sampler box I bought in February (a mixed box):

There was a spindle in the box that I spun on, but I have to say that the Bosworth spindles and my Golding mini ringspindles I have are so perfectly balanced, that everything else feels like spinning with a boat anchor (including the bigger Golding ringspindles, sadly).

The Monkey socks were knit using handspun, and I still have a lot of it. Rather than make tons more socks from the same yarn, which would probably result in 8 more unmatched socks, I decided to make a Cecilia. I have not gotten very far yet, I’m about 33 rows in:

Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, more about not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.

Note: I hope this article is helpful! Due to spam reasons, all articles on this site have comments disabled after a short time. If you want to leave feedback, you can tweet @sheeri or e-mail me at awfief at gmail dot com. (replace “at” with @ and “dot com” with .com to get the real e-mail address).
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, side effects not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra buy I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:
subway car – IMG_0247.JPG

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, recipe not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, viagra sale I counted 15, web and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cashmira – cashmere
acrilico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
Buenos Aires has a span of a few blocks, apoplectic not too far from the Malabia metro station* where there are many yarn shops, I counted 15, and went into 11 of them before I had to stop. The shops are on Ave. Scalabrini Ortiz just southwest of Ave. Cordoba, towards Ave. Correintes. The Malabia metro station is on the corner of Correintes and Scalabrini Ortiz, which is 1 km away from the corner of Cordoba and Corrientes, and about half that until you see your first yarn shop. There was a small bit of yarn bombing between two of the stores:

Yarn shopping in Buenos Aires is quite different from what I’m used to in the States. The stores all look like this:

The yarn is beautiful, and well-organized, but there’s no signs as to what the yarn is made up of, how much it costs nor the gauge of the yarn. In addition, you’re not supposed to take the yarn out of the bins. If you look at the bottom right of that picture, you’ll see some white yarn and blue yarn that is actually sitting on top of a counter. That counter separates you from the wall, and there are people behind the counter who can help you get what you want.

So it’s very different from the experience I’m used to. I got the feeling that a lot of people knew exactly what they wanted to buy, or walked in and would say “do you have anything made of wool?” I was feeling a bit shy due to the language barrier, so I picked up a Spanish phrase: “solamente mirando” – it means “Just looking”. The people are friendly and willing to help, but I like the yarn buying process to be a solo activity.

There were 2 exceptions to the fact that most stores don’t give any information about their items.: Milana hilados and Yanabey. Milana hilados had tags like this near most of their yarn:

Note that that’s in Argentinian pesos, and at the time, this was less than USD $10 per 100g. Another thing to note is the price is per 100g, not per hank of yarn. You’d ask a sales associate to take the yarn down for you and they’d weigh it and ask you if that was OK (kind of like at the deli counter). Then they give you a slip of paper and you take it to a cash register, where you’re usually helped by someone else. Another interesting thing is that the stores seemed to be staffed by about half men, half women, which is very different from yarn stores in the States, which are probably about 90% staffed by women.

I bought 3 hanks of yarn there, for about $25:

Yanabey had signs like this:

These prices are still in Argentinian pesos, but they’re in kilos. So these prices are $171 for 1 kilo, which is $17.10 for 100g. This is a wall of “seda vegetal”, or “vegetable silk“. By the way, that’s about USD $35 per kilo. So I bought 6 skeins, which was just over a kilo, because the tree which this comes from (ceiba speciosa, or “silk floss tree”) is native to South America, and I haven’t seen “vegetable silk” in the US.

A lot of the stores have the recycled t-shirt yarn, and I bought some at Arte Natural:

BUTTONS!!!

I was thinking I might make a purse from the yarn, like this:

That purse is crocheted, but I’m sure I can come up with a knitted version.

Here’s what I bought from that store:

Here’s a Spanish primer for some important words:
cachemira – cashmere
acrílico – acrylic
lana – wool
seda – silk
alpaca – alpaca
hilo – yarn (plural: hilados)
Also, I found out that cashmerillo is just an acrylic yarn that’s very soft. Don’t be fooled by price, some of the acrylic yarns are *very* expensive, even more expensive than the wool.

I was very excited by the prospect of all these yarn stores, and after these three purchases I was done, and passed by 4 other yarn stores that I didn’t even walk into. In addition, there were at least 2 weaving stores, and another 2 fabric stores. Only one of the yarn stores had fiber to spin, and it looked like combed top, and was somewhat expensive (by US standards).

All in all, I was extremely satisfied by taking a few hours to shop for yarn, but I found the experience quite different from what I’m used to.

* I was instructed by a friend who had visited Buenos Aires to take a taxi to the corner of X and Y. However, I enjoy walking around and public transit, so I noticed the subway stop was not far, and decided to walk a few blocks. To those who are considering what to do, a taxi would have cost about 20 pesos (about USD $5) each way. The subway costs $5 for two rides, but of course is not door to door. Another thing to note about the subway is that it is not the most modern system:

And you will get plenty of people trying to make money – some play music, which you may be used to from other subway systems. Others will go around a subway car, handing out products, and then go around and either collect the product back or collect money. I was handed tissues and Disney books – or at least, they attempted to hand stuff to me, and I refused. It helped that I had knitting in my hands, but I saw them just place stuff on people’s laps if their hands were busy, so don’t just look away, make sure you actually refuse by shaking your head.
I participated in this year’s Tour de Fleece. It was particularly difficult for me, was Sat 30 June through Sunday, 22 July – 23 days, and all but the last 5 days, I was abroad.

I did not make a ton of yarn (I spun up about 2 ounces total), but I did spin on 22 of the 23 days, which was pretty good. This was mostly all spindle-spun, because I did not take my wheel with me – I traveled from Argentina to Colombia, to Ecuador, to Trinidad, to Guatemala, to Honduras, to Costa Rica, and finally home to Boston.

If you want to see the picture progressions, you can see them on page 1 and page 2 of my Tour de Fleece photo album.
I participated in this year’s Tour de Fleece. It was particularly difficult for me, was Sat 30 June through Sunday, 22 July – 23 days, and all but the last 5 days, I was abroad.

I did not make a ton of yarn (I spun up about 2 ounces total), but I did spin on 22 of the 23 days, which was pretty good. This was mostly all spindle-spun, because I did not take my wheel with me – I traveled from Argentina to Colombia, to Ecuador, to Trinidad, to Guatemala, to Honduras, to Costa Rica, and finally home to Boston.

If you want to see the picture progressions, you can see them on page 1 and Tour de Fleece.

I worked more on my top-down Cecilia raglan cardigan. Before I landed in Boston I was able to get to the point where I put the sleeves on hold, so I’m down to the armpits:

I finished all the yarn I had for Tony’s Crooked Little Scarf. Unfortunately, it’s a bit too short, so I’ll have to find some other wool to ply with the Louet Black Diamond, that will match the purple, and then knit on it some more:

I made a baby sweater for an impending baby girl that my friend Linda is having. This is made out of Universal Yarn’s supreme cotton batik, which is the softest cotton ever:

Also out of cotton batik, I made another hoot cardigan for my friend Nathan’s son, who was recently born. I have to sew on the buttons and

And I made a pair of regular stockinette socks, with a sweet tomato heel, out of Mind’s Eye yarns amazing merino/tencel hand-dyed yarn. This yarn is wonderful, it feels like the socks hug my feet! The top pattern is just a knit/purl basket-type pattern (repeat 4k, 4p for 4 rows, then 4p, 4k).

And I made some hexipuffs in my spare time:

That’s it for travel knitting, for now. Tomorrow I depart for the Sheep’s Ahoy knitters cruise, so I hope to get a lot of knitting and spinning done then, too!