San Diego Yarn Crawl 2013

The plan was to post last Sunday, but life (in the form of a car key lost down the toilet at De Anza Cove at 6:50 am just prior to an 8-mile racewalk workout, necessitating a long train ride home - after the eight miles - and a return trip to fetch the car with an actual key) got in the way.  Weeks right now are so crazed (in no small part because Older Daughter - at 15 still licenseless, but with her permit test scheduled for a week from tommorrow - is currently taking French two nights a week at the local community college, and is participating in a project to build and send a micro-lab to the International Space Station one night at week at UCSD; there is much driving these days), so there's no squeezing blog space out of the week.  And this weekend was San Diego's first Yarn Crawl!  

Unlike my friend Marie, I knew I wouldn't be able to visit all of the stores on the list, but we did manage to skip out early on Friday to make the 40+-mile drive to Ramona to go to an alpaca farm (you can't go wrong with alpaca, I say, even if you have to do some washboard dirt driving to get there).  

This guy had the best topknot ever.

And - to my very great excitement, the Yarnover Truck was there!

I was amazed at how much yarn they pack into such a small space (if you find them on FB or Instagram, they've got great photos).  And as you can see, they were totally accomodating about little things like trying the yarn on to see what colors are best (as my friend Marie is doing here).  Can you tell I look happy?

I got some lovely yarn there - two skeins of IndigoFirefly (in the colorway 20,000 Lawyers Under The Sea) to make the Side Impact Sweater, and one skein in the colorway Tardis to make socks for Dr. Who-obsessed Older Daughter (OK, I admit it, she's got me hooked, too - just made it through Season 1 of the most recent seasons, and now think Christopher Eccleston is even hotter than Daniel Craig).

The Side Impact Sweater is excitingly fabulous, and I have already swatched.

That's not the best representation of the color, which is more in the seafoam green range, but it has a lovely hand. I just need to decide which needle size I like best for it (the range there is from 6-4, top to bottom), and then do the math to make sure I choose the right size.

On Saturday, I wove for four hours at my very own LYS, Yarning For You, and got to talk to an amazing array of weavers and spinners, as well as knitters, from as far away as San Fernando - that's several hours of driving each way, for you non-SoCal folks.  Then Deb (YFY's fabulous owner) and I were sheep together.

Today was the last day, and on the way home from meeting up with the racewalking group for walking and kayaking (more on that momentarily), I swung by Black Sheep and Common Threads, both in Encinitas.  While I did get some yarn in both places (that's for another post), I also made a donation:

Those two bags have been sitting in my den since the Great Yarn Stash Toss of 2013, waiting for me to figure out where to donate them.  Black Sheep was collecting yarn for several charities, among them a shelter for women leaving violent situations, and that's where those two bags are going.

And then home again, to work on a project that I'd like to get off the needles before casting on any more (not least because I could use those size six needles).  And, less happily, to ice my calf, which I appear to have strained pretty badly.  Not walking, but (get this), by jogging to my car to grab something I'd forgotten before starting out.  Can you believe?  Going along, pushed off with my right foot to jump off the curb, and then, pop - and really not nice pain.  Sigh.  I got through the walk (slowly), and kayaking afterwards was fine, but I'm hurting pretty badly when I try to walk, so, as you can see, it's ice and elevation and knitting for me.

(That's the Jade Sapphire Sylph Cowl, out of Jade Sapphire Sylph - naturally.  Boring, but I think I'm going to like wearing it when it's done.)

So that's where my weekend went!  Next week (I hope), an update on Bohus knitting, which proceeds, and maybe some FOs.  I've also been hitting the trail, and admiring the sepia shades of fall - I probably won't be wallking much this week, but we'll see...