While we were away in Cape Breton I got a chance to stop by the yarn shop in Baddeck, NS. I had to giggle at the name of the place, Baadeck Yarns. For knitters out there, they have a Facebook page also where they share links to cool free patterns on Ravelry. If you ever get the chance, stop by the shop. They had a fantastic selection of yarns there, as you will see. :-)
I started wandering around the shop and saw a sample pair of thick wintery type socks that were really cool.
They are made with Mirasol's Hachito yarn which is a blend of 80% superwash wool and 20% nylon. Although the yarn seems heavier in weight, it turns out to only be a fingerling weight. Choosing a colour was hard, but this is what I ended up picking out:
I think it will make a nice set of winter socks. Not far from the socks there was another sample project using Mirasol's yarn. This one was a lovely shawl.
The sample was knit up in the same blue colour in the picture and it was so pretty. But when I started thinking about my winter wardrobe, I decided not to choose blue. Instead I chose grey:
That is Mirasol's Nuna Fina yarn which is a lace weight yarn. It is so soft with it's blend of 40% wool, 40% silk, and 20% bamboo. It should make a lightweight but very warm shawl. I love how it has a bit of shine to it.
I continued to wander around the shop and found they carry Malabrigo yarns. When it comes to colours, Malabrigo (along with The Unique Sheep and Fleece Artist) has some of my favourites. I have a hat pattern, Pumpkin Seeds, which can use Malabrigo Rasta yarn, which is a bulky weight merino wool. I had a hard time choosing just one skein but I did. The picture doesn't show off all the fantastic colours in this yarn. I cannot wait to start working on it although I will have to since I have two projects on the needles right now and a laceweight MKAL starting soon (more on that below!).
Now up until this point all the yarn I was buying had a project to go with it. I've been trying to only buy yarn to go with specific projects rather than just because it's pretty. Well, that all went out the window when I saw this gorgeous yarn from Handmaiden Fine Yarns:
The yarn is Sea Lace which is 70% lace and 30% SeaCell, which is made from seaweed. The colour is called Forge Fire and was specially dyed for Baadeck Yarns by Handmaiden to celebrate CanIRON X, a blacksmith convention (for lack of a better word) that happened in Baddeck over the weekend. Here is a news story about the event. I love being able to buy vacation yarn that has some ties to the place I bought it. The fact that this yarn was specifically dyed to tie into the blacksmith gathering is really cool. And the colours in the yarn are so beautiful - the red fades to a purplish grey to an almost black grey colour. I have no clue what I am going to make with it but I know it will end up being a beautiful project.
At this point I was all done buying yarn. But of course the people running the shop know what they are doing and they had yarn on display right by the cash register. As I was standing there waiting for my lovely yarns to be rung up, I noticed a whole display of Malabrigo sock yarn next to me. I tried...I tried really hard to resist but when I saw this yarn, I gave in:
It is sock yarn, so I will either use it for a pair of socks or more likely to make a shawl or cowl. I've found a lot of patterns recently that use fingerling (sock) weight yarn so I am sure I will find something to do with it.
As I mentioned I will be starting a new The Unique Sheep Mystery Knit-along on July 18. This is the one based on the book the Once and Future King. I had two sets of yarn to choose from. One was a 50/50 wool/silk blend (Eos) called Coral and Cream and the other was a 70 wool/30 silk blend (Ling) in a colour called The Fox and the Raven. After a lot of thought I decided to go with The Fox and the Raven for the MKAL. I got my gauge swatch finished this morning and now it is blocking. I got gauge - yay me!
I started with the lightest colour from the gradiance set so the blocking board colour kind of drowns out the subtle colours in the yarn. I'm glad they had us do a gauge swatch because it gave me a chance to try out different kinds of needles to see which worked best with this yarn - bamboo ended up being the winner. Although there is only a small percentage of silk in the yarn it has a more polished feel so the yarn is a little slippery to work with. The bamboo needles have just the right amount of grip to keep the yarn from slipping but I can still work easily with it. With my Snow Queen shawl I didn't bother with lifelines but with this yarn, I'm thinking lifelines sound like a very good idea. (Lifelines, for non-knitters, are threads/yarn run through the stitches at various points in the pattern. If you should drop a stitch your work will only unravel to the lifeline rather than all the way back to the beginning. Lifelines can save a project.)
Because I love TUS yarn, I signed up for their ABC club. One of their customers challenged them to create a colour for each letter of the alphabet and they accepted the challenge. It has been going on for a long time now as they are up to the letter T. This is what I received for it:
The colour is Terra Teal and it came with a Tie-Dyed Towel. I'm not sure what I'll use the towel for (it is a cotton towel, not terry cloth) but it is cute and I love the colours in the yarn. I'm already plotting what I'll be using the yarn for.
Well, that's it! I'm stocked up in yarn for a while so I better get back to knitting if I'm going to use up all this yarn before our next trip to Baddeck. The yarn shop there is going to become one of my regular stopping places when we go there I think. :-)
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