Shopping Trip

Bethany and I ventured out of the house this weekend. This is no mean feat, as Beth is 39 weeks pregnant, and finding walking increasingly difficult. Nevertheless, we decided that we'd been in our little apartment for too long, and Bethany was starting to get cabin fever.
I have been reading the Yarn Harlot's blog recently. The Yarn Harlot (real name Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) is a legend in the knitting world. She has written 6 books, as well as contributing to several magazines, doing lectures on knitting and writing this brilliant blog on a regular basis. Somehow, she still finds time to knit some of the most fantastic things I have ever seen. No wonder she's well known. Best of all, she lives in Toronto, so I can check out all the yarn shops that she likes to frequent.

Beth suggested we visit a couple of these yarn shops, so we took the subway to Queen Street, and hopped on a streeetcar to Bathurst.
First, we stopped at Americo. This place is incredible. It's full of hand-spun yarns, and is very bohemian. There are beautiful hand knits everywhere, but non of them are for sale. They are there to display what you can make if you attend one of their knitting classes. The classes are free, but you have to buy the wool there. Pricey, but well worth it. They also have a knitting group on Tuesday nights, and I think we're going to show up in the not too distant future.

Then we moved on to Romni Wools. I'd heard that a first visit to Romni could be a very emotional experience for a knitter. It's true. Romni is HUGE. This picture doesn't even start to do it justice. This is only one of the walls in the main room, and you can't see the selection of needles, the book room (full of publications, patterns and more wool) or the basement - the home of the spinning wheels. I could have spent days in there, but time was short, so I had a poke around and we decided to come back soon.

If you live in Toronto, or even nearby, I really recommend both of these stores. There are more in the city, and we'll check those out soon too. But it's certainly something to be getting on with.

In other news, I've nearly finished the TTC Subway map scarf. I've been working on it for ages now, and I finished the colours a while ago. But I still have a good way to go in stocking stitch. There's only so much of that I can handle in one go, so I keep putting it down and doing something else for a while. It's good to pick it up when I want to knit something simple.
I'm also trying out some more complicated stitch manipulations. A friend of mine, Dirk, found a really good one - star stitch. I had a go at it, and now I want to knit Bethany a hat using it. I just have to work out my gauge and (more importantly) the decreases that I'll need to use. I'm going to have to knit it back and forth, so I won't be able to make full use of my double-pointed needle skills yet; but to be honest, they were a bit fiddly, so that's no loss.

Right, I actually have a job to do, so I'm going to get back to it. Let me know what you're knitting at the moment by commenting on the post, or emailing:
salvatordarling@gmail.com

PS Sorry to Lillian for stealing her picture of Romni - I'll go get my own soon!