Summer Travel

Ohai blog! I've missed you! This summer has been crazy, in the best possible way. Summer is the traditional time for travel in academia, and I definitely kept with tradition. Two observing runs, one conference, and some personal travel as well. What does a knitter do when traveling? Find the LYSs, of course!

First trip was an observing run to Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile:

On my way out of the country, I had an eight hour layover in Santiago. One bus and one metro ride later, I arrived at Pueblito los Dominicos, a sort of artist co-op space where I snagged some lovely yarns:




I also picked up some more commercial Chilean yarn at a grocery store(!) in La Serena:


Next up, an observing run at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona:


One of my sweet Ravelry friends, who is also an indie dyer, lives nearby and drove over to meet me, and brought along with her my very first purchase of Gherkin's Bucket yarn:


It's scrumptious!

After that, a trip to bella Italia for a meeting in Padua. I had to fly into Venice, so I snuck in a yarn store trip while I was there. The store, Lellabella, was fantastic. Small but packed with great Italian yarns!


Lastly, a family gathering in Pennsylvania to celebrate my granddad's life. I drove home with my mama and we stopped in Knoxville, TN, to visit a good friend and (of course!) hit up an LYS, where I got some Miss Babs, my first, which is dyed in (semi-)nearby Mountain City, TN:

The colorway is Gemini II, and I like to think that it's named after the NASA mission.

All in all an excellent, if exhausting, summer. Now I'm back home for awhile, settling back in, sleeping in my own bed, and not buying any more yarn because I'm set for awhile (ahahahahaha!). (In all fairness, I didn't keep all of the yarn--a lot of it was thank you yarn for rides to and from the airport, but still...)

How was your summer?

Not-So-Local LYSs

I've been doing a bit of traveling lately, and like a good little knitter, I've visited a few LYSs along the way. First stop, Tallhassee, FL. I was there for an astronomy meeting, but had a bit of free time to sneak out to two lovely LYSs:

First was Wooly Bully. Loved it!

I actually ended up visiting WB during one of their knit nights and not only were they still happy to help me snag some souvenir yarn but they invited me to join them, so I did! Sat and knit for thirty minutes or so and had a blast. The yarn I got was a skein of Pigeon Sock in "Thank You" from TurtleDove Yarns, a Tallahassee-local dyer. It's beautiful pastels, and unfortunately I don't have a picture to show, but trust me, it's pretty! She had a couple of different colorways there, and I wanted to buy all of them. They had a couple of other local dyers represented there, too, but I had to restrain myself.

Next stop was Really Knit Stuff, which is located in a neat community of artists and crafters.

They unfortunately didn't have anything local, but they had some yarns I'd never heard of or seen before, so that was exciting. I snagged a skein of Pagewood Farm's Hand Dyed Denali Sock in Vineyard Blues:

Scrumptious! It turns out that Pagewood Farm is actually pretty good-sized (based on the number of skeins of it in the Rav database) but I'd never heard of it before, and the colors are beautiful, so I was psyched.

After Tallahassee I spent a few days in Chicago with my mama. I had high hopes for a particular yarn store there that touted their "unique selection", but when I got there, not only did they not have anything local, they didn't have anything that I'd never seen/heard of before, and and they looked at me funny when I asked whether they had anything unusual. It was a huge bummer! I think the store would be great to have as an actual LYS, because they had a lot of nice stuff, but for souvenir yarn, it didn't work.

No need to fear, though, knitters to the rescue! I ended up meeting up with two of my dearest Ravelry friends, shalu and knit1purr2, and they brought me some absolutely fabulous yarn:

It's hard to see in the photo (more on that later, maybe), but it's a gorgeous worsted semi-solid turquoise that's just wonderful. 560 yards of hand-dyed awesomeness from Woven Art. So, I didn't get any Illinois yarn, but I got some wonderful Michigan yarn...yay!