I’ve been looking at my basket of Patons SWS in the earth colorway for over a month in an effort to decide if I should begin the muy fabulous Lady Eleanor Stole from Scarf Style or wait.

The problem: As you all know by now there are no local yarn stores here and while Hobby Lobby is a great general craft store, it leaves ALOT to be desired for the discerning knitter especially when said knitter has discovered the wonderful world of fibers beyond acrylic.

A N Y W A Y…

I was on a bead expedition with my mom a few towns over and we stopped in at a Michaels which up until this point I had considered of the same caliber as Hobby Lobby. I was pleased to discover that they carry a few Patons yarns which heretofore I had only seen online. One of which was the SWS I had been thinking about for my Lady E.

You may all remember that I started a Lady E back in August with some koolaid dyed wool. This was as far as I got before I frogged it and swapped it on the knitty board (I wonder what it has become?) I was debating splurging on Noro when I saw one finished in the SWS earth which is such a “me” colorway. I love warm earthy colors. So anyways, Michaels had only 9 balls (all the same dyelot, thank goodness) and I grabbed them up eventhough I need 2 more. Now in my excitement I totally could not remember the yardage I needed and as I had not planned a yarn shopping trip I was totally unprepared. If I had been skipping in a haze of euphoria over finding some in person I would have just gone home and ordered exactly the amount I needed online somewhere. I have to do it so often, but I hate ordering online when I haven’t had a chance to cop a feel in person.

S O…

If anyone is walking around with 2 balls of 161818 in natural earth I’ll trade you for them or I’ll buy them, but I’m not holding my breath as this seems like an incredible longshot.

Which leads me to possible solutions to my prob:

One: I can knit as far as possible with what I have and fringe in something entirely different albeit coordinating. This shouldn’t be too bad as I hear these girls are super long, and I’m quite short (5′2″).

Two: I could buy the two remaining balls in another dyelot and hope the patchwork-y-ness of the entrelac pattern breaks the color up enough as to not be too noticeably odd which would make me weird about it.

What do you guys think? In the meantime here is the beginning of Eleanor. The pic is way dark. Sorry!

All that talk about the local craft stores got me to thinking. Who was it over at Hobby Lobby that got the retarded idea to add their own line of yarns? Have you seen this stuff? I will admit that there are a few nice baby yarns and one or two that I might consider using for a funky bag or something, but on the whole the rest of them just suck! They are incredibly overpriced especially when you consider that they are mostly acrylic yarns, and foo-foo ones at that. About the only things I can see knit with these yarn are oodles of garter stitch scarves which is cool if you are a beginner whose lifetime goal is to look like a muppet. Now don’t get me wrong, I think everyone needs at least one good funky, furry, fringy-fried garter stitch scarf to chase the doldrums away on a gray day, and they do look smashing on the younger set, but come on do we really need fifty new lines of novelty yarn? How about some natural fibers people? And then if you’ve ever read the label it is VAGUE as hell. They sort of hint at gauge, if they even do that. So what’s a girl to do?

I’d love to open a LYS myself, but I’m not sure if there are enough local knitters for a local yarn store. My little brother says “open an online store,” but even that seems a little daunting when what I really want is to be designing. So I’ll just keep on submitting my patterns to Knitty and others while I wait for someone to open a LYS here for me and in the meantime be sure to drop me a line when you find a great online store. BTW I should be posting a few more patterns on the blog as soon as I get the kinks worked out.