5 posts tagged “shopping”

I've commenced a swatch for the Baby Surprise Jacket. I got over that weird squick about using my gift certificate to buy yarn to make a present for someone else; it almost felt like it should count as regifting, but in this case the present was that I get over the itch to try out that ingenious little sweater pattern, and Hubby's cousin has more need of a baby sweater than I do (not hard, given that my personal need for a baby sweater approaches zero). So for my gift certificate and $1.50, I got two skeins of Jaeger Baby Merino and one of Plymouth Galway, which will become a hat.

Not sure what to do with my JoAnn gift card. I think I'm spoiled by the LYS; none of the yarns they had there more than vaguely appealed to me. I'm going to need to pick up a circular needle for the BSJ - it's not going to fit on 10" needles, and people have suggested that working it on a circ makes it a lot easier to see how the folding works, because you can kind of practice while it's still on the needles.

...the stash kind, of course.

The SEX first...last Saturday

losgunna organized a trip to ye olde LNS; in attendance were me, her,

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jadecat,

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mightyafrodite,

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sarbah77 - and Daughter, which surprised me a little given that she'd lost interest quickly the first couple times I'd tried to teach her to stitch. We had Rocking Horse shopping, lunch at Quizno's, and ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery.

I was good - I got only a piece of fabric for the Peacock Cypher, and that was only because nothing in my stash matched it very well. I oohed and aahed over the model of Butternut Road's Celtic Banner - and

losgunna caved and bought the pattern, despite knowing full well that she will probably never actually stitch it. (The darned thing is 4 feet long!) Nobody caved and bought Shepherd's Bush's America (Oh Beautiful) - the picture there doesn't do it justice, and there was plenty of oohing and aahing from all involved, but ferchrissake the kit was $80. And Daughter....got a pattern.

In the car on the way over, we'd asked her what kind of pattern she wanted. "A kitty!" - well, of course. "What do you think of butterflies?" got an "ehh". But "A kitty with a butterfly?" got some enthusiasm - and

sarbah77 and I both immediately thought of Margaret Sherry. Daughter chose Purr-Suit - yes, that's a bird, not a butterfly, but she liked that one better than the butterfly. Fortunately, I had 14-count Aida and all but one color of the floss already in the stash... (and it was all I could do to not immediately grab some of the ones where the kitties have yarn balls, but I've got plenty of stash and not plenty of cash...)

She's actually worked on it two days in a row, but she ran into a little trouble yesterday - she got the tail of the floss stuck in the stitching and worked with all four strands for a while, and while I was picking that out for her, I noticed that she'd made a counting error a few rows above. She decided not to pick that out - it would mean going almost all the way back to the beginning, so I don't blame her; I'll help her figure out what to do with it when we start filling in around that section.

On the photography angle - I was taking pics of some knit and crocheted FO's to put on Ravelry, and didn't like how they came out. Some of the folks there told me what the setting with the tulip on my camera actually did (it's a close-up mode, not an outdoor mode like I'd thought, and it's recommended for use when photographing knits, etc.) and that I might want to look into adjusting the aperture on the camera manually. I'm reading my camera's user manual trying to figure out how, and pondering taking a photography course...or just getting some library books on photography.

...so I have $20 to spend at my LYS. Part of me is thinking, "Four more gift-giving opportunities, and I'll have a sweater!" Part of me is thinking, "You've already got the sock and the cross-stitch WIP's, you don't need any more yarn right now!"

...and part of me is thinking, "That'd almost cover the cost of doing Isabella in Stork. I know the LYS stocks Stork, I saw it right there by the sock yarn." And part of me is thinking, "That'd get you a pair's worth of slightly more premium sock yarn." And part of me is thinking, "You've promised Mom a felted bag, and Hoku some socks, and Stephanie's baby needs something..." (although it seems a little odd to use my gift certificate money to buy yarn to make a present for someone else...)

...what to do, what to do...

Why didn't anyone tell me about Smiley's Yarns before? Mostly they've got Lion Brand and Bernat, but also some nifty imported stuff, super-cheap - and a lot of discontinued yarns! Like Bernat Coordinates (as long as I don't mind it being Royal Blue)! Like Cotton-Ease! Like WoolSpun, which might be that substitute for Bernat's Scandia I was looking for ages ago!

Yesterday Stitch-N-Time had their "Christmas in July" sale - 15% off everything in the store, plus a lot of clearanced items. Dug through the Waterlilies again but none of the colors grabbed me - all that's left is the pastels. But...

I got, for me, Just Nan's Peacock Cypher, and drove

fmh crazy trying to figure out what the secret message was. I have already figured it out, and am honor-bound not to tell... :) I'm going to try to acquire the silk threads to do this with - I could do it with DMC floss, but that's just boooooring. Alternatively, I might see if I can find an overdyed floss in a peacockish color scheme - this particular brand of silk is something I'll have to scour the Internet for; many people design for it, nobody sells it...

I got, for Daughter, a small kit designed for children with a kitty and the sentiment "I Heart My Cat." (Can't find a picture on the net - it's by The Design Connection.) I tried to teach her and

hoku_star how to cross-stitch about three years ago, and they didn't seem to get it. Daughter is more enthusiastic, and more dexterous, this time. I think she might stick with it.

And then, at the checkout, they threw in two freebies:
Hinzeit's Boo, which comes with a little ghostie charm, and...the crack.

The particular crack in question is a series of Victorian-style "town square" patterns - the first set has a theatre, a bakery, a church, a school, and the town hall. One set of five will be released every two weeks, starting yesterday, free with a ten dollar purchase, and there will be a total of eight sets. (Heck, since the series is sponsored by Weeks Dye Works, a company that hand-dyes flosses, the materials for these freebie charts will cost me substantially more than $10. For that matter, the "Boo" pattern calls for that same brand of floss, and that will cost me more than $10.) It is good, I think, that Stitch-N-Time is effectively right around the corner from

fmh's new place.