A little before Halloween, this came in the mail:
It's sock yarn from Yarn Pirate, in the Culture Club colorway. It was around Halloween when I got this yarn, and the Yarn Pirate threw in that little skeleton guy with a parachute. What a nice touch! I am so into this colorway. It makes me nostalgic for my childhood in the 80s, and the colors are so loud and yet the neon green and neon pink belong so perfectly to the silver and the black that seems to be evoking vinyl records.
I wanted to show you my Koigu sock in progress, but my camera ran out of batteries.
So I'll devote the rest of this post to my sock-yarn obsession.
I have been on the look out for Trekking XXL in colorway 126. Does anyone have a yarn shop near them that has it? Is anyone willing to trade or sell the one they have? Is anyone willing to sell their (yes) leftovers? (Yes, I want this yarn so badly I will take your leftovers!) This yarn is sold out on-line. I have even been emailing bricks-and-mortar shops and they too are sold out. There were some on eBay, but I didn't think paying the auction prices was a good thing for my graduate-student budget.
I've heard that the company that makes Trekking is coming out with a colorway that replaces this one. I don't know if that means they will be identical or similar or nothing alike. I'm willing to wait if they are going to be identical.
My boyfriend wants to know when my yarn obsession started. He says it just started all of a sudden.
I'll tell you when it started: It started when I went to order Trekking 126 and there wasn't any Trekking 126 to be had. It started when I found out that yarns are discontinued. When I found out that once a dyer makes a batch, the dyer may not make another batch or the dyer may, as in the case of Socks that Rock, come out with new yarns every year and there's no guarantee you'll like the new season's colorways.
This is when I become obsessed.
How many times did I see the Trekking 126 for sale and passed it up because I couldn't justify the cost? How many times did I say, maybe I'll order it next month? How many times did I dream about the Trekking 126 and never bothered to spend five minutes ordering it? I just thought, however naively, that it would always be there. I really thought it would be available forever and ever, that I would be able to have it whenever I wanted it. Not so.
And that is why I snatched up this and this. They are limited edition Opal sock yarns designed by a German artist named Hundertwasser. I couldn't find a US yarn shop that carried this yarn, so that's why I had to order it from Astrid's Dutch Obsessions.
What I have learned is, if you see a yarn you like, buy it. Don't hesitate, because when you go to buy it, it will be sold-out, discontinued, selling for crazy prices on eBay. Your search for the yarn will take away from your knitting time. Your boyfriend will wonder whether or not he should back out of the relationship now that he knows you're insane.
I'm still trying to learn how not to go crazy waiting for UPS. It's now after 5:00 and no UPS truck has come up my block. I will try to remain calm; I will try to resist the urge to call UPS headquarters to complain and further cut into my knitting time.
7 comments:
You've been bitten by the sock bug bad! Heh...isn't it great? I'm the same way with wanting yarns I can't have...I've been this way with Yarn Pirate lately, but I managed to get two skeins (Plum Gorgeous and Crocus) so that's been satiated for now. Heh.
I'm sorry I can't help you with your current obsession. Wishing you luck!
You poor thing!! I wish I had known this BEFORE the weekend, as I was at TWO lys, and could have looked there for you! But I will surely look for you asap... I know that I need to go back to the one later this week to pick up something on order, and of course I may just "happen" by the other one!! Hope you are well! I just joined bloglines, so I can easily keep track of all the blogs I follow, mostly knitting. So of course you are on my list!
Oh wow girl I feel your pain on all accounts--there's nothing like waiting on the mailman to make you feel mentally ill! Also, I've gotten burned on the yarn discontinued thing before--ask your LYS owner to post it on the 'skeins' list, it's a listserve that LYS owners use to contact one another about such matters. I'll tell my LYS owner to keep a look out for it! Argh!!
Your knitting posse will gladly take on that search. Gosh, I just hate having to run into the yarn shops to see if I can find it.
Now I'm completely with you on the obsession thing, as I think you probably know. But when I was having a wee bit of a problem with a fabric addiction (Amy Butler fabrics are the same way... here one year, gone the next), someone asked me, "Have you ever not liked a year of her designs? And if you did have one of those years, do you think you could make do with your stash from years previous or find another designer?" Yeah, I hit my mom after she said that, but I guess I'm just reassuring you that I'm confident there will be more sock yarn to die for in the future.
Or with your dyeing skills, maybe you could replicate the Trekking?
But what fun is that? Obsess on, knitter, obsess on.
Oh, and last thing, I totally had an oversize Guess t-shirt in just the colors of your socks. I wore it with a neon belt clasp of a thing that you'd cinch the side of your shirt with in some awkward way. Rock on, 80's child!
Heh heh, you can still call ups and knit at the same time! Just hold the phone between your ear and your shoulder and dial with the opposite ends of your dpns!! Hee hee!
I can relate to the impatience with delivery. I love getting mail, even when it's something I ordered myself, but they seem to take so damn long.
The Fall hat looks awesome and I love that neon colourway!!
You've got me giggling so much, I have forgotten how gloomy it has been here! I will take a look around for your color. There is truly nothing worse than finding out your yarn is gone forever.
That colour is SO 80's!! I love it. can't wait to see it knitted up.
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