A Weekend Full of Knitting

On Saturday, I drove up to Orange County, Laguna Hills actually, to go to the Yarn Lady's infamous twice-yearly bag sale. I didn't know what to expect, but apparently, I had expectations because I was a little disappointed in the sale. But that's not to say I didn't have a really great day with Disentangled and Kris. Basically, instead of having yarns that they actually carry in their shop, they had bags and bags of brands they don't actually carry. It's as if they have a deal with a yarn distributor to get rid of discontinued yarns. But you can't quibble with yarn at 50% off, can you?

As planned, we left San Diego promptly at 6:30 a.m. and arrived at the Yarn Lady about 8 minutes before 8 a.m., and although we thought we got a jump on everyone, there were dozens of people already searching through the bins. Not to be outdone, we grabbed our Ikea bags and jumped in, too. Within 10 minutes of sifting, I had completely filled my bag with maybes. The three of us sat down to do some serious soul searching about which fish had to be thrown back. Basically, we each had at least $1000 worth of yarn in our bags. It's easy to get caught up in the frenzy and spend too much. The original prices of most of the yarn were very high, so the sale prices weren't that great, either. Throwing back had to be done. We all had hard decisions, and we each at one point or another coveted each other's yarn, but I think we all came away happy. We searched through those bins for around three hours, hoping someone else would throw back this or that that we were looking for. By the end of the day, I was dog tired and a little sore from bending over the bins.

Here's my take:

2 bags of Valeria de Roma Topacio in a light and dark blue, possible for the Ribby Cardi
1 bag of Anny Blatt mercerized cotton in a light turquoise color, probably to make another Soleil. I really like that pattern and my first one turned out all wrong.
1 bag of Baruffa Aerobic, in pink. This is a 100% extra fine merino yarn. I may use it to make the Vintage Pink Cardigan.


On Sunday, I took a Two Handed Fair Isle class from Knitting Guru Dave Kraft over at the Grove. It was really a lot of fun and I learned a ton. I couldn't believe I was actually doing it! I figured I'd have a lot of trouble with it since my Continental knitting skills aren't that great. But they were good enough I guess because I made a swatch:

Now I'm really excited to make Eunny's vest. I ordered my shade cards for Jo Sharp Dk Wool from ozeyarn. Hopefully, they'll make it here by Saturday so I can bring them to Rebecca's for show and tell. I still have no idea what colors I'm going to do. In the meantime though, I want to do a small fair isle project to get used to doing it and to improve my skills before I tackle a garment. Any ideas?