Monday, November 07, 2005

It Zwibble

Obviously I couldn't think of a clever title so I give you one of my favorite things to say. It's the title of a children's book that my kids had many, many years ago. The plot left much to be desired but I loved saying the main character's name!

Mmm, new yarn purchases! Aren't they nice? Two Saturdays ago, Sue, Donna, and I decided it was time to take another trip out Cooperstown way and visit Sybil's Yarn Shop. We left about 9 a.m. and headed out into rural New York State.

On the way to Sybil's, we decided to stop in Fly Creek to visit the Fly Creek Cider Mill. This place is great. In addition to the cider mill, they have a huge gift shop on two floors, a small snack stand, and a duck pond with every interesting kind of duck they could find.

We spent quite a bit of time browsing all the gourmet dips, jellies, spreads, mustards, cookie mixes, scone mixes, soup mixes, candy, fudge, cheese, home made apple pies, Vera Bradley bags, kitchen items, Christmas ornaments, Yankee candles, etc. I mean this place is FULL! I bought a new Yankee candle car freshener and a small jug of apple cinnamon syrup. And a cup of hot spiced cider at the snack stand. Yummy stuff!

We got there around 9:30 and by the time we were ready to leave (an hour later), it was starting to get busy. And on a Saturday in the fall, that place gets plenty busy!

So we headed off to Sybil's and got there around 30 minutes later. Much to our disappointment, there was a Closed sign on the door. I went up and rang the bell (as she lives next door) but no one came out. Now we had just driven an hour and it was closed. Bummer! But, at the library knitting group the previous Thursday, I was told there was a new yarn shop on Main Street in Oneonta. And Oneonta was only another 20 minutes away!

I have never been to Oneonta but Donna was fairly familiar with it so off we went again. We drove down Main Street (which is quite lengthy) looking for anything that looked like a yarn shop. Finally we got down into the business section and decided to find a parking place so we could continue our search on foot. I found a public lot on a side street so we parked and proceeded to walk down the street.

Oneonta is an old city and a college town to boot. The State University of New York at Oneonta is primarily known as a teachers college. Downtown was quite busy and had a number of very interesting shops. But, as far as we could see, no yarn shops. After walking a couple of blocks, Donna decided to go into a store and ask. Sue and I stayed outside and I wandered over to look at the Fair Trade shop that was next to the shop Donna went in, and what to my wondering eyes should appear in their window but YARN! Donna came out and said that they thought it maybe was next door. We had that figured out already!

We went in and, sure enough, they had a selection of yarns. We found Peace Fleece (which I have heard of but never found before), Mano del Uraguay, Mango Moon, and some locally spun yarns. They also had some great ebony knitting needles but I wasn't prepared to spend $16.00 on a pair of needles. I did buy two hanks of a rust colored Peace Fleece, though. While we were there, Donna asked the volunteer who was working if he knew of any other yarn shops close by. He directed us to one on the west side of the city. So we purchased our yarn, went down the street for lunch, and then headed out again.

He gave us excellent directions and we quickly got to Knit It All Together. It's located inside a semi-large building that has been converted to offices and shops. This yarn shop wasn't super large but she has a nice selection of yarns. Cascade, Dalegarn, Debbie Bliss, Lana Grossa, Sirdar, and a lot more that I don't remember. I bought two skeins of Lana Grossa Basics Quick Print (50% virgin wool, 50% acrylic), 3 skeins of Atacama 100% hand painted alpaca by KFI, and 3 skeins of Dalegarn Sisik (30% wool, 30% mohair, 34% acrylic, 6% viscose) in red. With the 3 skeins of Sisik, I got a free pattern to make a faux entrelac scarf.

Here is a picture of my yarn purchases for that day. Clockwise from the upper left-Atacama, Sisik, Lana Grossa, Peace Fleece.



Sybil's was closed which was a disappointment but it turned out to be a very nice trip. And I have a feeling we'll be going back that way again.

Here is a picture of the items I made for Ruinwen's charity challenge at the Yarn Yoga group. I wish I could have made more mittens but I had that bunting to finish. I did get 5 pairs finished.



And after that long of a post, I think I'm done for now. Time to go knit.

1 Comments:

At 11:08 AM, Blogger emy said...

Those mittens are so cool looking!

 

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