Friday 8 December 2006

what passes for thrills around here

This is how lame I am: I get ridiculously excited when I find out a yarn I've read a lot about, and seen used in many patterns, is going to become available in the UK. Like right now, Woolly Workshop is claiming they will soon have Mission Falls 1824 wool, and I am almost beside myself. I'm pretty sure this is just a very nice, basic yarn, so my excitement is all out of proportion to this news, but I'm thrilled anyway, if only because it means I won't necessarily have to substitute the yarn in some patterns I've liked. I'm all like Steve Martin in The Jerk, yelling, "The new phone books are here! The new phone books are here!"

The last time I was this excited about yarn was when Get Knitted started stocking Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride and Cascade 220. Perfectly ordinary, nice enough yarns, but there I was, getting stupid about it. I'm knitting the second of a pair of Fuzzy Feet right now with the Lamb's Pride, and sadly, it hasn't lived up to the ridiculous hype I created in my own mind. It's very nice. I'm sure it will felt beautifully. It's just yarn. My life is unchanged. I have yet to feel slightly let down by the Cascade, but I'm sure that day is coming. Koigu and Cherry Tree Hill and Lorna's Laces all totally lived up to my expectations, though. It is worth noting that these are all fairly expensive yarns, and I don't think I've yet encountered an expensive yarn I didn't love passionately. This does not surprise me in the slightest.

And all of this is just a lead-in to the latest heart-pounding thrill in my increasingly pathetic life: I'm about to order a swift. Over dinner tonight:

Phil: Blah blah blah, work, blah blah blah, new Nikon stuff, blah blah blah, enough about what I've been up to, what did you do while I was gone?
Me: Oh my god, I found two places selling swifts!
Phil: Huh? Birds?
Me: No! Yarn swifts!
Phil: Uh, knitting stuff, yes?
Me: Yes! Isn't that exciting?
Phil: Oh, certainly, yes, very exciting.
Me: You have no idea.
Phil: No, I'm sure I don't.

My husband, the terminal phlegmatic. Fortunately, he's cute, and even more fortunately, he has an obsessive hobby as well so even if he doesn't quite get what we refer to as 'the yarn thing' around here, he's agreeable enough about it for a man who is in imminent danger of losing wardrobe space to my stash.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Grin. Richard is the same way - I get all excited about something to do with knitting, and he does the equivalent of patting me on the head and saying 'that's nice dear'.

Also, you will love having a swift. It's one of the best purchases I ever made for knitting. That and a ball winder and you'll be all set!

ana said...

Ball winders seem to be a little trickier around here, but even just having the swift will make a huge difference, I'm sure.

And I suppose all we can do is pity the non-yarn obsessed, poor souls.