While I was home there was some fiber shopping. I helped get my mom set up to make about five or six baby blankets. The Red Heart Baby Soft that she likes using right now had some colors on clearance at Wal-Mart so we bought up a bunch and then filled out the coordinating colors from Jo-Ann.com. She’s going to play around with making blocks and is hoping someone at the nearest LYS will be able to assemble them for her (I sure hope someone there will do that for her or I’ll be pulling out my hair in a few months). This LYS has a charity knitting circle two Wednesdays a month but they also sell blankets on consignment. So, Mom decided if Grandma and Amber really like any of the baby blankets she’d rather sell them on consignment and give them the money to buy more yarn for the charity knitting projects. She isn’t quite on board with the mission statement of the group they are donating them to, so thought that would be a nice compromise. She also talked of giving them to the local battered women’s shelter instead.
This nearest LYS is about 15 minutes from the farm in a small little town called Lake Lillian. It is called Homespun Studio. They have few hours and I missed them the past couple times I was home and this time they were open by appointment only for the month. We had to drive all the way there to find that out because they do not have a business listing.
Homespun Studio is in what I suspect was an old bank building on the main street of Lake Lillian, MN. Inside she has hand made items on consignment, antiques, books, and of course yarns and pattern books and such. The yarn section was filled with Harrisville, Brown Sheep, a touch of Mango Moon, and some local handspun (not spun by her, but she does sell her handspun as well). The biggest selection was of Harrisville, carrying all six lines with a fair selection of colors in each line, though she also had a huge range of colors of the Lamb’s Pride Superwash. There was a fair selection of natural rovings, though no comemrcially dyed ones that I saw. She carries only wood or bamboo needles and the pattern book selection was a tad sparse. There were individual patterns I hadn’t seen before and a few books that were unfamiliar to me. The prices on the yarns and patterns were good though.
If you are in the area or putting together a yarn crawl in west central Minnesota I’d recommend stopping in, just be sure to call first! The address is 510 Lakeview Street, Lake Lillian, MN. Hours are listed as Wed-Fri 10-5 and Sat 9-noon with open by request in January, May, and September. She recommends calling if you are coming from a distance and the studio number is 320-220-0044. The owner’s name is Jane Youngkrantz and she was very nice and easy to work with on setting up an appointment to come in. She did ask me if I was sure I didn’t want to move back home, LOL! Mom had me showing off my super sekrit project that I’m hoping to get published and she was mighty impressed. We also talked wheels and such. She recently got an electric spinner, though hasn’t had time to try it out yet I guess.
Now, of course I couldn’t ask her to open the shop for me and then not buy anything, could I? Definitely not! I fell in love with most of the Harrisville line she had in stock. I haven’t seen it any shops before, but I haven’t gone to any yarn stores in Denver since we have so many right around here. I loved the heathered colors and the various types of yarn. It was a very hard decision. But I came home with Sandalwood (1200 yds) and Sand (800 yds) in the Highland Style 100% virgin wool yarn.
I called Ashley at work while I was there and asked her to look up yardage for the Dale Gerbera sweater from book 126 as she had just finished kniting one for herself. I need to upsize it ever so slightly, but I think this highland style yarn is a tad thicker than the called for Sisik, though the gauge on the ball band indicated a near match so I think I’ll be okay just going up a needle size. It’ll require some swatching. I’m itching to do that right now too but I have to finish last fall’s Wear Everywhere Pullover to free up the needles I think I’ll be needing. I guess this will be a good push to get that done finally.
The super sekrit project needs wrapped up first though… I’m guessing to be done by the end of the weekend, but then again FIL & MIL will be at our house from Friday until Wednesday morning, so….
