A non-knitting girlfriend thought that once I closed the shop I would lose interest in yarn.  I could not imagine that ever happening, but I didn't say anything.

So here I sit on a yarn collection that should probably be in a vault, and what have I been doing today? Shopping for yarn, of course.

Which seems even more ironic because this weekend I am clearing out the last odds and ends from the store.  Three carloads of stuff (not all yarn, but there is plenty of that, too).  After unloading last night's load from the store this morning, I went to meet Herta and Ginger for lunch.  Ginger brought along a set of gorgeous Prism yarns in Tumbleweed and gold tones that she had bought at the shop because she couldn't remember what she had bought them for and was hoping that I would remember.  My memory is going when it comes to all sorts of things, but for some reason I always remember other people's knitting projects.  The yarn was for the 3-yarn tee in Laura Bryant's Yarn Stash Workbook.

Then I went to the shop and loaded up the car again, and came home. 

What prompted me to start shopping on-line was that I finally figured out what to do with the four skeins of Tilli Tomas Flurries in Skydrop that a customer returned after the shop had closed:



With all of the yarn in my stash, and all of the projects that I have going, I don't know why I have felt compelled to find a project for this particular yarn.  I think it's that I am fascinated with the fact that it felts (it is 100% wool), and those clear beads on that lovely blue would make a nice fabric ... but for what? 

While packing things up at the shop I came across the Nicky Epstein felted wreath and the Dr. Seuss stocking that Herta made last year for our Christmas decorations, and it suddenly came to me:  a blue and white felted Christmas stocking made out of Tilli Tomas Flurries!  When I got home, I went to see if Lorena had the Tilli Tomas Aspen (the unbeaded counterpart to Flurries) in Natural up on the Hanks web site yet.  Not yet, and I know that Lorena is up to her eyeballs in doing inventory and updating the online catalog and getting ready for the big grand opening.  So rather than call her on Monday and ask her to hunt down one skein of it for me, I went looking for it online.  Found it, along with several other things that I had to have.

Including a pattern for an utterly gorgeous lace jacket -- a jacket that is just so "me" -- and one that I could never knit myself in a million years.  So I had to call Herta, knitter extraordinaire.  Herta has been going totally nuts lately on some outrageously intricate patterns that someone asked her to make.  She's been so stressed out over them that I figured that I had better ask permission first.  I called and asked her to take a look at the picture of the jacket and tell me if she would knit it for me.  She said yes!  Here it is:



It is a White Lies pattern and I ordered it from dreamweaveryarns.com  It calls for fingering weight yarn.  There is no way that I could do that much counting and knitting without going nuts.  Herta said "no problem -- that's not hard at all."

The big question now is:  what yarn to use?  I am thinking one of the Colinette Jitterbug semi-solids, but then I wonder whether silk or linen wouldn't be better.  Maybe Tilli Tomas Voile de la Mer?  But I am not sure if silk has enough "bounce" for this design and perhaps it really should be knit from wool.  Any suggestions would be most welcome!

Prism has just released Stuff Plus 5 (click on the link to see the contents):

 

Hanks will be getting it in sometime this week, and you will be able to get it here, when it arrives.  (I know that shelves seem awfully bare at the web site these days, but all of the yarns that you know and love will be back soon -- Lorena's working on it!)