Yarn Train

This morning, I got to leave the house, instead of run the office, and go do something fun. In a knitterly kind of way. I took my project bag, if you remember, this is one I received from the purple swap a couple of months ago.
This is the project in the bag. The other night, I watched Ann Curry in Haiti discuss a newborn infant, who was already an orphan. I got out my new copy of 'Knitting for Peace' that I had bought for the dog blankets and all, and thought a cotton sweater for an orphan in Haiti might be a good thing, FOR ME, to make. The pattern starts with panels knit center front and back, then the sides and sleeves picked up along the side of these panels.

Armed with walking project, I'm off.

This is the landmark tower at the Train Station. As beautiful as the architecture is outside, inside is breathtaking. But I was not here for the field trip of our city's buildings. That clock says our train is about to arrive, better get in there.

The group was so big, I couldn't have gotten them all in one shot. Here, the primary organizer is going over the game plan.

We listened.

And listened to other details.

On your mark, get set, go!

There was a woman from the group on the train, for whom this was a first time in this adventure, and since I've never been to any of the three shops in the nearby neighborhood, we set out to find it together.

The first shop was Dublin Bay. Their shop is down the next block, just there. This neighborhood is pretty much all new. I hadn't been thru here in a few years, so it was all new to me.
Here is my find, from Dublin Bay. That's right my friends. I bought a spool! I love them spools, can't resist 'em. This is a really pretty heather. The yardage is 1,750. Got me some knittin' to do.

At this intersection, we stopped as my companion needed to eat. She had to be at the train station at home about 6 hours earlier, it was time. We stopped in a little cafe, called (something like Delisia, I will look up and fix this later). I had eaten a big breakfast, so at this point I wasn't really needing anything. However, now that she had eaten, I wasn't about to let my own hunger slow us, so I had a half plain bagel with cream cheese. Her dish was 'Black Pearl Benedict' which had roasted potatoes, spinach, almond slivers, slices of pastry, with a sauce that looked like mole all over it.

We headed down 11th Avenue. There were several little park pass thru areas. Nice day in January, yes?

Next stop was Knit Knot Studio. Very tiny shop, but apparently the owner is something special as far as knitters go. There were so many ladies in there, I was almost glad to leave.


Continuing down 11th, we walked past Powell's Books (we were coming back later for this) to head to the next shop. There was a fabric store just before that, were I found some great leafy buttons to go with my new wool. I think I discovered that abalone doesn't photograph with a digital camera too clearly.

That was right next to the next shop, Knit/Purl. They have a very good selection of colors in the Cascade 220 Superwash there, I think I counted 45 plus another 6 or 8 in the clearance bins. The reason I noticed this is because my local area knitters are knitting the Great American Afghan, and this is the yarn they are using.

And Back to Powell's books.

Now, I was just there with my brother a couple of weeks ago, so I wasn't really looking for anything. I just looked for different authors that I didn't remember seeing on the earlier visit. This was the only Annie Modesitt on the shelf. I guess she's popular with many readers here.

And I opened it up to find . . . .

I found an AUTOGRAPHED COPY! I think I'll pretend that whoever this Stephanie is, she named me this book's God-mother and that is why I have it now. They also gave the Yarn Train gang a free recycled shopping bag. I'm very glad to have that, as I had another bag years ago and Nicole borrowed it.

Well, my adventure buddy hails from the book trade, so she found what she wanted pretty quick. We realized we had more than two hours left, what to do?

We'll first I wanted to stop to pick up a Red Velvet Cupcake for Superman. I had heard that many shops in the neighborhood were doing various things to raise money for Haiti, this particular place is donating 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this cupcake. I got a taste of it and it was very good.

We walked back to the train station and drove my car over to Twisted. Yep, we got FOUR shops done, none that I had been in before.
(You may have noticed I wasn't taking pictures of the shops we visited anymore. Well, it started raining and I didn't want to get the camera wet.)

At Twisted, we ran into another local knitter, this one I was familiar with because she is on Ravelry. I've seen several of her posts, because she is a travel agent that likes to put together other fun knitterly adventures. Today, she told us all about a cruise/train/knitting trip she's putting together for next fall. Oh, I so wish. We also talked about the local Knitting Guild. I was interested to learn more, she seems to appreciate it.

Back at the train station, the ladies are arriving back with full bags of bargains, tired but with smiling faces. Looks like we all had a good time.