Cardigan in progress.

For the past two weeks I’ve been knit­ting away at my new cardi­gan. My father-in-law took me shop­ping for the most gor­geous yarn as a birth­day present while we were vis­it­ing. A fam­ily friend told us about a going-out-of-business sale at the yarn shop in Fred­er­icks­burg, TX, so we went over to take a look.

This shop was spe­cial and I was very sad it was clos­ing. Even though it was a small space, the shop was beau­ti­fully laid out, with the main focus being the com­mu­nity knit­ting table. Every­thing was care­fully selected and placed. I could imag­ine myself com­ing in to sit, knit, and chat, if I lived there. The owner also car­ried every color of high-quality fulled wool you could imag­ine for appliqué and sewing projects. It was one of those places that inspires you and makes you want to go straight home and start cre­at­ing. As I looked around, I tried to make a mem­ory imprint of my sur­round­ings. It’s sad to me that it won’t be there the next time we go to visit.

My father-in-law, hus­band, and son were all coax­ing me to shop with wild aban­don. “Get what­ever you want!” they said. I knew I couldn’t, or shouldn’t, go too crazy. I’ve been try­ing to use up my stash and get it to be more man­age­able, i.e. eas­ier to store in the small space I have. One of my goals this year is to not only knit up projects sooner, but also to knit up what I’ve already bought for and be sure I fin­ish ALL of them! There are still a few projects from a few years ago that I just stopped knit­ting once the chal­lenge was out of it for me, but now those projects are clog­ging up my space. It took me some time to switch gears on shop­ping style.

As I was try­ing to decide which yarn to buy, I was par­tic­u­larly drawn to the col­ors in the Manos del Uruguay ket­tle dyed yarn in one of the yarn cub­bies. The col­ors are per­fect: all shades of rose, laven­der, moss green, and tan. I love that it’s called Wild­flower. The fiber is a lus­cious blend of silk and extrafine merino wool. I looked at every­thing else, but kept grav­i­tat­ing back to this yarn and touch­ing it. Being a very tac­tile per­son, once I touched this yarn, I knew I had to quickly cal­cu­late how much I would need for a cardigan. I could already imag­ine the gar­ment I would knit from it and the but­tons I would find to go with it. Before we paid and left, I got coaxed into tack­ing on a few more skeins, just to be sure I had enough.

Close-up of cardigan back.

Once home, I pored over knit­ting books and mag­a­zines for the per­fect pat­tern that matched what I imag­ined in the yarn store. I searched online and found the per­fect tagua nut but­tons at Lil­lianO­live on Etsy. They match the tan in the yarn exactly. I sus­pend my knowl­edge that this yarn is really cater­pil­lar spit and fine sheep’s hair, which is a qual­ity in human hair that we don’t always prize. Or maybe I mar­vel even more at the nat­ural fiber because of it. Who would have thought some­thing with such sim­ple begin­nings could become this gor­geous yarn? It knits up so beau­ti­fully and is a joy to handle.

This has been one of the best gifts I’ve ever got­ten. Shop­ping sprees are fun, because you get to splurge on some­thing guilt-free and get what you really could use, but haven’t had the money for. But every stage of this project has been excit­ing for me. Even hand wind­ing the skeins into balls has been enjoy­able, because I get to touch the yarn again. I’m rel­ish­ing all my knit­ting time and can’t wait to wear my new sweater!