Rose City Yarn Crawl 2013 Day 2

Another day of taking Brandon to work early and this time headed into Portland. The plan was to start out at Opulent Fibers and use a $10 gift card there. I had planned to get eight ounces of fiber but with the loss of the $20 was reduced to coming up with a little extra so that I could get an even four ounces. I was early and then waited inside the building until 9:15 then gave up when still not open. Sign said 9am. :-(

Since it was right on Division it was only logical and the other early opening shop, to head to Yarnia. Then I waited for the shop to have a bunch of other early crawlers empty and found that the machine was in use. First time seeing that!

Look close to see the yarns going to the machine

So off to Twisted, though I'd be early and miss the lamb coming into the shop. I have in the past either found parking on either side of Broadway or a side street on the same side as the shop. This time I went to the other side of the and around the block to find this:

How cool!

I had originally planned to get four Hexi-puff skeins and bring in a couple of finished hexi-puffs to get free skeins, but since my budget was less, had to figure something else out. I had been tempted the last time by some Brown Sheep Lanaloft and it was less expensive than I had seen in another shop, so picked out a pretty red and then was tempted by a skein of sparkly red mini:

They had some lovely snacks too! I was able to get some gorp and a tangerine to keep up my energy for the rest of the day.  The ride over to Happy Knits was quick and I was able to get a spot in front of the Barley Mill. I wasn't the only other early bird there, the car in front of me had a couple crawlers and saw others standing outside. Made me think of the Mervyn's commercial with the woman at the door going - open, open. ;-)

Yarn Garden is just a couple blocks down the street on the other side of the street, so an easy walk down the hill. I didn't have them planned as a place to shop, but found some cool fiber art:

Do you see me? ;-)

They also made some fun post cards that can be sent in the mail. I saw a pic of all four, Rachel tells me they are $2 each, here's the one I did see in the shop:

Gossamer isn't that far away. They have yarns and fibers and kits for needle felting. Picked up an apple slice and some lovely cheddar cheese to nibble on and ran into Rachel and Stacey finishing up their crawl. It was a store that Rachel had planned to shop so she was trying to find something. These were a temptation:

Sheep!

They also have a nice selection of embroidery floss 

Some cute samples of their needle felted items. There's little gnomes in the house and angels or fairies hanging.

From here I had thought to head north across the river back to the west side, but changed my plans because I wanted to end it differently from last year. The mapping program took me a different way than I would have come up to get to Angelika's, but that was kind of cool. Learning new ways to get around is always fun!

I had originally planned to buy this at Angelika's, to go with the yellow from For Yarn's Sake to make this. After some searching, I decided to get a ball of Cascade Fixation since I've used it in the past and able to get a pair of ankle socks from one ball. It's in a plastic shrink-wrap to keep the ball band on so please forgive the pic:

Another loop around and the phone map directed me back onto the freeway and back off to go to Knit Purl. I had to circle the blocks looking for a parking space. On the loop back I found a spot across the street from the shop, so dared the parking ticket to go in. They checked my cards and one was empty and the other had $4.15. The challenge - to find something without spending much more. I found Sara, the organizer of the Rose City Yarn Crawl busy uploading photos from her camera to her laptop. Chatted with her before finding a small bottle of lavender scented Eucalan that I just had to pay .10 more to get. You can never have too much wool wash!

It really would have made sense to go from Knit Purl to Pearl Fiber Arts, but I had decided I wanted to end at Cindy's shop. This meant driving down to Dublin Bay as my next to the last stop of the crawl. I found another parking space right on the corner around from the shop and saw that the street in front was full so dared the parking meter gods again and parked without paying for the meter. Looked around the shop and spotted this cute little sheep (I have had it in my queue, now want to knit one):

Nibbled one of their tiny little cupcakes and confirmed that their Downtown Abbey marathon were DVDs on the TV. It wasn't currently playing so went back out to the car. I had noticed this loud rhythmic pounding sound when pulling up. Found it here:

Not sure what its doing to the roof of the apartment building, but glad I don't live in that building!

This really isn't a parking space - at ALL

Turning the corner puts you on 11th Avenue so its just going back down the alphabet to Hoyt and Pearl Fiber Arts. I signed into her iPad to register for the shop prize baskets and received my final stamp to my passport - yea!

Isn't that pretty?
It gets me entered into the Grand Prize Basket drawing

Cindy was worried that I would get a $60 parking ticket for daring the parking meter gods, so had me fish out some coffee coins to feed it. In return I had told her about the free cupcake available from Cupcake Jones. She downloaded the coupon on to her phone and I took them both over - its a block down and around to the shop.

These are our Caramel Mudslides - devil's food cake, kahlua pastry cream filling, irish cream icing, house made caramel drizzle and chocolate coffee crumble on top

Rachel and Stacey had beat me back to the shop with their completed passports. We all chatted for a bit and I realized I was fading from hunger and since my meter had expired headed towards home. I was heading up the hill from the tunnel and realized I had left my cupcake in the shop! Horrors!! A quick call to Rachel and she kindly offered to drop it off on the way to dropping Stacey back at her house (she lives in the  housing community over by the 'new' Witch Hazel elementary (they tore down the old one a year after William graduated and went to middle school.) 

World Wide Spin in Public Day - No Pirates were seen

Gail called me as I was getting ready to leave this morning. "It's pouring down rain, is WWSiP cancelled?" I was good, I don't think I laughed. Nope, I'm an Oregonian, I don't let a little thing like rain stop me from having an event! If I did, there would be a lot of fun times that wouldn't have happened. ;-)

Twenty hardy people showed up with spinning wheels or drop spindles and got to go home with full Goodie Bags. Imagine that! ;-) I guess you could call it our 'fiber loot'. It was awesome to show up in the rain looking for a space under the overhang by the Starbucks for us to setup to find out from Kiley (sorry forgot a picture of her with her kids!) that the Hillsboro Farmer's Market people had set up three canopies for our use. That was just beyond expectations and such a pleasant surprise.  So a big THANK YOU shout out to Laura, market manager, for helping to make our event great!

Gail, had her appendix out on Wednesday, called me Friday and said she didn't think she was going to make it, and then as mentioned called and showed up today. I think she really wanted that Goodie Bag. LOL

Tiggywinkleknits showed a number of small children and adults how to use a drop spindle. I had fun getting a couple of twentysomething guys how to spin - she has 'clown' fluff in BRIGHT orange and green they really seemed to get a kick out of it. One of them had enough that he made a wristband out of his yarn.

Mom, there in the background was later seen trying her hand out with the drop spindle. Can't have Dad having all the fun! ;-)

Shelia, Duffy and Karen spinning (wheels are a Julia, Joy and Victoria) and Karen's mom knitting (sorry I missed mom's name!) Karen and her mom drove over from Gresham to join us. They also came for our World Wide Knit in Public Day event back in June. Aren't they awesome!?

I mentioned drop spinning - we had three Turkish Spindles and they congregated together to discuss the finer points of it. Dana and Michele are new and Jessica has been spinning for over a year that I know of.

Dana & Michele with Rachel in the background teaching her niece on a CD drop spindle. You can see my wheel setup to the left of Michele. It's a Lendrum (if you're keeping track of all the wheels - There were 3 double treadles and three single treadles - we had Lendrums fully covered!).

Love Jessica's smile! Melinda is to her right on the Lendrum. They carpooled together from Vancouver to come spin with us! 

Angela (Joy) and Rachel (Ashford Traveler), Bobbie with a Journey wheel in front of her while carding (her Lendrum is over there behind Rachel).

Another shot showing the three canopies. Rachel on the left with the niece drop spindling and I'm not sure where Norichan was going, that's her Lendrum in front of the chair.

Melissa had arrived after I finally sat down and got some actual spinning done, so no pictures of her. Michele wanted a picture of it, so you can see over on her blog. Much better than the WWKiP day event where I never knit a stitch! LOL Others that missed my camera were Tracy with her Lendrum and Robyn with her drop spindle. Sara had her Kiwi and was sitting next to Angela or flitting about checking out what others were doing. Not sure but there was also a trip to Carissa's car to check out alpaca fleeces. (Many of the linked people have/or will have blog posts about the event and possibly more pictures!)

We did end with some sunshine, just a little later than expected. Next weekend is OFFF, so I'm sure you'll see some of these same faces in a post for that event. It's fun to have such a large group of people to have a good time with.

I brought all my gear home. Gathered up the Transverse Scarf and headed to the 'other' downtown - Portland to Knit-Purl so I could give them their store sample. Sandy Kay was laughing and said she had just come upstairs from sending me an email asking how it was going. LOL Sandy Kay was very pleased with the scarf and offered me a choice of my next project. I saw that Kernel was one of them and while not one I planned to make for myself, I was more than willing to play with some of their Handmaiden to knit it up for them. It's a pretty red with silk and linen. It should be fun to knit up!

I'm now in search of a spider or web stitch pattern to make into wristwarmers for Bailey. She plans to wear her "Spider Geisha" outfit again for Halloween. I thought she needed wristwarmers to complete the outfit.

Knit/Purl Thanksgiving Yarn Window

Go check the Alder Street window at Knit/Purl where they have a VERY realistic Thanksgiving laid out all done in felted yarn:






Isn't that incredible?!