Days that start with “Y”

There aren’t many days that start with Y. Well, really only “yesterday” and that’s not exactly a fixed point in time, is it, being all relative and whatnot? But for me, yesterday was a “Y” day, instead of boring old Saturday.

Why “y”? Well, first there was Yarn. In the wake of the announcement of Sanguine Gryphon closing their doors to open up two new sets of doors in different locations, I went a little crazy and bought four skeins of their Mithril lace (the same yarn I used to knit my Rock Island shawl) because I LOVE that yarn base. It’s just as fluid as any plant blend lace but sturdy, warm, and well-plied and tightly twisted, unlike most wool laceweights.

There’s Big Bad Wolf…

Ophelia…

La Belle Dame Sans Merci…

and Zodiac.

And I also bought a skein of Eidos in Melesias.

Those arrived just as I was about to jump in the shower to get ready to head to Denver for the other “Y” of the day, Ysolda Teague. Having met the owners of Fancy Tiger Craft while teaching a class in Iceland, Ysolda scheduled two days of classes on her current lecture tour at my favorite craft store in Denver. My friend Laura and I both signed up, so we ventured on down to Denver to hear Ysolda’s lessons on knitting the perfect sweater.

There were cookies at each table, which felt perfectly “Ysolda”.

The classroom is downstairs, and I’d never been there before, but it is a great space for taking a crafty class. The walls are lined with shelves that mostly hold sewing supplies, including some beautiful machines, but there are also stuffed tigers on some of the shelves.

And then there was Ysolda herself! Charming and engaging, her talk covered much of the information discussed in Little Red in the City, at least in general terms. The conversations that sprung up and the questions asked were insightful and hopefully really helpful to most of the class. I felt like I knew a good amount of the information—there were no revelatory “Come to Jesus” moments for me, but I was entertained by the discussion.

Laura and I chattered afterward on how we’re much more of the “teach ourselves” variety of learners and that perhaps we should look to classes that are more on a master skill level than broad general topics, but we both loved hearing Ysolda talk and getting to chat with her a bit after the class. She signed both of our copies of Little Red and was simply delightful. Here she is (I kind of Kinneared her) chatting with another student about a section of the book.

This post unwittingly starts off a marathon of posts from me, as tomorrow we’ll have October’s month in review, and then I’ll be attempting to post every day in November as part of National Blog Posting Month. Hopefully you’ll keep visiting me and I won’t completely run out of words somewhere along the way.