Crab. Crabby. Crab.

I’m feeling crabby this morning. I don’t actually have a reason to be crabby, I just am.

So, in the spirit of crabbiness, I shall crab about knitting.

First, . I own the first , and I liked it. I thought it was fun and that the basics in the book were good. But do we need another one?

Go take a look at the pictures. They are… bad. Very bad. And the projects are just more of the same. Chunky knits. Weird accessories. A couple of fairly simple sweaters (although perhaps slightly more advanced than the last Stitch N’ Bitch book, but only because Intarsia is involved. Intarsia is involved in most of the projects. I guess people like stockinette and intarsia.). The only item I could potentially like was this one:

I know people talk about how its for the young people to convince them to get into knitting. How many of those books do we need? Perhaps young people would like to knit something that actually looks nice and is challenging?

Second Crab:

We ventured out to Zora’s Yarn Shop in Naperville. It’s in the owner’s house. (She has a gorgeous kitchen, btw.) She appears to only carry Plymouth yarn at this point, and I wasn’t very excited. Lots of novelty, a fair amount of Galway, and she did have some Alpaca. Oh, and one kind of sock yarn, and some baby/cotton yarn. I wasn’t even tempted, sadly enough. I hope she gets more stock - she had expressed an interest in stocking more traditional yarns, but I didn’t see a lot of evidence of that, unfortunately. The owner is very nice, though, and she is offering a variety of classes.

In No Crab News:

After Zora’s Yarn, Kevin and I went to lunch at Dali’s, in Downtown Downers Grove. It was scrumptious, as always. I then dragged him into Knitche (its his fault he parked near the yarn shop :)), and wandered around. I didn’t buy anything, but I do like how they often get in yarns in the higher end, even if I don’t buy them. For example, I got to touch some lovely bulky cashmere (53 dollars a ball), and some baby camel yarn. I totally fell in love with it - it was a wavy mix of browns, and was perhaps even softer than cashmere. But, at 23 dollars a skein, a bit too much for my budget currently. The yardage wasn’t bad for that 23 dollars, but it was still 23 dollars.

In knitting news, I have done a tiny bit. I’m starting the heel on my second sock. I’m still working on my sister’s sleeves. The problem is that for some reason, knit 2, purl 2 puts me right to sleep. Not out of boredom - its just so relaxing that 30 minutes of it leads me to snoozing on the couch. But, I shall soldier on.