Yarn Extravaganza

My dad came down from upstate New York on Thursday, and on Friday we went to the Renninger's Extravaganza in Kutztown, a gigantic flea market. We'd been planning all week -- what time we'd get up, which route we'd take to get there, how much cold water we'd need. Hat? Check. Sunglasses? Check. Cash? Check. Checkbook? Check.

It ended up being a bust.

Having walked the show twice over, we were ready to leave by 11:00 with nothing to show for it. We didn't even buy a bag of Kettle Korn (tm). The Extravaganza has become what many flea markets have become these days -- a kind of shabby, down-in the-mouth affair full of depressed people and their goods. Blame it on eBay, blame it on the economy, blame it on whatever. Flea markets just aren't what they used to be and this was clear proof. Back in the day, Renninger's was one of the best-known flea markets and everyone went to the Extravaganzas.

As a consolation prize, we drove to Adamstown, "Antiques Capital of USA" [sic], and trolled a couple of the antique malls there. My dad spent $5.00 on a figure for his train set, and I spent $9.00 on a bag of vintage yarn. Here it is laid out on my table. No real duds, I was happy to find. And only one skein, white, that has some rust stains I'll see if I can get out.


Behold.


This angora is so soft. There's only a little bit of the turquoise left, and some white. But it's enough to use as a highlight in a stranded project.


I love the old labels. Here, Opalette, a blend of wool and rayon. And mothproof!


Pure Shetland from Brunswick. The blue is my favorite. Too bad there's only one skein of it.


Coquette!


And the softest 100% wool yarn from Reynolds, which is inspiring me to think about knitting argyles again.

So, even though we failed at the Extravaganza itself, I feel like I hit it big with this little Yarn Extravaganza in a bag. Extravaganza, with the letters v, x, and z, is such a nice word.

Yeti in pink pants

Here are photos of another yeti I've made. I'm wondering if it might become part of a series. What's next, the Loch Ness monster? Bigfoot? A unicorn?

Full yeti, standing about 15" tall. He needs the pink pants to keep him warm.

He's got a sweet face.


A detail of his back pocket. For his cigs. Or his moleskin notebook.

His belt, keeping it all together.

A close-up of his fuzzy feet, his pants buttons, and his navel.

For two summers during college I worked at a frame shop in Cape May, NJ, selling prints and posters of the Jersey shore and a bunch of other stuff to tourists. I dealt with a lot of French Canadian men who would mosey in bare-footed, flashing their wet, matted chest hair and wearing nothing but a heavy gold chain and one of those embarrassingly tiny Speed-Os. Hard to take them seriously as customers when clearly they weren't carrying their wallets on them. (Or were they. . . ?)

Anyway, one day a guy came in and asked if we had posters of unicorns. I said no, we didn't in stock, but I pulled out our graphic arts poster catalog, started thumbing through it, and suggested we could order something. Something like this. Or this. Oh no, he clarified. I want a photograph of a unicorn. Oh, well, no, I didn't think I could get anything like that. So young. So naive -- I didn't know about cryptozoology back then.

Olympiad

I finally finished this hat and I feel like it was a bit of an Olympic effort on my part. I was copying the hat that Ralph Lauren designed for the US Team. It looked like this:
The day after the opening ceremonies when the team first wore the hat, I took a look on Ravelry and sure enough- someone had already posted a pattern. I happened to be hanging out with my sister, who's family nickname is Moose. (Long story- she is not a large person, though.) She likes things with moose on them and her 50th birthday is coming up and she asked me to make her the hat. But I was on a yarn diet, only using yarn from my stash. I did have red, white and blue, but a different gauge and, now that I see these pictures together, rather different colors. I cast on and knit all the way up to the moose's nose when I was sure it was too small. Frogged and started over. I am not too good at knitting anything twice, so it was tough going for a while there. But all in all, I am happy with it. The yarn is really nice Norwegian Dale yarn and I dyed the blue. The red is some leftover yarn that Simma got in Germany- I think it is alpaca. The hat is very soft and kind of fuzzy.