Finally Yarn! Finally stash!

I'm swamped. I thought that after the defence I'd be less stress but in fact I'm more stressed. I have to get rid of stuff, pack stuff and pack and somewhere in there are two young children. Think god for mothers. Without my mom I would have lost my sanity way back.

Yesterday I did get away from this and go yarn shopping with my stepmom, who is a knitter. We started out going to Álafoss factory shop, where they have anything you need and it's cheap. A skein of eingirni (Icelandic laceweight wool) costs $2.25 (170 kr) and I got a sweater's worth of a beautiful steel grey color (5 skeins) and some red natural colors (yes, we have redhead sheeps here too) - mórautt.

I discovered that they have cheap sockyarn and lot's of it. I got some green. They also have demin cotton yarn. Both these are danish yarn. Even if this is a factory outlet it also sells variety of yarn. I had wanted to knit a denim skokkur (sleeveless dress for kids) for Kamilla for a long time and this stuff was at least half the price of Rowan's denim.

I got some léttlopi (lopi light) in beautiful red colors for French Market Bag from Knitty. My MIL (tengdó) goes to farmer's markets a lot and I want to make it for her. I wanted to make it while I was here but I kept starting it over and over again. I was using a wrong color it turned out. This red one is much better, before I used black for the bottom.

I ended up buying about $70 worth of yarn. But that is a lot of yarn. One Icelandic shopping bag (which is much bigger and sturdier than the US equivalent) and two 4 mm needles as I didn't have one in 80 cm length (since 4 inches are 10 cm then 80 cm is 32 inches).

Later we went to Ullarselið. I had wanted to go there for a while since I went there last summer. I just love their herb colored eingirni. Now they have expanded the selection and have the yarn clearly marked from which plant it is (you don't have to check each hank). They have 50 gr. hanks and 10-15 gr. hanks. I got 4 of the later ones, which is perfect for a shawl with white being the main color. The colors varied from yellow to green. These colors are just so beautiful. As you would expect green and browns dominate the color palette. But there is a lot of variation just from one type of plant. What supprised me most was the onion and the black currant (? krækiber) colors.

This place also has some really cool buttons, made from animal bones and horns as well as stones and shells. I could have gone all out there but I didn't have a project in mind so I just looked.

So now I have stash, at last. Until now I've only bought yarn for one project at a time but the awailability of wool is so little in California (wonder why?) that I have to stack up.

In Iceland you can buy yarn at the grocery store (well, only in small villages where there is just one shop that sells everything). But in the US you can only buy yarn in yarn shops and craft stores. Why doesn't Target sell yarn, especially cotton and superwash yarn??????