Gingerbread and "What I Bought on my Vacation"

The last of the travel posts, just because I love the Victoriana so very much.

Ferndale, CA

There is a vintage car convention in the area every year around this time, so there were a number of these little cuties spotted.

This was my favourite building - I'm totally in love with those colours and all the detailing.

Even the public restrooms are cute.

This is the yarn I picked up at Foggy Bottom Yarns when we were in Ferndale.

They didn't have any local yarn, but they did have a new shipment of Sweet Georgia Cashsilk Lace, which is 55% silk, 45% cashmere laceweight, in the colourway, botanical. I was havering between this and a purple and I came down on the side of the green since it reminded me of the redwoods we were camping amongst.

When I travel I do try to look out for local yarns when I can. Art of Yarn in Kelowna in May didn't have anything in  that was truly local but they did have Hand Maiden, which is hand dyed in Canada, and which I'd been wanting to try for a while. I bought a skein of Maiden Hair, 67% silk, 23% kid mohair, 10% nylon sport weight, in the Blomidon colourway. It's lovely and sqwooshy.

In March, when we went to Portland, I realised (after it was much too late to turn back) that I'd left my knitting bag by the front door, so the day after we arrived, while David attended some meetings, I googled the nearest yarn store, Wool 'n Wares, and went in for some emergency stash. Turns out that Portland was having a yarn crawl that weekend so they had some really gorgeous local yarn, which I petted and sighed over, but when I asked the price I had to sit down - from $120 to $400 a skein! I quickly bought a ball of Zwergers Garn's Opal Flower Power self-striping sock yarn, a set of 2.5mm dpns and cast on a pair of socks to calm my nerves. 

The next day, our coffee tour with Lora ended near Knit Purl in downtown Portland, so I dragged David in for a quick look. He's so good about going shopping with me.

I bought two really nice skeins of wool in Portland (apart from the Opal) but I can't remember now which one I bought at Wool 'n Wares and which at Knit Purl.

This is Madeline Tosh, Prairie - a 100% merino laceweight in the Cathedral colourway, which I think I got at Knit Purl -

The other is an Oregonian yarn, which I think I got at Wool 'n Wares, after I picked my jaw up off the floor. It's Alexandra's Craft, Baby Silver Falls, a 60% superwash, 30% bamboo, 10% nylon, fingerweight in the Kaleidoscope colourway. I forgot to take a picture of it skeined up but here it is being knitted up. Although I like the way variegated yarn looks in the skein, I usually don't like the way it knits up, but the colours in this were just irresistible. They remind me of an early evening sky. And it really suits the garter stitch.

It seemed appropriate that I use it to finally make the Multnomah shawl (which I'm calling my Keeping Portland Weird shawl).

Unfortunately, I still have a four-row pattern repeat, plus the bind-off to knit, and I only have this much yarn left,

So it's on hold until I can rummage through my stash and see if I can come up with a complementary yarn I can use to finish it off with. I can totally pretend that it's a intentional border. Yeah.

Wendy