January 2007 Archives

There's a new yarn store in Hyattsville! And thus far, the closest store to where I live. I learned about A Tangled Skein from reading another DC Metro blogger's post and I was so excited that the next day I drove over to check it out. That was last Thursday, I think and they had only been open for three days. I should say that they're off to a really good start. Here's another positive aspect - the store's near my sister's home, so in warm weather, I can just park my car there and walk over to the store. Perhaps if my nephew is a good boy and in the mood for a nice walk, we can go over there so he can pick out the color for nice sweater. Well, right now it's just a fantasy - it'll likely be a couple of years before he understands that Auntie wants to make something handsome for him . . .

The shop is located in a building which used to be an office building, or a bank, I'm not sure. For years, the Hyattsville downtown, which is run through by Rt. 1 (Baltimore Ave, in this section) had been on the decline, with shuttered storefronts and auto shops, new, used, and repair. But in the past couple years or so, there has been a revival of the area, and the car shops are for the most part gone. Construction of new residential buildings and renovations of existing building is occurring. One of the developers wants to turn this into an artist mecca, where artists would live and work in the same space. And of course, trying to bring in new businesses. Which is great.

I spoke with Cheryl Hoffman, one of the proprietors of the shop. She seems very enthusiastic about her business. I told her about how I used to go to The Yarn Shop (now closed) when I was going to University of Maryland College Park (which is just about 4 or 5 miles up from the new store's location). She said that Shirley Pugh, who was the owner of the store, helped her get this business up and running. I was really glad about that. And looking at the selection of yarn, it's obvious that she's done her research well. There is a nice blend of classic and novely yarn, with a good price range. She carries a wide range of Brown Sheep yarn (Lamb's Pride, Superwash, Naturspun worsted and sports), Debbie Bliss, Ella Rae. Even has a decent selection of Noro yarn. For the sock knitters, there's Wildefoote (I know some people think it's splitty, but it's very durable and wears like iron), Sockotta. Some of the more unusual yarn include Tofutsies, a sock yarn that includes chitin, which is fiber made from crab and shrimp shells and is supposedly antibacterial. I'm going to have to pick up a skein of this sometime.

Here's what I got from the shop: one skein each of Ella Rae Classic and Berroco Ultra Alpaca, a pom-pom maker and a free tube of Soak wool wash. I don't have any partuclar plans for the yarn, just to swatch with. I want to see how comparable is Ella Rae Classic to Brunswick Germantown, and the price for Ultra Alpaca is decent enough that it warrants a close look.

Tonite there's going to be a "Sit & Knit" meet starting 7pm until 8:30pm. Everyone is welcome and there's no charge. You're free to bring unstarted projects, or that UFO you've been meaning to finish but gotten stuck. If I'm not too tired, I'm going to come over.

Meanwhile, I came across a way to wind your yarn quickly using a mixer. Wow . . . a way to get an electric yarn winder using what you already have in your house! Results are very mixed, however. I have three mixers - a KitchenAid professional, an old SunMaid mixer that doesn't quite work properly anymore (Speed Level 1 is more like Level 4) and a hand-mixer.

First, I tried the KitchenAid mixer, using the dough hook. This didn't quite work out due to the angle. Next, I tried the SunMaid mixer. Speed level is too high at 1 (see above paragraph). Next up: hand-mixer. I still need to locate the attachments. Stay tuned.

Addendum: Here's the address and phone number for the store:

A Tangled Skein
5200 Baltimore Ave.
Suite 101
Hyattsville, MD 20781
301-779-3399

There's a website, but it's not up yet. And to get to the store, you need to make a right turn onto Gallatin St. from Baltimore Ave, if coming from the north; left turn if coming from the south. Right after the post office and its parking lot, there's a public parking lot where you can park; the price to park there is quite decent (for now).

Okay, so it's not a whole lot of snow. More like a dusting and now it all turning to mush thanks to rain/sleet. Fun, fun fun. Maybe we'll have a more substantial snowfall before the cold weather is over.

Here's an interesting technique that I discovered while browsing the web:

I don't do long draw very often, because you have to have well-prepared wool that isn't too slippery. But this looks like a great technique for getting yarn spun up quickly. Now, if I could feel motivated to get back to my spinning wheel. Maybe if I can find a sturdy, low, backless chair at a thrift shop . . .

By the way, I've now enabled TypeKey for this blog. The first time you sign in, your comments will apparently be held in moderation so I can check it out, and then toggle the "trusted" tag so I don't have to deal with this again. Hopefully it'll cause net abusers to come up against a brick wall.

I'm getting sick and tired of junk spam coming through and some of these making it through and getting posted, even though I've turned off commenting for old posts. (Something seems to mysteriously turn commenting back on.)

So, I've been doing some research on the MovableType commenting setup, and it seems I can use the "trusted" setting, so that I can flag legitimate folks as trusted and allowing their comments to be posted automatically. But only if I set it that those wishing to leave a comment must first sign in through TypeKey.

I don't know how many of you have TypeKey accounts. I do and most of the time I don't have problems logging in. I have a buddy who runs a blog which gets over 50 comments on the average and he uses TypeKey, and has had no problems seeing spams getting through. This would make my job a lot easer in that I won't have to go in to rescue legit comments 6 hours after these have been posted, and spam comments going where these belong without me having to interfere.

How do you all feel about being required to sign in through TypeKey before leaving comments here? Please note that some of your comments may end up in the Junk Comments folder, so it will take me a while to get to these. ;-)

Edit: Oops . . . I meant that my buddy, who has TypeKey enabled, has not experienced any spam comments slipping through on his blog.

Just or giggles, I wanted to see how much it'd cost to travel to Tbilisi, Georgia. So, I looked at the calendar. Assuming that Bruce and I'd want to go when the weather was nice, and before the start of tourist season, I picked May 14th as departure date (you don't think I'd want to miss MDSWF, did you?!?!?), and June 29th as the return date. I do like to be in my home country on July 4th.

I went to Travelocity to look up the costs of departure and return flights. It just so happens that United has a route from BWI to Tbilisi, with two changeovers. It's going to take at least 29 hours flying out there and 20 hours returning to US. Assuming there's no delays due to mechanical trouble, weather problems or guards looking for portable WMDs.

Looking at the first flight option, I see there's something about turboprop service. Umm . . . no thanks. Been there, done that. I'm leery about being stuck in a 40-seat plane where you can feel every rattle and groan of the plane. And Georgia is a mountainous region.

So, I'll go for United . . . waitaminnit - the last two flights are actually the same! How so? Flight time are the same; plane change locations are the same. The only difference are the price - there's $599 difference. So, we'll take the Lufthansa option, which totals up to $4400.

We're suffering sticker shock already. But that's okay . . . hypothetically, we've won the multimillion lottery, so we can afford to throw caution to the wind. Or maybe a billionaire died and made us his sole beneficiaries in his will . . .

Return flights - the options aren't much better. Prices are all the same, so we might as well pick the fastest flight, which takes all of 20 hours 29 minutes. Total - $5598. And Grand Total - $9998. Might as well round it upwards of $10,000 . . . there's going to be taxes and fees tacked on.

And we still have to deal with housing, food, and transportation. Sigh . . . I'll take the cheapest option of all - travel to Georgia in my dreams.

I came across a truly fabulous video of a Georgian song and dance group, Erisioni. The Georgians have a rich tradition of singing and dancing, and you can see some of it in this video. There's an English subtitle version at Google Viideo, but there seems to be no way to embed a Google video and so I've taken the liberty of embedding this YouTube video.

Fiberwise, yes, there's knitting in Georgia. I have a book that was published by a museum back in the late 80s/early 90s, when Soviet Union still existed. There's some pictures of Georgian socks, but unfortunately the pictures are tiny and you can't really get a good look at the details. One day I'll have to go to Georgia and stay there for a couple months to explore the beautiful country.

Okay, so I didn't get back to my spinning wheel on this day since I was busy with church and our Sunday visit with the parents. But, hopefully I'll get back to spinning this week, and as usual, I've started work in a new project while not yet finishing the other UFOs. This time around, it's the Saddle-Shoulder Cardigan that I'm working on, using Briggs & Little Regal yarn. I needed a project that has Aran and Twisted stitches, and this one fits the bill.

More later . . .