Knit and the City

Welcome to the Joy House!

On the ground for all of ten minutes, we were off to our first yarn store, a Stitch Above, in Providence, RI. A Stitch Above, however, had multiple personality disorder, as half the shop was a yarn store, and the other half was a leather goods entity - I want to sell fanny packs, no I want to sell yarn. Yarn, Fanny Packs, Yarn, Fanny packs!

The pounding schizophrenia drove us out the door, and for Knitty D, into the arms of Vera Bradley. No photo available - just say no to Vera!

Then, after a light lunch, we were off to Plymouth, and Knitting Treasures. Treasure I found indeed. Here is my handpainted mohair (project to be discussed later in the week). Oh, and that is that Mayflower rising in the background, and here is my educational excursion for the trip - Plymouth Rock. I suspect that this is not the actual rock . . . at least they don't charge a fee for admission.



After spending a restful night with the Six (count em SIX) Bach beagles, in the morning we were off to see the Lobster Pot Lady, dyer of exquisite cashmere yarns. Here we are in her sale stash - cashmere

And, mohair.

While not quite ready to retire, the Lobster Pot Lady was doing quite the hard sell to convince Knitty D to move to the Cape, and become the next Lobster Pot Lady. And, what will the next dyemistress of Lobster Pot fame get for her money - a dyeing studio? Well, if you count the lobster pots on the stove, and the turkey fryers in the backyard as a studio . . . Developed on a nearly no overhead budget, with your basic kitchen items as tools of the trade, it's a thriving business, the yarn is beautiful, and what could be more idealic than sitting in your backyard on the Cape watching your cashmere yarn cook and dry? I was a bit jealous envisioning Knitty D's fiber future, but on the other hand, I'm such a Philly girl, I think it would take more than a mohair blend, or a worsted cashmere to get me to move . . .

But, speaking of business . . . I think Knitty D and I are going to incorporate. A lot of podcasts put a donate button on their blog, and fund the podcasts that way. I'm not comfortable with that - I think we should at least sell something. So, we spent a lot of the weekend experimenting with tote bags, iron-on transfers and making stitchmarkers. I have to say, we've completely mastered the stitchmarkers, and some of them are truly lovely. Unfortunately, I didn't take even one business class in law school -- it was all about crime and punishment for me - so I have my handy dandy The Small Business Start-Up Kit, and once we have a bank account, I think we'll go the Etsy route, and sell our notions bags that way. I'm also thinking about soliciting advertising, but I don't know . . . I don't know what podcast listeners think. Any opinions? In theory, if we had charged listeners $1 per podcast a la a subscription, we would be making about a $1,000 per episode - which would have funded the sound equipment we sorely need (one reviewer called our sound atrocious - loved the podcast, acknowledged that we were working on the sound, but the sound is shitty nonetheless, and I pretty much agree). Would an ad be such a horrible thing?

But enough shop talk, on the the whales. The weather was pretty lousy most of the weekend, but on Monday, the sky cleared, and we were off to Provincetown and the Portuguese Princess Whale Watch. The Whale Watch guarantees the sighting of a whale, so Knitty D has a theory that at the end of the journey, if there are no whales, a buzzer is sounded, and the mechanical whales are released.

Luckily for us, following Ernesto, the whales were restless, and there was no need for the mechanical twins. Knitty D's pictures are much better than mine. While I usually have very sturdy sea legs, I found myself not quite seasick, just a bit disoriented, and I was more concerned about holding onto the rail than taking pictures of Midnight and her calf, who is still too young for a name:


And, after the whale watch, to get my bearings back - off to the Turo Winery for a bit of wine tasting to settle the ol' stomach.


Ah, the Cape Vacation . . . yarn and wine, oh, and six beagles.