the Village Knittiot

So, Mr. Knittiot’s enthusiasm snared me, and this weekend I took out the crochet hook and we spent a portion of our time curled up together on the couch surrounded by yarn. We are experimenting with some little toys. I made a mouse for our house (with a pattern that Mr. Knittiot found online) and Mr. Knittiot made a creature of his own devising. We are contemplating starting a joint fibery blog to talk about our together pursuits with crocheting.

On Saturday we also went to another local yarn store which was less than impressive. Whenever I hear a store advertised as the “oldest store in the area,” something in the back of my head thinks, “Hmm.” And then when I get there and realize that the store hasn’t changed much since it opened, I remember the wisdom of the “Hmm.” Still, every now and again, something surprises me, but sadly not this time.

The store — located in an old house — reminded me of my grandmother’s home. The place was immaculate — very clean and neat, each item in it’s place — but with a faintly musty smell that permeates everything. I felt like I shouldn’t talk, move or touch anything. They had a large number of patterns — most of them, it appeared, from the early to mid 80s (think Princess Di, big hair, Dallas on TV and shoulder pads — not CBGBs, the Ramones or John Hughes films). And lots of old yarn. It was also dead, dead, dead. There might have been one other person in there, but I wouldn’t have known, because we were all busy observing the unspoken no talking rule.

They did have a great selection of Noro and some beautiful silk/merino hand-dyed, handspun (to the tune of $40 a skein). They had some of the more current and popular books as well, but you could just tell they hadn’t changed their model of business since they opened and that the busy, “hip” knitting store not far down the street was going to slowly drain their business away — mostly because it was probably not really great to begin with and when people had other options nearby, they flocked in droves to the new store.

Even though I left there feeling pretty unimpressed and uninspired, looking back over my visit there are at least a few things that I really appreciate about their “old-school” approach. They had 4 volumes of the Barbara Walker treasuries — and I will tell you it took great restraint for me not to snatch them all up. They had a good selection of instructional crochet books. But in the end, they weren’t old-school enough for my tastes. There was too much structure and order to their process (yes, there is such a thing as too much). Also, as I was looking through Anna Zilboorg’s hat book to show Mr. Knittiot some of the things I really liked, the store clerk told me that I should check out Folk Hats which was very fun. Now, I have very much enjoyed all the books in the Folk Series from Interweave Press. I even considered knitting a vest — something I never could imagine myself wearing — because some of the patterns were so compelling. But Folk Hats, at least to me, was a big disappointment. I thought the patterns were kitschy and awful and had little redeeming value. I didn’t even think they were fun on a purely frivolous level. It just did not appeal to me. Clearly, this store and I are not on the same page.

On the work front, I’ve been really killing myself. Pushing 10 hour days without taking a lunch and really trying to get too much done. This has resulted in a very cranky knittiot. I think that I still am trying to get work “out of the way” instead of integrating it into my lifestyle. So, this week, my experiments with working from home will involve me cutting up my day into more manageable chunks. Taking a lunch, getting out of the house, etc.

Hope everyone is having a happy Monday. Only 12 more days to the Olympics… I hope I’m ready.

I leave you with a mouse in my house:

This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 8:02 am and is filed under this Knittiot Life, this Random Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.