Thrift Score!

Hello, Edie is 13 months old yesterday. When did that happen?

This morning I had a good feeling about the thrift store, and I always try and act on it when that happens, especially after reading this cautionary tale over at owl in the dark. Asidedly, could her life appear any more charming? I'm completely fascinated with this lady's blog - her boyfriend used to play in the Cocteau Twins, she has two pure white cats and her knitted creations are like something an elf might have snuck in to make while she slept.

I'm on a limited budget now, so I've set up more rules about thrift store shopping. Thank goodness, or I'd find way too many things. All I ever look for anymore are wool sweaters. I found a pair of high heeled boots that I almost bought, until 70cents turned into 7dollars. Edie got to babysit the last half an inch of my green tea frappacino, as a reward/bribe for staying in her stroller, complacently fingering the fringe on a couple of shawls while I read the tags. Some of the older sweaters boast "100% virgin acrylic." Oh, virgin acrylic, huh? I don't know what that means, except it sounds more like wool that way. I found a little capelet made of 100% wool, with big easy seams to undo, and in a cream color which is good for dying. Then I discovered the Men's sweater section. Hello, cashmere! Hello, lambswool in argyle! Unfortunately I didn't have enough cash to rescue all the sweaters that deserve a new life as a felted blanket, but I have a good feeling they'll still be there when I return. It is getting warmer out, and I am becoming well-aquainted with a lot of the sweaters living at that store. In other words, the sweaters tend not to move very fast around here, so as far as scoring good wool for cheap goes, Inglewood is not the worst place to be.

I ended up with a hunter green cashmere sweater in a fingering or sock weight yarn and a light brown cashmere/angora/nylon blend in sock weight as well. I want to experiment with dying brown to see how it turns out. I also just found out last night that I can use Wilton's icing colors (for cake decorating) to dye wool, which will give me more options for color mixing. When I told Kenneth, he left the room and brought back a package of icing color that he'd bought a while back. Sweet.

So....I just realized what the most positive aspect of living here has been, for me. I've been so focused on what we are missing here, that we used to have in Portland - plenty of friends, parks, nice places to walk, a public transportation that is not brain surgery to utilize, and perhaps most of all, coffee shops - that I completely overlooked what has been happening in the vacuum. I am learning more and more to work with what I have, for entertainment aka yarn. Hunting for sweaters and colors to make new yarn with is one of my favorite things to do here, and the love of yarn is starting to consume me. If I were working, I'd probably spend too much of my paycheck at the yarn shop, amassing cool balls of color to store in my stash bin and perhaps knit up someday. Since I can't really afford to horde yarn like that, my thoughts turn more and more often to creating my own yarn. I think about color combinations all the time, and I've been watching videos about spinning yarn online.

And here I thought I might focus on writing, if everything that kept me preoccupied in Portland was removed.

I'm not sure if these thoughts are clearly laid out...it was a mini-piphany that I had while walking around the same old dirty streets, looking for new colors in the cracks......

and This weeks list of Ten...

Ten songs that describe you or your life.

huh.

1. Sovay, by Andrew Bird, though I don't know why.
2. Emily, by Joanna Newsom
3. Little Room, by the White Stripes
4. Me and the Bean, by Spoon
5. Here it Comes, by Modest Mouse
6. Good Friday, by CocoRosie
that's all I got.