Freak/Geek

Gabbing online to some friends the other night, I mentioned how I was having trouble finding the specific yarn my sister wants me to use to make this, a lovely shrug. She wants a silvery grey bamboo, and I've had no luck on Ravelry or on any one of the (count them) fifteen knitting supply sites I have bookmarked.

"Have you tried Etsy?" asks Stef.

"No, never heard of it," says Lucy.

"Linkage: www.etsy.com" says Stef.

Eeep. Not that I needed another online knitting community to look at/participate in/spend money on. But I've seldom had bad recommendations for websites from my online peeps, so I trundled over to check it out.

Bad move.

Immediately, I found 3 suppliers of hand-spun bamboo yarns that have silvery-grey hand-dyed hanks of goodness.

Expensive, because the process is labor-intensive. Pretty, too. Only trouble, as I saw it....well, there were two. One, the lack of funds? We remember this part, yeah? Where I was job-hunting because I wasn't making ANY money? Two, most of the yarn-makers I found on Etsy specialize in sock yarn, much too small of a gauge for what I want to make. 8-9 stitches to the inch on size 2.5mm needles? I'd take me the rest of my life to make a shrug on needles that small.

The patience, Lucy has not so much.

But as I paged through 22 pages of bamboo yarn, I found this lovely-ness.


The freak part comes here: the yarn-maker has called this Battlestar Gallactica yarn, and in the description of the properties of the yarn is a paragraph about why the hell she named it thusly: she's a fan of BSG, and the colors correspond to things in the show. She's not the freak, though, you must understand that. I am, because not only did I read and understand the explanation, I agree with it. Dude, I don't even watch that show. There is no Jensen, therefore there is no point.

Here's the geek part: it isn't even close to enough yarn to make the shrug, being about 120 yards less than what I would need. Doesn't really matter, I wanted it. Even if she hadn't made the pop culture reference, I would have thought the colors were uber-cool anyway. And I'm fascinated by the blend of materials, bamboo, alpaca, and wool. I'm full of questions about how'd they do that? Did it take a long time? Was it a plan, or did the design just end up working this way?

Total dork. Or, y'know, just enthusiastic. Take your pick.