Or Happy Birthday to Me
Yesterday I spent the day on my own personal little yarn crawl of Berlin for my birthday. I started the day with a list of 4 yarn shops and a general plan for the order in which to hit them. I made it to three of them before feeling done for the day.
My first stop was Frau Wolle more on the outskirts of Berlin. This was a nice shop focused on main stream brands of yarn (like Lana Grossa) but also well stocked with notions as well as lots of beads.
Since I’ve had plenty of fluffly alpaca mohair blends recently (and I’m still working on two scarves), I stuck to picking up a couple skiens of workhorse sock yarn in fun colors.
On the way to the train station, I saw a fun little bit of yarn bombing, which seemed like an auspicious sign for the day:
The second shop, Wollen Berlin, had more smaller independent or luxury brands. These included things like Malabrigio, Brooklyn Tweed and, this is the one I was after, Hedgehog Fibres. Sadly, they had a fairly small selection yesterday and none were colors that really spoke to me.
Instead, I picked up some The Fibre Co yarn in a lovely heathered teal. The yarn is “Lore”, which is made from Romney lambswool in the colorway “Majestic” though it reminds me more of the color of the winter dusks that creep up around 4pm right now. It also has a nice woolie smell. I am going to make some leg warmers. Living in a more urban area with actual public transportation means I spend more time outside in the winter, but I want to keep wearing skirts.
I next headed for Yarn over Berlin, but almost didn’t make it in time because I was distracted by a Christmas Market I saw from the SBahn in Alexanderplatz. I hopped off the train to check it out and grab a bite to eat at one of the stalls.
Then I grabbed a tram and made it to Yarn over Berlin about 20min before they closed at 4pm. They had lots of indie dyers in vibrant colors. They also had really nice displays of fades and matching lace/fingering wools with coordinated mohair blends. I splurged for La Bien Aimee singles in a colorway called “Shipwreck”. My plan it to make a light weight cardigan that works with dresses and skirts. I have a decent line up of heavier sweaters but only one nicer light weight cardigan, which, while a very pretty pale spring green, only goes with certain things.
Then I headed home to get ready to head out for my birthday dinner. I spent this morning taking pictures of my yarn in what counts as daylight this time of year. All my time on the trains netted me some decent knitting time and a little drop spindle time. My mohair scarf is coming along well:
You may have noticed a rather deep blue theme to my purchases. This is, however, not due to my mood, but rather the things I feel would be valuable additions to my wardrobe at the moment. I passed up some deeply tempting and remarkably bright pinks and oranges as well as a fun looking green speckled yarn. I have a pink morphic kit hanging on my wall along with a skein of lime green and electric blue already.