Blue Weekend

I did some travelling this weekend - Janis and her husband had planned a trip to Niagara-On-The-Lake to take in some of the Shaw Festival, so it was an excellent opportunity for us to meet. We saw "The Circle" by Somerset Maugham, and Shaw's "St. Joan". I am always surprised at how many "quaint little villages" exist in Southern Ontario, and mildly saddened by the fact that they depend on tourism to survive - nothing like turning the place where you live into a cross between Disneyland and a zoo. On the way down I stopped in Burlington and checked out Spun Fibre Arts - it's a great store; too bad it didn't open until after I left Burlington. Or maybe that's a good thing-they had a whole table of Malabrigo on sale. I managed to restrain myself and buy only 2 skeins, as well as this gorgeous blue Trekking yarn: I picked up some Pop Corn as well: I can't believe that she forgot the butter! I only picked up one skein because I couldn't think of a specific pattern to use it for. The swatch was knitted up at a worsted gauge, but I think it would work better being knit up as a DK. It's incredibly soft and light. I'm going to knit it up into the gift pouch from Last Minute Knitted Gifts; it's the perfect colourway for my Secret Pal. Since I knew that Janis wouldn't have a chance to stop at any yarn shops, I brought her a souvenir skein of Fleece Artist Sea Sock yarn. She gave me some Tiny Toes in exchange: The colours don't come out well on this photo - they are closer to this Silk Garden colourway: Which of course leads me to consider combining the 2 yarns together for some as yet undertermined project. I suspect that non-sock projects that utilize sock yarn will soon be all the rage - all that lovely sock yarn out there will need to be used eventually, and I know that I am developing the early signs of sock fatigue 7 pairs into the 12 I planned to knit for the year. I wonder what the next Big Knitting Thing will be - Lace? Colourwork? Mixing yarns? Felting? Felting Lace? The number of knitting books being published seems to be exponentially increasing. Forget SABLE, soon we will all have to-knit lists that we can never complete. It's kind of like advances in scientific knowledge - nobody can keep up with all of them.