Yarn(ia) crawl

A group of the PDX Knitbloggers gathered yesterday at Yarnia, the latest shop opening in Portland. Unlike other shops, Yarnia's concept is for a person to come in and make a yarn from the selections of yarns they have available. The resulting yarn would be in a sense unique.

The proprietress, Lindsay Ross, took the concept from a yarn shop in Montreal, La Bobineuse de Laine, and set up shop. The yarn is sold by the pound. At first you think, why should I get a yarn that I have to have made when there are already so many out there? Well, suppose you want to make a tank top out of cotton and silk. There are several yarns out there that are cotton and silk blends, but they're on the spendy side. At Yarnia, you can make a cotton/silk blend yarn in the colors you want for less. You're not paying for a name or a cachet. It's a more affordable means of obtaining yarn for projects.

I had gone in with no intention of coming out with yarn. Stop laughing. I did. I was going to check it out to see what I could find there and what yarns Lindsay had. For starting up, she had a fair selection to choose from of different fibers and types. I ended up hovering over the silk/rayon blends and boucles, taking a multicolored silk/rayon blend and matching it up with different yarns. I was sucked into the magic and had two cones picked out for winding together: the multi in warm tones and a rust fine boucle. In several minutes, Lindsay had the yarn wound for me. I had enough to make a wrap for taking with me to Miami in July. When I got it home, I swatched it up and am very pleased with the effects.

The Knitbloggers afterwards went out to lunch at the Berlin Inn. This is a small German restaurant with excellent food. There were 8 of us and I was afraid we would overwhelm the place, but they had a niche for our party. There were some concerns, especially for Kerin who can't have dairy of any kind, but all of us found items that were very satisfying. Kerin was pleased to find a chicken schnitzel club with no dairy. Not only did it have no dairy, but it had bacon.

Not piddlin' strips but slabs of bacon.

I think this says it all.