(re-post)
There have been odd moments of feeling guilty across the last forty or so years that I do not often buy yarn in wool shops and support that worthy enterprise, that I get my fibre elsewhere; I'll tell you where those "else"'s are in a moment.
Forty-five years ago I did buy what I needed to produce the first sweater knit from a pattern, three balls for one dollar, brilliant red, acrylic (I think), from Woolworth's. I seem to recall the total cost was $12 which would have been a lot of money to a fifteen-year-old working for the summer in Toronto and paying rent on a bedsit; what puzzles me is that $12 means 36 balls of wool at 3 for $1: that can't be right! Neither does one dollar a ball sound right. Oh, memory.
I do recall the sweater very clearly - it was gorgeous, a sort of staggered block pattern with off center buttons. I wore it contentedly for a number of years. And I learned something from that first effort: if I had used good wool I could be wearing that sweater now! I suspect I chose acrylic because I found the wool available back then quite itchy. That same summer, from the same book, I knit a black vest (it was a sweater pattern but I adjusted it to a vest; maybe I got tired of knitting; maybe I ran out of yarn) in a rolled stitch pattern and it lasted longer and still held its shape when I gave it up. A year or two later I knit my mother a soft green mohair cardigan using good wool. I mention all this to remind myself that I have purchased yarn from stores selling yarn.
What happened next changed my knitting life. While living in Oldham in northern England I discovered the market and handspun wool. Oh! Wow! It had such character and carried with it the experience of my having met and chatted with the person who spun it, the history of where and why and the link with the sheep who had grown the fleece. From then on shelves of wool in stores lacked some ingredients that were important to me because I had, well - experienced them, and wanted to do so again.
Since then wool acquisition has been diverse.
People give me yarn, knowing it is always an appreciated gift. When family travel and wonder what to bring back home for me, they often think "yarn" and thus I have come by yarn from an Irish mill and wool from London and Toronto and San Francisco.
People give me yarn when they see me Knitting in Public, as I do every morning on the patio at the Polish Deli. More than once men have stopped and told me his mother (or wife) used to knit and he now has all this yarn he doesn't know what to do with and would I like it. Since I belong to two Knitting Guilds and several Knitting Groups I've never said no. The Guild and Groups knit for many charities as well as themselves.
Another source for wool is thrift stores and garage sales. The former is more impersonal not knowing who donated the wool, but at garage sales I have many times purchased some other knitters stash offered for sale for any number of reasons, sometimes quite poignant like having to stop knitting for physical reasons. Unfinished objects (UFO's) are often part of it.
Sometimes beginner spinners put their early attempts at spinning out at garage sales and usually apologize for the quality of it. I love this kind of handspun wool! I have knit some from various different people into a large square and turned it into a knapsack. More has become Wool Pockets.
Wondering if I would be gripped by the spinning process I took a drop spindle course last winter. The tiny resultant skein of wool was hung on the wall and admired, as Brenda Nicolson, the instructor, said it would be, but soonest got knit into a piece of knitting. This got admired as well. Something has been satisfied. Yet another way of acquiring wool.
Posted on July 12, 2007 at 06:00 AM | Permalink
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