Best Quote I Heard All Day
Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.—Lenny Bruce

OK, so I’m going to West Palm Beach on Wednesday. Is there any difference?

I’ll be bringing the laptop with me but I don’t know if I’ll have much time to blog. There is the issue of going to the Campus Management Conference in Delray Beach and knitting poolside at the Delray Marriott whenever possible.

Yes, I am bringing socks to knit on the plane.

No, I am not writing the Knit List to ask their collective permission to do so.


Bowing to the Goddess, Kinda
You know I don’t buy that “wo-man as goddess” bullshit. But I have to say, some of the nicest yarn I’ve seen recently is the Goddess line by Maria Gornatti. Check out the link here.

This is a basic line of yarn that parallels Debby Bliss’s, with two notable exceptions: It’s better quality all around (and cheaper, too), and the color saturation in all of the fiber blends is remarkable. The pictures on the website do not do this yarn justice. In addition, Gornatti’s pattern line, while a bit simplistic for me to consider, is well worth a novice/intermediate’s attention. These are classic sweaters with classic shaping, a cable here and there, even some beads thrown in, but all beautifully presented and far better than the crap in the magazines. The directions appeared to be very well-written. I will most certainly work with this yarn at some point.

I was fortunate enough to see and handle the yarn at The Knitting Basket in Denville, NJ. The pima cotton/silk is far superior to Bliss’s. And I don’t care for cotton. But I sure would knit this. Karen, the owner, said she’s the only shop in the country to carry this yarn—you have to buy it online, generally, and she had a tough time convincing Maria Gornatti to sell it to her. Gornatti is concerned that if she sells to shops, she’ll have a hard time keeping up with the demand. She’s right. This is fantastic stuff.

While I was in the shop, Kristin Nicholas’s sister, who lives in Denville, came in and said that Kristin was in town visiting their father in the hospital. Karen is hoping to entice Kristin to do a workshop for her. I may break my rule of “no classes” and go to that one, if it happens. Kristin is apparently doing a great deal of designing with the Goddess yarns. Certainly Classic Elite’s loss. Have you noticed how ghastly their designs have become since Kristin left the company? And the Classic Elite yarn? Right down the old shitter, in my opinion. I still have 20 skeins of Willough that I’m hoarding for a special occasion. Wouldn’t touch CE now if my life depended on it.

MDS&W
I didn’t go. So you’ll have to read Joe’s blog to hear all about it and how much Joe hated the smell of sheep dip. Wish I could have gone but since I’m off to FL, I figured I’d better save my money. Besides, did I need anything? That’s strictly a rhetorical question, at the very least. I do agree with him that it is a better show than Stitches, insofar as you will see yarns from small producers that are truly unique. And if you spin and/or weave, you can’t beat it for buying opportunities.

I expect to make Rhinebeck in October, which I understand is becoming almost as big as MDS&W. On top of that, SOAR is being held at the Pocono Manor in October this year, a mere 45 minutes from minutes from my house. So it will be a one-two-three weekend fiber extravaganza in October, with SOAR the first weekend, Stitches the second, and Rhinebeck the third.

Contributions to my October FiberWallow Fund will be graciously accepted.

Let me ask my Florida readers: Any good yarn shops in Delray Beach?

Heh heh. I’ve already looked them up. Because I believe in Google as an art form. So rare and handy (and recently gone public, too).

See ya after Florida.