National Knitting Centre

We visited Donegal for a couple of days and while perusing my handy hotel guide to nearby attractions, I was delighted to find the National Knitting Center was just down the road.

National! Knitting! Center!

It promised a light-hearted look at knitting through the ages, the story of wool from sheep to shawl and a shop full of Irish yarn. What we found was slightly different. First, there was a shop with lots of Irish knit sweaters and caps. I sifted through the wares and talked to the shop assistant about why they had to close the knitting center and move to a smaller location (lack of visitors and support). I asked if they had any yarn for sale and she took me back to the....um....warehouse, storage facility, largest stash I've seen in my life.

They had shelves built from floor to 30-thirty foot ceilings. All stuffed with raw wool, coloured wool, rough wool, soft wool, thin wool, but mostly aran-weight wool and not a label to be found for miles. Not categories, names, wool-types, dates of shearing. recommended needle-size, dye-lot. Nada....
Just me and wool. So I searched out as much as I could carry (literally) and when the nice lady went further back into the shop to weigh it, she invited me along.
The next room offered the needed scale for weighing, the owner of the shop, a floor covered with bagged and tagged Aran sweaters and two ladies sitting and knitting saidsweaters. Turns out they sell sweaters (not sure where or how). And the knitters were totally excited to have their picture taken :)
So maybe it wasn't what the hotel had advertised, but it was certainly the most knitting I've seen in Ireland to date. And I made off with 1.5 kilos of wool.

Cute story about the red lace-weight in the middle. I asked if anyone knew the content because it was sooooo soft and squishy. The owner jumped into her office for a little Steiff bear wearing an Irish knit sweater made from a similar colour. But the bear wasn't wearing the same content of the squishy in my hand, he had a cashmere Irish knit sweater (or Aran Jumper, as the locals say). The shop had been consigned to knit cashmere sweaters for Steiff bears to be sold at Harrod's and she had their sample leftover. It's a good thing I had just dumped the contents of my wallet into their cash register, because I would have searched the car and Dave's pockets for enough money to tempt that bear away from her. I can't even imagine how much they retail for!
So, now to dream up project for my new yarn :)

Seriously...the Yarn!

The town we visited, Rovereto, doesn't so much have yarn shops as Haberdasheries. A general handy-work shop, heavy with fabric, buttons, stitching arts like cross-stitch and that stuff they do with silk thread that looks so cool on pillows and wall hangings. The first yarn we found in a fabric shop. There was a small bookcase with wool and alpaca-wool skeins. Believe it or not, the 100% wool was softer than the alpaca mixes. I was delighted and bought some skeins for a hat, possibly baby jacket.

The next shop we found was button-heavy and had a lot of mohair (by a lot I mean 3 different kinds) and one color-way from Regia. And the counter top had a huge basket of mixed colorways of this stuff. 100% wool, 200g skeins for 8Euro, super soft and screaming to come home with me. Who could say no? I think it wants to be a fiery, sassy sweater with a big, comfy (and totally squashy) turtle-neck.

The last store, we saw on our way to dinner one night and I pretended to go for a healthy little walk the next afternoon so I could check it out. First task was wading through the store's other wares (gorgeous leather purses, handbags and fabulous little hats and scarves, poor me!) to find fthe largest wool stash in Rovereto. Seriously, he must have had like 2 whole bookcases of yarn!
First, the sock yarn, I had seen the evening before and immediately grabbed a couple for the obligatory stash enhancement (50% wool, 50% meraklon(??) 100g and 300meters - am thinking boot socks) :

The next caught my eye and wouldn't let me go. I think it's the first lace-weight I've seen in my life (that wasn't mohair). It is possibly the softest, squishiest, most delicate wool I've ever seen. 1500 meters, baby (and for some random, reason, matching lace-weight mohair)! That means I should be knitting something lacey with it, no?
But I'm not exactly laden down with lace experience or books. This is where you, my dear friends, collective experience, knowledge and wisdom of many, come in.

If you were to recommend only one lace book to someone going for a 2 year stint on the International Space Station, which would you recommend???

Wool vs Acrylic : The Final Debate

After the shock of my first wool shop find in Karlovy Vary, The Acrylic Heaven (and literally, I mean shock - how many balls of acrylic can you sift through before everything and everyone gives you an electric shock!) and my yummy lunch, my blitz visit to the Handwork store was every wool lovers' dream.

In every store I enter in the Czech Republic, I ask if they speak German or English. Few admit to understanding English and fewer still want to practice. But the wonderful nice lady in the wool shop preferred and spoke wonderful English. She had a shop full of all sorts of needlework supplies - from Opal sock yarn to cross-stitch kits. The wool set up was the same as the other shop - one basket with every colour from a certain series - one has to choose their wool-type and colour and the owner delves into what must be miles of shelving in the back of the shop to get the amount needed.

This is the best part! The first thing my eyes fixed onto was a apple-bushel basket on it's side full of skeins of 100% wool in natural-looking colours. Nice Shop Lady explained that all the wool in the basket was spun in a factory only 10 miles away and that same factory spins wool for all of Europe. She pulled out a drawer with sample wool and their labels for loads of countries. Here is one for Denmark-Love Garn (how sweet is that?) :

Then, the other best part - 100gram skeins of 100% wool cost approx 2.25 Euro (like $3!). God Bless the Eastern Bloc!

I checked out the web address on the skein labels when I got home and found every single type of wool that ever existed (from sock yarn to fun fur to superwash wool and 100% felter's dream) , and the costs are about half of the shop prices. All of it shippable in the EU - and should be import-tax free up to €200! Woot! Woot! Woot!

The only reason I haven't ordered yet is because my Czech isn't quite up to snuff. But, hey, that's what neighbors are for, right??!! I bet a batch of sugar-glazed cinnamon rolls would butter her right up ;)


Below are my stash enhancers from the acrylic mix family. Can you believe Red Heart has made it as far as the Czech Republic???