Napier yarn tour

Last week I returned home from a 3 week vacation in New Zealand. I basically spent the whole time in Napier, where a bunch of my husband's family live, but we went to Wellington for a long weekend as well. I was planning on hitting all the yarn stores in both areas, but ran out of time in Wellington, so was only able to make a tour of the yarn shops in Napier. No worries, I still managed to pick up enough yarn to fill a whole suitcase. :)

My mother-in-law led the unofficial tour, and we started in Hastings at Knit World. Since it was our first stop, I only browsed, wanting to get a better feel of the offerings before purchasing. Next we went to the Design Spun factory shop in Onekawa. They're commercial spinners, and have a large, fairly unorganized room of seconds, discontinued lines and some premium yarn. The prices were great, so I bought 10 balls of a standard DK 100% wool in a dark dark purple, 10 balls of a magenta DK angora/wool blend, and the last 7 balls of a merino/silk blend in a rusty color. All this for about US$30. Amazing.

Then we went to JJ's Crafts, where Jan Gilray handpaints her own line called JJ's Specialty Yarn. Lovely stuff. I got 2 skeins of the Mystique mohair and 1 of the Kaleidoscope 100% wool. Funny thing, I had never heard of this yarn before, but when I returned home last week and looked through the lastest issue of Interweave Knits that was here waiting for me, I saw that the Merry Maiden's Dress pattern calls for JJ's Specialty Yarn. Small knitting world.



My mother-in-law has been knitting for a very very long time, so she has accumulated a lot of patterns. I went through many of them, and she let me take a bunch that interested me. She had an old Women's Weekly magazine with a pattern for a Fireman Sam doll that looked fun and different, as I've never knit any toys or dolls before. She also had another old issue with a Pingu doll pattern. So at our last stop on the tour, Wool 'n' Things in Onekawa, Napier, I picked up a bunch of really cheap acrylic yarn for making these toys. I've never knit with acrylic before, preferring natural fibers, but decided for my first toy efforts it would pay to be a bit economical. I also got some lovely looking multicolored Ashford Tekapo 100% wool. And then I got some lilac 100% superwash wool in a light weight, called "baby wool" down under. This is specifically for another borrowed mother-in-law pattern, a cute little lace baby angel top. I actually bought 4 balls, one isn't pictured because I've already started that project. Lastly here I bought a Patons book of toddler patterns which are really cute and utilize an eyelash type polyester yarn called Feathers. These patterns will help me with ideas to use the 9 balls of similar yarn that my mother-in-law gave me.

Then I decided to go back to the first shop to make a last few purchases. First off was another Patons book of adorable kids patterns. It features their Zhivago yarn which is 50% tencel, 50% acrylic, and I figured I'd actually get the called for yarn, which I virtually never do. So I got 7 balls of this nice shimmery denim color (only 4 shown since I've already started this project as well). And they had some more of the Ashford Tekapo in their discount bin (discontinuted colors) so I got 3 more balls. They're 100g balls, so I should be able to get a baby sweater, or a few soakers at least, out of them.

And that's it! Now to knit it all. Like I said, I've already started the lacey purple sweater for baby, but that took too much concentration to work on while catching up on all my missed TV shows, so I started this jacket from the Zhivago book. My first time knitting with synthetic yarn. It's very soft. I've only got the trim left, so I'll be updating soon with the finished project. Originally it was meant to be for Big Sister, but I might have picked a size too small, in which case it will be for Baby. :)