While my goal is to create many clothing items from locally sourced fibres, there is also another category within the concept of "local" that deserves some attention. That is the LYS, or local yarn store. We have some real gems our here in the Lower Mainland and one in particular that I want to draw attention to here:
Sweet Georgia Yarns.
Felicia Lo has an amazing studio just blocks from where I work in Vancouver. All along the first floor of her studio are drying racks filled with recently dyed rovings and yarns; bins full of a rovings and yarns waiting to be dyed; spinning wheels and a loom. The small upstairs area is completely shelved and these shelves are full of dyed yarns and braids, like the ones seen on the left, of fibre. My favourite these days are the bluefaced leicester (BFL) 100 gram rovings. The green on the far left and the orange are BFL.
I spun up the green -- called pea shoot. It was dreamy and luxurious. Wonderful stuff. And made the following hat and 1/2 mitts.
The hat is from knitty.com called
"Foliage". It's a straightforward lace knit that works up fast. The pattern is easy --despite it being rated as "tangy" because you can memorize it quickly and read the lace, so mistakes or errors are easy to avoid.
The 1/2 mitts are my own pattern. I'll post those in a while.
So when I want to take a break from washing, carding, and dyeing my local fibres, I treat myself to a braid or two of unspun fibre from Sweet Georgia Yarns. Almost as good as a visit to the spa.
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