I explained yesterday’s post to Nina and told her, So I have to choose the blackberry flavor. She laughed and allowed as how, yes, I did.
We were at (psst–Nina–what was the name of that place? Miriam’s? Marianne’s?) Makes all their own ice cream. In Santa Cruz.
Nina’s on the email list of the Golden Fleece yarn shop down there and they were having not only Malabrigo Rios in stock as of today but were putting it on sale–IF you bought ten skeins.
The hottest new yarn out there, with a lot of stores on a waiting list, and an incentive to go buy lots of the stuff? Hey. Turns out some of her customers showed up last night to see if the box had arrived yet, it just had, and they were going through it before the owner even got to see in there, picking out their favorite colorways they’d been waiting for.
Meantime, no way no how was I going to go buy ten skeins of yarn right now and I doubted the two of us together could, either. But I wanted some Nina time, and I do like seeing Malabrigo in person because the colorways have enough variation from dye lot to dye lot and you know how it goes…
(I can just see all the knitters nodding, oh yes, we know how it goes…)
Rios is the yarn I’ve been waiting for all this time that I snatched up that test-marketing skein of in April. It is THE softest merino worsted I have ever come across. Superwash, too.  Someone (thank you RobinM!) gave me a heads up that Webs had it now: I’ve been watching that page–they got some in on Wednesday and it is going fast. (Guilty as charged on the credit card. I did not know I was going to get an email from Nina right after I did.)
I did not need to up my supply in Santa Cruz. Really, I didn’t.
And then we got there. I have a grandchild on the way, and new moms need good warm things for their babies *that they can throw in the washer*. (Because at 4 am after the baby’s already gotten you up twice it’s probably going to end up in there anyway just because you’re too tired to think straight. I vividly remember a knitting grandmother I know scolding her daughter for turning the baby blanket she’d slaved over for x months into a, quote, postage stamp that way. I want my knitting gifts guilt-free.)
You see that photo in that old post?
Golden Fleece had that exact colorway.
They had it in two dyelots, and when I separated them and stepped back, it was clear they really were separate dyelots.
They had some of their sock yarn with that same Azules nametag on them, and it was markedly different. Not baby friendly, either; much darker, and where did that almost-black-in-this-light streak come from?
I have some Azules coming from Webs.
I have no real idea what it will look like till it gets here.
I want to start serious baby knitting, like, NOW.
You can see where this is going.
And so I bought the Solis green. To match that hat I made. And that’s it! (Yeah right.) I bought the Azules, to have on hand for sure the colors that were exactly the way I wanted. If that means an adult gets a Webs-yarn vest to match our little one, worse things have happened.
We stopped for ice cream on the way home, because it was another Santa Cruz institution Nina didn’t want me to miss, and I picked the flavorway I did in Lisa’s yarn‘s honor.
Which I now need to finish up, like, really really fast because I got me some serious Rios knitting to do. Twist my arms.