{"id":731,"date":"2011-05-23T22:11:23","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T05:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/?p=731"},"modified":"2011-05-23T22:11:23","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T05:11:23","slug":"they-followed-me-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/?p=731","title":{"rendered":"They Followed Me Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

One thing that’s very dangerous about going to Germany is the yarn.\u00a0 Germany is where the sock yarn comes from (Regia, Stoller & Schall, Trekking…), and as far as I can tell the German culture still embraces the idea of handicrafts like knitting.\u00a0 You can be strolling around a department store (which might span several city blocks), minding your own business, when – suddenly – you find yourself in The Yarn Section.<\/p>\n

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That’s right, it’s completely normal for a department store to have a selection of yarns on par with a modest local yarn shop.\u00a0 Just, you know, because while you’re out shopping you might end up needing a few balls of yarn, right?<\/p>\n

Why can’t we figure that one out in America, huh?<\/p>\n

I actually didn’t break my yarn diet too badly while I was there, though – I had very limited bag space, and somehow I managed to remember that fact whenever I was fondling a particular skein.\u00a0 In the end, I returned to the US with this:<\/p>\n

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My favorite is the blue and white striped yarn.\u00a0 Not because I like stripes (I’m finding I actually dislike them immensely except in rare circumstances), but because the dye pattern is based on the Swiss flag.<\/p>\n

Yarn based on flags!\u00a0 Why don’t we have that here?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, they only had Switzerland.\u00a0 This will join the Danish, Portuguese, and Brazilian flag yarn in my stash that I found last time I went to Germany, all of them to eventually join the pair of German flag socks I made.<\/p>\n

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The other two yarns are both Woole Roedel<\/a>, which is apparently a chain of stores in Germany.\u00a0 If you speak German it seems that you can order online, but I can’t actually tell for sure.<\/p>\n

I did also pick up a bit of yarn for my favorite knitting friends.\u00a0 Erica (of the Wedding Blanket II<\/a>) asked for “strange colors, and lots of stripes”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Wish granted.<\/p>\n

Shruti, on the other hand, was much harder to shop for.\u00a0 She’s allergic to wool, which is bad enough in a muggle but just tragic in a knitter.\u00a0 Also, the German sock yarn industry is pretty dominated by wool – they don’t really go in for cottons or synthetics (except insomuch as they can be paired with wool).<\/p>\n

However, perseverance and a careful lookout for hot pink eventually yielded success in some synthetic-but-still-unbelievably-soft yarn:<\/p>\n

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It’s a little on the thick side for socks, but it might be great for gloves or a cute little hat or something.<\/p>\n

And…that’s it for yarn from Europe.\u00a0 Feels a little light now that I’m back at home – maybe I need to go back to get some more?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One thing that’s very dangerous about going to Germany is the yarn.\u00a0 Germany is where the sock yarn comes from (Regia, Stoller & Schall, Trekking…), and as far as I can tell the German culture still embraces the idea of handicrafts like knitting.\u00a0 You can be strolling around a department store (which might span several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38,39],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-wild-yarn","tag-yarn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}