Yarn Crawl Part 1

Angie had her freshman orientation on Thur and Fri this week.  She also got to meet with her advisor ( with the Honors College it's a staff and she can see any of them) to make up her schedule for fall semester.  She is taking the same approach to college courses as she took in HS. She is taking 17 credits, all fulfilling one or more graduation/major/honors requirements except French.  She placed out of the first 2 years of French - so that fulfills her foreign language, but she really likes French, "it's easy" to her and she discovered that one of the honor societies she wants to get into doesn't count the placement test.

She placed out of several semesters of math as well, so she will take statistics next semester and not need any more math. ( meanwhile my brain is in convulsions - I went to an engineering school and had 24 math credits)  She is really good at math but, gulp, doesn't like it.


Ready for orientation!

While she was in orientation we stayed at the Latham Hotel - it has a floor 13!!
Most hotels go from 12 to 14, and since we stayed on 12, I noticed the 13 right away.  I even pushed it once to make sure it would stop at a floor and it did! (yeah I'm a dork)



Thursday I went on a yarn crawl with my friend Min.  First we went to Narberth to a store called EWE AND I .  I got a skein of Lorna's Laces that reminded me of an outfit I used to wear in college all the time.  Enough so , that Curt remembers it.



They were really friendly, and we had a fun discussion of how college and dorms etc have changed ( seriously Angie's dorm has central air!) Parked in front of the shop was a car with knitting plates.  (Some background - there is a NASCAR driver Clint Boyer who looks like a serial killer. My friends and I refer to him as TSK) I misread the plates as TSK Knits and thought oh my god, CLint Boyer knits?! (yes Dork I already admitted it)





We then went to a "highly recommended by several members of the Philly knitters" LYS  THE TANGLED WEB.  We were in the shop for at least 5-6 minutes before anyone even looked our way to say hello ( I know you can only help one person at a time, but said person usually won't mind if you just look over and say Hi) If you took out all the eyelash and ladder novelty yarn, there was like 5 kinds of Plymouth and not a really good color selection of them.  ( I really don't like the stores where it is obvious what color the owners like, and that's all they order. because unless those are the colors you like it's pretty useless and if you ever need to make a gift or swap they don't have the colors you need so I try to avoid them)  I usually try to buy at least something when I'm in a yarn store, because they don't have a really high customer count and have to compete with the internet and all that, but I'm not buying something I don't like either. I walked out of there empty handed.  Couldn't even find a pattern or stitch markers I liked!


We then went up te street to The Knit With.  I wish I had taken a picture of the outside.  Looked like an abandoned house.  Serious overgrowth, could barely read the sign through the vegetation covering it.  There were no lights on but the sign said open.  So we went up the stairs 9 Curt behind us wondering if he was going to have to save us from an axe murderer or something.  The door creaked! as we opened it and there was a weird  smell, like musty dirt - or Norman Bates mom...  An older ( mid-late 50's guy) came out and asked if we wanted the lights on - i mean how do you shop for something for which color is a big selling point in the dark?  Hmmm this feels like orange...  he kept asking Min weird questions, like was she from Hawaii - I look more Hawaiian than she does, and where was she from, West Philly apparently not the answer,  not where she was born, where was she from...  When she finally said she was from Kansas City he said that explained why she didn't have a Middle Earth accent ( did he think she was a hobbit?  I mean she is short, but she wears shoes and has correspondingly small feet not big hairy hobbit feet!) 

He had a huge- not fat mind you, just huge white cat (Sancho) with one green and one blue eye who he had odd convos with.  At one point he kept asking the cat if he wanted his belly rubbed. (another important aside- my text/IM alert is Yoda saying "awe ooh, message from the dark side there is)  Curt had texted me about how weird the place was just then , and Min thought the alert was the cat!  So she's laughing saying " I don't think the cat  wants it's belly rubbed"  He did have an interesting selection of yarn, some that you don't see often and he had Mountain Colors and Anne sock yarn - two of my favs.  I bought a super bulky Italian yarn that caught my eye - and didn't smell - I checked!  I also got the finer mesh yarn bras that I like using.





From there we had lunch at a coffee shop that was fantastic!  I had a roast beef panini with spicy mustard and pepper jack cheese, and a side salad that was very cooling with lots of diced cucumbers.  I also had a triple macchiatto - the real kind not the Starbucks version! 


This post is long enough so I'll cover after lunch tomorrow.