The Aspen Yarn Gallery

Yes.  There is a yarn store in Aspen.  And I mean . . . a Yarn Store.  Don't let this plain facade put you off. This ain't your granny's store, either.  Way back (2007ish) the shop was selling beaver, fox, mink "yarn".  Thin strips of hide, laser cut and sold as yarn.  Interesting.

But the new owner has a completely different take.  And the eye-candy.  OH, the eye candy. . . .

Well.  Let's take a look.

First (and excuse the crappy pictures), this is Mango Moon yarns. 

Look again more closely.

The yarn is made up of recycled fibers, yarns and silks and loaded with stone and glass beads.  It's absolutely gorgeous!   The pictures don't do justice.

Mango Moon also makes Zing String shown here:

This is cotton thread with hand-tied stones and glass beads.  It's drop dead gorgeous.  You carry the string with your yarn when you're knitting.  It really is amazing.  It's a very new 'yarn'.  I haven't seen it on Ravelry, yet.

She also features regional yarns that are hand spun and dyed.

Here is yarn from Snow Leopard Trust.  "Founded in 1981, the Snow Leopard Trust is the world's leading authority on the study and protection of the endangered snow leopard." - Snow Leopard Trust website.

The yarn is camel wool.

The walls were FULL of Misti Alpaca in different weights and luscious, rich colors. 

And there was so much more.  Just beautiful.  The owner gave me a thorough tour of the shop, which is tucked into an upstairs location in downtown Aspen.  She was very informative and had loads of ideas on how to use this unusual collection of yarns.

She doesn't have a website, so I told her I'd blog about her beautiful little shop of wonders.

Did I leave unscathed?  HA HA HA.  If you know me well, you know that I left there after spending way too much money. . . on only one skein of yarn.  But beautiful deep forest green Misti Alpaca sock yarn.  I'll post pictures later.

No famous people yet.  My son thought he saw an NFL player, but didn't verify that.  We saw a band getting out of their Cadillac SUV's for a gig at Belly Up, but we didn't recognize the faces or the names.   Aspen. . . you never know.

Here are the specs for the shop.  She does sell kits and will ship:

Aspen Yarn Gallery
520 E. Cooper Street #205
Aspen, CO  81611
aspenyarngallery@yahoo.com
(970)925-5667

Comic Life

The sun came out, so I went out and had to look very close to find these treasures.

The strange water-mark is because the "Comic Life!" I thought I downloaded for free, was, in fact, a trial and when I made this collage, I was told I had to buy the software to get rid of the watermark . . . hence the watermark.

Who knows. It's fun software. But I'd rather spend the money on yarn. OH YEAH, BABY!

No new knits today.

Lesson #1

Did I learn something new at my first knitting class? YES! The tail-cast-on (I guess I didn't learn what it's actually called). This method proved to be much easier than I had anticipated.

The bad news: I wanted to knit really cool striped socks (my own stripes, not yarn-self-striping stuff). But they didn't have colors I liked. Hmph. So I bought this instead and decided to knit socks for Mr. Moody, my 8 year old. I was grumbling until I figured out how easy and fun the magic loop needles are and how truly entertaining self-striping yarn can be - especially when pulled from inside the ball. But they're too small and I'll have to pull them out and start over. sigh. GAUGE GAUGE GAUGE

So I did learn something and enjoyed myself - despite the fact that the teacher thought it would be great fun to start me out on #1 size needles.

My Choco-socks are kind of boring, but still coming along.

Oooh! And I ordered my yarn for my Nordic Stockings AND ordered THE last three skeins of Rowan Summer Tweed from Patternworks so I can make this:

for her (my niece):