Necessary knitting, take two

You don't think of Iowa as the type of place where people will take your gloves from the coat check at the children's science museum. But that's what happened when we were visiting my grandmother in Des Moines for her 88th birthday this past weekend. I'd been wearing a pair of brick-red gloves that my husband found when doing a massive cleaning of the hall closet last weekend, a pair that exactly matched my coat. Up a pair of gloves. At the museum I stuck them in my coat sleeve, but when I returned they weren't there--or anywhere on the floor or in the lost-and-found. Down a pair of gloves.

The only thing to do, of course, considering that it was five degrees out and we were to be in Des Moines for one more day, and that long-term gratification was thus obviously the way to go, was to find a yarn shop and start in on a pair of replacement gloves that will probably be finished in time for spring.

The yarn shop was of a different variety than those I've encountered in this corner of the Northeast. It's hard to describe it without sounding classist. I suspect this store caters not to young hipsters who have taken up knitting as the newest fad but to kindly older women who have been doing "needlework" for fifty or sixty years. The type whose homes are decorated with embroidered pillows and cross-stitch Kleenex-box covers. The proprietor was very friendly to me, but when pointing me to the "standard yarns you'll know, of course" she referenced three different acrylic yarns I didn't know at all. Most yarn stores here don't carry acrylic.

Conversely there were none of the brands I'd consider "standard"--no Rowan, no Debbie Bliss. In fact, there was almost no wool in the place. But I did find one cubby of wool sock yarn, which was what I wanted anyway, and pounced on a multi-colored skein in brick-reds, pinks, and sage greens. The perfect thing to tie together my coat and my sage green hat, another find of the closet cleaning. So all is well.

Meanwhile, I didn't like the Manos version of Swell. There's no finished edge on the pattern, and with yarn that varies in thickness it looked a little too messy. So I didn't block it, and I plan to tear it out and go with a toddler sweater after all. Maybe one of my own design.