Haifa Yarn Crawl.

I was actually planning to call this post S.E.X. in Haifa. But decided against it, afraid that it might attract a wrong sort of reader to my blog.
Anyway S.E.X. - Stash Enhancement Expedition - if you are unfamiliar with the knitting jargon, is a wonderful opportunity to pet new yarn, re-visit the yarn you have pet before and resisted adopting and give a good home to a few good skeins. Hey, so I am a softy - I could never resist the yarn calling my name. S.E.X. can be done by one knitter or as a group. And the joy of group S.E.X. grows with the number of participants.
The Haifa Yarn Crawl - like this sounds more dignified, was organized by the members of "Yarn and Falafel" Ravelry group. It is a wonderful place to be on the Internet. The group is very happy and supportive, it is my favorite cyber forum.
I sneaked out of the house at the crack of dawn, or actually about 7.30 a.m., before the kids could wake up and slow me down, or worse - ask to come with me. I was lucky and by 8.30 a.m. I was already in Haifa. My friend and fellow "crawler" Shoshie arrived at 9.30 and we were off to meet up with another one of our group, Batya, who was driving us to the first destination - the Esse-Yarns. I have spoken about Avital - the owner of Esse-Yarns before, when I published the "Ample Shawl" tutorial. She is as wonderful in person as over the phone. Avital runs Esse-Yarns out of her home. She and her husband have generously opened up their home to a crowd of yarn-hungry knitters. We shopped, we made noise, we exclaimed over each others yarn - yes we brought our own yarn pets with us for "Show and Feel". I had my wonderful Watermelon Yarn, from "knitpurlgurl". The two most amazing yarns I got to touch were a small skein of handspun Mongolian Cashmere and the legendary Wolmese. We showed off our FOs and WIPs.


And, of course, we bought yarn!
Now, I had a firm limit. And was not going to go and step over it. Also my friend Tamar wanted some of the magic Kauni yarn. I am in love with this yarn and will talk about it more later on, in another post.
I kept gathering more and more yarn to me - it all called me "Mama" and wanted to be adopted. Luckily my friends helped me out by buying too, so I could not buy out the whole shop. And then they helped me weed out the losers. For instance, mentioning that cute "pink-hot pink" striped yarn was the exact color of Pepto Bismol took a lot of charm out of it. Back to the bin it went!
So in the end I got enough yarn for two huge shawls for myself in "Black Lilly" and earth tones (shh... one of them is for my Mom, but please, keep it quiet). Fabulous "Blue Lilly" colorway for my friend Tamar. Also some pencil rowing in blues and pinks to knit slippers for my kids.


I also got a long (120 centimeters) needle for Tamar. Oh, and a wonderful "solid" charcoal grey - possibly a sweater for DH.
And yes, I will show off all the yarns in the next post.
Then we all went to lunch. And had lots of fun, talking, and sharing, and looking at more beautiful knitting artifacts.


We occupied the cafe until 3:30 p.m. Tried to get into the yarn shop around the corner, but it has closed early. Then drove to the other two shops on our list of sights to see.
More Ravelers joined us there. We looked at the yarn and petted it. I was able to resist the temptation in the first shop - since they did not have anything truly exotic.
But the other one - "Gdil" - was more than I could resist. I could smell cashmere as soon as I walked in the door. Two friends just had babies. So I had to look. Thank G-d they had neither blue nor pink! But white angora yarn was more than I could pass up. So one skein of fluffy angora, one skein of yummy merino-silk blend in baby blue were absolutely necessary for the new babies well being. It was my duty as a responsible knitter to buy them. Then I suffered a bout of yarn-delusion. My fellow Ravelers were buying lace weight superwash merino that came in lots of gorgeous colors. Not for shawls, but for sweaters. Why? The trick here is that there are approximately 1640 meters in the 100 gram ball. For 33 shekels! This is less than $10. So if you hold two strands together... That is right, one can get a sweater made out of yummy yarn for less than $20! I got one skein of silvery grey and one skein of lavender. I am not sure if I will knit the colors, holding them together, or will stripe them. I keep changing my mind.
But I know it will be special.
Regretfully the time to leave came too soon, and I made it home in good time and without any adventures.
DH and the kids lit the Hanukkah Menorahs and then Mommy went to sleep.