I’m feeling snarky today. (I am also really digging the word today, hence the heavy usage.) If you’re not feeling up for snark, please, I urge you to try a sampling of the archives. The archives are worth it. Promise!

I got an email this morning from Mary Charles Yarn Co a certain yarn shop near the village. They’re having a party tonight, please come join them. I mull this over all day and then think, you know, maybe yarn will cheer me up. It’s been a rough week.

Which, thank you! everone who sent emails and left comments. I really appreciated them and it was nice to know so many people have kept my family in their thoughts and prayers in the last few days. It means a lot.

So I go home. Change clothes. Sit down and watch an episode of the Muppet Show while knitting a few rows and giving the kitty a few scritches behind the ears. I leave and head over to the Yarn Party. I park. Walk in. Peruse the front room and what do I spy? Roving. Dear lord in heaven, this woman might actually be trying to run a real live yarn shop. She’s got ROVING. Not just any roving either. Gorgeous, luscious, it-should-be-illegal alpaca handdyed roving. Eight ounces of baby butt rivaling softness. I should have known better. I should not have picked it up. I cradled it lovingly in my hands, already envisioning myself standing in the park, spinning lovely laceweight yarn on my drop spindle. Sigh. I should have known that the price was not written on it for a reason. Are you ready for this? Because I really think you ought to sit down. Now. For your own health.

$80.

I actually laughed at Mary Charles. In front of her. At her. To her face. I laughed and said "Thats not gonna happen!" I put the roving back down and started thinking about the slightly felted wool roving waiting for me at home and sighed a little sigh.

Now. This is the third time I’ve been to her shop. The first time I went because I’d been hearing mixed reviews of her within the first month of her opening. I thought to myself that she deserved a shot and trucked on down. I walked upstairs and I’m greeted by three large boxes filled with bags upon bags of Noro Kureyon in gorgeous fresh on the market colorways. Unattended large boxes of Noro Kureyon. Did I mention that these boxes were alone on the landing with not a human in sight? I wanted to bury the back seat and trunk of my car in Noro and drive off cackling. Instead I went and dug through her new shop and thought she seemed rather nice and she talked to me and I felt welcome and I bought a couple of balls of Noro. I found out later the price discrepancy occuring between normal retail price and her price. Rather wide gap there. (Lets see, MSRP of $8.50, MCYC - $10.50. You can do the math) But methinks she was rather nice. One can go back.

I go back a second time. I try asking a couple of questions about pricing, I get answered rather rudely and am kinda irked aobut it.But, I run into Jet and Liz and we laugh and talk and buy yarn. I bought some pretty yarn that Mary Charles had half a ball of leftover from knitting a shop swatch. I bought the last two skeins of that colorway and she gave me the other half ball because she had nothing to make with it. So I’m now left with a yeh, could be more pleasant to talk to but not half bad opinion of the place. Still not feeling the urge to complain about the place. One can still go back… Until tonight.

So we having the horror of the roving up there. I wander a bit, talk to some girls who go to school at Rice and are skinny beyond belief and chat about knitting groups and tell them about where some of the groups meet up. Yes, I totally mugged for the Thursday night group. Wait, lets be more specific, the Thursday Night "We Have been Meeting For Waaay Longer and We Totally Trump Any Other Thursday Night Group That Might Want To Meet 2 Miles Away" Group. I wandered around looked at the overpriced yarn and went back with another question.

Me: Um, do you have any laceweight?

MCYC: Any what?

Me: Laceweight yarn.

MCYC: Whats that?

Me: …enter the gaping maw of a silence

Me: in disbelief It’s yarn for, you know, knitting lace. Really thin.

MCYC: Is it 2 ply or 4 ply?

Me: Generally 2 ply.

MCYC: Well, we have some alpaca and silk thats 2 ply.

I go over and pick up the alpaca and silk. Its DK weight yarn.

I sigh and leave.

Now, I have presented to you the ultimate resaon why I will never walk back into the woman’s shop. The lack of knowledge of laceweight yarn. This completely and TOTALLY trumps the $80 roving.

Edit: It was not, despite popular opinion, "a pisser," I was however deeply disappointed in the lack of knowledge for the art which this woman, in owning a yarn shop, is supposed to have a rudimentary working knowledge of.