I *was* buying less yarn this year....

Compared to years past, 2012 has been a light yarn buying year. An exquisite level of work and life frustration recently has left me stalking wool shop websites, planning to knit everything right here and now and being moderately annoyed at the cost of overnight shipping. There's nothing like aggressive pursuance of a tangible craft when one is incredibly frustrated with the intangibles of knowledge work.

Recently, I remembered Lisa Souza and her beautiful colors. She does such lovely things as dyes silk yarn that Franklin turned into a beautiful pineapple bag. I'd picked up a skein of her Polwarth/Silk in the Styx colorway at Stitches Midwest in 2011 and it's lounging in the stash.  As I started to look for yarn that I could use for a project the Philosopher had requested (more on that later), I recalled that originally said yarn was intended for him and went looking to see what else I could find on her website.

While I ended up going a different way for the Philosopher's project, I did happen to stumble through Lisa's sock yarn and buy a couple of colors. She's so prompt answering questions and shipping and the yarn is so lovely, I will make it a serious goal to spend more yarn money with her.

I got two skeins of sock yarn, one in the aforementioned Styx colorway and the other in

The Styx is black with hints of raspberry and blue.











Though from any great distance it looks black.




















This is her Sock! base and as such probably would be best as socks but I'm not sure yet if that will be the final product or not. It's so subtle. The Incredibly Patient Mother wears a lot of black so it might go in the black but with subtle for her or it might go into something for my sister or...or....or....

I also picked up a skein in colors that will seem oddly familiar.  Perhaps because they almost match the BMFA random skein that I got earlier this year. I really have to stop buying the same three skeins of yarn over and over someday.  Lisa calls this Shade Garden.  It's full of pink, blue-purple, green, and gray.


























This yarn will most likely be socks. Because obviously I'm running low on sock wool.

If you got some extra yarn money for the holidays or if you just haven't had a browse over there recently, do check out Lisa Souza's yarns.  While the Bombyx Silk will set you back a rather large chunk of change (and rightly so!) her other yarns are certainly within a reasonable price range.  I don't know if she'll be at any festivals near me before August, so I'll be sticking to web orders til then...