Family visit and yarn from the Carter administration!

David and I spent the holiday weekend in Boston visiting his family. Since I'm heading off on the national tour, and I'll be gone god knows how long . . . we thought we should get a visit in. We didn't get in until Midnight on Friday and we crashed with our pal David. Saturday we hung out with David's folks. David's mom is a big knitter. She makes blankets for foster kids from squares knit up (or crocheted, I'm not sure which) by lots of folks. Because of this, people are constantly giving her yarn. At a certain point she just gets full up and that's where I come in. In the past I've scored with full cones of mohair, wool, balls of novelty yarn, trim, you name it. People have also started dropping off their unfinished projects to her. You can't believe how far people get in their sweaters before bailing. She usually finishes the sweaters and returns then to their owner. I keep telling her she could go into business. This time someone dropped off a sweater and said she didn't want it back. This thing was almost finished, except for one problem . . . it was hideous. It was red and white stripes on the bottom, then the body was white with anchors in red yarn. It had big 80s poofy sleeves, and was completely unwearable. We made the only sane decision . . . FROG.

Here's the stash:


I now have six skeins of Reynolds Saucy 100% Mercerized cotton in white & 3 in red. What do I do with it. Does anyone have any pattern ideas for cotton yarn? I'm desperate for ideas. Lemme know.

Amongst the other random bits were some Sheltand Wool in green and tan, some ribbon yarn


There was also a blue cone of novelty yarn that, according to the price sticker, was purchased in 1979!!
















I'm open to any ideas for what to do with this stuff.

Sunday night we went Candlepin Bowling. What the heck is that you may be wondering? If you're not from Massachusetts, Maine, Ohio, New Hampshire, or parts of Canada (and I'm not) you've probably never seen anything this weird. The pins are little skinny pins. They don't get fat at the bottom like normal bowling pins. The balls are small wooden balls with no holes. You just hold it in the palm of your hand and roll it as fast as you can. You get three balls, and the pins you knock down, or "dead wood", does not get cleared away between balls. Part of the strategy is hitting the pins that are already knocked down so that they'll knock other pins down. It is possible to get a gutter ball, yet have the ball hit a pin in the gutter and knock others pins down. It was crazy, but the bar served a bitchin' apple cider martini, with cinnamon and sugar, so I didn't really care how badly I sucked.