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| Karen Wabby |
Whenever I travel, I like to look for yarn stores and see if I can pick up yarns that I haven’t seen before
and/or something unusual to remind me of my trip or the location visited. My husband and I just recently went to
Italy for our tenth wedding anniversary, and although I wasn’t sure I’d get the
opportunity to shop for yarn, I was sure on the lookout for it.
The first city we visited was Rome, and
imagine my surprise when on our first walk the afternoon we arrived, we walked
right past a yarn store that was only half a block from our hotel! It was closed then, but I made a mental
note to come back (like I would forget!).
After five days in Rome, I still had not picked up a souvenir for
myself, and since it was our last day, I decided my Rome souvenir needed to be
yarn (it just seemed providence that I didn’t have to search for a yarn store,
one presented itself almost immediately upon my arrival!)
The clerk didn’t speak much
English, but I made several selections and paid about $40; I got 7 skeins of
various things - all made in Italy.
I plan to make some kind of scarf with the mauve pink Mondial Boreale
Lux (merino, acrylic and polyamid/polyester – it has a fuzzy look with a slight
silver sparkle.
I also got a multi
blue, gray and white sock weight yarn (Sesia Nordica Print - extrafine merino) that will probably
end up as fingerless mitts.
Finally, the clerk showed me a picture of a wool scarf with ruffle yarn
ruffles at each end made by one of her customers, and since this yarn was in
the sale bin, I got enough to make a cream colored scarf (Mondial Rossana –
merino & acrylic) with cream and latte colored ruffle (Mondial Trine Stampe
– acrylic & polyamid. It’s
similar to the ruffle yarns we see here in the US, but is slightly
different. I didn’t get a pattern,
but I plan to make a reversible cable ruffle scarf and add the ruffles to each
end.
We had three days in Florence, and
by that time, I’d gotten to know our tour guide, Rafaelle, and he’d seen me
knitting on the bus. I was
knitting a lovely shawl called Mansion House by Toby Roxanne Barna – you can
find it on Ravelry. I had met Toby at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC in January (that’s
another story!) and so loved her designs.
This particular one is three triangular panels, the two outer ones being
stockinette stitch, and the center one is a lace pattern that looks like
stained glass windows – so appropriate as all the lovely churches we visited in
Italy had fabulous stained glass, so I will always think of them when I look at
that shawl…now back to Florence.
As soon as we arrived in Florence,
I asked if Rafaelle would find out where any yarn stores might be near our
hotel. We were staying in the
downtown area, only a few blocks from the beautifuI Duomo Cathedral. The next morning as we began our day,
Rafaelle handed me a piece of paper with an address and the name of one the
plazas, Piazza Lorenzo and told me it was the address of a yarn store. We did our tour for the morning, then
some additional sightseeing on our own and mid-afternoon, my husband and I
headed back toward our hotel and I branched off to look for Piazza Lorenzo and
the specific address which I found with not too much difficulty (I found the
street, no problem but was having difficulty finding the street number and was
pointed in the right direction when I asked two of the policemen standing in
the square). It was sort of
difficult to tell it was a shop, there was a window at ground level and a low
doorway, and on closer inspection I did see a small yarn display in the window,
so I went in.
Immediately you go downstairs and it was a large open shop with shelves
everywhere.
There were two
shopkeepers, appeared to be older couple; they spoke no English so I looked
around and picked up an interesting skein with large ‘puff balls’ on it, like
the old fashioned chenille bedspreads, sort of.
They showed me a pattern magazine with many projects using
this yarn (Mondial Shock), mostly bags that reminded me of the very expensive
one I wanted at Vogue Knitting Live in New York, so I bought two skeins and
they tried to sell me the magazine but I tried to explain that I couldn’t read
the patterns in Italian! I’m
hoping I can do a little experimentation and figure out how to knit a bag that
at least looks similar to this one (the one I saw in NYC).
So I did find some nice Italian
yarn that I will knit on soon, and think of my wonderful trip to Italy!
