The Sweatshop of Love Blog

I’m not a shopper, really. When I go to a store I go with a list of things I need and I don’t mess around. I thought I was like this because I budget well, I’m very determined to spend wisely, I try to be very practical, and don’t buy things I don’t need.

I found out Thursday that I have just been going to the wrong stores my whole life.

Grisel, a friend of mine from Chicago, is in New York City for a while and she was my perfect excuse to finally make it to a bunch of crafty stores I’ve been wanting to go to since I started knitting. She knits, sews, and even has a interest in cross stitch, AND she lived in New York for years so she knows her way around.

It was the perfect storm!

We started at Tender Buttons because Grisel needed buttons for her finished Baby Sweater Buffet and I lost the button off my red skirt. I didn’t pack a lot of clothes so loosing that skirt was a big hit to the wardrobe.

Once our buttons were obtained we were off to the Lion Brand Yarn Studio, which had the most amazing window display I’ve ever seen! A big beach and carnival display and, of course, everything was knit or crocheted.

So yeah, I was kind of sold on the place before I even got through the door.

The Lion Brand Studio has every kind of Lion Brand yarn displayed beautifully and priced reasonably. They have yarn that isn’t available anywhere else, too! I picked up a skein of their Superwash Merino in Dijon, a color I’m going to be obsessed with this fall.

Next up was Purl SoHo, the store portion of the blog I absolutely love.

I have never been to a store that had something I’m passionately interested in occupying every inch of it until now. Every book, ever bolt of fabric, every skein of yarn I loved.

I could easily pack up one of everything at Purl SoHo and be happy rolling over it all laying in a big pile for the rest of my life.

We spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at everything EVERYTHING everything in this store.

One of the fun parts of being in the store was finding all of the projects she has featured on her blog placed around the shop. Like this needlepoint canvas!

She had a lot of them displayed in bookcases around the shop.

Our final destination was Brooklyn General Store and, I’m sad to say, this is the only picture I took. I was still in store shock from Purl, I think, and we had been running around shopping for like seven hours at this point.

I will be back, though! They had these cute turtle buttons I haven’t stopped thinking about and an amazing price on Cascade 220 I want to take advantage of.

Sadly, just because I visited these places doesn’t mean I had a ton of money to burn or, more importantly, any space whatsoever in either PT’s apartment or my suitcases. But I did pick up some essentials. That skein of dijon at Lion Brand, my skirt button from Tender Buttons, needles and thread from Purl SoHo to attach the button and do a couple other mending jobs I’ve developed since living here, and one of those fancy tiny measuring tapes I’ve always wanted, also from Purl.

A HUGE thanks to Grisel for being the best crafty shopping partner an out of town girl could ask for. I had the best time and could do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that!

~~~

PS: I totally got accepted into the DIY Trunk Show this year! Mark your calendars for Saturday, November 20th because not only is the DIY Trunk Show really fun and full of amazing crafty vendors, this year I get to be one of them!

Do you want a chance to win a Sweatshop knitting pattern? The lovely Amy at @threadpanda is hosting a giveaway! Go show her some love!

Despite sitting around all day waiting for my special FedEx package to come in, missing my workout, leaving for Sweater Club before it arrived only to come home to it sitting outside my door, delivered at 7:56pm, holy shit am I excited!

We are entering a new phase at The Sweatshop of Love: actually trying to make money! It is something new and different for me, and, as usual, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I thought buttons would help.

Obama is president now because he had buttons that people wore, so if people wear these buttons then I’ll be famous, too!

Right?

Get one here! Or email me.

To celebrate, PT and I had Muffin Club this morning before heading off to work.

We haven’t held Muffin Club in about a month because PT’s mom was in town, we went to Michigan, things just kept coming up. We are back with a vengeance, though, and we got up at 6am to bake these Apple Yogurt Muffins and take a sunny stroll along the boulevards to start our day off right.

I’m glad I got out a little, at least, since I’m battling some kind of insane headache/cough/dizzy/body ache/tummy bubble/sore throat thing now.

I cooked myself up some oatmeal, threw some raisins and cinnamon in it, and ate it with some crunchy peanut butter on my homemade bread. I’m drinking hot tea, and it is 76 degrees. I’m the worse sick person, totally in denial, PT was just yelling at me through gchat to get off the computer and lay down and to most certainly not go work out. I better do that before he jumps through the computer and knocks me out cold so I get some rest.

Buy a button!

To say that I hate buttons is inaccurate. I love buttons. I love looking at them, I love buying huge containers of them at flee markets or thrift stores and digging through them for long lost buttons no one knows exist but me. I love when I buy nice sweaters or jackets (or back when I used to buy nice clothes) and they come with extra buttons in a small plastic bag on the tag, or hidden away in the sleeve or sewn to the washing instructions. Anthropology wrapped its presents with button ribbon this holiday season and I’ve been treasuring it! My button anxiety comes from button functionality. Picking out buttons for a sweater I knit is my nightmare. I hate finding matching buttons. I hate standing in the button aisle at Joann and pricing buttons, trying to shove buttons through my bind off/cast on buttong holes to see if they will fit. I hate when I need six or, god forbid, eight buttons and I can only find four that I like that match. I sit on sweaters for months, completely done but for the buttons. I have button anxiety.

You can imagine my feelings when I finished my sweater! I was freaking out!

In all seriousness, this sweater was a joy to knit. It was quick and fun and has minimal finishing. It was fun to use two such different needle sizes, the 15s and the 7s, and two such different yarn textures. The yoke increases for the shoulders were easy and before I knew it I was done with the body of the sweater. It was probably something I did, but the only problem I had was with the button hole bands. The instructions literally say to pick up and knit 156 stitches on each side. That is impossible to begin with, since most of the pick up space is made of the Homespun yarn, so I picked up the correct number of stitches at the neck band and bottom band, then picked up each stitch in the Homespun to KFB in each of these stitches to get 156. When I finished the band, though, it was all buckled and wavey because 156 is way too many stitches for the sweater. I pulled it all out and picked up 125 instead and it worked perfectly, as you can see. Very smooth and cute! Velma really likes it, too.

I started thinking about button shopping, even looked around online a little. Then Pudge knocked over my button jar and I thought, ‘Sign!’

Fuck it. I’m using mismatched buttons I already have. These buttons. And it is going to be cute. If anything it will just bring more attention to the fact that I knit this sweater! I did! And it is cute, dammit.

That also means that I’m going to gauge my sweater dress today! We are gauging this week in sweater class so I should set a good example. I have sweater dress anxiety, too! I’m just a little ball of anxiety!