It’s hot. It’s too hot to knit Birch. I want to knit Birch, I love knitting Birch, but I’m here to tell you that Kid Silk Haze is the wrong thing for hot, sticky weather. I realized this yesterday afternoon when I noticed that my gauge had changed and the shawl had taken a turn for the tiny, because my sticky hands weren’t letting the fine, fuzzy yarn slide on my fingers. Since Casa de Harlot has no air conditioning, I was a little put out. I don’t have anything against hot weather, in fact…I really like it. The way I see it you are destined for misery if you live in Toronto and hate the cold and hate the hot. Toronto is a city of extremes. All winter long (What’s that joke I kept hearing south of the border? Canada has 9 months of winter and 3 months where the skiing is a little off.”) and the winter is admittedly long, I hear “It’s so cold, it’s too cold, I can’t wait for summer.” then the minute that summer arrives and it’s 30 degrees (86 for my American friends) plus staggering humidity, you start to hear the opposite. “It’s so hot, it’s too hot….”.

I say pick one….hate it more.

Me, I hate the winter. Loathe it. I hate that you need a big plan to go to the corner. I hate shovelling snow. I hate that if you lock yourself out of the house you could die before you have a new plan. In as much as winter is really glory days for the knitter…I could do with a little less. Therefore, I have made the carefully considered decision to hate winter more, and not say one little word about the heat, except as it pertains to Kid Silk Haze, which is clearly a cool weather yarn.

Lucky for me, Lettuce Knit had a brand spanking new delivery of this.

HandMaiden yarns (the HandMaiden is the daughter of my most sacred Fleece Artist) is producing a new line of yarns. This skein is enough to make a totally snazzy vee neck tank, in cool, slidey silk. (I understand that my decision to dump the beautiful and much coveted Birch for the first fancy-arsed yarn that waggles down the yarn shop isle at me makes me a fickle, fickle knitter. I’m ok with that, I switched teams as fast as I could wash off the cloud of mohair stuck to me. )

Considering that the sock is fine upstanding Canadian wool, I’m surprised that it’s hot weather instincts are so good.

A shady corner of Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, resting before doing this…

The Rosie’s Yarn Cellar gang shows me their knitting. (Note: Rosie’s does not have spectacular stained glass. Due to the tiny size of the shop, we met in a synagogue down the street, though if this really was a yarn shop, I would live there full time. ) Philadelphia is a beautiful city, and very, very different from Toronto. The narrow streets and architecture remind me more of Europe or Vieux Quebec and the sock and I were wildly charmed.

I leave you with this picture. Look closely. This is a group of knitters gathered together at “The Black Sheep” pub in Philly, enjoying knitting, beer each other’s company and Juno’s story about her birthday yarn. See the looks on their faces? The shock? The glee? The desperate, wild-eyed, excitement of knitters who understand her urges and wish they had her nerve?

This my knitterly friends, is the exact moment that Juno told them that on her birthday she had called Virtual Yarns to buy herself a sample card, a wee giftie to herself, and on discovering that they were all out, had done the only thing that a drunk knitter on a birthday high in desperate need of a yarn reference could do.

She ordered one skein of every possible colour.

Atta’ girl.