no mo norweger ringel

Just when I thought I was in the Ringel.

You may recall that back before Xmas in my sock-knitting frenzy I started a cute little pair of self-striping socks using the Strapaz Norweger Ringel yarn from Austria (it's made by Steinbach Wolle). You may also recall that I bought the single (yes, single - oh, the humanity!) ball of yarn 1/2 price at a store many many miles from my home. Oh, woe.

Surprise, I ran out of yarn with just inches to go on the second toe. Blast! So I scrounged and phoned and googled and eBayed looking for another sweet deal on the elusive second ball of yarn, but to no avail. Paying full price + shipping was not on my to-do list for that 2 inches of toe.

So what a thrill, to be passing through this town many miles from mine on Sunday, to find that the yarn store where I first bought that solitary ball was open! Open, at 5:45 PM on a Sunday in North Carolina! Nothing is open at 5:45 PM on a Sunday in North Carolina, except for the K & W Cafeteria (and the line is unbelievable).

And then disaster struck. This particular yarn store, you see, is not really a yarn store but a quilt store that carries yarn. Normally this is a wonderful thing, because HWWLLB quilts, so we can spend many happy hours browsing and spending our rent money on fabric and yarn, gleefully indulging our own sick shopping compulsions and justifying them by revelling in the fact that the other person is about to dump just as much money! Wheeee! Except that this particular shop never had the best yarn selection, so it was hard to go as hog-wild as I would have liked.

Double except, for some reason which I still can't explain, every time I went there the yarn was half price. Hence the impulse one-ball-of-sock-yarn buying. I should have bought ten.

Okay, I'm getting to the point now. They didn't have my sock yarn. Jeezoo, they didn't have anything, because they're getting out of the yarn business. What they did have was marked down to an amazing $1 a ball, but it was mostly frizzy novelty yarns that make me want to sneeze just looking at them. It was tough, but I scrounged up a purchase (2 balls of Linie 139 Cicada for a fashion scarf for me, and 6 balls of something cotton I can't remember right now and had never heard for, for a kid's sweater). But alas, no Norweger Ringel.

This is now a quest. I solemnly swear that I will not buy a full-price ball + shipping, because somewhere in my travels, whether at some out-of-the-way yarn shop in East Jesus, NC, or in the bottom of a sympathetic stitch & bitcher's yarn stash, I am going to find that yarn. And I am not going to pay full price.