Road Trip

Three of us spinners headed off to Montreal on Saturday morning. Object of trip: meet up with an artistic someone who knew about a little place where they make handmade paper, which she described as 'crack cocaine for artists'. Subsequently, lunch and yarn crawl before heading home. As one of our number is a printmaker, and the other two are fiber-focused but multicraftual, this was a fully agreeable plan.

The paper place proved to be very much what you might expect of somewhere selling the artist's equivalent of illegal drugs. Old brick factory building, well graffitoed. Entrance via a minimally marked, basement-level steel door. Inside, nothing fancy. Concrete floor, one side having pulp tubs and screens and supplies for making the paper, printing presses scattered about, a broom closet-looking bathroom, and the rest having a variety of shelving, tables, and piles containing paper, and random buckets and boxes with trimmings. Not standard 8.5 x 11 sheets, mind you. Heavy, textured, deckle-edged sheets in a variety of colors and sizes. Some with seeds or rags or leaves incorporated. Linen paper. Even vellum. Our two artists had a lovely time, kept drifting off distracted, and finally came out with a bundle each. We then had to return as one had gotten so distracted she had left her coat there.

After lunch (a little Indian place which rendered us all too full to think about supper) was yarn shopping and the turn of the yarn and fiber crew to get distracted, although the artists had fun as well. I was not intending to splurge, but...I saw a copy of Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, flipped through, and didn't let go of it. Now I know what the fuss is about her, and I shall definitely be keeping my eyes open for the other three Treasuries. I have several stitch dictionaries about, but I have never seen most of what was in that book, and it is making my designing node itch.

Oh, and I also bought a skein of yarn. I needed it to test the pattern for Kim's mitts I made last year. (Justify, justify!) And bagels, because that's what you do in Montreal. I haven't had a Montreal bagel in years, possibly not since I moved away from there. They will be breakfast this week.