Friday
Flight out of Denver was late. In my experience this is a matter of course. Oakland airport is kind of ghetto.

The look of utter and complete surprise on Jocelyn’s face when I came in the door after Chris was priceless. She had no idea. And they had spent a lot of time fixing up the guestroom for random future guests. Chris done good.

Saturday
Adela’s yarn store - damn those women were rude. I’m submitting an essay about my experience to any and every place that will take it though. I really hate thinking about how they treat people, particularly newbies who are already insecure. So I’m going to spread the word. First stop is Knitter’s Review Forum. Then the shop reviews at Knitting.about.com. To spread the good word as well I’m going to submit my great experiences at the other shops I visited in the area. In any job involving customers there’s no shortage of complaints, but the compliments can be rare so I try to send my compliments when I can too!

My first day in California and we went to a mall. I’d forgotten to bring a jacket of any kind (hey, it’s hot here at home!) and there was a 50% off clearance sale at Torrid. I found some fun things that would keep me warm in breezy San Francisco. And I got to see a hhttp://www.sephora.com store!!

We went to dinner at absolutely the best sushi place ever ever. And dudes, I’ve been to Japan. Really interesting combinations of tastes - nice fusion style which didn’t come off as pretentious that’s quite a trick. Peanut butter and jelly rolls. Holy Crap. I happily ate them while singing the peanut butter jelly time song in my head. Peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly.

Sunday
Took the bart into SF (I was staying about thirty minutes away in Castro Valley). Saw Jocelyn’s office. Walked around the artisan markets in the Embarcadero Ferry Building. Ate crab cakes for lunch.

ArtFibers was closed. Booo.

We went to the MOMA. I saw an Eames chair, Eva Hesse sculpture, a few Ana Mendietas, Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, a particularly frightening de Kooning portrait (which is saying something), one of my favorite George Braques paintings. So many. At one point I was going around a room looking at the paintings not paying attention to what was in the center. When I came to the placard for it it said Marcel Duchamp, Fountain. I turned around and damned if the that urinal readymade signed R. Mutt wasn’t sitting right there. Fun! The exhibition on the top floor about Painting Masculinity was interesting as well. I bought some small art book toys for the ‘phew’s birthday. Which I need to mail today.

We went to Japantown. Mostly because I wanted to go to the Japanese dollar store I’d heard about (here). I’d been to Chinatown when I was a kid and apparently Chris had been there throughout his childhood since his grandmother lived there so Japantown was a different and more interesting area for us to see. That’s when we took all those photos of Barry as godzilla and stuff. It was fun. Bought some tchotchkes. Including washcloths with hedgehogs on them. For some reason there was more French Engrish than actual Engrish on the stuff there. Is that Frengrish?

We took a taxi to Fisherman’s Wharf so I could see the sea lions. Called Cody on my phone so he could hear them barking. Ate dinner at a mediocre and overpriced Italian place that overlooked the sea lions. Great mineral water and garlic bread. And at first the food would seem like it was really good. But eventually we would realize that it was bland and we were just really hungry. Took a very long ride on the bart back to their townhouse.

Monday (Memorial Day)
I slept late. Oops. After running some errands we drove down to San Jose to meet Nathania and Emy @ Commuknity. I’d heard about this shop from a variety of sources and Laurie had loved it so much I had to check it out since I was so close by. It was a fairly short drive. (This seems to be the major benefit of Castro Valley - it’s roughly 30 minutes to most places in the area).

Commuknity is HUGE with golden natural light and friendly people. Who are also nice enough to leave you to wander around by yourself to absorb the wonder but they’re nearby to answer questions in a friendly way too. Most yarn stores I know and love have a clausterphobic feel to them, which can be good when you feel like you’re being cuddled by all the yarn, or it can be bad when there are a lot of customers elbowing each other over the koigu. But Commuknity was open and somehow simultaneously warm.

That place has a great variety of yarns! I’m guessing every yarn in the Rowan catalog? And I got to see Bee Sweet yarn in person. I’ve been wanting to get my grubby hands on that. I’m such a sucker for the socially conscious southern hemisphere yarns. There’s a cozy sitting area around a fireplace with big comfy sofas and lots of books. And a separate room for classes - which is something I’m looking forward to when Village moves. I always feel so guilty skulking around the people taking lessons in weaving and spinning in the middle of the store.

It was really cool to meet new people who are participating in Dyeorama and find out how their experiences have been. Emy’s been SO GREAT about answering questions on the group blog. This idea of people helping each other was really what Scout and I had in mind when we went to the trouble of making everyone who signed up able to post to the blog. We wanted a place for people to share ideas and experiences so it was really nice to thank her in person.

This was the perfect antidote to the poison from Adela’s Yarn I really needed to spend some time in a good, friendly yarn shop and I couldn’t have asked for a better place.

Unfortunately, Jocelyn and I were too late to go by the crazy Winchester house so we went across the street (this is in a charming little shopping village in San Jose) and drank coffee and chatted for a while. Then we went back to her house and Chris grilled some tri tips for us while Jocelyn cooked my favorite “mushroom thing” over pasta. This is sort of a vegetarian version of beef stroganoff made with sauteed mushrooms, yogurt, and a TON of butter that she made up when we were roommates in college. I’ve never really been much of a cook. Even then.

Tuesday
Was my big day alone in the city. Jocelyn had to work (which is a bummer because this was her birthday) and I really didn’t want to spend the whole day sitting around their house. So I rode with her on the Bart train and got off at the second exit to the City - sort of near Union Square. But I’m going to write a whole separate post about that because there’s a whole lot to say about that day.

We did end up going out to dinner at a nice new French restaurant and I gave Jocelyn her two presents (a purse and wallet from Etsy don’t look Joce there are prices!).

Wednesday
I bummed around the house, took a jaccuzi bath (so jealous of this), did a load of laundry, packed. Jocelyn took the second half of the day off to drop me off at the airport. We got a bit lost but I made it to the plane. Got really delayed coming out of Denver again. Didn’t make it to Albuquerque until very, very late.

Cody’s been off this week so we’ve been doing a lot of organizing projects around the house. And a lot of sleeping and cuddling with the pets. Seems I was missed a lot.

I’m still working on the post about my big day by myself in San Francisco!

Like every yarn hoarder I have a pipe dream of someday having a yarn shop. I want mine to be a bookstore/coffeeshop/internet cafe/yarn shop where people can bring their pets. Who knows if this would ever happen. But even with just the etsy shop I have a fairly strong opinion of how I want to treat my customers - because first and foremost I am a consumer. And I will always want to treat customers the way I want to be treated when I’m shopping.

After Ramona’s party a few weeks ago I picked up a fun book called “Greetings from the Knit Cafe” It’s fun and has a lot of patterns that are very comfy looking. I particularly liked the stretches for knitters in the back but really, it made me want to travel and see other knit stores. Not to steal ideas, but to experience the little fiber families that we have at our LYS. I’ll admit that my very first experience at my LYS wasn’t super fantastic but I didn’t feel outright animosity - not at all! Which brings me to my first experience with a yarn shop in the bay area…

Adela’s Yarn
Castro Valley

It’s literally around the block from where I’m staying, this was the first shop I went to. A lot of Colinette, best collection of Tilli Tomas I’ve seen in person. The people who work there, however, were totally unacceptable to me.

I was perusing the yarn selections which were nice but were primarily commercially spun handpainted - and in the wake of dyeorama I couldn’t get around that. I knew exactly where to get a lot of that yarn undyed for one third the price and paint it my damn self.

But that Tilli Tomas was something to see. I’d seen some at a nice shop in Birmingham in December and have regretted not buying some ever since. And I’ve seen the new stuff on kpixie but I’ve been hesitating to buy it without feeling it first. Well, I’ll admit, it’s delightful to touch. The silk is like Fiesta’s La Luz and it’s softly plied with beautiful crystal beads or stones. Gorgeous stuff. Forty five bucks a skein.

I wandered around the store fondling yarn and overheard a saleslady explain how people go get crap at other stores and think they’re knitting but they get the “real” knitters and crocheters at their store, not just crafters. Nice. And an odd attitude to take for a store with high end but nonetheless some novelty-type yarns.

So I was gearing myself up to buy a skein or two of tilli tomas and I had picked up a silver thread cutter pendant which I’ve been wanting when a nice saleslady (the other saleslady) came by and asked how I was doing. At the time I was looking at the Giotto thinking about the sprout sweater I’ve been working on. So I told her I’m working on a sweater in the Giotto.

She asked me if I’d seen the new Colinette pattern book that was all Giotto, which I hadn’t but I’d been wanting to. So she took me over and we were admiring the lovely patterns. I told Jocelyn, who is tolerating all the yarn shops very nicely, that what I thought was really cool about Colinette yarns is there’s no dye lot really, each skein is handpainted and different.

And then the other lady (the not-nice saleslady) who worked there started squawking and raving. One of the residence knitters said very nastily “Oh she’s smart.” Then I had to listen to the rude saleslady explain to me in a really condescending and repetitive manner that there really are colinette dye lots and how I’d have to buy them all at the same time for them to match. I guess she hadn’t heard that I already have 12 friggin balls of giotto and I’ve been alternating skeins every other row. But she kept saying that there really are Colinette Dye lots and how you can tell how they were painted at different times.

Now that i look back on it I think she may have thought I was saying there are no dye lots like the red heart acrylics say there are no dye lots but clearly she wasn’t listening to me. She was trying to be snooty and assert her “yarn dominance”, an attitude I never tolerate well, and apparently trying to “upsell” me, a tactic which I tolerate even less.

Why stores who think they can behave snobbishly to customers and treat them like they’re morons believe that this is a successful sales tactic is beyond me.

But she kept going. Really we’re talking two-three minutes of this woman saying things and not listening to me. Every once in a while I would look over at the nice saleslady and try to gauge how she felt about her coworker’s behavior. Mostly she just looke embarassed. Then I asked rude saleslady if she was the owner of the store. She said yes. So I asked “So is your name Adela?” to which she said “there is no Adela”. That was whenI set down the small pile of purchases I’d accumulated so far. Jocelyn said “I’m thirsty! Let’s go get a drink!”, I turned to the nice saleslady and said, “Thank you for being so nice.” and we left. I wasn’t going to buy a lot there yesterday but I ended up buying nothing.

The good news is that Jocelyn and Chris are regulars at the sushi restaurant just next store so we went back to eat there last night. Now the sushi restaurant seriously rocks. Like RAWKS. We sampled a little of everything and every single thing we ate was tasty. A great fusion of tastes and textures, some fun experiments. (Did you see the PB J Sushi Roll?? Holy CRAP is that good! - Crunchy Peanut Butter, Macadamia nuts, avocado rolled up, cut up, topped with strawberry jelly, whipped cream, sprinkled with dark chocolate chips) I met the owner and chef (who has a photo of himself with Iron Chef Sakkai!) and he was very nice. So even steven as they say.

Go for the yarn if you want. Ignore the bitchy sales woman, and stay for the Sushi. Tell Stanley I said hi and he should still move to Albuquerque!

Adelas yarn

They were extremely rude. like a lot! Adelas is bad