Introduction to the Garden

We're settling into our Berkeley digs nicely. While there's been a lot of work, I've also had some time for exploring!

The exploring started with a haircut at Tique Salon, followed by a visit to Article Pract.

Article Pract is a GREAT yarn shop. If you're anywhere near the Berkeley, San Fran, Oakland area, check it out. I found the shop online, and since it's the closest place to me, I decided to bike over and check them out. My whole visit to the store was a treat! I think they have a perfect mix of yarns, covering a wide variety of labels, fibers, colors, etc. If this were the only yarn store around I'd be completely satisfied (although, I know there are some great ones in San Fran that I have to get to). This is different than my Boston yarn shopping, where I have to go to one store for sock yarn, another for nice cottons, and on and on.

Article Pract is having a HUGE sale. Huge as in about a quarter of their yarns were 25% off and a whole other section of yarn was 45-50% off. I resisted the urge to buy everything and just stuck with a few specific purchases ~~ I needed some Rowan Calmer to make a couple of Shedir hats.

I started Shedir using an alpaca yarn, while it felt nice and soft, it didn't look that great. Shedir is a cabled pattern and with the fuzzy/splitty alpaca, the cables didn't show up. But now, with Calmer, the hat is perfect! This just goes to show that having the right type of yarn can really change the final results (i'll post some alpaca vs calmer pics when I'm done with the hat).

Other Purchases:

Some Malabrigo baby merino wool in the Glazed Carrot colorway. I'm going to use it to make Sarcelle.

Some Araucania Nature Wool in a greenish/yellowish color that I'm going to use to make another Clapotis. I'm really excited about the color, but I'm not as sure about how it will feel and drape as a scarf. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

So, after my stop to the yarn shop, I have plenty of yarn to keep my fingers busy. And, with the cool Berkeley weather, I'm excited to have a few new scarves/wraps and a hat to keep me cozy.

Here are some shots from the gardens around our building:

Check out the intense orange of these guys ~


We have some grapefruit growing!


And these are the sweetest plums ever!!


As always, there's more to share, but I'll save it for later posts!