Looking Glass Yarns in Santa Fe

Santa Fe has five yarn stores and because I've only visited three of them I decided to find one I hadn't checked out previously. Looking Glass Yarns is in a location that is right around the corner from Trader Joe's so I'm surprised I've never noticed it.

I have to say that Looking Glass Yarns is by far the most friendly yarn store in Santa Fe I've visited. The owner was kind enough to let me take these photos and she helped me figure out how much fiber I'd need to spin yarn for socks. 

Sorry about the photos - it was a bit dark and my photography skills are lacking.

There was a sale on Brown Sheep yarns and the store also had Cascade 220, a good selection of sock yarn, and some fun metallic yarns. They have a shelf of local yarns and fibers right by the door.

I nearly succumbed to a new spindle - these are made by Ken Ledbetter of KCL Woods and were light as air. Aren't they gorgeous? I did buy some sock yarn and some fiber for spinning which I'll show you later

Also, if you're interested in Santa Fe shopping, on my cooking blog I posted some photos from the gorgeous kitchenware store The Spanish Table. I thinked they turned out a little better.

Santa Fe

The braided fingerless glove pattern (shown in my last blog post) is now available at my Lulu store HERE. I decided to stick with just one size, women's large, because I've already moved on. I'm hard at work on the Algonquin socks from Folk Style and I think I'm going to make the flower hat as well.

For your eye candy today here are some recent photos from the City Different (Santa Fe). There were still flowers blooming in November.


Some pretty adobe buildings


A very old church


The Lensic theater


St. Francis church

I never get sick of looking at New Mexico architecture.

Santa Fe Decorated for the Holidays

Knitting??? What's that??? I haven't accomplished much in the fiber department in the last week but I do have another tutorial to show you soon.

The plaza in Santa Fe



An art gallery on Canyon Road




More Canyon Road



A hotel all decked out

Santa Fe

UNEXPECTED KNITTING by Debbie New

My best knitting Christmas present was one I gave myself - I ordered Debbie New's Unexpected Knitting a while back but kept it until Christmas to open. It is an amazing book and one I can't recommend highly enough. With the current emphasis on non-challenging knitting this book goes a million miles in the opposite direction and challenges knitters to think about knitting and knitted fabrics in a much different way. In fact there is one chapter, Virtual Knitting, that isn't actually knitting but replicates knitted fabric. I often don't think of my knitting as terribly creative but this is the best book I've seen on creativity and the design process in knitting. Some of her knitted works of art are truly things the knitting world has never seen before.

I plan to start something using the freeform knitting technique this weekend. Thank God for Debbie New's remarkable intelligence and for Schoolhouse Press for publishing this book - there's no way other knitting book publishers would even consider attempting such a book. I read through this book today and had some incredible thoughts and ideas - there is not a single technique in here that doesn't excite me and start me imagining whole new ways of looking at knitting. Wow - this is easily the most exciting knitting book I've seen in a decade or two.

Back to our Santa Fe Tour. Santa Fe is easily one of the most important art marketplaces in the country. Canyon Road, billed America's Arts and Crafts Road, is littered with galleries. I thought I'd take some photos of some of the outdoor art on display. First we have DH with a large metal rabbit.



And perhaps an errant reindeer.



The cougar on the roof of the Canyon Road florist is sporting a Santa hat.



And my favorite piece of Canyon Road art - a massive rabbit done in some sort of concrete mixture.