Acrylics anonymous

This is my husband's aunt Sylvia-

In addition to being an excellent cook, an intelligent and attractive woman, an excellent hostess, and someone with some very, very interesting stories to tell, Sylvia is also a knitter. Ahh yes... She's one of us. But if you ask me Sylvia is far from your regular, run of the mill every day knitter. Sylvia knits amazing, original gorgeous things and makes them look effortless. Sweaters with amazing cables or gorgeous lacework that are often original designs. She's not really one for patterns. She's been knitting so long she kind of improvises a lot. Everytime I see her and her husband in the winter inevitably one of them is wearing one of her sweaters. And she must knit a lot because I really don't think I've ever seen the same sweater twice. And this weekend I realized almost every sweater Sylvia knits is knit with acrylic. She hates wool, she finds it too itchy and too expensive. And honestly her work is often so gorgeous and intricate, I don't see how the acrylic part would ever bother anybody.

Recently, she invited me to go with her to her favorite yarn store Smiley's Yarns. I had heard of Smiley's before. Apparently they often have huge sales in Manhattan where they'll have a large party room in a hotel just filled with bags and bags of yarn at unbelievable prices. Last Saturday Sylvia and I visited their store in Woodhaven, Queens. Yes, most of what they sell is acrylic. But-I found most of it to be really, really nice acrylic. And looking at all those great colors, soft yet washable, so very inexpensive, well of course... I totally caved...

Yep, that's what we would call a yarn haul. Whoa. But then again, it's really not as bad as it looks, I promise. Here's how it breaks down.




The red Patons Canadiana is for a sweater for me. Possibly another top down raglan like the one I'm working on now.

The black Filati Cervinia, is for a short sleeve cardigan I've been coveting forever. It looks like there's a lot of it because it is dk weight and I wanted to be certain I would not run out of yarn. Yeah, that's it...

The pink Bernat Satin is for a sweater for my niece.

And the gray Bernat Sox is for a pair of socks for my hubby.

And the size dpns I needed for the sleeves to finish the sweater I'm working on now. Yep, it is a lot of yarn, but honestly it was so cheap. And the store was awesome. So well organized, really like not a single skein out of place. And so much of each yarn, which really is a treat for me, one of the reasons I order online so much is it's hard to find a yarn I like and enough of it for a whole sweater in some of the smaller stores. But I didn't have that problem at Smiley's! So I treated myself. I got to spend a lovely afternoon with Sylvia, have dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in Queens, and make friends with my inner acrylic appreciater.

Hello. My name is Jana and sometimes I like to knit with acrylic...