Europe Finds

Okay, so it's been about a month that I've been home so it's past time for me to unveil the yarn finds I had while in Europe this summer. Thanks to Allison for reminding me!
At first I wasn't really expecting to buy yarn on the trip, but as soon as I got my first taste of some really unique stuff that I can't find here, I was hooked! This first bunch is from a store in Helsinki, Finland. It was actually a kind of housewares store on the main promenade and at one point I turned around and realized that they also sold yarn. I think I actually gasped out loud....needless to say that Matt was a little afraid of me at that moment.
The yarn that this store sells is mainly used for weaving and not hand-knitting so a lot of it was very itchy. But then Matt found a sample of some hand-knitted and felted slippers made out of this orange stuff below. It's a very fluffy wool that hasn't been tightly spun, it's more like a very thin continuous strand of roving.

Now I just have to figure out a pattern for these suckers.

Next to that big orange ball, there is a pile of spools that I found in the same store. That is cotton ribbon and I'm so excited to see how it knits up! I really love the colors that I chose, though they literally had a rainbow of colors and I would have liked to buy one of each. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this yet, but it's machine washable so I think it will be really versatile for whatever I choose.

Another note about this store, they sold the yarn by weight. I am very unnacustomed to buying yarn by weight, but I thought it was really fun that the saleswoman weighed each ball as if it were fruit. This whole lot cost me about $28 US.

THere are actually a few yarn stores in downtown Helsinki and after finding the first one I was very curious about the others. I only went to one more and it was very much like an American yarn store but without any handpainted yarns. They had all of the same brands we have here, so I didn't buy anything.

Then, on our last day of the trip we were in Stockholm and I came across a store in what is called "Old Town" which is actually quite touristy. I was looking for another yarn store that I'd seen advertised, but I came across "This Side Up" first. Here I found the linen yarn shown below. It's Swedish linen by Yllet and it is so gorgeous.

I decided to make a set of placemats with it (I bought three skeins, 200 meters each) using the log cabin technique from Mason-Dixon Knitting. I love that book! And I really like the way that the placemat is coming out so far although it's taking quite a long time on size #3 needles. I'll have the set forever though, so I'm willing to put in the time.
Also at THis Side Up, I bought this skein of hand-dyed laceweight Swedish wool. I'm not really a lace kind of girl, but I couldn't resist and I figured that if I'm going to try to commit myself to a lace project it might as well be with some special yarn.

There isn't a ton of it, so it will be a little project anyways.

So there you have it! My vacation yarn purchases are all out in the open now. I'm still considering emailing the people in Stockholm to try and get my hands on some more linen, but I'm going to wait and see how my stash of it works out for my current projects.