The rest of Reno.

I neglected to mention last time that Jimmy Beans has a hot tub full of yarn.

One of my goals in life has now been achieved.

I spent almsot two hours just wandering the Jimmy Beans warehouse, but eventually the yarn fumes heat and aridity wore me down - it was 104 degrees in Reno that day, and though the warehouse was big enough to retain some coolness, only the front portion of the store was actually air conditioned. After making my purchases (more on those in a bit) and recovering a bit in the front part of the store, Bandit and I headed back to our hotel for a nap. Later in the evening, when things had cooled down a bit, we went downtown for dinner.

There was a wonderful riverside terrace where we sat and watched the water and took in the city.

We wandered down the main street because Bandit wanted to get a picture of the famous "Little Big City" sign. Right next to the sign was a high-rise building with a rock-climbing wall built right into its face. It might be hard to see, but further courses follow those two stripes of dark "rock" right up to the top of the building.

Turning around, I saw... a knitting factory?!

(It was actually a music venue. That was disappointing.)

Dinner was at The Chocolate Bar. I cannot recommend this place highly enough. It's become my new gold standard for fine dining experiences. Almost everything was utterly divine, with the exception of the flatbread appetizer, which was merely delicious. I ordered the bacon-wrapped lamb, and couldn't open my eyes for a good thirty seconds during my first bite, I savored it so. It was surprisingly affordable, too, for such quality upscale food - a martini and two beers, an appetizer, two entrees and a fondue-for-two dessert came out to under $75, and if we had just gotten entrees, it would easily have been under $40. The only thing that might put people off is the vibe. It had a very strong hip-twenty-somethings feel, which suited me perfectly fine, but might be jarring to others.

The next morning we tried to visit Lake Tahoe, but since it was so packed, we ended up hiking around the adjacent but much smaller Lake Spooner instead.

All right.

Jimmy Beans purchases.

My current GTalk status, with apologies to Johnny Cash*, is: "I bought some yarn in Reno, just to see its dye... but I can't photograph it, and it makes me cry."

For some reason, I cannot photograph these colors properly. I spent a lot of time and fiddling with the camera and postprocessing in Photoshop, just trying to get them to come out right. Can't do it. They won't come through. I'm determined to build my long-desired DIY lightbox in the next few days to see if that will help. If I must, I will take these yarns back to Boulder with me and retake pictures with my own camera there, which has never given me this problem before. I will get better pictures, I swear.

So, when you see these first pictures, just understand that these are a pale shadow of the real yarn, okay? The real colors are ten times, a hundred time more glorious.

Anyway, I wanted to get beautiful luxury yarn. You don't drive seven hours to Reno in order to pick up two skeins of workhorse yarn, right?

So I looted the MadTosh.

Tosh Chunky, in Baltic. The real color is darker, more vibrant, a touch more greenish. This appears to be the closest we'll get to finding the mythical Bandit's Favorite Color (We make a game out of trying to find the exact perfect color. Really.) and it will become a DNA cabled scarf for him.

MadTosh Prairie, which is a laceweight single, in Stargazing. The real color is also darker and more luminous, ranging from forest green to teal to sapphire, in a spectrum that reminds me of the iridescence of a peacock's tail. It's beautiful in any light, but practically glows in direct sunlight.

Tosh Lace, in Lichen. This one is actually not too far off in color (by which I mean it doesn't make me want to bury my face in my hands and weep, merely somewhat sad). It has more forest green in it and less light purple in real life. It reminds me of my World of Warcraft character**, and no doubt at some point soon I'll be looking for foresty shawl patterns that will work well with this.

Handmaiden Sea Silk. (More or less the right color. It's very hard to screw up pale gray.) This is my second try with this yarn - the aftermath of the first project I tried out with it was not very pretty, but I'm willing to give it a second chance. Maybe I'll do another Commelina with it, now that badly-pooling colors can't interfere with the pattern, or maybe I'll find a different scarf pattern.

Finally, Lorna's Laces Solemate, a merino/viscose/nylon blend with the irresistible name Winter Is Coming. (The colors are just about between the ones shown in those two pictures.) Socks for myself are definitely on the horizon.

Edit: Also a Jimmy Beans project bag which I initially forgot about because I've already started putting it to use.

 

 

* Johnny Stash?

** She's usually a night elf, but is currently enjoying a brief stint as a troll. I spend a considerable amount of time and energy looking for the perfect yarn and patterns to try to capture her personality.