There's No Such Thing as a Vacation From Knitting
No matter how you try to leave knitting behind, you'll find it in the strangest places
I bet you've never planned a holiday with knitting in mind. Neither do I, but it always seems to find me! No matter how far knitting might be from your original plans, there's always a way to find it off the beaten track. Knitters cross borders and encompass generations.
A perfect example? My recent experiences in New Zealand. Believe me, I didn't plan on doing much knitting as I trekked across the New Zealand winter. I didn't even bring my knitting needles, if you can imagine that. But sure enough, knitting caught up with me.
Stop That Car
It happened in a small village called Waitomo, whose only claim to fame is an intricate series of caves laced with glow worms. We were there for the caves, of course, but as we sped along the highway I spotted a barn in the distance with the words ANGORA YARN painted across it.
Filled with thoughts of knitting, I of course insisted on stopping, and to my delight, I discovered that we'd stumbled onto an angora rabbit farm and yarn shop. At first I was disappointed: the store looked like all the other souvenir shops we'd seen in New Zealand. But then we rounded a corner to find the single most massive rabbit I'd ever seen perched on top of a pedestal, glaring at the world.
This rabbit was easily bigger than a toddler, and most of that was soft, fluffy, angora fur. On the other side of the room, the shop owner had another one of the little darlings strapped down and was shearing her (don't worry: the bunnies didn't seem particularly worried about it, and they certainly weren't in any pain).
The woman doing the shearing even invited us to pet the half of the rabbit that hadn't been shorn yet, and we found it incredibly soft.
So That's Where Yarn Comes From!
Next to the shearing table stood a refrigerator sized box firmly titled DO NOT TOUCH, and the woman had filled it almost completely with rabbit fur. Nearby, another woman used a spinning wheel to transform the fur into yarn. No knitting yet, but you could finally see the craft shaping up.
The rest of the store carried angora products and yarn, and of course I spent half my travel budget stocking up. I even bought a set of bamboo needles so I could keep knitting on the plane. My husband might grumble, but it's true what they say: you can take the knitter away from the knitting, but you can't take the knitting out of the knitter!
