How to buy Wollmeise?

Die Auster
Originally uploaded by taikasatama

I've been a bit absent from internet these days. But for a good reason, I finally have only one more essay to write before getting my Bachelor's. And on top of that, I have quite a bit of my Master's done as well. I couldn't feel more reliefed to finally have something concretical to show about my studies.. wel, in a few months time. But it's so close that I just need to get there now.

But I also wanted to write down a couple of words about Wollmeise. I totally lost it with Wollmeise this summer - before that, I was a but intimidated by the hype, thinking that it can't possibly be so good as people make it out to be. But after seeing some gorgeous green projects, I caved in, spent a long while reading Wollmeiseholics Anonymous group on Ravelry and started stalking for an update.

And well, what do you know - it was better than the hype. The colours are perfect, so deep, so pretty, so alive. They are also bright and perhaps someone who prefers more subtle tones, might be happier with other yarns. To me the bright is perfect. On top of that, the base yarn is great. It isn't the nicest yarn to knit, but not unpleasant either. What really makes the yarn is the knitted fabric. It looks great with cables, it looks great with lace and the colours make it pretty even in stockinette! The lace yarn is even more to my liking, unfortunately because it is pretty much impossible to get. It is a little bit lighter than the sock and the lightness of it makes it feel a little more wool-like.

As for the stalking - the updates thread at Wollmeiseholics Anonymous is golden. It's pretty active at all times but when there's an update, the amount of messages sent goes very high very quickly. People are so nice and will always announce it there is there's an update. For Europeans, the only problem with update time is that people might be at work - for people in the US, the updates seem to be in the middle of the night and I've heard that people actually set up an alarm clock and wake up in the middle of the night to refresch the "In stock" page. That's about it. At the WA group on Ravelry there are also threads about most common update times and such, so that people can plan it a little bit.

But what I recommend as a way to get a good variety of colours is to buy We're Different bags. They are updated on the store just like other yarns, but come in bags of 2 or 5. These are colours that don't exactly match their picture or perhaps guinea pigs, test versions of regular WM colourways. You can buy the bags by general colour (ie. greens, purples, blues etc.) or compeletely random. What I like about the bags is that you can easily get several skeins and on top of that, they tend to go out slower than normal updates. Of course you will still need to be online at the update time but you have more time to think. Also, if you don't like the element of surprise of the grab bags, they might not be your thing.

Lastly, you can buy Wollmeise from destashes on Ravelry and maybe elsewhere. I think that there's always a couple of skeins for sale on Ravelry and people ask quite reasonable prices after all.

So, it's hard to get but not impossible. If you can't stalk for updated yourself, you might want to ask around if someone you know is also stalking and could try to snatch you some.