A Road Less Travelled

When I was in Erie Josh, Adiel, their kids and I took a trip down to Pittsburgh to visit my aunt and grandma and to see Grandma’s fancy new digs. At 84 she thought she’d uproot herself from where she’s lived for more than a decade and move to be closer to her daughter. I admire her courage. So now she’s set up in an apartment that’s close to my aunt’s work and not far from her home. It’s a good setup.

Part of this trip was to visit them and part of it was to poke around nifty parts of Pittsburgh. Josh and Adiel they visit Josh’s family in Pittsburgh all the time, but have never gotten a chance to experience any of the cool bits and I’ve never had a chance to view Pittsburgh as anything more than where Aunt Laurie lives so this was a cool plan. We didn’t have as much time as we’d have liked, but we did get to bop around the Strip District and see some really cool stores. I’d love to go back with an empty stomach and a large budget because there were quite a few restaurants and specialty foods stores that looked fascinating. Bizarrely, I think my favorite store was Wholey’s (inexplicably pronounce Woh-lees), a little grocery store with a huge fish section complete with tanks of live fish. It was really nifty for some reason I can’t satisfyingly explain.

The one store I’d really wanted to check out was a yarn and knitting shop Barb had told me about, Knit One. She’d even emailed me their latest newsletter and their address. I, however, completely forgot to find out where the store was in relation to anything else in the world. She said it was close to my grandma’s new apartment, but since I didn’t know where that was I was still totally lost. Only problem was I didn’t realize this until we were well on our way. Oh well, I thought, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

The live fish pushed it out of my mind and Fudgie Wudgie’s made me happy so I wasn’t too bummed. We left the Strip District to go have lunch with Aunt Laurie and Grandma at Grandma’s new home which involved me in the navigator seat, but we got there fine anyway. We just couldn’t seem to find the front door. We drove past an apartment building a block long that had all kinds of little shops on the ground floor, but nothing presented itself as the way into the apartments above. But I just happened to be staring so closely at all the little shops that I saw a yarn and knitting shop! Apparently “close to your grandmother’s new apartment” meant directly underneath it though Barb hadn’t known it at the time. So after lunch while Josh put a computer desk together Adiel and I took the kids down to the yarn shop.

Knit One is a classy little shop. I’m not sure if living over it would be a huge temptation to me because it specializes in specialty yarns with prices that make my lungs stop functioning and my eyeballs pop out of my head, but stopping in on my vacation was great. The store had that charming feel of being run by people who are delighted by what they do. One woman in particular stopped me to rave about the yarn I had picked out. It was variegated orange Peruvian Alpaca. It was so soft and smooth, handcrafted and would I believe only $15.90 a skein? I tried to not to let on that I was still trying to put my eyeballs back in their sockets from looking at the price. Far from being annoying, her rhapsodies had the ring of a knowledgeable craftswoman who made sales simply by being so sincerely excited about what she does. I mean, I bought the yarn. And another skein of very fine purple and green yarn, some extra poky knitting needles for fine work, and a set of bamboo double-pointed needles which, for the uninitiated, are used to make socks.

It really was a charming little store. And maybe I haven’t seen a lot of Pittsburgh niftiness, but I can no longer say I haven’t seen any.