Stash enhancement

On our recent trip to North Carolina I managed to find a couple of yarn shops and enhanced my yarn stash.

The first store was a bit of a disappointment for me. I would call it more of a craft store than yarn shop. Not that there is anything wrong with that just that my tastes obviously run more to the yarny side now. The service was fine but the selection was not the greatest. I'm not going to mention the shop name because I don't want to use this space to hurt someone's business based on my personal preferences. I can tell you it was not my cup of tea and move on from there. 

They did have a skein of yarn that I fell in love with when I first started knitting. Mountain Colors Barefoot in the colorway Crazy Woman. There was a time for me when I could not go on an internet site without running across this colorway and I always loved it! Now it is mine, see a shop can not be inherently bad if they have your dream yarn. Oh and they had highlighting tape that I wanted to try out too.

The second shop had a distinctly more yarn shop feel to it. My hopes were raised when I saw this sitting outside their door.

What says knitters gather here more than a big basket of yarn? I'm not that comfortable taking pictures inside someone's shop so this is the only yarny picture I took while we were there. The ladies in a class up front did give D a bit of ribbing when he left to walk down the street while I shopped. Don't worry he is a tough guy he handled it fine.

I can say that if I lived in the area, The Needlecraft Center of Davidson, NC, would be my yarn store of choice. They had plenty of sock yarns. I even saw the elusive Koigu but it was a bit spendy for my tastes so I was able to resist it. Plus I like my sock yarn to be in one skein, I've had yarns from two skeins of the same dyelot not match so I tend to shy away from them more.

These are the lovelies that I brought home. All yarns new to me. 

Up first we have two skeins of Blue Ridge Yarns Kaleidoscope superwash merino sock yarn. At 400 yards I know I can easily make socks out of these. The top colorway is Apple Rose and the bottom Crimson Redbud. The colors are a bit more dark than the bright sunshine allowed but they are beautiful. I could not decide which one to get so I walked around the store with both in my hands and did not want to put either back, so I didn't. That is one of my decision making tactics, sometimes I put things back because I don't really love them and other times if I still love both after 15 minutes I get both. It is not a perfect system but it seems to help me.

And this little lovely is Knit One Crochet Too, Crock-O-Dye in color 535. It must be hard to name all your colorways but I gotta say I really don't like it when they just number them. It gives no sense of what the color looks like. Now if this was named veggie time or spring grass, I would know it was green. But then how would you know what the difference is between veggie time and spring grass? But I don't run a yarn company so I don't make the rules.

This yarn is 100 grams of 65% superwash wool, 20% nylon and 15% silk. This will be my first partially silk sock yarn. No wait that is not true I have some Knitpicks Gloss in my stash, now we will see which gets used first.

The silk adds sheen to the yarn and gives it a smooth, silky texture. This was Gus' yarn of choice to bring us in the middle of the night. I really do think he loves my yarn as much as I do.

Now I know you are all worried about D wasting part of his vacation time in yarn shops with me. Have no fear we stopped at a bike shop for him to peruse after my yarn shops. Apparently it is easier to find yarn to buy in a yarn shop than to find bike stuff for him to buy in a bike shop. They did have a great 'Share the Road' jersey but it was in a too small size for him. Bummer.