Last Saturday the Utah Valley Stitch and Bitch knitting group went on a field trip. Janalee, Libi, Crystal, Lis, Kit and myself piled into Janalee’s Durango (bless her for driving) at 10:00 in the morning and headed north to visit a few very lovely fiber shops.  What followed was over six hours of laughter, lunch and yarn shops. Hysterical, juvenile, slightly naughty, side splitting, soul healing laughter.  It was a wonderful day.

Our first stop was Three Wishes.  I found some lovely fiber to add to my spinning stash which is starting to grow despite the fact that I don’t spin very often.

I’m still working on my first batch of plain white wool that I got from Knit Picks.  I had been to Three Wishes recently and had already come home with a large stash of Noro and some other sock yarn so I limited myself to the one ball of spinning fiber. It doesn’t have a label and I can’t remember what the little sign on the bin said, but it’s a lovely hand painted with blues and purples and a little silver running through. I kept ogling the little knitting bags that you can wear on your wrist.  They are perfect for knitting socks (which I have a lot of on needles right now). We had arranged to stay there and meet a gal we had only known through Ravelry, shanknits. She’s a lovely lady and it was great to meet her.

Next was Kamille’s in Gardner Village. I had been there the previous Saturday and found some yummy yarn so didn’t get anything this time. I love Gardner Village. It has such a beautiful crafty atmosphere and I wish they were closer. I would hang out there more often or try to get a part time job there, or just beg them to let me sit around there  all day and absorb the atmosphere.

We went to lunch at Archibald’s and hopefully didn’t disturb too many of the other patrons. Lis totally drank me under the table. We were both fighting headaches with Dr. Pepper and were tossing them back as often as the nice waiter would bring them to us.  The waiter, Colby, did an admirable job of keeping us topped off.

Next we headed off much farther north to Blazing Needles. It was there that I discovered a lovely sale bin and brought home some of it. Well, a nice chunk of it. No, I didn’t bring home all of it, but dang I wanted to. I also purchased my first Malabrigo.  Sooooooooooooooo pretty. We sat in their knitting area and knit while waiting for the yarn to be wound on balls.  They have a nice big table in front of a fireplace. It was nice and cozy on that rainy day. Again, I wish we had places like that closer to home.

This is my haul from that day and from the previous Saturday’s visit to Kamilles.

to what?  Wear? Knit with? Yarn?  Part of this post was spawned by the Yarn Harlot’s post about organizing her knitting needles. She has way more than me, so I’m totally safe from the people doling out the white coats. It amuses me that I thought she had a reasonable amount of knitting needles.

I’m looking at some of my DPN stash and thinking, I don’t have enough needles.  That’s kinda like looking at my stuffed closet and saying “I don’t have anything wear”. (I don’t, btw)

This is a picture of most of my dpns sitting on a very pretty DellaQ needle roll case. It’s a fabulous system of storing needles except that it doesn’t hold all of my dpns and I have a Knit Picks Harmony sock set that comes in its own case. I need a way to store ALL of them, cutely, nicely, in one place. I’m still working on that.

After I got rid of a HUGE tub plus two bags full of acrylic yarn (oh, my oh my, did that feel good), I organized my stash/knitting/stitching and book space.

Before: not so bad, but it couldn’t hold everything

After: I added an extra shelf and many of the magazines went into magazine holders in the hallway cross stitch stash closet.

Today it snowed sideways for a while.  I love it when it does that. Too bad more of the stuff didn’t stick. I expect it will be gone by tomorrow. I know a lot of people around here don’t like the snow and by February they are well and truly sick of it and wishing for Spring. I love the snow. Frankly, we really don’t get that much of it, there are only a couple of days in the winter where it’s really crazy and you can’t go anywhere. I’m able to drive my rear-wheel drive Mustang (red, convertible, love it) almost all year ’round. When the temp gets up to 40F after having been in the single digits for a week, I seriously consider driving with the top down. My point is, we don’t get snow like we used to when I first moved to Utah. I want one of those winters. I want to go outside and see at least a FOOT of snow on the ground. I want there to be so much snow that *I* get sick of it.

The Knitter’s Brewing Company Mystery socks are coming along okay. I finished Clue #2 and thought I was doing a nice job of starting Clue #3. I had just thought to myself, boy I’m glad I didn’t put in a third lifeline, I really don’t need one, I’ve got the hang of this. Yeah, I know, the universe needs balance, the knitting goddess needs to get her jollies (well deserved jollies) and the knitter must stay humble. I noticed that while one sock seemed fine, the second one (I’m doing TAAT) had way more stitches on it than the first one. If I’m at the same place in the pattern on both socks, I should have the same number of stitches. I really should. I didn’t. I must have worked everything twice on that second socks because it was way out of whack. It hit the frog pond. And I’ve started that second sock back at the beginning of Clue #2.

I’m going to be fine. Keaton made sure of it by offering his expertise.

It doesn't take the Yarn Harlot this long...

He assures me I’m going to be fine, but then he also thinks I should try to start channeling Cat Bordhi. How could someone go wrong with a name like that?

You can't see the pattern again until you've had a nap.

I can’t wait until I get my own camera back.