Yarn Comes and Goes

See... I found Mosaic. It was such a neat little yarn store in Blackburg - just a few blocks away from Virginia Tech. I arrived on Saturday afternoon and found it full of knitters - all sitting and knitting while chatting. It was such a nice atmosphere. The shop seemed pretty busy, with people constantly coming and going. It's the kind of place that I could totally see myself enjoying if it was close to my house. The yarn there was really nice but nothing new. That didn't stop me from buying some though.

Look at the cute decorations. They said that these yarn balls actually have styrofoam balls as cores but you'd never know it. I was told that Gina originally put them up as Christmas decorations but they liked them so much that they decided to keep them up. I can totally see why.
There was something else I saw at Mosaic that was pretty inspiring and I have no pictures of it to show you at all. They Hokie Spirit blankets were there. They were all folded up in the back room in a really large pile. I really wanted to get closer but I got distracted by something (ummm... yarn maybe) and I never went back. I also didn't take a picture of the map above the couch with all the pins stuck into showing where the squares came from. Let me tell you - there were a lot of pins!
These are the bags from my purchases. Normally I wouldn't take a separate picture of them but just look at how cool the bag from Mosaic is. It's a triangle! Have you ever seen such a cool bag?
Here's what was in the bags. Nothing too earth shattering but very nice in it's own way. I got some Louet Gems to coordinate with a skein of Claudia's Hand Paint. I also got a skein of Twize which is 100% Bamboo. It's my first bamboo yarn and I was thinking that I'd make a Dream Swatch from it. They actually had one all knitted up there and it looked pretty cool. Then I went to Asheville and found 2 lonely skeins of yarn from Knitsmith's, a company I've never heard of, in a sale bin. One is Cashmere/Alpaca in blues and greens. The other is called Sockezze and it's a Superwash with nylon. It's probably not quite enough for a pair of socks but I'm sure that eithert of these would make an excellent Dream Swatch. Now I have 3 great possibilities. The last thing I picked up in Asheville was a ball of Tofutsies. I've wanted this yarn for quite a while. I'm just very curious about it.
So this is all my sock yarn. I could swear there was more but now that I see it all laid out like this, it doesn't seem that bad. Does it? Certainly it's enough to keep me busy for quite a while but it's not obscene. I really love it all too. Some of it was souvenir yarn that reminds me of where I got it. Some skeins were gifts or prizes. Some I just bought because it called my name - loudly. Will I ever get to knitting it all? Maybe. Will I share? Absolutely!

This brings me to the point where I thin the herd a little. I said that I spend to much time each year at the W*lmart in the town where my daughters camp is and, as I thought about it, I realized just how true that is. The night before we left home I was thinking about having to go to the big W. I could picture it perfectly in my head. The funky way the parking lot is set up. The specifics of the layout of the store. I could see it all so clearly which struck me as wrong because I'm only in that town twice a year for about 24 hours each time. I shouldn't be that familiar with the stupid store!
In this frame of mind I plotted to avoid that store alltogether this year and stopped at T*rget in Blacksburg. I felt so clever. But, as we drove from Blacksburg to NC we realized that we were still missing stuff so I went to big W... but only once! I think that's a small victory.

As I cleared out my sock yarn shelves to take it all outside for a picture hubbo got a little excited. I think he was hoping that it was leaving the house permanently. Clearly I still need to thin the herd so, the random number generator has spoken and I'll be sending Carol a little something.