Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Yarn trip!



My knitting group had been talking about taking a trip to Solvang for a looong time. Sunday we finally made the trip. Solvang is a small Danish inspired town in Santa Barbara County (Central California). There are bakeries, windmills, Danish restaurants, fudge shops, art galleries and tons of shops. Of course, there's a yarn & fiber store to visit too. Village Spinning & Weaving (in the photo above) was our ultimate destination. My first impression of the store was that they didn't have much of a yarn selection. Almost two hours later, I'd say we found plenty to keep us interested.

I wasn't planning on buying anything. Seriously. I was only going to buy something if it was "special", meaning I hadn't seen it before or it's hard to find. The store has a very good book selection and, being that books are almost as hard to resist for me as yarn is, I wound up buying Barbara Walker's A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns to add to my collection, and a book called Crocheting School which looks like a great reference book for all kinds of crochet stitches and edgings. I have two projects in my future that require me to learn how to crochet, so I think this book will be valuable.



Then I saw this little sheep ornament. He wanted to come home with me.

Still no yarn for me. I was actually feeling quite proud of myself at this point. We had been in the shop for quite awhile and I was not really tempted by any of the yarn I saw. I was going home yarn-free.



Until I saw this:




A whole display of Louet Euroflax. I don't know how I missed it when I walked in, but I did. Look at all of the colors! I've seen this at one of my LYSs and also at Stitches, but have never seen such a color selection in one place. I've been wanting to buy this yarn ever since I saw Madge using it for her Gothic Leaf Stole. I knew the minute I saw the display that this yarn was going home with me. After much debate and fondling, I settled for the same Aubergine color that produced yarn envy of Madge's stash. I bought four skeins. Enough to make a lace shawl. Now I just have to decide on a pattern. I encouraged Madge to buy some too! She bought a mossy green color called Island Moss. I see a Euroflax KAL in our future.

It's hard to see the color in this pic. I'll try to get a picture of it in natural light in the future. Take my word for it, it's pretty!

Here's a pic of those of us who went.


From L-R: Linda, Mary, Me, Jillian, Pam & Madge

It was a great day! It felt good to spend a whole day with my peeps talking about yarn, knitting and all things related.

I'm posting from Boise, ID. I'm visiting Jeff for a few days. I'll let you know if I find anything interesting here. Have a good week.


7 comments:

mary said...

Hurray! A fabulous day deserves fabulous yarn!

jillian said...

Ahhh, a walk through memory lane :)

Anonymous said...

I love it when yarn stores surprise you like that. Enjoy the Euroflax! I bet it's worth it.

pam said...

It was a great day! I loved every minute of it!

Ellen Bloom said...

Thanks for the great photos and travelogue! I'm so jealous that you all went on this fantastic field trip.
The Euroflax is gorgeous!

Madge said...

Thanks for the lovely recap. It was a great day, wasn't it? And we are so doing a linen lace KAL! (I bought nylons to wash my linen in yesterday, even, so I'm thinking about it already.) Now to pick a pattern....

P.S. Thanks again for Tom's coffee maker. It's a hit.

x.

amanda said...

looks like a great trip - yay for finding such a great yarn!