A Yarn

I went to Webs on Saturday with Emily and Beki. Webs is "America's Yarn Store", the largest yarn store in the US and it's right in Northampton, 10 minutes from my house. Not only is the store huge but they also have the "warehouse" in the back of the store that's loaded with close-outs and sale yarn. We were there for 1 1/2 hours on Saturday and that wasn't enough time.

Jon, Emily's boyfriend, has been yarn shopping enough with Emily to understand how it really works. He summed it up pretty well, "Oh, this is soft and pretty, I think I'll buy it." Later (much later) you make something with it. Knitters and crocheters (or at least the ones I've met) rarely go to the store and intentionally buy yarn for a specific project. How boring! The point of buying yarn is to build your stash. Some people even blog about their yarn stash. My yarn stash is rather minuscule compared to some. There are even books about yarn stashes and what to do with them if you feel guilty enough.

As you can see in the photo, Beki is very concerned that she doesn't have nearly enough yarn in her stash. She's the one on the left. Emily is on the right. They just finished winding all of Beki's yarn into balls with Emily's yarn winder. A yarn winder is a handy little machine that winds a skein or hank into a center-pull ball. They're fun and useful.

Anyway, to continue with my yarn... when I got home I tried out my new yarn. I wasn't too happy with the way it was looking and so put it away and pulled out some nice fuzzy, warm, yarn from my stash (see how a stash comes in handy?) and started to crochet a hat. I'm almost finished with the hat. It's a pretty simple single crochet around in circle and if my camera weren't away at sleep-over camp in Illinois, I'd take a picture of it. For now, you'll just have to settle for "borrowed" photos from Facebook ;-)