Good Knitter, No Yarn

*As a warning, I'm writing this while severely sleep deprived and there are no pictures. A better, more coherent, yarn-pr0n-filled entry will be forthcoming in the next week.*

So...since I left you, loyal readers [seriously, I just write that because it amuses me...I know no one is reading this], I have almost been good. The Cascade 220 that I bought was swatched for an idea I had, but it didn't work out, so the three skeins are now languishing on my coffee table. Meanwhile, I went out and bought four skeins of Lion Brand Microfiber in whatever the periwinkle color is called and am now 4 feet into a mind-numbingly dull moss-stitch scarf of my own invention.

In other words, after I vowed both not to buy any more yarn and not to start anything new, I both bought four skeins of yarn and started a new project.

In my defense, both of these actions were undertaken before I was reunited with my stash and unfinished projects.

So why, you ask [no, seriously, it just cracks me up, pretending there's a "you" to ask me], does the title of this post refer to a "Good Knitter"?

Because today, my friend Jimmy (most recently featured in the Yarn Harlot's blog sporting a binary scarf [follow the link because I don't have permission to steal the Harlot's bandwidth. Also, you should be reading her blog anyway]) told me he needed yarn for his next third project. And he wanted me to help him figure out what he needed for it, and help him get it.

Now, we're both working stiffs, so by the time we were ready to go yarn shopping, all the Yarn Shops had closed. I'm a big believer in working with good quality yarn if you can afford it, though, and being working stiffs for a really well-paying company meant going to one of the local craft mega-marts was right out. (Yes, there would have been Microspun, which some of you might have noted, I am currently using [who am I kidding - there's no one there to "note" anything!]. Microspun is just about the only yarn worth buying in the mega-mart craft stores around here, and in my opinion for most cases it's only borderline acceptable. My buying it was an act of desperation. On the other hand, I do happen to be a bit of a yarn snob....

Anyway, just about our only chance at decent yarn in the area tonight was at Ben Franklin (kind of an old-school mega-mart craft store). I hadn't been there in a while, so I was pleasantly surprised by the selection. It wouldn't rival a real Yarn Store, but for desperate situations...well, they've got a great selection of Cascade, some Berrocco, some Trekking, some Fortissima...actually quite a few brand name yarns, and a many times a few lines from each. There was plenty there that a Yarn Snob like me could love...and plenty that I did.

I refuse to divulge the number of times I picked up a skein, petted it for a while, and murmured to it what I would make out of it. Refuse.

Jimmy walked away with several skeins of a really, really, really soft alpaca for a scarf and a couple skeins of Cascade for a hat, plus needles to match. He is definitely a knitting prodigy - as soon as he'd been knitting for an hour, he started planning Christmas presents he could knit. And folks, I hate to break it to you, but that was in May - he might actually be able to make it, with time to knit himself a few things while he's at it.

To get back to the original idea behind this post, though, I walked out of Ben Franklin with a $5 bottle of Euclan wool wash (I think it was Euclan...lavendar-something, whatever it was) and nothing else. Not even a skein of Trekking, and I do love my Trekking...

I think I deserve a cookie.