Recently, I’ve been swearing off yarn purchases due to my stash guilt.  There is my post on not going to Stitches Midwest, and I didn’t go to Wisconsin Sheep & Wool for the first time since I started knitting.  This week, I was weak.

I had the opportunity to be in the western suburbs this week with some free time on my hands.  I sat in Panera knitting and having some coffee, when it occurred to me that the next town over had a yarn store.  It wasn’t one I’d been to, but I’d seen them at Stitches before.  Since I hadn’t planned ahead, I pulled out the handy new GPS, went to the shopping tab and entered “F-R-I-N-G-E”.  I guessed that the GPS unit might not know about yarn stores, but the results of my search listed Fringe: A Knitting Salon.  (Side note – knowing the GPS knows yarn stores is a scary and enabling idea)  Since the store was just about 8 miles away, I decided that it would be worth the trip.

It was about 10am, which seemed reasonable as a yarn store opening time, so I hopped in the car and drove to the store.  As I arrived at the parking lot, there was a large sign that said “Yarn” in the window of one of the stores.  The GPS had found the right place.  The door to the store was open, so I went on in.

It’s a nice small shop.  As I walked in the door, there was a bench full of worsted hand-dyed merino, always a nice greeting.  The store had to arranging methods.  Lots of yarn was organized by color, but the baby yarn, lace, and sock yarns all had their own area not mixed with the rest of the colors.  The same was true for the Encore and the Brown sheep yarns (and maybe the Malabrigo?).  I was a little confused by the yarn organization. Being the bargain hunter that I am, I was immediately drawn to the big table in the middle of the room labeled “Sale – Buy 1 get 1 of equal or lesser value free”.  Buy one get one free yarn?  Whee!!!

There was quite a mix of yarn on the sale table, but I was drawn to the handpainted yarns.  The interesting thing about the handpainted yarn was that most of it was unlabeled, nothing to indicate yardage, yarn weight, or price.  Those yarns that did have tags were from Pink Cottage Yarns – Exclusive Hand-Dyed yarn from Fringe.  Now, I happen to know that the owners of Fringe are also the creative force behind Dream in Color yarns.  In fact, they run the Dream in Color dye studio/shipping area out of the back of Fringe.  Could this Pink Cottage Yarn actually be either the predecessor to or test samples for Dream in Color?  I can’t find any proof on the web, but the yardages are the same, and a few of the colors on the table looked very similar to a few I saw on the Dream in Color website.  What’s a knitter to do when presented with this kind of a deal?

I bought yarn.

What did I get?  There were two skeins of a beautiful chartreuse green worsted weight, but I couldn’t justify only purchasing 500 yards.  I didn’t have my list of patterns and yardage with me, but I didn’t think that 500 yards would make me anything substantial, so I left it on the table.   Then, I found some sock yarn on the table.  Sock yarn at buy one get one?  Two 100 gram skeins for less than twenty dollars?  I couldn’t resist; I bought sock yarn.

Both yarns are varying shades of a solid color.  I thought that it would be nice to have some yarn that would work better for some of the textured sock patterns I want to make.  Since I used my green yarn with Bayerische, I don’t have much stash in solid colors sock yarns.  I really liked the gold, it has really rich tonal colors in it.  The blue is much closer to being a solid color.

Please forgive me for my weakness.