What I Bought on my Summer Vacation

In which I am a model of self-control and restraint.

When I lived in Edmonton it was pretty under served in the yarn shop department. That was before the recent knitting boom, of course and I had heard that the situation had improved somewhat. Time constraints and the realisation that Adam's yarn shop tolerance, while good, should only be pressed so far, meant that I only hit two shops in town. The expedition was a success.

My favorite shop was River City Yarns. This shop was profiled in VK a while back and had a lot of buzz so I was looking forward to checking it out in person. It did not disappoint. They had Socks That Rock! One skein of the lightweight had made its way into my stash earlier in the summer, but I had never seen a selection of colours and weights in person. Wow. There were easily 5 or 6 skeins in colourways so lovely I was tempted to own them as art.

I managed to keep one foot in the real world and remind myself that I often don't like socks knit with wildly colourful variegated yarns, no matter how pretty they may be in the hank. The skein you see is Midweight in the Beryl colourway, which is one of their shaded solids. Adam picked it out for his next pair. What can I tell you - the boy has taste.

This shop also had a great notions selection (I do love notions). I had been looking for a Norwegian Knitters Thimble for ages and was pleased to find one. I'd never seen the Phildar DPNs before, but I'm always on the lookout for good ones, so I'll give them a try. Difficult to see in the photo (glare, sorry) is a little bag of coil-less safety pins. I remembered Elizabeth Zimmermann's admonition in Knitting Without Tears that one should always take a card of these when you see them. Who am I to argue?

The Rowan Felted Tweed came from Wool Revival, a shop which has existed in various versions for a long time. It is very much an old school yarn shop. Bags and baskets of yarn spilling all over and not too much rhyme or reason. Some nice yarns but mostly stuff I can get easily enough at home. I liked these colours of the felted tweed together though - I'm thinking maybe Nucks. I was very happy to find a copy of Knitting on the Road there.
The Travelling Knitter will be an accurate description of me for the next 16 months or so. And I can never resist a Nancy Bush pattern. Itty-bitty hats was also a vacation purchase. Lots of gift ideas in that one.

That's it. I was even able to zip my luggage on the way home. Yarn is the best sort of souvenir don't you think?

And for next time....does anyone know if there's a yarn store in Jasper?