.....and fun was had by all

We had so much fun yesterday. Each shop in the LYS tour had a free one skein pattern, and the yarn for that pattern was 10% off. We started by meeting at my house and hopped on 405 South towards Kent. First stop - Renaissance Yarns. They had Duet Sock yarn in DK weight. So many colors to choose from! I ended up with a burgundy, black and blue colorway called Midnight Sky. I kept going back and changing my mind on the colorway, but in the end I really like this one. I did also purchase some Blue Sky Organic Cotton in a really pretty teal-ish light blue.

The next shop on our quest was the Knittery in Renton. This shop has been around for over 40 years. Their pattern was for cabled fingerless gloves, with novelty yarn at the cuff. I did take the pattern, couldn't figure out what the yarn was that they used, but I didn't feel I needed this. Working in a yarn shop, I have to say no sometimes! I did pick up a ball of Trekking in color 101 however....

Next stop - The Yarn Stash in Burien. Cute shop and fairly good stash of sock yarn. I bought some Tofutsies there, color #2173. I've been wanting to try this yarn out - wool, soy cotton and chitin (crab and shrimp shells) blend. It looks pretty splitty, but we'll see. The free pattern here was for what they called a rice roll - basically a tube lined with muslin and then you can fill it with rice. The cool thing (okay, I fell for it) was that it uses the scented meditation yarn from skacel. I chose lavender. If I decide I don't like it, I know my mom would enjoy the novelty of it for her birthday!

Fourth stop on the tour was to head over to West Seattle and visit Seattle Yarn Gallery. The pattern there was for a small entrelac bag using Noro Tidiori. Oh of course I caved on this one too! I bought colorway #5. I haven't done entrelac anyway, and I wanted something small so, what the heck.

By this time it was after 12, so we thought we'd hurry on to the ferry to Bainbridge Island and Churchmouse. Our original plan was lunch, Churchmouse and then Mora ice cream. We quickly realized that since we couldn't drive on water, we'd never make that ferry, so we stopped at Alki Baking Company for some lunch to go and then off to the ferry lines.

While in line for the ferry, we had our lunch (yum!) and the trunk of Naomi's car looked like this:

Here's a shot of the ferry lines too:

Off we went on the ferry for our Bainbridge adventure. Churchmouse Yarn and Tea is just such a cute, fun shop. Of course, they carry STR which is awesomely stupendous (not like I'm in this year's sock club or anything). I did buy one skein of STR lightweight in Farmhouse for me, and picked up a skein of Puck's Mischief for Brad at work. Their one-skein pattern was for a tea cozy, using STR in heavyweight. I decided I really don't need a tea cozy so passed on that one. I did pick up a skein of Louet Euroflax in light green for I think a washcloth and 3 skeins of the light purple to make a summer shell. It was nice talking to Kit and John (the owners) too - they are so nice, and remembered who I was from our shop. Kit had on the cutest sweater - Now I'm on a quest to find the rowan design book 2 so I can make it.

Ice cream break at Mora's afterwards - I tried two flavors - Cinnamon and Blackberry. Yummy!!

So Much Yarn was next - by that time we were fading fast. Lauren has a really cute shop, and it was nice to see her again. She has a shop dog who was busy snoozing behind the counter. Shop pattern(s) were a seed stitch wrap and/or a baby sweater.

Village Yarn and Tea (where I work!)was our last stop - We thought we'd stop in for some tea and Naomi was going to pick up a skein of Suri Blue while she could still get some. There were only four skeins left - I'm guessing people liked it! There was a person there who is blogging about knitting for the Seattle PI - she took a picture of me with my wrap (I called it the touring wrap, because of the LYS tour). Here's a link to her post.

So we all had fun. I decided that I wasn't going to visit more shops today though. I wanted to go to weaving works for a few things, but I think I'll go later this week. I am working 10-6 tomorrow for the tour, so I felt I really needed to get some things done around the house - one of them being to somehow get my stash in order. So off to finish that - hopefully I'll be done with that tonight.

Happy knitting!