Life without a LYS

Abilene, Abilene,prettiest town I've ever seen...

...has NO YARN SHOP!!!!

Now, there are places to buy yarn in town. You can get yarn from Wal-Mart. You can get yarn from one of the two craft stores...Michaels or Hobby Lobby. However selling yarn does not a yarn shop make.

At first this was disconcerting to me. I was going to have to drive at least 2 hours into Dallas to find a "local" yarn shop. (Can one call it local when it is over 100 miles away?)

There were solutions. I adore KnitPicks. Jimmy Beans Wool is also nice. I could order yarn and have it shipped to me. I could make sure and ALWAYS find a local yarn shop to visit when I traveled. But what about when I just wanted to squeeze a skein of cashmere? Yarn shop trips are major stress busters for me!

Then I unpacked.

Hmmm...

I guess I do have a local yarn shop.



My stash!

Why Yes...That Does Sound More Impressive

Brother and Sis-In-Law stopped by for a surprise visit on Sunday afternoon...and once again Brother said something amazing.

I was showing Sis-In-Law some of my yarn and patterns for current/future projects. One of these was for a shawl/vest thing knit out of lace weight. I showed Brother the yarn and told him that the garment took just shy of 1000 yards.

"Really...that's almost a mile!" (Actually...it was only about 5/8 of a mile, but close enough.)

"Really? I hadn't ever thought of that." I picked up the shawl I had just finished and told him that it had taken about 450 yards.

"Well, that's about a quarter of a mile then!"

Turns out that a mile is 1760 yards. Which I knew. I had just never connected yarn quantities with distance before.

Brother and I went through and converted some of my projects over into mileage. A sweater was a mile. A wrap was a half mile. A pair of socks is a quarter of a mile.

"You should start telling people that," Brother said. "A quarter of a mile of knitting sounds a lot more impressive."

He has a point.