Non-yarn haul: Knitty City

Although I’ve been participating in Surmount the Stash all year and have been fairly good about avoiding new yarn purchases, the siren song of my favorite local yarn shop, Knitty City, began calling to me last night.

The start of my yarn craving was receiving an email update about another local yarn shop that is closing because the owner is relocating to Philadelphia.  I was feeling very good about the fact that I deleted the email and didn’t ride up there to start buying yarn I don’t need because “it’s on sale.”

I’ve also been working on some design submissions, and when that happens I often get the craving for a new color or brand of yarn.  I’ve wanted to try Sweet Georgia Yarns for a while now, and they happen to be the yarn of the month at Knitty City, and as such, are 10% off.

And, this weekend I was actually supposed to teach at the Finger Lakes Fiber Arts Festival, but when my classes didn’t fill, I decided to stay home rather than take the long trip up to teach a small class.  I’m sure I would have had a lot of fun anyway, since last year was so wonderful, but I needed the rest and saving the money didn’t hurt either.

While all of these things were influential, in truth, like most Americans, I partake in retail therapy from time to time.  (I’ve been working on curbing that, too, after participating in the 23 Day Frugal Living Challenge through Frugally Sustainable along with one of my best friends, OB.)  The past month at work have been remarkably taxing, and I’ve been in the office about 60-70 hours a week while also trying to keep up with my various part-time jobs.  Since I had already budgeted for yarn shopping at the Festival, I decided to stop by Knitty City instead.

I did check out the Sweet Georgia yarns, and they were as beautiful as I remembered, but I didn’t immediately have a project in mind so I decided not to buy any yarn.  (I consider this a small victory.)

Then I saw the sign mentioning a 20% of sale on books.  I immediately headed right over to the Japanese book section.  Since those tend to be more expensive and are harder to find in the States, it seemed like the wisest choice.

I fell in love with the top swatch.

Although I have a reasonably sized collection of Japanese crochet and Tunisian crochet books, Knitting Patterns 500 is my very first Japanese knitting book purchase.  I’m not as familiar with knitting stitch symbols, so I look forward to that new challenge.

I also discovered two other books that went onto my wishlist for a future time, 1000 Knitting Patterns Book and 100 Aran Patterns.  I’m really looking forward to decoding the knitting symbol patterns and coming up with some fun designs using this book!

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