During this holiday break, I thought it might be a good idea to catch up on some of my stories that never did make it out in blogland. This one is from our Thanksgiving trip to Baltimore. You may remember some of our adventures from here and here.

I love three of my local yarn stores (LYSs) and I would (could) never deny them any of my yarn funds. And although I do dally with online sources, I still remain quite faithful to these local loverly ladies. But when one travels, the will and desires tend to wander, too.

I visited two LYSs while in Baltimore; one was a hidden treasure and the other one is rather famous in the knit-blog community. I went to Baltimore for the turkey and the family (which some may say if full of turkeys - ha!), and I fell in love with the LYS.

My hidden treasure was almost literally in my brother's back yard! The Cloverhill Yarn Shop was probably 1/3 of a mile from my lodging's front door; just off the main drag in Catonsville, MD. (If anyone is ever to go, I can recommend some tasty food joints, too.) Oh, and what a treasure it is! The staff was friendly ('specially for northeasteners, I'm guessing that's the yarn-love effect), the store was wonderfully coated in yarns, and their notions and needles section was probably the best that I've seen. It's not that they had tons of everything, simply tons of what I like/want/need. (ha)

This was the first time that I've seen (fondled) Manos del Uruguay in person. Oh, the colors! Oh, the softness! Oh - I drooled! (sorry) Much of the sock yarn was nothing like I've seen (different brands), and I could have easily bought everything in their clearance bins. Okay, I know that I can't be the only one that does this - check out the clearance bins. In fact, part of my internal LYS rating is based on the quality of merchandise in this area. By all means, the Ewe's clearance section is an amazing room of woolen goodness and should be world renowned. But I digress.

I could have stayed and groped yarn for hours at Cloverhill, but my companion, Nana Jean, had already humored me for longer than necessary. So I paid for my goodies and left. [sigh] Besides some new needles, I added the following items to my stash:

Stash Enhancement

• 3 skeins of Manos del Uruguay in color 112-Moss, which was used for Matt's hobo mitts and a scarf (still in progress)
• 2 skeins of Trampoline Stretch in #238-Still Waters
• 1 skein each of Froehlich Wolle Special Blauband Multicolor in #7246 (light purples) and #7247 (dark purples), which I hope to use together for a pair of socks
• 3 skeins of Sugar Knits "Yarn Naturally Dyed by Hand" 100% Pima Cotton dyed with logwood, which is a soft, light purple. These were hand dyed by Marie Sugar, who wrote The Complete Natural Dyeing Guide.
• 1 skein of Sugar Knits wool/rayon boucle dyed with fustic and indigo, which created a beautiful green and blue varigated yarn

sock & I at Metro station - don't mind the stares

From there, Matt humored me with a trip in to Alexandria, VA to... (everyone say it with me)... Knit Happens! We took the Metro and it was a treat to ride such a well-run public transit system. We took the green line to the yellow line and exited at King Street, just blocks from Knit Happens. We stopped for a little refreshment (packed turkey sandwiches) and regrouping (there's a reason I drive everywhere - bleh), before heading down to this mecca of the knitblog world. Matt was a bit embarassed, but agreed to take my pic of this auspicious event.

We're here!

The store was smaller than I expected, but had a wonderful array of fibers. And without a second to spare, I found the Koigu! (Yum) I even saw Kristine (owner), but it was a bit busy and I didn't want to sound like a fool blathering on about my blog and her blog, excetera, excetera. So I silently crept around the store, picked my Koigu (which took a long time, I might add), then paid and left. From Knit Happens, I added the following to my traveling stash:

• 2 skeins each of Koigu KPPPM in #304 (purples and greens) and #334 (russet, browns, and greens)
• and I couldn't leave without 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the Knit Happens coloway
made us laugh




Overall, we had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Friends, family, and fiber - huzzah! I'll leave you with a picture of a sign we saw on a store front in the shopping district of Alexandria.





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