mental wanderings

the other day i was sitting in my sister's living room knitting my big triangular thingy, when we started talking about knitting. i had dragged her and other fam mems to the sheep and wool festival a few weeks ago, where they were stunned by the plethora of colors, varieties of yarn, things you could do with it and the prices. i managed to make it out of the festival without making a single purchase, thanks in large part to my mothers presence. it kinda sqelches the urge to spend. i then began talking about my current project and the various yarn shops i frequent. one of the ways i decided to make the traveling i do more bearable was to frequent yarn shops. i regularly travel to philly, pitsburgh, louisville, dublin/columbus, boston, princeton and baltimore. i try to visit one yarn shop each time i visit any of these places. i haven't really been to to many stores in the philly area, but i have found some great and not so great stores in the other areas. there is one shop in partuclar that i go to here at home, but only because it's close. the yarn variety leans strongly towards the expensive, and the quantities are sometimes limited. the service is good, the sales people and owner knowlegeble. but i much prefer springwater fibers. they have a nice selection and a good quantity of inexpensive, but really nice yarn. i have fallen in love with felting and they have a great selection of yarns for felting. i really have a problem with taking $40 worth of yarn and shrinking it. i would much rather use like $20 worth. and it's not the price, it's the little teeny skeins that you have to buy so many of. and the price of all of those little teeny skeins. that's why i like springwater. they also have a great collection of books. a lot of stores have very few books, these guys have what amounts to a reading roomful of books. the only other store i have been in that compares is a shop in boston, whose name escapes me. they had two good size bookcases with one copy of each book they carried. you would take your book selection to the counter and they would go in the back and get you a purchasable copy, and return the store copy to the shelves. very nice. and great yarn too!
enough for now. must go running.