Yarn addiction: I has it.

Oh man. So, for my birthday I got a gift card to Michael's from one of my friends. Yes. And, thankfully, there's a Michaels a few miles away, which I had seen several weeks ago when driving with my roommate.

Gosh. I turn into such a weird person when I go peruse the yarn selection at craft stores. (Not so much at independent knitting stores, maybe because their yarn is so pricey. I mean, it's better quality, and nicer, and all that, but more expensive, so I don't tend to buy yarn at those stores. Not at this stage in the game, anyway.) I was there at Michael's, and I had never been to this one so I had to acquaint myself with the layout and where the different brands were and everything. Apparently they just recently expanded their yarn selection, but haven't quite yet gotten the actual yarn to fill in all the spots, so it was kind of sparse today. (And they didn't have the color of a particular brand that I needed to finish that afghan I'm working on.) But...oh man. Even with that, it was so hard not to walk out of there with more than I did. (And I walked out with too much as it is.) I'm such a sucker for yarn. Especially baby yarn, which was mostly what I got. I do have tentative plans for some of it, which is good. And I'll find projects for the other stuff.

I also ventured to the JoAnn's which is like two stores down from the Michael's in that shopping center. It's a small, dingy Jo-Ann's, especially compared to the one I'm used to back home, but they had the yarn that I actually needed, in the color I needed. Unfortunately, neither had good candles (I was hoping one or the other would have a pumpkin spice candle I could get, since I need one. As much as one can need a candle, anyway). But it was still lovely. And it's surprising - my yarn ventures tend to be less expensive than I expect. So that's good. I mean, I buy acrylic yarn typically, which is the cheap stuff, but whatever. It's machine washable! And I've gotten some good afghans out of Caron Simply Soft. Dude. I love that stuff. I don't know how well it holds up over time, but so far so good. And for babies, the Bernat Softee Baby is delicious. Those are pretty much my two exclusive yarn brands, depending on what I'm making. I've used various other things for various other projects, but I'm definitely a big fan of those.

I wish I had eight arms, so I could knit multiple things at once. Sigh.

(Today also made me anxious to get my new bag - which should be delivered on Wednesday, yay! The knitting I carry with me in my purse got a little tangled with my keys today. Everyone made it out unscathed, but it was a harrowing few minutes there. But the bag I'm getting will have separate knitting sacks in which to put projects to keep them separated from other stuff in the bag, and it also has a key clip so my keys will stay put. Double yay!)