Wherein Rosemary Wishes to Knit ALL THE THINGS.

My mom and I are, apparently, bad influences on each other. Like mother, like daughter?

Anyway, she had some birthday money that was burning a hole in her pocket, and I just got my paycheck, so we made a trip to Natural Stitches today, which is really a sensory overload for anyone with a love of fiber. There's the colors, and the squishy-softness, and the sheen, and the various textures, and ... well, there's everything. It's enough to turn you into a yarn zombie. (Think someone walking around with glazed eyes and outstretched hands, caressing skein after skein of yarn and saying, Prettyyyyyyy .....)

I wanted to get something other than teal or purple, which are, granted, my favorite colors of late--which explains why I have a lot of them already. I got a skein of madelinetosh's Tosh Sock in Nectar, which is a lovely variegated peach color. All of her yarns seem to glow with color, and they are crisp and lovely.

I also bought two skeins of Road to China Light in Carnelian. (Or more accurately, I bought one, my mom bought the other for me.) This is a deliciously soft yarn, a blend of aplaca, cashmere, camel, and silk.

Camel! What has happened to me? I have become a FIBER SNOB. My roommate wants to learn how to knit, so I brought her to Michael's a few weeks ago to buy needles and yarn, but I bought nothing for myself because most of what they have is acrylic. But as I said to my mom, it's easy and fairly cheap to get a soft yarn spun from acrylic fibers, while getting something nice and smooth against the skin in natural fibers gets more expensive.

But is it worth it?

My vote is yes. :)

Now I just have to figure out which patterns to knit up with this precious stuff. I'm thinking a cowl and/or fingerless gloves with the Road to China yarn, since it is so soft. Or I'll knit the fingerless gloves up with the Tosh ... but there are some lovely shawls it could become, too ... really, I would just like to knit everything there is. But life and yarn (not to mention money!) are limited, so I'm happy making a decision between different pretty things.