Recently, Vicki asked me to make a few things for her to give to her co-workers. They are small items and I don’t have a problem. She emailed me the colors and I went to my lovely wall of yarn. I pulled out all the colors I had but I discovered I didn’t have them all. This meant I had to go yarn shopping.
As you saw in the last post I also made a scarf for Ana and in doing so I used up one of my colors is Sashay yarn. I love the colors of that particular scarf. I actually wrote down the color so I would remember it the next time I bought yarn.
It became obvious to me that I was going to have to go yarn shopping. The types of yarn – ruffle and crochet cotton – I needed do not go on sale often. My thought was I’ll start with what I have all the colors for and see how far I get. Ana came to visit and after seeing her with the scarf I realized there was a lot I wanted to try with that same color. The ruffle yarn is $5 – $6 per skein and crochet cotton is about $2.25 per skein. This is an investment.
I get emails from all my favorite craft stores – Michael, Hobby Lobby, Joann Fabrics, Herrschners – letting me know about specials and sales. Herrschners runs yarn sales all the time but I hadn’t seen any with these two items in particular. Then I get a Michael’s email – I’ve just been deleting without looking at these (it’s a time thing) but for some reason I looked at this one. Good thing I did – they have both these yarns on sale.
The other issue then is money – I was looking at my budget and thinking I really can’t afford to go get a lot of yarn. I’ll have to keep it to the bare minimum. This is just sad because if there is a sale on crochet cotton in particular I want to buy all the colors I can because I go through them quickly. In my head I was considering payments for the week and having this internal debate about being good and not buying yarn and splurging and buying yarn.
As I realize I am of course going to do the responsible thing, I got a payment for editing. Perfect! I can now splurge a bit on yarn. It’s been a crummy week for me – sinus infection, lack of sleep, weather induced pain for my arthritis – I’ve been a lot grumpy this week.
Last night I determined I was going to stop at Michaels on the way home from work. Their store is not user friendly at all. From the door that doesn’t open automatically to the narrow clutter filled aisles, this is a store that is difficult for me to get into and move around. I took my scooter though and grabbed a basket – that was not fun – but I get back to their yarn corner and just had fun. I grabbed all the colors I needed (except for one that I’m not sure they even make). It was fun to look at the colors and think of the things I would make and who would like what colors. I think I rolled around the two aisles several times looking, adding up money, and enjoying selecting the colors.
I didn’t buy one thing that wasn’t on sale. I saved $21. I didn’t break my budget. I got five skeins of the ruffle yarn and twenty plus of the crochet cotton. I picked some colors for specific people, some because I knew I was out, and some just because I liked them.
When I left the store, I felt wonderful. My mood was happy and I was looking forward to working with the yarns. I even started one of the projects for Vicki last night. Now I have to get the colors organized for my projects for Vicki and the rest need to be added to my wall. I do think I’ll be using one or two of the ruffle skeins this weekend too.
My weekend plan – after the errands are done – dvds, crochet hooks, yarn… heaven!!!
