This past weekend, I made a trip up to Brevard County to visit with my sister who is down from Kentucky visiting before she heads off on a cruise to the Bahamas. Since I have known for a while that she would be in town this weekend, I have purposely been saving up for a major yarn splurge at Knit and Stitch Boutique in Cocoa Village.

When I am in town, I occasionally drop by there for a skein or two (or three) and had just one more stamp to go on my 10% off card. (Once you have $100 on your card, the store gives you 10% off your total purchase.) I also had a list of yarns for future projects I hope to make, and luckily, my sister is also a crafter, so she was happy to tag along and check out what I now refer to as basically “yarn heaven.” In fact, though she was not ready to treat herself to the good stuff (yet), she found a lot of inspiration in some of the finished pieces displayed throughout the store.

Normally, this store is jam packed with yarn and people, but we found what would be considered a lull time. There were only maybe a dozen people in the store instead of two or three times that amount, which is normally the case when I go there. As usual, the staff was super helpful and friendly. Here is the yarn I walked away with.

This is some of the baby alpaca yarn that is so amazing. I’ve purchased baby alpaca at a few places on-line since discovering it at this store, and none of them are even half as soft as this stuff. The colorwayis called Summer Sky Heather. This probably a cross between DK and worsted and has 220 yards/100 grams. I have no specific plans for it yet, but I just loved the color. You can’t tell from the photo, but is kind of has a hint of blue-ish-purples in it.

Of course, that was not enough baby alpaca for me. This is a splurge, right? One skein of this stuff was not going to do it, so I also got two skeins in black. I plan to make a shawlette, specifically the Milk Thistle Shawlette if I can figure out the pattern.

I’ve been looking for gray yarn to make probably another shawlette, and I was curious about using a bamboo blend. I wear a lot of black and gray pants at work, and then I just switch out tops. It’s kind of my teacher uniform. I selected this super soft skein of Frog Tree sock yarn. It is 80% washable Merino wool and 20% bamboo. The skein is 100 grams/255 yards.

Now for a pop of color – This is Cascade 220 Quatro 100% Peruvian wool. I think it’s DK weight. It has 220 yards/100 grams. I have a green long sleeved t-shirt type shirt that I wear a lot to work, so again, I’m thinking scarf or shawlette with this. I had them go ahead and ball it up for me.

Now I know this next skein looks really similar, but I could not pick between the two. And why should I have to pick when I’m splurging? So my final purchase was this skein of Heritage sock hand painted yarn. It is 75% Merino superwash and 25% nylon and has 437 yards/100 grams. Even though I have a few projects in the works now that I really need to finish, I couldn’t help myself and yes….

I started another project! This is the beginnings of a shawl that will probably turn into a shawlette (notice a trend?) The pattern is from Totally Simple Crochet: Over 30 Easy Projects for the Home and to Wear. The pattern is called the Crochet Shawl with Chain Stitch Loops, and what I like about it is that it starts at the point of the shawl (which is a triangle shape), so you can stop at any point later to make it smaller or even larger than the pattern calls for. I did find a typo in the pattern and that meant it took me a while to figure it out, but luckily, I did, and it is pretty easy to do, mainly single, double, and triple crochet stitches.

After the splurge, that means I have yet another 10% off card of there with lots of stamp on it…yikes! But, I’m going to be strong and not make another trip there until probably the holidays.