Oh happy Saturday!

It must be wrong to be so happy that my husband had to work today. Evil or no, I enjoy having the morning free to do what I like. Since the weather was gorgeous I decided to take a little trip to the adorable town of Springboro where a new yarn shop just opened. My excuse for such luxury is threefold:
1. my car has gas
2. I need yarn for Mother's day gifts.
3. I had my darling's approval
So here it is:


The new yarn store, Wooly Bully (clever, eh?) in Springboro, OH

What I bought there, all for mother's day gifts, so it does not count towards by own yarn lust. From left to right: Plymouth Yarn Alpaca Boucle (only $5!), Berroco Candy Fix, Sirdar Duet (1/2 off so only $4!) and under that, BerrocoSoft Twist ($4.50!), the Red ball is Cascade Pastaza ($5 b/c it was already balled), Trendsetter Yarn's Metal and Crystal Palace Squiggle.

Now, about these mother's day gifts. Since this is our first married Mother's Day (and we have deemed this to be the holiday most treacherous to undertake) we have to give something of equal value to all involved (my mom, my Grams and my MIL). Well, we don't HAVE to, but the way to cause the least hurt feelings is to do something with all 3 at the same time (lunch on the Day) and give gifts then. If there was some way to see them all at different times we would, but who wants to be the one to tell their mother they won't be spending the holiest of days with the One Who Gave Me Life. Especially since all involved live a short distance from us and since he's an only child and I'm the eldest (all other siblings are at least 10 yrs younger and thus not responsible to make this Day the Best...oh and I'm the only girl).

So the gifts--I'm going to knit a throw for each, like the one from The Yarn Girl's Guide to Simple Knits. It's simple really--you cast on the length (about 150 stitches on US11 circs) and then knit each row with a different yarn (but in the same color scheme). Mom's getting blues and greens (which is her signature beachy syle), Grams is getting red (her home is "French country" according to her, which means lots of toile and gingham in reds and pinks), and the never satisfied MIL is getting black (yes, the color of misery....no really, she's redoing her 'sitting room' and when I asked her what color she said "oh, black"--what she meant was she's adding black accents to a boring tan room, not that she's going Goth on us). Anyhow, the trick is to for your yarn to be different enough to create texture and interest. After about 40 rows your finished and the yarn did all the work! Yay!

oh, and I bought some yarn from Knit Picks last night (for Mother's Day, I swear!) : Crayon in red, Natural Wool of the Andes to dye blue and red for the throws and my leftovers will be used for the Lady Eleanor wrap, Alpaca Cloud in Mist (got two skeins so my leftovers will be enough for the Kiri Shawl, and Color Your Own sock yarn to dye for the throws and because I want to learn to make socks (and I needed to buy more to get the free shipping!)
What's great about these Mother's Day projects is that I'm using a lot of yarn from my stash, while trying new stuff and not commiting to a whole project in it.
I can't wait to see how I'll manage to buy more yarn in honor of Fathers!