Disappointment

Not too long ago, with giant wads of money from my recent raise burning a hole in my pocket, and a lust for sock yarn coursing through my veins, I hit The Knit Stop in Castleton (Indiana) on my way home from work...I had been there a couple of times before, but not in a while, and after I got there, I remembered why I hadn't been there in a long time...

This particular LYS was the cause of a near-accident at one point...Miss Sherri and I were returning from a merry yarn shopping expedition up north, and noticed this new place, and did a quick U turn (screaming "Yarn Shop! Yarn Shop! New Yarn Shop!!") to check it out...Unfortunately it was closed...Should have been some sort of foreshadowing or dramatic irony or something...

The next time I went, 4 PM on a Saturday afternoon, it was also closed...

A few weeks later I was finally able to gain entrance to the Inner Sanctum, and got a chance to check it out...The first thing that struck me was that, at that time, all the yarns were organized by color, rather than material or brand...It was visually very pleasing, but a bit annoying to have to walk from one side of the shop to the other to look at the different colorways of the same yarn...

Since Sherri is Evil, and has gotten me hooked on the whole idea of making socks now, on this trip I figured I would get a bit of sock yarn as an incentive to complete my Sock Virgin socks...I could check out some of the sock yarn I'd seen online and get an idea of what it was like (being a touchy-feely kind of gal)...I noticed that they had moved a lot of the inventory around in the store, so some of it was still organized (and I use that term in the loosest possible sense) by color, but a good portion was by company, and, apparently, fuzziness or lack thereof...

The books were also in different places...The baby patterns books are now on a shelf by the baby yarn, though there were some shawl and sweater books in the stack also...The pattern binders live on a small TV stand in the very back of the store, by the bathroom...As for the rest of the books, the ones I could find were on a couple of different shelves on the side of the store--I couldn't really see any rhyme nor reason in their placement, but books are books, right?

Well, I looked and looked for the sock yarn...Then I looked some more...I finally found about 5 skeins of Lorna's Laces, 2 in the Camouflage colorway, and 3 in the Pioneer...When I asked the Nice Lady about sock yarn, she pointed out what I had already found jumbled in a standing rack by the sink area in the back of the store...Then we went on a fruitless search for more, Nice Lady stating that she knew she'd seen some around here somewhere...There was a big basket of black yarn that you could use for socks, if you wanted...It was here just the other day...Etc. etc. She tried to sell me on some South African merino (?) that she said I could use for socks, even if it was hand wash only, and $25 a ball...Riiiiight...

Since I'd spent some time looking through the pattern books, which were mostly in order by garment, I ended up walking out of The Knit Stop with a pattern for a boyfriend sweater, and a pattern for a lace weight tunic...But I really had to hunt for something I actually wanted to buy...In a yarn shop, I had to seriously search for something to purchase...

Long story short, Sherri and I are planning a coup, since this store has a really great location, and a good LYS within short driving distance would be The Best Thing Ever...If you like fuzzy, frou frou yarns, aren't into socks or a great selection of patterns, and don't mind the owner's rather cool demeanor, then I would definitely recommend a visit to The Knit Stop...And some Haldol...