A few days ago, I got a Ravelry message from Hannah, who works at Yarns Etc. She just wanted to introduce herself and say hi, which was very nice. So, I decided that this weekend, I would trek out to Chapel Hill to visit Yarns Etc., since I hadn’t been down there since they moved to their new location. (They moved this past August from their Carrboro shop to the spot where Knit-a-Bit used to be.)

When I got there, Hannah luckily recognized me from my Ravatar (that’d be a Ravelry user icon, or avatar, for those of you who are non-knitters), so I didn’t have to stand there awkwardly trying to figure out who she was for too long. (I didn’t know what she looked like, because her Ravatar is picture of her cute cat, Felix.)

The Chapel Hill store is lovely — so open and colorful and welcoming. What surprised me was the differences in inventory, as I had assumed (incorrectly, apparently) that they carried exactly the same stuff we did in Raleigh. Most of it was the same, but there were definitely some differences. The main difference being that they have fiber. FIBER! I’m jealous. (Though, on second thought, it’s probably safer for my pocketbook that Great Yarns doesn’t carry fiber.) So, of course, I had to buy some. What’d I get? 4 oz of some absolutely gorgeous (and soft!) black alpaca.

The Chapel Hill store also carries a bunch of products from Three Waters Farm, a local farm that sells “Handpainted Yarns, Rovings, Felt, Silk, Spinning Wheels, Looms, accessories, and Goat’s Milk Soap.” There was a beautiful display of their handpainted sock yarn on one of the walls, and I couldn’t resist. (I say that a lot, don’t I?) What I particularly liked about this yarn, though, was the array of colors it came in. They were all, for the most part, very masculine colors. And wouldn’t you know it, the next pair of gift socks I’ve got queued up are for a man. (Haha, yes — I did just refer to Wes as a “man.”) So, I bought a skein. Of course.

What amused me even more was that when I got home and actually looked at the colorway name, it was called “Man Sock.” Heh.

So I sat around and knit with everyone who had gathered around the table. And while it wasn’t terribly busy there (a fact we blamed on the 75° weather we had today), there were a number of customers who stopped by — regulars from what I understood. And spinners, too!

One of the women who came in is, in fact, the person hosting this week’s spin session of the Twisted Threads guild, a guild which I’ve been wanting to join for several years now, but haven’t due to logistics. However, there have been many discussions lately on the topic of changing dates/times/locations of their meetings, and should those changes occur, it might actually be feasible for me to join the guild. And I’d really, really like to join. It’s just really hard for me to drive 30+ miles each way on a weekday night after work to attend a meeting in an area that’s completely unfamiliar to me. But they’re talking about moving one of the meetings each month to a centralized meeting spot in Raleigh, and that would certainly be more than feasible more times than not. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Anyway, so on my drive home, I started thinking about knitting socks (which is, in all fairness, understandable, since I had just purchased some new sock yarn… again…). And that got me thinking about the tools I use for knitting socks. I’ve got two small bags I use for my sock projects, and a handy little tin I use to keep my dpns (sock needles) in. See?

The bags were ones that Mom’s given me over the years. The tin I got from my boss—it originally held a very nice bar of German chocolate. And it’s absolutely perfect for holding small needles and a few other spare knick-knacks, like a stray stitch holder.

What are your essential knitting accessories?