I recently had the opportunity to drop in at one of my favorite yarn shops – Yarn Barn in beautiful downtown Lawrence, Kansas.

I ended up with a couple of balls of gorgeous Jojoland Melody Superwash sock yarn, in soft green and pinky-beige colors. I really like the marled yarn (plies of different colors twisted together), and it looks like it has lovely slow color changes. I am not a striped-sock person!

Jojoland Melody

Another purchase that day was this set of “DP WIP Tubes”. Translated, that means Double-Pointed (needles) Work In Progress tubes. These ingenious paper tubes have a slit along one side, so they can be slipped over dpns and the knitting they hold. The result is a tidy package that not only protects the knitting and the needles themselves, but also prevents poke holes in bags (or people).

I am also telling on myself with this picture; you see I have made no progress on my daughter’s socks after ripping out the heel. I WILL finish hers before I start on mine. You are my witness.

DP WIP tubes

What I didn’t buy on that trip: the hard-to-find book Sweaters from Camp. I am generally a very conservative purchaser, but that was really a dumb decision. I can only plead that I was waiting for it to arrive for me on interlibrary loan (from out of state, no less!), and thought I’d better have a look at it to see if I really needed to add it to my personal collection. Oh, boy, it was short-sighted of me to walk out without it!

But I’ve been rescued. After looking at my borrowed copy, I called the nice people at Yarn Barn, and purchased their next-to-last copy (did I mention that used copies START at $95 from Amazon.com affiliates?) at regular retail price. I have a very kind non-knitting friend who picked it up for me this weekend, and will pass it along to another friend next weekend, so it will be in my hands even before the borrowed copy is due back! *sigh* I hope I learn something from this experience.

Did you happen to read my post on “duct tape armor“? Perhaps you thought I was a little… odd… with the idea of creating a dress form with duct tape. I now have proof in print that I was onto a good thing! Have a look at a snapshot of page 19 of the recently published book, “Custom Knits” by Wendy Bernard:

Custom Knits page

I never said the idea originated with me, but it’s very nice to feel validated!!