🧶 yarn candy 🧶

i had a couple of days in minneapolis at the beginning of my trip, so i made it my mission to visit yarn stores. funnily enough, they had a lot of the same yarns and patterns that we have here in denmark. the danish knitwear designers and yarn companies are clearly hot all over the world. i knew that from knittok, but it was fun to see it in reality. this store, bewoolen, had a lot of hand-dyed yarns that weren't scandi, but they were very pricey and i didn't see anything that i couldn't live without. 

i do just enjoy seeing lots and lots of beautiful of hanks of yarn though. i don't think i'm experienced enough to be able to see the potential in them and think that they would be perfect for one or another sweater that i have in my ravelry queue. i'm not honestly sure that i'd really like hand-dyed for sweaters. i think the variegation can yield weird results. but maybe one day, i'll just see the perfect hank and have to have it.

i did get this cute little bundle of minis, though. the color combo just appealed to me and wasn't one i'd have thought of on my own. that's the best part of visiting a yarn store - getting inspired. i don't know what i'll make with it - i was thinking of using it in some colorwork socks, perhaps. they also told me it would make a nice winter hat.

i'd been seeing lots of talk about japanese noro yarns on knittok, so it was fun to see some of them in person. i got these two to make another sophie hood, so it's not entirely true that i'm not inspired by variegated yarns. i also got myself some of the famed chaiogoo needles - just 3 pairs in the sizes i seem to be using most. i don't feel worthy of the full $200 set of interchangeables as of yet on my knitting journey. 

i went back to the store a second time with my sister (she knitted that sweater she's wearing, by the way, and even made up the pattern herself!). we didn't end up buying anything the second time around, but it was our last stop that day and we were getting a little bit hangry by the time we were there. sometimes there can be so many choices that you end up not choosing at all. 

i got some beautiful yarn to make a bella blocking sweater at another yarn shop - dandelion fiber co. here, they had some of the danish knitwear designers and knitting for olive and other scandi fibers, but they also had yarns from some american manufacturers. the yarn i bought was from tumalo fibers in oregon. 

i got enough yarn to make the bella blocking and with two skeins of lucky tweed by kelbourne woolens, another american yarn maker, i can also make the vest no. 1 by my favourite things in the same pretty mustard yellow tone.

one more basket of inspiration - someone at bewoolen has an eye for this color combo, it's very similiar to the small hanks above. i had to snap a photo to remember it for future projects.