On collecting

I love visiting LYS's. It's my goal to visit each one in Illinois. Or, all of them North of 80 and as far West as Dekalb. Here is my current list:

• The Gifted Purl - West Dundee
  
• I'd Rather Be Knitting - Long Grove
  
• Knitche - Downer's Grove
  
• Wool & Co. - Geneva
  
• Needle Things - St. Charles
  
• Village Yarn Shop (Closed) - Geneva
  
• Loopy Yarns - Chicago
  
• Three Bags Full - Northbrook
  
• Village Knit Whiz - Glenview
  
• Fringe - Aurora
  
• Close Knit - Evanston
  
• Chicago Fabric, Yarn and Button - Chicago
  
• Nina - Chicago
  
• Lizzie's - Wheaton
  
• Never Enough Knitting - Wheaton
  

The last two were added today. Never Enough is a fairly small store with a relatively small selection, but, a huge amount of patterns, and they also seemed to carry many quilting supplies. Lizzie's is just two blocks down the street and it's a significantly larger store with a really huge, well organized, selection. They're all put into black shelves, the smaller ones in perfect little cubby holes. At first the black shelves were a bit daunting and depressing, but, they REALLY make the yarn jump out at you, and it all looks so clean.

From Lizzie's I bought this:


It was a brand I hadn't seen before and the colors really jumped out at me. Currently, no plans for this pretty yarn.

From Never Enough I bought these:



and:




Two hanks of my usual go-to yarn: Cascade 220. There were others that were calling out to me, but, sadly they didn't come in colors I wanted. Cascade comes in pretty much EVERY color so I was able to find a match. With these I plan to knit Exchequered which brings me to my next subject.

I think I'm a "collector" of knitting. Not only do I want to collect the experiences of visiting every yarn store in Northern Illinois but I also want to have every knitting skill and technique under my belt. I also have fleeting fantasies of using every brand of yarn... but, that's a bit of an enormous and rather daunting task.
I've purchased the yarn to knit Eunny's End Paper Mitts in order to get color work down, or at least Stranding/Fair Isle. Exchequered will conquer Double Knitting.
I made a list the other day of skills I still need to attempt and master. There were a lot. Some of the techniques I'd like to try sooner (rather than later) include Magic Loop, Entrelac, and Beaded Knitting. Two socks at the same time calls out to me, but, I hate knitting socks. Bobbles and Intarsia, on the other hand, are skills that I'd need to learn but seriously have no desire to--they are at the bottom of my list.

I've been working on writing out the pattern for my DS Lite case, more details on that in my next blog.

I want to be a Master Knitter!
Knit hard!