Kicking off the Colorado Yarn tour

Nachaele had this fab idea to go visit all the yarn stores in Colorado in 2008, buy a skein of yarn in each, and make a Colorado afghan. We'd had grand plans of starting in Estes Park today but given the snowy weather decided to stay local and visit those stores that are open on a Monday. In hindsight I should have done my homework and figured out what I wanted to make before I headed out the door. But luckily when I walked into the first store I found my colour inspiration:

Duck egg blue, olive green, chocolate brown, beige, cream and copper. Yum!

So here's the list of store, in the order we visited them:

1. Yarn Arts, Parker
Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pics in the store. But I did get a good one of the outside -- it is in a cute location off Parker main street. The lady there was very helpful had some lovely local alpaca yarn. In addition to finding my colour scheme, I also picked up some Berroco Boho.

2. The Knitting Habitat, Aurora
Wow what a store! I had no idea that this was even in the neighbourhood. It is fabulous! It's a good size with a wide variety of wonderful yarns, lovely staff and amazing finished objects that are showcased around the store. (I think I'll be adding at least 2 more projects to my 'queue' as a result). And they have a movie night! That's definately going to get added to the social knitting calendar. Ooh and they also had a shop pooch sporting a sparkly knitted dress - too cute for words! I chose a kettle dyed Manos del Uruguay cotton in a duck egg blue/cream colourway. I'm wondering if this might be too chunky? We'll see.....

3. Colorful Yarns, Centennial
This is one of my favourite yarn stores in my neighbourhood. They have some beautiful and unique yarns and the folks I meet there are super friendly; there was a fun crowd in there today and we had a great time hanging out. One of the things I most love about Colorful is the range of accessories -- I've been drooling over some of the Amy Butler bags, for example, that they carry. I think I had at least 6 skeins picked out in this store and had a hard time narrowing it down to one -- the Tilli Tomas 'Disco Lights'! Love this yarn!

4. String Boutique, Highlands Ranch
String is another one of my local favourites. I love how Cassidy set up the yarn in the store -- each section a different colour. They also have a fantastic range of yarns and some very cute buttons. I was toying with picking something from the great selection of Koigu and struggled not coming home with some 'just because'. But see my previous post -- I'm really not going to make a dent in my sock yarn if I keep backfilling my stash! I was good and settled on the Tahki Luxury silk yarn for my afghan. Yum -- this is going to be a nice base colour. Oooh and Cassidy was there with her hubby and beautiful baby boy -- aren't they adorable!

By the end of the day I'd also decided on the approach I'm going to take -- to mimic the mosaic afghan from 100 afghan squares to knit. Oooh this might be pretty!