Traveling Across Kansas

This week, I took a business trip for a tradeshow in the middle of Kansas. I was not in the tradeshow mood, but I put on my very best "tradeshow smile" and decided that as a reward for myself, on the way back, I would stop at a yarn shop (if there were any in the Salina area, I wasn't even certain of that).

Well, let me tell you, there is the nicest one there called "Yarns Sold and Told" right in downtown Salina. It is a big, sunny shop brimming with wonderful, well-organized yarns. I loved the friendliness of the store - both the employees as well as the customers. There were many cute and recently popular projects on display and they were very helpful about helping me find the magazines and patterns the projects came from.

I haven't been yarn store shopping for a while, since I've been doing more spinning than anything else. Making my own yarn is just so gratifying, that I forgot what fresh inspiration and fun it can be to go into a good yarn shop to touch and feel the finished objects. There's more there than just yarn! Going there reminded me that yarn shops can be good sources of live inspiration. Ravelry is nice and all, but having real people to talk to, and admiring their projects is a different kind of fun that I haven't experienced in a while.

It also reminded me that it's good to visit and support local yarn shops, because we want these "brick and mortar" shops to stay in business during the hard times so we can go there and hang out whenever we want.

The cup I brought home from their shop says, "2nd Friendliest Yarn Store in the Universe is located in Downtown Salina."

I now have two brand new projects I'm casting on for as a result of my visit to this shop. I'll be talking about and showing you those projects soon. Here's to my trek through Kansas, and the mental lift it gave me to walk in the door of the "2nd Friendliest Yarn Shop" in the universe.