San Fran.!

I'm a very lucky lady. For Christmas, Jake got me a trip to San Francisco. So, two weeks ago, I finally cashed in. I hadn't really ever been to California, unless you count being dropped into L.A. for a day to visit USC when I thought I might go there for college (I don't count that). We were gone for five days, and had a fantastic time. You can see all of the pictures from our trip on flickr. I would have blogged about it sooner, but I was down with the flu pretty much all of last week. Talk about hell. Anyways.

I got plenty of yarn time in during out trip. We did a TON of walking, and thankfully for me, the two yarn shops I visited were in parts of the city we planned on exploring! We went to ImagiKnit first. Here is a shot of their magificent wall of sock yarn:



The ceilings are super high, and the yarn goes, well, up to the ceiling! Here's another shot of me having a moment with some Alchemy:



The shop staff was very friendly and mostly all male that day! What a rarity. The guy in the picture at the checkout counter had just been to Stitches West the night before and showed me and another shopper his badass haul. I was pretty jealous of the skeins of silk he had scored that were dyed gray somehow with charcoal. I walked away from the shop with a few skeins of very brightly colored sock yarn and some Claudia Handpainted Yarns Fingering Silk 55 in the John B colorway:



I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but it sure is pretty. Oh heck - you and I both know I'll be making socks.

Next up, we went to Artfibers:



As you can see, Artfibers is very much downtown in San Fran.. Here's a peek inside the store:



And another:



Now, I'd never seen anything like this. I believe that Artfibers spins and dyes all of these yarns themselves, which is pretty spectacular. I got one cone of Quipu (baby alpaca):




And one cone of Valparaiso (baby alpaca and merino):



I'm not sure you'll be able to see the marvelous colors from these pictures, but I'll just say that I cannot wait to cast on with this stuff. I'm thinking lace is in order.

That's all the yarny I have as far as San Francisco goes, but in other news, my first few days at the Haus have been great! I think I am really going to love this gig. Over the weekend, we were lucky enough to have Jackie E from Heartstrings with us to teach a toe-up sock class and a lace class. Her patterns are killer. Check 'em out!

Smiles,
Erin