The danger of Michael's

This is entirely my sister's fault.  Ok, not completely.  But mostly.

I haven't shopped at Michael's in ages.  This is primarily based on the fact that I have developed a severe case of yarn snobbery and don't buy acrylic anymore.  However, after the sock success, I felt the need to grab some cheap yarn to practice on.  Back to the basics, I guess you could call it.  I didn't want to waste yummy yarn on my clumsy sock learning process.  One day I will be proficient enough to spend $30 on luxury sock yarn, but I need to practice first.

Doesn't it just figure?  The yarn I had fallen in love with for my first pair of socks - Bernat Sox - has been discontinued by the company.  This stuff was great - super soft and squishy, warm and lovely.  Nope, gone.  I'm glad I grabbed three from wherever I bought them.

Off I went to Michael's to find something to work with.  First round resulted in a couple balls of Patons Kroy Sock Yarn in Clover Colors and Lion Brand Sock Ease in a blend of pinks (no surprise there), but overall I found their sock yarn selection a bit limp. I suppose I have been a bit spoiled by the Needle Emporium having an entire room of sock yarn.

The problem came when I walked into the larger Michael's store in our area which has a substantially larger yarn selection that the other one, and walked right into a whole new line of Caron Simply Soft in the most gorgeous neon shades.  I'm an 80's baby; how could I resist this?  So besides my sock yarn, I walked out with five neon colors of the Simply Soft to make me a fun blanket.

Then doesn't my sister message me a few days later and say, oh hey, Michael's has a big sale on yarn.  Everything on sale and coupons and everything.

Aw, man.

Off I went again, husband in tow to help me exercise some measure of control.  I had plans to grab black for the neon blanket as a contast color, and while I was there I decided to check out if they had restocked their sock yarn.  They hadn't, but I realized I had missed an entire line of yarn I hadn't realized was a sock weight.  It's by Loops and Threads, had stunning colors, was incredibly soft, had a ridiculous yardage of 678 yards (can you say knee highs?) and was only $3!!

This is the denim, which I bought two of, and the purple.  I also got a color called Mauve which was entirely misnamed because it is a garnet red.  Who names this stuff? A neon blue and purple Caron Simply Soft were added to the blanket colors as well, which now consists of pink, yellow, green, coral, orange, blue, purple and black.

Oh the potential.....It's a good thing hubby came along.