30 Day Knitting Challenge Day 27: How do you acquire most of yarn? Online retailers, local yarn shops, swaps, or large chain craft stores? What’s your favorite?

Yes, I buy yarn (and fiber) all of those ways and more – I buy it at festivals (mainly MDS&W and SVFF), I occasionally buy on Ravelry from destash pages, and I sometimes buy or trade with my knitting & spinning friends, both online and in person. All of these different shopping experiences have different purposes for me. I’ll buy at big box craft stores if I have a specific project in mind, usually a baby blanket or if need something machine washable. I like browsing and supporting my local yarn shops and going to festivals for the same reasons, but usually find yarn I like first and then pick out a project later, or wait for the yarn to tell me what it wants to be.

I buy online when I’ve got big projects in mind – sweaters or afghans – and am looking for the most economical yarn choice or the best bang for my buck. I set up an Excel spreadsheet so that I can compare different yarns from different online stores. I plug in the cost per skein, put up (weight & yardage in each skein), the number of skeins I’d need for a project, and the total final cost of the yarn. You might be surprised to discover that the cost per yard of what many think of as cheap or economical yarn is actually on par with other brands with higher quality fiber content (Red Heart and Knit Picks, I’m looking at you). And there are great deals to be had on closeout and discontinued colors and yarns – Webs is my favorite for hunting deals like that – you just have to make sure you buy enough for your project or you may be sitting high and dry with an unmatchable dye lot.

So yes, I like buying yarn and I sometimes get really geeky about it. 🙂

Also, to make this more interesting, here’s a picture of Jeff and Eevee. When I left the room, they were snoozing separately. A minute later they were here, looking kind of guilty? Surprised? Both? (And Jeff just looks sleepy.) They weren’t doing anything, nothing at all …