I've been knitting since about 1980. A little German woman who owned a knitting store in Santa Barbara at the time, Knit and Stitch, told me if I bought my yarn at her store, she would teach me to knit. So I bought a skein of Lamb's Pride Worsted in a periwinkle color and a pair of knitting needles and off we went. I learned to knit and she had a loyal customer until she closed her business about 5 years later. By the way, I still have the remainder of that first skein of yarn.
After she retired, I found another knitting store, In Stitches, owned by a lovely woman named Tina, which I can't tell you how much yarn I bought from that place during the 80's, but it was a lot. In fact, some of it still inhabits my stash. Everytime I see an Anny Blatt or Pinguoin label peeking out at me, that's the era. And I don't sell it off or dispose of it because it is beautiful and I still am of the belief that one day I will make something out of it, just not what I originally intended it for.
I branched out in the 90's and went to yet other LYSs, which I won't get into as much detail about, because that's not the subject of this post, but I landed a job in the Santa Barbara Superior Court in 1997, and In Stitches is only half a block away! I thought, great, this is sooo convenient, I can just pop in there at my whim and I'll get so much knitting done... Little did I know I would be so busy with my new job that I wouldn't really have any time to knit for quite a while, five years to be exact, but I would go into the store every now and then just to feel and smell the yarn and try to be inspired for that one day soon in the future when my spare time would open up.
As life will have it, tastes change, the internet looms large in my buying budget, store hours aren't as convenient as internet hours, and I pretty much stopped frequenting In Stitches, until early this year, I walked in and met another lovely woman who worked in the store named Laura. We started talking about yarn and blogging and obviously shared the same love and enthusiasm for the craft. Last week, I'm walking by the store and I see a sign, "Store Closing, 25 Percent Off." I went in and talked to Laura, and sure enough, after all these years, Tina is retiring. There is a possibility that another yarn store will be going in the same space (oh, please, please, pretty please), but they're in the negotiation phase and it's a big unknown at this point.
Which gets me to today, I'm walking by the store again and I see a "75% Off All Merchandise" sign in the window. Now, I was on my way to Saks, but I immediately bolted inside,wanting to lock the door behind me, quickly scanning the remaining contents, and within 30 seconds had a nice little stack of yarn on the table, much of it Lambs Pride, but some Rowan Kid Classic and some Cascade alpaca/angora blend called Indulgence. Laura rang up the purchase, we exchanged phone numbers, and this will probably be the last time I'm ever in the store.
It made me sad, because knitting is such a part of my life, and looking at yarn in my stash or sweaters I've made are benchmarks that evoke memories of where I've been in my past. I'm sure Tina is on to a new journey in her life, and I just wanted to say, good luck, Tina, and thanks for the memories.
Well, it seems I'm at the halfway point of both my projects. I've finished the front and back of Hearten and I've begun the sleeves. I like to knit both sleeves at once, so that they come out exactly the same and you don't have to keep track of how many rows you've knit after the increases to get to the arm bindoff. I'm really enjoying this sweater. It's moving along fast, and once I adjusted for the row guage, there hasn't been a problem with the size. 
I've also completed one of Wendy's toe-up socks. As Wendy likes to say, "Alert the media!" I figured out what I was doing wrong on the toe when I did the heel. Of course, I had to do the heel twice (I like to get my money's worth), but after the first attempt and the same results of the purl side short-row wrapping coming out wrong, I went to my trusty Vogue Knitting resource and it was explained to me. That book has saved my bacon more than once, I tell you. I'm very pleased with the sock and now I can see why everyone is addicted to sock knitting. 
