I ventured into a local yarn store today. It is the one that is close to work that I don’t usually visit because they don’t have posted prices and they haven’t been very nice in the past. Today, they had posted prices and they were very nice. It felt very familial. It’s weird to walk into somewhere and have such a different experience. I fell in love with their Pima Tencel. It is so soft and if I can wade through some of my stash, I may just reward myself. It would be so yummy to make a cardigan out of for the fall (keep in mind that the fall here is alot like what you guys are experiencing in the summer). I only purchased one skein of yarn for a potential Christmas present. I want to try the yarn before jumping into the project. What restraint!

While I was in the yarn store, a grandmother had her two grandchildren there. They were a boy and a girl. They were probably 5 or 6 and they were mesmerized by the massive amounts of novelty yarn. The little girl said to the boy, “you can’t like these, they aren’t boy yarns, are they grandma?” The grandmother said “No, those aren’t boy yarns.” He said “What are boy yarns?” She replied by pointing some very plain worsted weight yarns in masculine colors. He almost started crying because he wanted to look at “the sparkley ones.” Now, I’m fully aware of gender identity development, etc., but this conversation made me rather sad, especially in light of the number of male knitters that exist. Just because he’s a boy doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy beauty. The grandmother doesn’t have to buy it for him, but the fact that he wasn’t even allowed to look at it and touch it and enjoy it made me sad. His creativity is already beginning to be squelched at such a young age.