Michigan Yarn Shopping, Part 1: My Triumphant Return to Hobby Lobby

Hello! Remember me? I’m back from vacation, and I took lots of pictures to blog about. I suppose this is as good a time as any to inform you that I’ll be gone for the entire month of August. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll schedule any posts…it depends on how motivated and busy I am before then. I’ll try to get a more regular blogging schedule in the fall, in any case. There have been a lot of happenings around here that make it difficult to keep writing posts!

Today’s post has a long title, and even more stuff to talk about! First, a little backstory: I used to live in the Midwest, where they have Hobby Lobby stores. I learned to crochet out there and got my yarn from Hobby Lobby. They have a special brand of yarn that is only sold in those stores, “I Love This Yarn.” Think Red Heart Super Saver in affordability, yardage, and colors, but a hundred times softer…and it gets even softer when you throw it in the washing machine. It’s by far my favorite kind of yarn. But they don’t sell it in the Pacific Northwest, because there are no Hobby Lobbies, and I prefer buying yarn in person to ordering it online.

A few weeks ago I got to attend my cousin’s wedding in Michigan, where I spent the first of my formative years. I had a wonderful time seeing family, but this is a craft blog and not a life-of-Claire blog, so I’ll stop blathering with the backstory. My grandma took me out yarn shopping (thank you, Nana – I know you follow my blog!), and we explored a couple different stores, but today I’ll be focusing on the real shopping highlight of the trip…Hobby Lobby!

I almost cried at the shelves of I Love This Yarn, hehe. The problem was that I only had so much suitcase space, even though I knew I was going to buy a lot of yarn. I’m not the kind of person who can pack light for a week away. I thought, I’ll just get three skeins or so of yarn. That can fit easily in my suitcase. Well, let’s just say I overestimated my restraint.

There were a lot more offshoots of I Love This Yarn than I had seen before. I Love This Chunky, as you see above, which is basically their version of chunky yarn. A problem I have with a lot of bulky-weight yarns is their partial wool content, but not the case with this! I wanted to rub my face on the yarn because it’s so soft, which doesn’t sound weird at all. (Don’t worry, Hobby Lobby-goers, I restrained myself.)

As a side note, I am a pretty good judge of whether or not something contains wool – I just touch it to my neck and wait ten seconds. I’m sensitive to wool, so I usually come out of my local yarn store (which has “Wools” in the name) with a mild rash on my neck. Whatever works, right? So if I had more suitcase room, I would have definitely gotten some of this yarn…imagine a Katniss cowl in one of those cream colors! <3

I love the crochet hook section of yarn stores. There were some interesting ones here, like the following…

Gargantuan crochet hook! I can’t remember what size this one was, but it’s bigger than my Q hook (16 MM or so), which I thought was the largest you could find in a yarn store. Any bigger is usually a custom order. But apparently “Yarnology” rose to the challenge!

My grandma spotted this section of “Fan Pride,” which made me hyperventilate. It’s basically like Red Heart Team Spirit, which you may remember from my Gryffindor scarf, but this is super soft and RH is not. As it happens, I have a sister who is a Ravenclaw, and she was interested in having a Ravenclaw scarf. So I got a couple skeins of Ravenclaw colors, which are blue and silver.

The stripes work up a little thinner than Red Heart Team Spirit, but it just makes skinnier stripes, no huge deal. The softness of the yarn really makes up for it!

While we’re on the Harry Potter tangent, I had my mind set to make a Hufflepuff afghan. I’m about halfway done with it as we speak…I’ll definitely post an update sometime, it’s a lot of fun! So I got two skeins of yellow and two skeins of black, because it really is the best yarn for making afghans, in my not-so-humble opinion.

I found some of this lovely variegated yarn, too…I loved the heathered blue and all the vibrant colors! I think this is destined for a scarf, but I’m not 100% sure. (And look at the shiny label! Just makes me happy.)

So what did I end up bringing home?

The yarn in the seat was some yarn my grandma chose to make a scarf, and then we picked up a bunch of those free patterns. Then I chose the Hufflepuff yarn, Ravenclaw yarn, variegated, and that lovely pink that I want to make a shawl out of or something. So much yarny potential! And my grandma was kind enough to humor me in shopping for all this. Thank you, Nana! 🙂

So that concludes my triumphant return to Hobby Lobby! It was super fun acquiring some I Love This Yarn, and even more fun to start crocheting with it again. A trip down yarn memory lane, I suppose. Thanks for joining me in my fangirling, I haven’t used this many exclamation marks since I met my favorite author!

How’s your summer going? Have you done any yarn shopping of your own? 🙂