I went adventuring to warmer climes this January and picked up some yarn along the way!
The Trip
Over the holiday weekend, my SO and I traveled to the Phoenix area to get some sun and escape the icy streets of Washington, DC. I had never been to the southwest United States, so the landscape change was mind-boggling. The mountains were red and sharp instead of blue and soft. Mostly we couldn’t stop marveling at the cacti. I’m sure we looked a little silly stopping and taking pictures of every saguaro, haha! The picture above is from a breath-taking drive we took along Apache Trail (route 88) in the Superstition Mountains on the last day of our trip.
If you’re thinking about a trip to Phoenix, don’t miss the Musical Instrument Museum and the Desert Botanical Gardens! I can’t recommend them enough. We drove all around the Phoenix area, but since we were in Arizona, we also took a day to travel to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Here’s just one of my many, many photos:
The sheer scale of the canyon is truly spectacular. It was a very special day and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. In honor of our visit, I vowed that some of my travel yarn would be in canyon-y colors and that I would make a pair of “Grand Canyon socks” to commemorate the occasion. As you might have read in this post, one of my goals this year is to learn to make socks and to make 12 pairs. As someone who mostly only made amigurumi until 2017, I didn’t have much sock yarn, so I made a point of buying only fingering weight souvenir yarn in Arizona.
The Yarn
Although we thought we’d spend most of our time in Phoenix, we ended up in Tempe several days in a row. There we found Tempe Yarn & Fiber, a very cute and welcoming local yarn shop.
When I walked in, I told the cashier I was visiting from out of town and needed travel yarn, and she immediately led me right over to all of the local options. She was terrifically friendly and helpful, and promptly pointed out some skeins that were dyed in-house by the owner of the store! You can’t get more local than that. 🙂 These are the ones that caught my eye and ended up coming home with me:
From left to right, they are:
- Dyelicious Yarn Carefree 650 (dyed in-house by the owner of Tempe Yarn)
- Gherkin’s Bucket Shimmer Sock in “Fine Looking High Horse” (I couldn’t resist the Hozier shout out)
- Sundial Design Faith
All of these colors just shouted SOUTHWEST to me, so they seemed like the perfect mementos of such a fun trip. The Dyelicious and Sundial Design yarns are one of a kind, so they don’t have colorways. I’ve affectionately named them myself, just for fun. I’m calling the Dyelicious “Chili Pepper.” The Sundial Design, I’m calling “Desert Sunset.” For proof of how appropriate the latter name is, scroll down for one last picture: a sunset shot from the Desert Botanical Gardens.
Visiting Arizona was a really fantastic experience, but I’m happy to be back home and getting back into my normal routine. There’s just one last thing I need to do before I can fully get back to normal: buy a little cactus for my office. 😀
