Oh, my. How I needed yesterday. It was truly a Grand Day Out.

First stop in town: Stitches and Stuff. Sue Childress (one of the owners and a truly lovely person, a Southern Lady in the best sense of the word) remembered me! She commented that it had been a couple years since I'd been in. (I don't know if she's just one of those people who's preternaturally good at remembering faces, or if I, as one of my friends once said, have a particularly memorable face).

I will post a picture of my embarrassingly-large stash enhancement later, when my camera's charged up.

I did wind up finding (and buying) the Arucania Nature Wool for the Fibonacci Sweater. The shop didn't have the dark gold that the original pattern has, but I did buy a paler yellow - it matches just fine, and it may even spark up the sweater a little. And my sweater will be distinctive.

I also bought some sockyarn, and a couple skeins of Kureyon for a hat.

And then, I saw the shawl.

It was one of the Fiber Trends shawls, I think the Pacific Northwest one. Frances Hughes (the other owner) had knitted it up out of a mohair - a dense, fluffy mohair, fuzzier and lighter than the kid mohair I had used for the Kilimanjaro Kat shawl.

And this is why samples in yarn shops can be so important: I saw the shawl and immediately said "I want one Just. Like. That." It was like a soft, warm cloud. I could so picture myself wrapped up in a shawl like that, reading a book on the sofa. Or at a Christmas party. Or smiling sweetly across the table at some sweet but dowdy restaurant at a Gentleman Caller. Or going to the symphony with friends on a chilly fall night.

So I wound up buying a bunch of the Jo Sharp mohair (the mohair the original shawl was done out of was out of stock; the only colors they had of it were colors that didn't grab me). Yes, yes, I know it is either a once or future Elann thing. But I don't feel like fighting with the other Sharp-ites for it on Elann, I wanted it THEN, and it was a good price. And I was so intoxicated by actually BEING in a yarn shop, that I wanted to spend my money there, hand it over to Sue, so she could keep the shop going so I could come back (Although, judging from the stream of people in and out while I was in there, they're doing just fine).

I did pick out a Fiber Trends shawl - the Sheep Shawl - to buy to use with the yarn, but it turned out to be lagniappe, I suppose because of the volume of yarn I had already bought.

Yes, yes, I have a shawl on the needles. I have about eight of them lined up to do. I have Christmas projects to attend to. None of that matters, I think, to the true knitter, especially the true knitter who is yarn-shop-deprived.

So I have a big, tall, pink paper bag filled with my purchases there. Remember that book I reviewed over the summer? I never spent the money I got paid for that. Well, I have now.

Next stop: Barron's books and cafe. I grabbed a few books off the shelves, and then realized it was jolly close to noon and if I wanted to get in for lunch, I had best get in now. So I left the books at the register and went to get lunch.

Crab cakes and a salad with maple vinaigrette dressing. I do wish I could figure out how they made that dressing. Maple vinagrette SOUNDS like it should be horrid, a clash of too sweet and too strong, but their recipe worked - it was a thickish, tan-colored dressing. Absolutely delicious. I wound up mopping up what was left with my bread.

And I love the cafe there for another reason: unlike many restaurants, they never make the solo diner (which I almost always am) feel like a pariah. Like someone who is "oh, my gosh, I have to wait on them as much as I would for a four-top, but I'll only get about 1/4 of the tip." Like someone whose pathetic single state will somehow infect the other happy diners and so they need to be hidden away in a dark corner.

No, I was given a prime table, and I don't think it was because I looked unusually fine that day. I think they're just kind there, and realize that some people dine alone not because they are some kind of creepy freak, but because some people just go out on their own to shop, sometimes, and after all, you have to eat.

I did leave a fairly generous tip, and I had ordered one of the more expensive items on the menu. (I generally leave a fairly generous tip, unless service is horrid; I think of it as some kind of karmic balancing for all the years my mom worked as a waitress when she was in college and all the times (she tells me) she got stiffed on tips. And it's a way of telling the Universe that I'm thankful I have a job where I can afford to tip generously).

So I toddled out, full and happy, having had a good restaurant meal for once (Why can we not have a restaurant like that here?). I bought a few more books, and a couple of Christmas-gift type items.

Next, to the kids' bookstore next door. (Yes, I like kids' books, you have a problem with that?) Bought the most recent Lemony Snicket and a copy of Michael Hoeye's new Hermux Tantamoq book (a signed copy, even, which made me squeal inwardly with delight. Oh, I'm sure there are thousands of those out there, and Hoeye wasn't VISITING the shop or anything - he probably signed the books at his publisher and they shipped them out to stores around the nation). But it still made me happy.

Then, on to Michael's (bought a pillow form for a gift I'm making) and Books-A-Million (yes, I know, but it's rare that I get to hit three bookstores in one day).

Then, home, and late, because I got turned around on a shortcut and wound up in Marshall (about 20 miles to the east).

This morning, cleaned house - the joy of a freshly-cleaned house! I even cleaned my bedroom, which I don't often do - more typically I close the door when I have people over. Now, I'm trying to write a couple of exams (one is half-written already) and then I'm running down to Sherman - yes, to spend more money, the two quilts I had Mary do are done.

I am definitely going to stop spending now, at least on "unnecessaries," and go into stash-using mode. The good news is most of my purchases yesterday were underwritten by a couple of large textbook publishers and their reviewing programs. It was a lot of work to review those textbooks but it's worth it to me to have the money to go out and buy the next two Jasper Fforde books, and a book on the Little Ice Age, and one on how the Scots supposedly invented modern life (as a nominally Irish person, I'm not sure I agree with that claim, and after all, Thomas Cahill said that about the Irish first). And some nice soap, and a bunch of Christmas presents for the people I love, and lots of wonderful joy-generating yarn for socks and hats and sweaters and shawls. And best of all, was simply the experience of the day, the getting out, the driving down route 69 with my Charles Trenet tapes playing in the car and me trying to sing along with Trenet's French patter-songs and stumbling over the words. And the joy of walking into a wool shop, and not being able to take it in all at once. And the peace of drifting through the bookstore and "elegant lifestyle necessity" shop, picking out what I wanted and needed and could use and could give as presents. Just knowing those places are there, that they exist and thrive and that I can go there when I've got some money saved up and a day to spare, makes all the weeks of hunting through Wal-Mart for things they don't have, or going to the mall and seeing stores full of low-rider pants and t-shirts with sayings that are cheeky without being clever on them, more tolerable.