yarn on the cheap

so i's po'. and i will proudly admit that i often get my yarn at the dollar store. cheap vibrantly bright and mildly itchy acrylic. i love it. i will not say which dollar store, otherwise one of y'all in the city is going to buy all the pink and leave me with nothing left to knit. and that would just be plain sad.

i was shopping at the dollar store the other day. now this is your standard run of the mill dollar store, except in one respect. it has decent knitting supplies. not good knitting supplies, mind you, but ones that don't suck to use. and these, oddly enough, are the only things in the store not a dollar. go figure. and because of this special high-value $1.99 status, they live behind the register.

so i stand at the register with a ginormous hank of fire engine red yarn, needing appropriate needles. "do you have size 8 needles?" i ask the woman at the register. she is probably about forty five, but has lived the kind of life that makes her look over fifty. and some sort of slavic. i'd guess ukranian. "what?" she takes down an 8mm needle. "no no no...size eight." this went on for a while, as she proceeded to pull down every set of needles they had. and a few crochet hooks. i debated her grasp on not only knitting, but the english language. "no...look...this size" and i pull out my hat. it's being knit in the round on size 7 needles, maybe halfway through. "oooh!!! you do yarning!" i admit that yes, yes i do. "how do you knit? like this?" and proceeds to demonstrate amazingly competent english and continental styles. i showed her how i knit. by this point i think the woman behind me could sense her excitement. oh, yeah, there's a woman behind me. That Woman who stands wAy Too close. so TWAT is butting up against me as i happily chat with my newfound doppleganger. upon realizing that i do yarning, she shows be the full bounty of her wares. stitch markers, needles, and the like. TWAT holds up the shampoo she would like to purchase, drops a dollar, and leaves. this, as you may notice, is not actually the correct price when tax is figured in. but my nordic kindred does not care. she also does not have size 8 needles, but we agree that size 9 will most likely suffice. she became particularly excited about stitchholders. (if you don't knit, trust me, they're awesome. a kind of hybrid between a bookmark and a safety pin.) i sadly admit that i am not yet that advanced. she frowns, and tells me they'll still be up there right on those hooks when i get that advanced.

she's right. and i can't wait.

[update: i used a stitch holder. they are as awesome as i had suspected.]