The Search for Yarn in the Florida Panhandle

The morning after I arrived at my father's in Panama City Beach, my step mother, Flo, had arranged for us to go shopping in Fort Walton with a couple other ladies. We were on the hunt for a yarn shop which they thought I had the address for. I did not... but looked it up in the phone book and programmed the GPS unit and we were off.

It was a beautiful sunny day but a very cold (for Florida) windy day with the high only about 58F. It made for great shopping weather and the scenery was still gorgeous. We went straight to the yarn shop which was about 1 hour from my parents place. We found it and I snapped a photo with my cell phone. This is the only photo I took of the shop and as you can see the sun was shining down on it to help lead the way.



The shop is called "Unwind" and the joke of the day is that I went to 'unwind' during my vacation! There were a group of about 5 ladies knitting in the shop and it was a pretty small but lovely location. The best yarn I found there was Tilly Tomas. I'd seen this is magazines but the pictures don't do it justice. It was really expensive so I did not come back with one of the amazing beaded yarns but did purchase a skein of 100% silk called Pure and Simple in a rich red colorway.



My main goal was to purchase some sock yarn that it hard to find in the maritimes, like Jitterbug or Koigu. They only had 4 skeins of Jitterbug and I didn't like any of the colors. Since we were supposed to go to another yarn shop later in the week in Panama City I held off buying any at Unwind except for this ball of Noro Sock yarn.



CJ was babysitting my pup Clancy as some of you blog readers know, so I really wanted to bring her back some nice yarn as a thank you. I almost held off for sock yarn at the next yarn shop but I couldn't resist this absolutely silky soft alpaca/silk yarn in a pale lime green and a skein of artyarn in pink and green. (Her favorite colors are pink and green and spring is coming)


Picture courtesy of CJ's blog, I forgot to take a photo before gifting it.

On our way back with went to lunch at a terrific Irish Pub called McGuire's.


They had 700,000 dollar bills stuck to their ceiling and all over the place... yes that is really $700,000! I'd hate to see the place go up in flames!



Our day of shopping ended back in Destin with Ross' (like Winners), Pottery Barn, and Bellas. I bought 3 pairs of shoes and a weird frog ornament for my mom and that was all.

Later in the week my Dad took us (Troy, Flo and me) out to Panama City for a drive. We had some errands to run and were going to find a yarn shop that I had got the address for off of the Florida Knitters blog. They had a list of all the shops in Florida so I'd written down the ones that were close. We drove a really long way down a road and found the alley, parked the car and ran out to the spot. They were no longer there and hadn't been for 2 year! And just now when I went to get the link to the site I'd got the address from they have taken it down saying they can't keep up with all the shops locations...aghh...

So the bad news was that I didn't get to shop for any sock yarn. Good think I have a stash full already :) Also a very good thing I didn't wait on getting yarn for CJ, we both would have been really sad :(