Yarn Diet?

I am not at all a person for resolutions, because I know I feel bad when I break them and there is usually no way to avoid breaking them, ambitious as most of them are. However, looking at my stash last winter I had the thought that it might be good to try and not to add to it excessively for a while... And so far I did pretty well with my self-imposed yarn diet, but I can't deny that I was very happy when  I discovered a yarn store during our short trip to the Harz (nearby low mountain range). Because souvenir yarn is of course an exception to the rule... ;-)

The lovely shop in Wernigerode is called Umgarnt, a word play with the German word 'Garn' for yarn which you find in the word 'umgarnt' meaning ensnared. Well, I certainly was ensnared when I found the store and since they carried hand-painted yarn - a basic criteria to be considered souvenir yarn - I couldn't leave the shop without any new 'yarn babies'.

I decided for a lovely tonal blue-turquoise (the picture doesn't do the colour justice) sock yarn dyed by the store owner herself and a happy pink merino nylon blend dyed by a friend of hers under the name 'Katze und Kind' (cat and kid). Very happy with my souvenirs from our weekend trip - we'll see what these want to become eventually.