I'm sitting here holding one brown skein and one blue skein. Together, plus 8% sales tax, they came out to about $175.

Holy crap! you say. And I said it right along with you.

What in the world would possess you to spend $175 on two measly skeins of yarn?

Well, you see...

I was in Oklahoma for my mom's graduation. We stopped at Sealed With a Kiss in Guthrie. A nice little yarn shop. I'm from Oregon - we have yarn. Finding yarn wasn't much of an issue. So I decided I wanted to look for something... "Oklahoma." Something I couldn't find at just any yarn shop. Two minutes in the store, and I found it. Buffalo down. Not even just buffalo wool, but the downy undercoat. Oh ye gods and little monkeys, it's soft. The shoplady said they call it "Oklahoma cashmere." There was a finished scarf next to the basket of yarn. Holy mole, it's soft.

And next to all of that was Qiviuk. Alaskan Musk Ox. Almost as soft as the buffalo down (which is saying something!).

I went back and forth and back and forth. I finally decided a) my mom had flown all us kids out for her graduation with her frequent flyer miles, so I hadn't paid for transportation, b) I was staying at her place so I wasn't paying for a hotel, c) we had most of our meals at her place or they were taken care of in other ways, and d) when the heck else was I going to find buffalo down in its natural habitat? Ok, the musk ox wasn't exactly local, but dangit, as long as I was going to get the buffalo anyway, I might as well go all the way.

The buffalo down is a beautiful shade of... well, buffalo brown. The musk ox is "arctic bluebird," a nicely dark shade of blue. I don't have patterns yet for either skein, but I am pretty sure they'll become scarves. I kinda want to save part of them to make a "Noah's Ark" blanket - I have some yak leftover from a previous project. It could be a nifty animal sampler blanket. And at the time, the yak/merino blend was the most expensive yarn I'd ever bought (about $20/skein).

In the meantime, I think I'll just content myself with being blown away with the sales receipt from this trip. I've spent this much on yarn before. Just not on only two skeins.