Shopping at "Shall We Knit"

So, I had a couple of gift certificates from my birthday to spend at Shall we Knit here in New Hamburg, Ontario. I have quite a stash of yarn going on at the moment which coincides with a long queue of projects I'm planning to knit over the next several months so I was sort of wondering whether I should spend these gift certificates now or save them for later.

I explained my situation to Karen, the owner, and she offered to walk me through some options. She asked if I needed any tools and I said I would love a Swift, but that I just didn't know what I'd do with a big wooden Swift in our small condo. She suggested The Umbrella Swift/Skein Winder By The Package from Lacis. It's a portable, wire/plastic swift that comes in its own carrying case. She uses one herself when travelling and said that it will even attach to the side of a cupboard door (you can angle it) so it seemed like the ideal compromise for me (although one day I'm still hoping to have enough space for a knitting studio with a lovely wooden swift).

You can see the swift set up here in her shop -- I was amazed that she has this one for customers rather than one of the wooden swifts but she said it works just the same and takes up a lot less space. Anyway, enough about the swift. I'm excited to get it home and pair it up with my ball winder and get some of my yarn wound.

She had also walked me through the wool-free selection of yarns (she carries a good number of them) and I would have bought a skein of Claudia Handpainted Linen which she had on display (knit up into a Victorian Lace Scarf) because it was "just my color" but regrettably everyone who had seen the display before I did bought up all that colorway (sigh) and there was none left. I'm going to keep an eye out for it or something close to it -- makes a gorgeous spring scarf.

She also started regaling me with the wonders of Rowan Denim Yarn and invited me to sit awhile and read through the Indigo Knits book. After reading the first chapter I was hooked, I just HAD to have some denim yarn. However, after much pondering I only bought 2 balls of each of the blues. I really want to play with this yarn before I commit to an entire project and I might even want to make a blanket out of this stuff so I thought I'd maybe knit up a couple of afghan squares and play around with bleaching it and stuff and see where it goes. After all, this is birthday money so it'll be fun to have some yarn I can play with.

I also bought another stitch holder (can you ever have enough of these?) and I still had a little bit of money leftover. I might save it for my next trip up or I may drop in to the store again tomorrow and buy more denim yarn. I'm still thinking about it.

It's silly, but I tend to fuss more about how to use up gift money than I do if I'm paying out of my own pocket. What would you have bought with a gift certificate?