Tuesday, September 11, 2007

more yarn...

Isn't Hubby's hat the greatest? He's working on it for his brother, and I'm starting the Backyard Leaves scarf for his wife. Apologies for the icko pictures: there's no light coming from the sky today.

I tried to focus my vacation purchases on local yarns, and succeeded! (You can see the details on Ravelry, if you are a member.) We visited a number of yarn shops on vacation, listed here in (I think) the order visited:

Windsor Button, Boston: I wish there was a place like this in New York. What a great variety of stuff. All the rumors are true - it's great. Hubby got his Malabrigo here!

Newbury Yarns, Boston: They were reorganizing the store when we popped in, so it was pretty hard to see what they had in stock. Also, there were no prices anywhere... which raises my suspicions. No opinion.

Seed Stitch Fine Yarns, Salem MA: The shop was lovely and spacious, and had a crazy awesome display of giant knitted flowers. (There's a reception with the artist this coming Friday.) Prices seemed quite reasonable, and the owner was very friendly.

Yarn Sellar, York ME: Located in a strip mall, the store was pretty small and carried a lot of very large brands, and didn't really emphasize natural fibers. There was locally dyed sock yarn, though, so I got a skein. Again, very friendly staff.

Yarn Basket, Portsmouth NH: Yay! A teeny-tiny shop, but packed with good stuff, including customers just stopping by to knit and chat, and also to scold the owner for blocking my way to one wall of yarn. The owner was chatting with another customer, and one of the knitters told her to get out of my way. It was pretty entertaining. More locally dyed sock yarn ended up coming home, along with some J.Knits laceweight and an on-sale skein of superwash Brown Sheep.

Loom with a View, Newburyport MA: After returning home, I discovered that the shop just opened in July. The owner was, again, excellent, and showed off some yarn I'd not seen called Mirasol, from Peru. (They have it at Webs, too.) I stocked up on some of my favorites for an EZ marathon: the two-needle baby sweater and a surprise jacket.

Yarn for Ewe, Rye NH: While the shop was quite large, the yarns didn't call to me here. (Perhaps it was yarn overload from all the other stops we'd made?) My research said that this was a favorite, so I was pretty surprised. Maybe I was tipsy from the discovery of the Mirasol earlier in the day?

3 comments:

Brenda said...

Great hat! Your husband has the knitting down.

Wow, you bought some pretty yarn! Glad you had such success.

~Kristie said...

Sounds like a fun trip through all those yarn stores and your stash enhancement is yummy! The hat your hubby is making looks scrumptious. He must be loving the Malabrigo .. it's a great colorway for a guy too!

Anonymous said...

Wow, that hat looks awesome already - how totally great that your hubby is knitting it!!!
And my gosh, all these yarn stores! It sounds like so much fun browsing through all of them - and I really love your stash enhancement!