f1bercat's SlowKnitter: 2014 South Sound Yarn Crawl

Hello:

On Saturday, May 3, I went to 9 LYS on the South Sound Yarn Crawl. We have been having weird weather again; if you went on the crawl on May 1 or 2, you would have had sunshine and record breaking heat. On Saturday (the day I went) and Sunday, we were back to our usual Spring of temperatures in the 50's F, and intermittent rain.

JulieMustKnit, Wajio, and WireKnitter arrived at my house at about 6:30 am and we were on the road south by 7:00 am. We drove around Puget Sound through Tacoma and up to Poulsbo, WA, where we started the crawl. This took only about 1.5 hours, and we arrived a bit early as the shops opened at 9:00 am.

We stopped and got some goodies at Sluy's Bakery, the home of the famous Poulsbo Bread.

Poulsbo is like a little Norwegian themed town, and has lots of fun shops.

One of the things I found most interesting on this Yarn Crawl was how each shop reflected the personality of each owner. At each shop, I asked the owner what made her shop special, or what she would want her shop to be known for. I almost didn't have to ask. The personality and speciality of each shop stood out.

Amanda's Art Yarn

18846 Front Street Northeast #200

Poulsbo, WA 98370

360.779.3666

This shop has been in business for 22 years. She carries her own line of yarn, Color Dance Yarns.

She has lots of her own patterns to support her yarns.

But she also carries many other yarns and lots of fiber. The shop offers classes in knitting, crochet, spinning and weaving. The free knitting pattern for the Crawl was a 1 skein lace wrap. She also had some really unique felting projects on display. Poulsbo is a fun town, and it would definitely be worth going back to shop.

Debbie Macomber's A Good Yarn Shop

1140 Bethel Ave

Port Orchard, WA 98366

360.876.0377

This is a very cute building, right across from a tea shop. The shop is a good size, and airy.

They feel that they should be known for the friendly people who work there. They carry many yarns that are perfect for making baby items. One local yarn they have, that I had never seen before, is Cantering Crow Colorworks.

The free patterns were fingerless mitts, a crochet version, Simple Crochet Fingerless Mitts by Donna Stein, and a knit version, Mother's Day Fingerless Mitts by Elizabeth E. Bartlett.

The next stop was new to the Crawl, and a New Shop to the South Sound.

Rainy Day Yarns

3200 Tarabochia Street

Gig Harbor, WA 98335

253.514.6890

This shop is a wonderful source of local and USA yarns. Yes, they carry some standards (if you can call Malabrigo a standard), but they really make an effort to carry USA made yarns, and have a great selection.

Follow this LINK to a list of their USA yarns and indie dyed yarns. They also carried Cantering Crow Colorworks (a local yarn) but, their selection is unique to their store.

They have a wonderful selection of Rain City Fiber Arts yarns,

and so many new-to-me local yarns, I can't show them all. But I will show Sleepy Hollow Fiber Farms, because the yarn is "grown" in Washington and Oregon, milled in Washington, and the company is based in Washington and Oregon.

Their label says, "Grown with pride in the PNW."

One other fun thing in this show was that the yarn bowls were made by the owner's sister.

Can't get much more local than that!

Allyn Knit Shop

16590 State Highway 3

Allyn, WA 98524

360.275.4729

This shop has moved and is much larger than last year. When we got inside, we found a BUSLOAD of Crawlers.

Luckily, they were headed in the other direction than we were taking! This shop also had some wonderful local and USA yarns, including Dakota Yarn.

They would like to be known as the Cheers of Knit Shops. They have an outdoor garden area that will open in July for summer knitting. This shop has a huge amount of wonderful stock. I was especially impressed at how much fiber they carry.