Monday, April 23, 2012

Color by Number

A few weeks ago, my friend Lucretia & I took a 45-minute drive north of Seattle to the adorable town of Edmonds, WA.  One of our friends owns an awesome women's clothing store right on Main St & the town boasts such other great finds as Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door.  The last time I'd been in Edmonds was in 2007 while traversing the northern leg of the Local Yarn Shop Tour.  I visited Spin a Yarn on that trip & was excited to see the shop again.  Last time I was there, the shop was run by a delightfully eccentric old lady who walked me through every room of the shop (there are 3 rooms downstairs & 3-4 rooms upstairs) making sure I didn't miss a single item in her knitting, needlepoint or latchhook rug stock.  Far from being irritating, I found this absolutely endearing & I was actually looking forward to the updated tour.  However, in the intervening years it seems that the shop has been turned over to this woman's daughter, whose style of hospitality involved allowing us the luxury of the self-guided tour.    This was probably for the best as we were on a bit of a schedule. 

Unchanged since 2007 is the shop's decor, which resembles a country-style bed & breakfast, complete with antique furniture & life-size wooden sheep. 


The organizational structure is also the same as it was in 2007 giving this shop the distinction of being the only yarn shop I've been to whose stock is organized by color.  While this makes for a very visually pleasing display, I'm not sure how easy I'd find it to shop for something specific here.  

Spin a Yarn has a constant supply of sale & close-out yarn & this was my favorite section of the store.  I picked up a skein of NY Yarns Gypsy in a very springy colorway.  This looks to be a bulky weight medium-color-length variegated single whose colors run the gamut from pink to purple to blue to green. I have no idea what I'm going to make with it yet but I look forward to experimenting with plugging some of the stitch patterns I learned at the variegated yarn class I took at Madrona into a garment.  And lest you think I've forgotten about my swatch project, the results of which I promised to share oh so long ago, fear not!  The swatches are complete & ready for blocking & photographing, after which they'll be ready for blogging!  

1 comment:

Haus Frau said...

Full sized sheep!! Also, the color coded yarn is pretty. I will have to check out this shop next time I'm in Edmonds, even though I don't do fiber arts.