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Giveaway: NeedleTravel Fiber & Fabric Mania Guidebook

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needletravel guide book

Jennifer is our winner!

The weekend before last I spent in Columbus, Ohio, at the summer show for the National Needlearts Association, the major trade group for needle crafters. I had a great time and met a lot of people in the industry, which was fun.

I also picked up some goodies to share, including this book. The NeedleTravel Fiber & Fabric Mania book is a companion to a website and app that list yarn, fabric and other fiber-related shops around the country. If you do a lot of traveling and like to check in on the LYS while you’re there, this is a great guide. It’s hard to believe that not everyone has smart phones and always on Internet access, but if you’re more of an analog person the paper guide is a great choice.

This book only covers the United States, so please only enter if you live here. Thank you!

If you’d like a chance to win this book, leave a comment on this post before the end of the day Sunday, June 14. Why don’t you tell me about your local yarn store, if you have one. Mine is Hand Held, a sweet little shop in an old house, with a great selection and a lovely shop cat, Sasha.

Thanks for visiting, commenting and sharing, and good luck!

Comments

  1. I dont have a local LYS… I would have to travel 25 miles to the closest one. What a great idea book idea though!

  2. Other than Joann’s I go to a store that is call Three Bags Full. The staff is friendly and always willing to help. The store is one I could get lost in their yarns. It is just a great place to go .

  5. There are a couple, but I know that our local Vidlers store carries a lot of yarn. Our elderly friend from Canada likes to shop there when she visits us. Thanks and God bless!

  8. I always look up yarn stores before I go on a road trip or other travel. I also try to buy something local at the stores I visit. A book and companion site/app is a great way to help plan alongside a vacation or business trip.

  9. I’d love to win this guide. My favorite was Yellow Dog Knitting in Eau Claire, WI, but they moved from Barstow Street and I really miss them. So I’ve moved on to quilting – and have too many favorites to list! Sew Little Time in Baldwin, Wisconsin is the closest!

  12. as an avid knitter, cross stitcher and quilter, I would LOVE this book! I always try to find at least one of those types of stores when I am on vacation. My favourite yarn store is Northwest Handspun Yarns, in Bellingham WA….about an hour away from me 🙂

  13. Wow, this a great book since I travel alot! We don’t have a local yarn shop, unfortunately. I have to order all my stuff online because the nearest yarn shop is over 2 hours away.

  15. My lys is an hour away. But they carry a nice selection of yarn and books. I just wish they would carry more crochet material—they cater mostly to knitting.

  17. Mine is The Yarn Shop at Nob Hill, a friendly place with beautiful selection and a welcoming attitude to crocheters. I took an inspiring freeform-crochet class there.

  19. Oh my what a wonderful book idea. We travel a lot and I love finding local yarn and fabric stores.

  20. When I go somewhere I always look up a craft store I can only buy what will fit in my overnight bag that way I can’t go crazy. The book sounds very helpful. Thanks for the wonderful giveaway and have a great day.

  21. I generally go to Joann’s for my yarn . I love the idea of your booklet and I have traveling plans for the summer so I could really use it !

  22. My local yarn store is a tiny shop I visit as often as my budget allows. I’d love a directory to all the closest shops I could visit!

Have you read?

Book Review: The Knitter’s Sweater Fitting Bible

It’s one thing to follow a knitting pattern and get the fit that the designer wanted for that particular project. But it’s quite another thing to decide how you want your sweater to fit and making a project work for you. 

Designer Kim McBrien Evans aims to help knitters understand why sweater patterns don’t always work for them the way they expect and what to do about it in her book The Knitter’s Sweater Fitting Bible.

She describes the book as containing “everything I’ve learned about sweaters, bodies, and the art of fit.” It covers how to plan for a good fit through things like taking measurements and choosing the correct size to knit, understanding ease, reading schematics and fixing fit issues. 

Sweater style templates give knitters a place to start knitting better sweaters with made to measure patterns that work with any body, any yarn and any gauge. The book is designed to give knitters confidence to go their own way whether they’re modifying existing patterns, using one of the templates or designing their own custom sweater.

McBrien Evans argues that the best way to make a sweater that will fit well and stand up to lots of wearing is to work from the top down flat in pieces that are seamed when the knitting is done (the exception being circular yoke sweaters, which are worked in the round from the top down). She offers advice for making seaming easier like using selvedges and short rows.

She goes into a lot of detail on how and where to measure yourself and how to understand schematics in knitting patterns to help you choose the correct size for you and know where to adjust. The fixing fit chapter covers how to fit a sweater to your body from the shoulders down, with tips for things like balancing uneven shoulder height, accommodating a larger bust, using different shaping on the front and back of a sweater for better fit, fixing neckline depth and fixing sleeve and body lengths. 

The book includes photos and drawings of people of different sizes and with physical differences such as a smaller limb or having a mastectomy on one side, which is nice and helps you see how these concepts work on different bodies. 

The sweater templates offer options like a straight body, A-line and waist shaping body; set in sleeve caps and armholes, straight raglans and modular compound raglans, drop shoulders and circular yoke shaping; crew, scoop and V-neck options; a variety of sleeve templates, neckline finishes, and button hole options for cardigans. 

It’s easy for all this to feel overwhelming if you’re trying to read the book cover to cover, but it’s good to know that all of those options are there if you need them. There are also nine design profile sweaters that show you how all the pieces go together that you can knit through to help you understand some of the concepts. 

A fit kit in the back walks you through the math so you’ll feel comfortable with things like determining your rate of shaping, adding darts, shaping diagonals and calculating the lengths of curved edges, among other things. 

The good news is you’re not going to need all of these tools for every project. The better news is that now you know these are things you can do to make your sweaters fit better, and you’ll have McBrien Evans as your able guide every step of the way. 

While this might not be a book you want to spring on a new sweater knitter, it’s a guide that everyone who enjoys knitting garments should have on hand to reference ways to make sweaters they want to knit — from written patterns or designing for themselves — that much better. 

About the book: 192 pages, hardcover, 9 patterns. Published 2026 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $29.99.