Googling Yarn Shops

I spent this past weekend [tag]googling[/tag] for [tag]yarn shops[/tag] on the internet. Do you know how many shops have a presence on the web? The result of this search was 1,280,000 hits â€“ almost 1.3 million pages that mentioned â€œyarn shopâ€ somewhere on a page or in their meta tags.

YIKES I donâ€™t have time to visit that many websites!

In the results of this search, many hits were [tag]yarn manufacturers[/tag] whose sites I wanted to remove from my search. I further refined this search using the advanced features of [tag]google[/tag]. I asked to perform a search that had â€œyarn shopâ€ mentioned, return pages that had been updated in the past three months, did not contain adult sites, and was written in English. This advanced search returned 294,000 hits. Do you have time to look at all these sites? Sensory overload!

If you followed my steps to this point, you could further search in the results for other criteria, such as location, or specific yarns. Now this is a long way to perform the search, but this is an easy way for most individuals to refine their criteria. Others may want to use a boolen search, which is more convoluted, or a newer method called [tag]Search Engine Math[/tag]. This method has you use the plus sign (+) or a minus (-) sign to fine tune your search.

I used this method to remove any store that mentioned supplies and patterns. This result netted me 144,000 hits. I live in Michigan so I decided to add Michigan to the search and the result was 12,900 hits that mentioned Michigan on their site. Still a hefty amount of pages to look through, but a little more manageable.

Who am I kidding? Need to fine tune the search again and look for stores that sell wool. Ah, now I am down to 361 hits. THAT is better! This result I can bookmark and spend time looking for that special yarn.

This is not a perfect method, many pages slip through the critera and may contain other information such as a list of guilds or a yarn manufacturer listing the stores that sell their yarn. For the most part though, this will help you fine tune your search for material and supplies without spending time clicking on 1.3 million pages.

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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