Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Support Your Local Yarn Store, Wherever You Happen to Be

by

good earth yarnA couple of weekends ago my husband and I went to Kansas City to celebrate our wedding anniversary. While in Overland Park visiting the Penzey’s store (aka, the happiest place on earth) we did a little wandering around the super-cute neighborhood its situated in and found a yarn store, among other really cool, really specialized shops.

My husband was kind enough to leave me alone with the yarn for a little while, and I came out with a few skeins of a linen-cotton blend (Good Earth from Fibra Natura, to be precise) in light purple to make something for my girl. Even though I hadn’t been planning any yarn shop visits for the weekend, I’m pretty much incapable of going into a yarn store and not buying something.

That’s not because I’m a huge yarn junkie, though I guess I am. I just know that yarn shops are small businesses that need our support. I want my local shop to stay around, and I’m sure the knitters and crocheters of Overland Park want their store, too. So it’s worth it to me to spend a little money on something I’m pretty sure I’ll use anyway. Someday.

I bring all this up because Sally Melville has a post on her blog about the same topic. More generally she’s talking about people who window shop in stores and then go buy the yarn online to save a few bucks. I buy a lot of yarn online, too, but I’m really trying to make an effort to buy local when I can (and, honestly, trying not to buy that much right now).

How about you? Do you have a local yarn shop? Do you mostly buy online? Do you buy yarn when you travel? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Comments

  1. I love my LYS. Sometimes online can be a little cheaper, but I love the personal service and the ability to fondle the yarn before I buy 🙂

  2. i thnk you are right on the money with this one…..and, my parents live in overland park. nice to know there is a shop there for the next time i go visit…..

  3. I am lucky enough to live across the river from Portland, Oregon where there are at least 19 LYS. I have only bought yarn on line once because I carefully watch for sale in the LYS. Now of course we all know about the wonderful yarns that aren’t on sale that we just have to have and we love the owner of the shop and just one or two skeins will fit in the stash.

  4. I’d like to buy online, but in Russia post cost is rather expensive to buy few gramms of yarn. So the most buy online only when they buy huge amounts, still I like my local store and some stores I can visit near my work.
    I do think helping small businesses is a good thing indeed!

  5. I think I know just the yarn shop you’re writing about…around the corner and halfway down a street from Penzey’s. Ah, KC, part of my beloved home state!

  6. Oh and I much prefer patronizing the LYS to buying online, because I can see color in person more truly than on a computer screen.

  7. Sadly, there’s only 1 LYS in my area and double sad,the owner is not knowledgeable or helpful. I doubt she’ll be in business very long.Anyone want to open one up in my area???

  8. As a yarn store owner, thank you if you shop your LYS. And remember, if you want somewhere to go sit and knit/crochet and ask for help, you need to buy at your LYS or it won’t be there for long.

  9. I map many of my road trips using an app on my smartphone (Yarn Places). Gives me the opportunity to visit yarn apps wherever I visit.

Have you read?

Knit a Log Cabin Blanket with All Your Scraps

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]