Yarn Crawl

My guys signed up for a basketball camp for the weekend at St. Mary's, so I invited myself with my knitting friends on a yarn crawl. A yarn crawl, for my non-knitting muggle friends, is when you go from yarn store to yarn store and in the end your credit card and yourself crawl back home through the crack of the door, before your family catch a glimpse of what you drag home. Since I'm playing home alone, there is little concern about getting caught, as long as I find enough room to stuff the yarn in the closet before the guys get home Sunday afternoon.

First stop, the main event of this yarn crawl, is Muench Yarns second annual warehouse sale in Petaluma, about 90 miles from where I live. My friend Jocelyn graciously offered to drive the carpool, a task not so easily accomplished considering by the end of the day the car was packed to the brim with knitters and their yarn purchases.

 

 Yarns yarns everywhere. Everything was 50% retail price. There were some bag deals, mostly novelty yarns, not my cup of tea. The secret of scoring a good deal is to grab before seeking the ultimate answer -- what in the world should I do with this lovely pink cashmere? Some fast hands snatched up those cashmere quickly.

 

 One complaint we had about the sale, they had only one cash register, so we were waiting in line for a good part of an hour. We all ended up doing quite a bit more snatching and putting back while we were in line. Of course this could be a ploy to make us hang around longer and therefore grab an afghan kit en route to the cash register. We had lunch at this sports bar down the street. The lobster sandwich was delicious.

 

 We turned around and started heading back south to stop at couple of stores in downtown San Rafeal. This big church on a side street is rather nice and grand, what really mattered was we found parking in front of it.

 

 A quick stop at Starbucks.

 

 Then head to Marin Fiber Arts. I'd never heard of this store before, and it just recently moved to this location from around the corner. This seem to be a much nicer store front even though they had to give up some interior space.

 

 Gorgeous hand dyed Whisper hanging on the racks. I scored some Drops Alpaca in sports weight. I fell in love with Garnstudio yarns and patterns when I worked at The Knitting Room. The very traditional fine gauge designs.

 

 Outside on the plaza Fae and I spotted this sculpture named "The Lion" by Bryan Tedrick. Rather strange looking creature, reminds me of The Body exhibit, but thankfully it's not flesh and blood.

 

 A few blocks away is Dharma Trading Company. I've been getting their catalogs and email updates for years, it's a fabric colorists' heaven.

 

 Racks of undyed garments awaiting for creativity to be splashed on.

 

 But I never dreamed they'd have such a huge yarn selection!

 

 On the way back to the car, we had to stop at this bead shop to accommodate the beaders among us -- which is like, everyone but me.

 

 The beads were so pretty, I even called my mom to see if she needs any supply. No, she didn't.

 

The loot:
- 6 balls of Zarina merino (the green/blue/pink/orange variegated yarn on the lower left) from Muench
- 7 balls of Queensland Collection Kathmandu DK (the orange yarn on the lower right), a wool/silk/cashmere blend, from Muench
- 1 skein of Alchemy Promise, the red mohair, from Muench
- 8 balls of Garnstudio Drops alpaca (the purple yarn on the upper left), from Marin Fiber Arts
- 5 skeins of Araucania Nature Wool (the blue yarn), from Dharma Trading Company. These were their last 5 skeins of this color, on sale. Lovely.