Shop Reviews -- P2P Day 3

Saturday, September 20 This was the most leisure day, with generous hours to spare, much less driving, and all during the day light. The guys went to Napa for Henry's guard camp, hosted by the Warriors so none of us had to be home until dinner time. I wore my Bonsai Tunic for this occasion. I decided to drive to the far north point first and cruise down towards home. 280 is always an enjoyable drive. Almost two years of driving on 17 every day makes me so appreciate of an open road, and going 70 mph seems to be impossibly fast. 1. Yarn Paper Scissors in Burlingame is the far north store in the hop. Downtown Burlingame reminds me of Los Gatos, even has the same shops. The store is upstairs but wasn't hard to find. The card making station is so cute, makes me almost wish I do paper arts as well. I did fall in love with their one-skein project, a cabled headband, but they used cotton yarn which I dislike for knitting. They allowed me to switch to the alpaca/silk yarn, also from Blue Sky Alpacas, and gave me the 10% discount for it. 2. What a difference a few miles make. The next store is in downtown San Mateo, Nine Rubies. The street reminds me of Castro St. in Mountain View, complete with a Chinese restaurant supply store, and a Japanese "dollar" store. No picture to share, to protect owner's copyright. (Side note: I know rude people when I encounter them, but dumb as I am, the knowledge usually doesn't come to me until it's too late. Turning your back to a customer that you met before was rude, and talking about the customer within ear shot in unkind words was exceptionally rude. I'm also well aware of my skin color and aware that some people does not appreciate my existence in their towns because of my skin color. It has happened in Los Gatos, Saratoga, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Carmel, Solvang, and on this day, San Mateo. I cannot, and would not, should I had the choice, change the color of my skin, the language I speak, and my origin. I learned to ignore the behavior, but I will never forgive the hostility.) 3. Down El Camino, take a few extra loops, I finally found Creative Hands in its new location. I visited the store a few times when one of the South Bay Knitter members was the store manager. It's always well kept, with nice displays of samples and yarn, and people are always very friendly. It helped not only they recognized Bonsai Tunic, they really seemed appreciate seeing it in person. They had Noro Transition and Iro on the sale rack for $5.99 per skein. Should I go rob a bank? 4. Two yarn shops a few blocks apart, only possible in downtown Los Altos where residents seem to have unlimited disposable income, or so they want you to think. Uncommon Threads has been around for awhile. We went there when Henry was very little and he threw a huge temper tantrum for the entire time I was in the shop. It's a sign. Opal looks lovely in a large skein, though I'm not tempted to knit a sock side ways. 5. Full Thread Ahead, finally a project caught my attention. Hollis designed a cute little capelet/shawl, using one skein of sea cell and silk mix yarn. The yarn sells for $35. The pattern is lace knitted in wedges to form an open circle. This is the only complete one-skein project I bought. 6. Last stop, Purlescence in Sunnyvale. It was not yet 5pm and I was well ahead of the schedule. I was happy to have finished the entire shop hop as planned, yet sad the shopping was over. I lingered for a long time, looked at yarn, and flipped through some chapters of The Natural Knitter by Barbara Albright. Maybe someone with an Amazon account will buy it for me some day.