I recently asked all of you to send me your favourite yarn stores, and all of these have been collected in The Traveller’s Map of Yarn Stores. I’ll link it in a reblog, and if your favourite store is not on the map, please let me know. And if you know a good place to buy yarn in one of the “empty” spaces on the map, please let me know. I would like the map to span more than just the East Coast and parts of Europe, but I’m sadly not familiar with every yarn store in the world which is why I need your help.
And now I went far of track, but let’s just ignore that. What I wanted to do in this post, was rant about indie yarn stores for how ever long this post ends up being.
And why do I want to rant about indie yarn stores? Well, both because I work at one, and because they harbour an expertise that is hard to replicate in online shops and large retailers.
YARN
It can come as no surprise that you are able to buy yarn at a yarn store, but it is the type of yarn that is interesting. I cannot speak for every yarn store out there, but the ones I personally know usually specialises in a specific genre of yarn. It could be a specific brand, it could be hand dyed, it could be a specific material etc.
This means that you probably won’t find cheap acrylics anywhere in sight when you enter a indie yarn store (it is simply impossible to compete with the prices of larger retailers), but you will be able to find the softest, shiniest, most colourful skeins around.
And as a bonus, a lot of yarn stores offer sustainable yarns such as yarn made from discarded or recycled materials, GOTs certified materials, locally produced materials and so on.
And one thing that we can do that online retailers can’t is to let you see the yarn with your fingers!!
ADVICE
I feel like this is a pretty broad point, but half of my job is actually to help people. What can I (or your local, nice yarn store owner/worker) do for you, you might ask, and I got so many answers for you.
First and foremost, we can help you find the correct yarn. Most patterns come with a recommended brand of yarn, and if we got that and you like it, we can move on to the colour choices.
If you don’t like the yarn suggested in the pattern for whatever reason or we don’t have that specific brand, we can still be of service. We know the yarn in our stores, and can help you find reliable alternatives that will work as well with your pattern as the original yarn would.
When you have chosen an alternative type of yarn, the yardage might not match the original yardage 1:1 – but we know how to calculate how much yarn you’ll need in your chosen yarn (and even if you don’t have a pattern and want to do a freestyle sweater/blanket/scarf/whatever a lot of us are pretty good at estimating how much yarn, you’ll need).
And what if you already have the yarn, have started on a project, and then you can’t figure out what the fuck the designer means by that one line in the pattern? We are here to help you decipher (please don’t make me spell that twice) your pattern. We have read a thousand patterns, and most of us are driven by an unstoppable need to know more so we kinda end up hoarding obscure tecniques. All this helps when the designer wants you to figure out what they mean by that one obscure line. Or if you are a brand knew knitter/crocheter and still haven’t found the Rosetta stone of knitting/crochet patterns yet (trust me, it gets easier although it can feel a little like learning a new language), we can help you out and point you in the right direction.
And let’s say you know which yarn to use, you understand the pattern, everything is right on time, and then you have to choose the colours? We are here to help you answer questions such as which colours look best together? how does this self striping sock yarn look like when knitted? is this or this best to use as a horse mane? *an older man holds up two balls of slightly different coloured brown yarn, and for a moment I pretend that my expertise is horse manes and not yarn*
PATTERNS
If you’ve been knitting or crocheting for more than five minutes, you’ve probably figured out that you can find a billion patterns on the world wide web, some for free, some are rather cheap, and some are insanely expensive.
But to be frank, selling yarn alone doesn’t necessarily pay the bills and therefore yarn store owners often have an alternative career at the site. This might be having their own brand of yarn, selling merchandise, turning up at fares, or pattern design.
Are yarn store owners better at pattern making than everyone else? you might ask.
No, it’s not always the case, but these people often have a life time of experience forming needle made fabrics to fit the body, they have a network of test knitters/crocheters that help them catch mistakes, and they know how fibres work.
Does this mean these people are better at the design process than everybody else?
No, their patterns aren’t always the most trendy patterns nor the patterns that fit your personal aesthetic and that’s okay too.
WORKSHOPS AND COMMUNITY
If you’re a new knitter/crocheter and you don’t have an older relative to help you figure out your new hobby, try turn to a yarn store. On a regular day, there is always one of two people who come in to ask if we can help them get on with their project.
And most stores have some kind of workshops or cafés where you can learn new tecniques, practise old tecniques, chat with people who share your hobby etc.
As an example, the place I work have knitting café once a week where you bring you current WIP and we provide coffee and company. We also have a weekly knitting school where we introduce people to different tecniques such as different heels, cast ons, increases etc.
And if you are more of a SoMe person, most yarn stores have both Instagram, Facebook, hashtags, KALs/CALs, and blogs where you can find inspiration.
SUPERHUMANS
Okay, so as I wrote this I realised, I made yarns store owners/workers sound like the perfect human beings, and truth is we aren’t that. We are just human beings, and all though some yarn store are extremely talented this doesn’t apply to everyone. As in any other line of work some people are jackasses, bad at their job, or downright hostile go interact with. If you happen to meet one of those – leave. You don’t have to interact with them, you don’t have to love their store or buy their yarn. Find a new yarn store (I promise, you’ll find a good one out there).
Sources:This is written on basis of my own experience so I don’t have any good places, you can go to read more. My best advice: visit your local yarn store.
I read somewhere that today is Local Yarn Store Day and don’t know if it’s true but I think it’s a very good excuse for me to reblog this, mention The Traveller’s Map of Yarn Storesonce again, and advocate for all the indie yarn stores out there.
So apart from reblogging my own post what else am I going to do on a day like this? I’m going to visit my local yarn store, go enjoy the weather, and then I’ll find a nice drink and an even nicer WIP to work on
ALT
