A Yarn Crawl--sorta

Yesterday my friend Risa and I took off midday and went to Hillsborough for a ladies lunch, then we hit the Hillsborough Yarn shop. The owner, Ann, describes her store as similar to a department store shoe department. She has one of everything out on display, and the rest is in the back and she can get it for you. I would love to walk through the back room.

I took a couple of pictures of yarns and wares. The colors and textures were a joy to the eyes and fingers. The photos don't begin to recreate the sensation.

While we were there, a van-load of ladies from Wake Forest arrived on leg two of a yarn crawl. They had been to a shop in Henderson and were off to Carey next.

Risa had never witnessed a full-fledged yarn crawl. Given the size of the shop, it was overwhelming; there may have only been five or six women, but it felt like a busload. The group was having fun. They are part of a group that meets every two weeks at a library. It was delightful to hear the back-and-forth among the knitting friends.

Ooh, feel this!

Does this yarn go with that one?

I think I must be buying this one; it hasn't left my hand since I picked up.

As a true-blue knitter, Risa was right at home.

One thing we all agreed on is that a real yarn shop is filled to the ceiling and overflowing and overwhelming. Now I understand why the shop we had visited in Rockville two weeks ago was so underwhelming. It had aspirations of being a boutique not a yarn shop.

I'm hoping to go back to the Hillsborough shop on Tuesday. I fell in love with a stitch used in one of the sample sweaters--a star stitch [of course]. I was willing to buy the book just to get that one pattern stitch, but they didn't have it. However, the owner said she would work it out for me if I came back at a quieter time. And she added that Tuesday and Wednesdays were dead. [In the wall photo, the sweater is the second on the right, the bright colorful one].