A yarn (and fabric) tour of the San Francisco Bay Area
While I came home with a not-insignificant amount of yarn from my 6 week long trip to the west coast, I still didn’t buy yarn at ever yarn shop I visited (that would have definitely required a second suitcase).
Between the Bay Area, and Portland, I ended up visiting 15 yarn & fabric shops (plus a handful of bead shops and vintage stores). More than just petting all the yarns & fabrics, I loved having the chance to get a feel for so many different shops in a condensed period of time.
I think we all know this if we have a favorite local yarn (or fabric) store, or if you’ve ever bypassed the closest shop to travel to your preferred shop further away, but every shop is different. Sometimes it’s simply a difference in what they carry, but other times it’s something more illusive, it’s the culture, or the environment, or simply a feeling, that draws us to one shop over another.
Of course, if you surround me with yarn, fabric, or textiles, I’ll feel at home.
And yet, I’m constantly amazed at how individual every yarn shop is. Some categories of shops all look & feel the same (like big box stores), or fall into a few general categories (like book stores, or gift-y boutiques), but no two independent yarn stores really feel the same at all.
The first yarn shop I ended up at was Lacis Textile Museum. I ended up here at a tip off from Jill, and oh damn it did not disappoint.
Lacis is a shop combined with a museum. The upper parts of the walls & ceilings are the “museum” part – with more lace and clothes than your eyes can take in. While the shelves at eye level are stocked everything from fine yarns, to millinery supplies, to beads, to tools for every type of lace making, to select vintage clothes, to all the books, to lace fabrics, and on, and on. The proprietress is incredible, and kind, and knows her stuff to a T. If you’re ever in the area and have any interest in lace, or textiles, or clothes, or fabric making of any kind you must visit. I came in a second time at the very tail end of my trip and walked out with a million (more) photos and 1,000 yards of cobweb weight silk that I might just keep as a pet.
The second shop I visited was A Verb for Keeping Warm – which it turns out was about 4 blocks away from the first place I stayed at. I loved how this shop mixed fabric, and yarn, and fiber, and tools. There was tons of natural light, everything was clean and organized, and packaged beautifully. This hanging was in the middle of the shop, and was incredible – it was made up of small naturally dyed swatches of fabric and beautifully showed off the range of colors you can get from natural dyes.
Britex Fabrics – four floors full of fabric. It felt like the never ending store! Each time I went to another floor there was another one above it.
I loved how they divvy their fabric up by floor, all the wools & suitings were on the first floor, then cottons & silks on the second, then trims & notions on the third, and finally remnants & sales on the fourth. I also appreciated the uniformity and neatness of their bolts of fabric – a far cry from the mish-mosh of fabric you get at stores in the NYC garment district.
ImagiKnit, in the Mission in San Francisco, was the first place I bought yarn on my trip. I intentionally left the east coast without a knitting project, intending to find yarn and decide on a project when I got to the west coast – this Ito yarn fit that bill beautifully. ImagiKnit was a really wonderful shop – stuffed to the gills with yarn, it had a lovely and knowledgeable staff. They also had a small, but well curated selection of locally milled & locally dyed yarns.
Avenue Yarns is a shop just to the north of Berkeley (I think). I’m not sure if it’s technically within the bounds of Berkeley, or if it’s actually in Albany, CA – but either way it’s a great shop with an excellent selection and if I hadn’t been trying to keep my luggage light I probably would have walked away with some of the spinning fiber they stocked. They’re spinning fiber selection was small but beautiful! And though they have a sparse web presents – they’re definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area.
Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics, was the last place I visited in the Bay Area. Two floors and three rooms of fabric! I’d say a major percent of their stock was quilting cotton, and at the same time there was also a pretty excellent selection of other fashion fabrics. And within the quilting cottons there were a nice variety of weights – some of which (maybe with a wash or two) would work well as fashion fabric for clothing.
I ended up bringing home 3.5 yards of a loud plaid cotton gauze, and just under a yard of a black & white brushed cotton plaid. There were a couple other fabrics I had my eye on, and if I hadn’t had to fly what I bought back across the country – I probably would have bought more.
Now that I’m writing this all out, and knowing how many shops I visited while in Portland – I think I’ll save the yarn & fabric tour of Portland for tomorrow.
How much yarn could I fit in my suitcase?
I just got back from a month and a half in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, and Portland, OR – and while, I’ve never been a huge souvenir buying person, there was no way I could be gone for 6 weeks, visit a multitude of yarn, fabric, vintage & bead stores and come home with nothing.
So come home with something I did.
8 skeins of yarn, 4.5 yards of fabric, 3 books, multiple prints, buttons, beads, and a candle (plus a ring that I was busy wearing while taking these photos).
Since I knew that I’d end up buying yarn anyhow, I didn’t travel west with any knitting projects. Partly because I knew I’d end up buying yarn there, partly because I’d be gone long enough that any project I brought wouldn’t last for the whole trip, and partly because I didn’t have anything actively on the needles. (I ended up doing a lot of sleeping on the flight west.)
So towards the beginning of my trip I made a point of going to Imagiknit in the Mission in SF – I picked up two cones of Ito’s Shio yarn, along with some needles and stitch markers. I ended up swatching and casting on for a lace weight sweater on US 4 (3.5mm) needles, a project that would (and did) last me for my entire trip.
Being based in NYC means I have access to tons of yarn, so while I was shopping, I was very specifically looking for things I had never seen before and knew I probably couldn’t get at home (aka no Madelinetosh, Malabrigo, Manos, etc) – as well as yarns that I’d love to work with.
This ended up narrowing my selections of yarns down considerably – I was looking for lace weight & light fingering weight, local or new-to-me yarns primarily in deep purples and blues. I ended up picking up 8 skeins/balls/cones of yarn in total.
2 cones of Ito’s Shio in Navy – which is already in the process of becoming a sweater. This is a Japanese yarn, 100% wool lace weight, with 525 yards per 40gr cone. It’s made up of two threads running parallel to each other, has a beautiful drape and is a deep, rich, interesting heathered navy.
Next to the Ito is a skein of Knit Purl’s anniversary lace weight yarn, which the label says was created in collaboration with Shibui yarns, and Canon Hand Dyes. So I think, the base is Shibui’s Cima, which is 328 yards of a 70/30 alpaca/merino lace weight blend. And while I don’t generally pick up variegated yarns (even relatively tame 2-color varigated) this skein was just too pretty to leave behind.
Next to that, is a skein of Knitted Wit’s Single Fingering, in “Prussian Blue” from Twisted Yarns. The Knitted Wit seems to be a hand dyer local to Portland, and the Prussian Blue is a beautiful rich black/blue color. At 475 yards of a fingering weight single, 100% superwash merino, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to make with it, but I’m thinking I might combine it with another yarn.
Last in that row of yarn is a giant skein of Marli Tharn’s Light Sock in “Fountain Pen” from Avenue Yarns. It’s a black/purple hand dyed light sock weight. With a generous 822 yards, 150 grams skein, it’s destined to be combined with something and perhaps knit into a sweater (or maybe even a shawl).
The wound ball over on the right hand side of the photo is a ball of Holst Garn’s Noble, in “Eggplant.” I picked it up from Close Knit in Portland. It’s a European brand from Denmark, and they had just gotten it in, so I’m super excited to knit with it. It has 333 yards per 50 grams and is a 95/5 wool/cashmere blend.
Then that skein of off white colored yarn is from Lacis Textile Museum in Berkeley, CA – it’s 1,000 yards of 60/2 cobweb weight silk yarn that’s more than divine – it’s simply scrumdiddlyumptious.
Books, books, books…
I came home with three books – the first two of which I got for reading on my trip and the last one was just too good to pass up:
Over-Dressed: the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
Airline: style at 30,000 feet by Keith Lovegrove
I got them all from various shops in Berkeley, and am rather astonished with myself for being able to walk out of Powells in Portland with nothing – let alone enough books to fill a second suitcase…
Compared to yarn & fabric – beads and buttons and artwork basically don’t count because they take up no space (right?!).
They’re flat and tiny – and oh so beautiful! I picked up 9 vintage clock buttons from Happy Knits in Portland (they were also gracious enough to give me some waste yarn for my sweater when I needed it), and I think they’ll end up as details on a sweater at some point. I’m imagining 3 at the neck, and some along a vent detail at the hem – but that idea could change completely before they come off the cardboard.
I stopped in at Baubles & Beads with no intention of buying anything. But, it turns out that they’re closing their Berkeley location (and moving to an online only shop), and were therefore having a sale – 50% off of all loose beads, so I picked up some owls, dragons, chess horses, skulls, and other shinies.
The artwork is from two places. The crow in the center, possum at the top right, and raven patch all came from cousin, and are by Corina Dross, I believe from her etsy shop. While the three abstract circles tucked in over on the left are from Amy’s Not Dead Yet – when I first got to the Bay Area I ordered a handful of cards from Amy, and used them as thank you cards throughout my trip. I have three left over and am thinking of framing them as a series – or holding on to them for future card giving needs.
And last, but never least 4.5 yards of fabric – both pieces are from Stonemountain & Daughter, which is a brilliant fabric shop in Berkeley.
That crazy bright pink/yellow/brown/white plaid is spectacular in person (and a terrible pain to photograph). It’s a cotton gauze that I got 3.5 yards of, with plans for turning into another Archer button up shirt (because you can never have too many). It may or may not have been carried as a scarf on my flight back east…
The black & white plaid is a brushed cotton remnant that I picked up on my way out the store. I have just under a yard, and no real plans for it. Though I do have a vision of a patchwork plaid skirt of sorts, so maybe this will end up as part of that project.
And that’s what I brought home with me. I’ve never been quite so glad that I prefer hard-to-find, thin, highly squishable, yarns then I was the night before I flew, while I was squishing everything back into the original suitcase I flew west with.
I came pretty close to sitting on my suitcase, and my purse was pretty close to bursting at the seams, but in the end, it all fit.
