The mother of my good friend Robert (currently blogless) lives on Bainbridge Island and is always inviting my family and I to come visit. My friend Katrina and I were talking about our desire to check out Churchmouse Yarns and Teas on Bainbridge, as well as our desire to have a little break. Somehow that all morphed into one of the best road trips ever!
Robert's mom lives in a lovely house on a very wooded and rural piece of land on the island. This is what our view was like out of most of the windows.
We had great intentions of getting out and visiting lots of yarn shops, or at least I did, but this view, along with the solitude and quiet were mesmerizing. We ended up spending a lot of the weekend hanging around, looking at the trees and knitting. Glorious!
We did get out a bit though. Here are Robert and Katrina outside of Churchmouse.
It is a beautiful shop and the folks who work there are wonderful. For those of you in Portland, they sell a lot of the same products as Dublin Bay, but they also have needle point and tea supplies. I didn't end up buying any yarn there, but enjoyed the experience very much.
Here are Robert and Katrina on the ferry. We road it into Seattle on Saturday with the intention of doing a little yarn crawl. It was cold and windy!
At one point, we looked over toward the city and saw this beautiful rainbow.
It foretold of the wonderful yarny goodness that was to follow because the end was right over the area of the city where we went next, which included the warehouse of Little Knits. I actually love Little Knits and decided to call them before we left to see if they had an outlet store. They said they did but it is only open a couple of days a week, one of which happens to be Saturday. So, armed with the address on Saturday, we set off to try to find their shop. What we found was this:
This is Little Knits. It's hard to tell since there was no sign and it is in a completely residential neighborhood. After tentatively knocking at the door, we were greeted warmly by Sue, the owner of the company and welcomed into her warehouse. We spent the next 2 hours hanging out with her and shopping amongst her stock while she and her employee pulled orders. There are no posted prices, so if you want to know how much something is you have to ask and they will look it up for you on their web site. If you visit them, I recommend taking a good look at their site beforehand so you have an idea of which bargains you want to take advantage of.
While it is true that the stock is the same as their web site, it's also true that you can save on shipping if you shop in person. You can also check out all of their gorgeous yarn in person and see colorways not posted yet on the site, etc. To any knitter planning to be in Seattle on one of the days Little Knits is open to the public, I highly recommend a stop in. Just don't think it's going to be a quick one!
I did end up buying a bit of yarn there. For your viewing pleasure, I have added a few pictures:
Angora Polymide from Fly Designs. It has approx. 900 yards and is sooooo soft!
2 skeins of Lace Wing Sock from Fly Dyed in color Petrol. Each skein has 546 yards of very light fingering weight yarn. I plan to make lace with it, someday.
Silk Rhapsody from Art Yarns. I purchased a shop pattern at Churchmouse that called for Debbie Bliss Pure Silk. I loved this colorway and plan to substitute this yarn for the Debbie Bliss.
I did buy a little bit of other yarn, but this is all I'm planning to show you right now...
Finally, with all of our knitting time, we managed to only come up with one finished object between the three of us. Even though it isn't mine, I have to show you. These are some socks Robert has been working on for 2 years that he finished over the weekend! OK, so he also completed a nursing degree, started a new job and bought a house in that 2 years too. Still, I think he was very happy to be finished with these.
These are knee high socks he made for a friend of his out of a nylon ribbon yarn. They are really soft and the nylon is very stretchy. I thought it was a very interesting idea to knit socks out of nylon ribbon. One of the things I love about Robert is that he is not tied down by the "standard" way of doing things!
So, anyone still with me after all that? If so, hope you have a happy thanksgiving!
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