LYS Tour Day 4

Ok, so I finished the tour today!! Here is my review of the last of the shops, after this post I will be doing a summary of my experience with the tour. So please look for that.

Today started out with a little light exercise. I parked my car in downtown Seattle near the ferry dock. Since it's Sunday all street parking is free and has no time limit. I then grabbed the ferry over to Brainbridge. There was a woman knitting what I believe was a pair of socks also waiting to board the boat. It was nice to see others on their way too. The walk over to Churchmouse Yarn and Tea was quite pleasent and there was some nice scenery. The shop itself had quite the selection. Their asian yarns were really quite remarkable. Their pattern is Two Way Ruffled Scarf. It's a beautiful, gauzy scarf knit is Rowan Kidsilk Haze. They give directions for two different ways to knit it with one version being a bit more open and airy and the other one being a bit tighter knit. From here I headed next door to the blackbird bakery for coffee and pastries. Their coffee was excellent as was my muffin.

After a ferry ride back to Seattle, I headed on over to the U District and Weaving Works. They had silky pima armwarmers by Jennifer Miller made with Misti Alpaca Handpaint Pima Silk and crochet Denim Scallop Baby Sunhat also by Jennifer Miller made from Rowan denim. Sadly there were out of colors I wanted in the Misti Alpaca. However, I did land one thing I had been wanting. In a back corner behind a bunch of stuff and stacked under some bags I found a Nantucket Bag (www.nantucketbagg.com) for $36. The woman at the checkout hadn't seen it before so another lady showed it off to her. They almost didn't let me buy it from them since it was the last and she really liked it. :)

Next stop was Acorn yarn shop. This was a very cute shop with a nice selection. I picked up some new point protectors. Their pattern is a Sensational Cowl by Mary Mara made with Sensation from Naturally. They had a really nice selection of books here.

Moving along I headed to Bad Woman Yarn. Due to some help from google maps and my own assumptions given my experience with Wallingford, I parked on a nearby street (in theory) and walked over to Wallingford Center. I eventually figured out where I was going and found Bad Woman. However, when I got in I found I had forgotten my passport. I had to run back to my car and grab it and make my way back over. So about 15 minutes after I had parked, I managed to get my stamp! Their pattern were a Shells Beads and Ruffles crochet scarf and a knitted Cascading Leaves Cowl both a which used Malabrigo lace yarn. They had a really great sale section with lots of marked down yarn! Also, all their shop patterns are free with any purchase.

So continuing the run through Seattle I found Full Circle Yarn. Their patterns were a knit Nifty Newscap using Classic Silk by Classic Elite Yarns and a crochet Toddler's Circles Hat Pattern using Classic Elite's Cotton Bam Boo. The brimmed newscaps were definitely a unique style and the baby hat was very cute. Full Circle is also a framing shop and they had lots of pretty frames as well.

My second to last stop was Fiber Gallery. This was a large and well appointed shop with a really great selection of yarns. Their pattern was Weldon's Vintage Scarf using Malabrigo lace. However, they were running low on the Malabrigo, so they were substituting Smooshy. They had lemonade and cookies out for yarn tour visitors!

So on to the end!! I had meant to hit Village Yarn and Tea at the end of my day 2 trip however, we ran out of time. So little did I know that Village Yarn had recently moved, and someone forgot to tell google too. I made it to their old location without any problems! I walked up to the door and yeah... well. I was very sad for a moment. Thanfully the LYS Tour Passport had direction it as well. Sadly though, those only got me to the shopping center where VY&T is located and that is a very large shopping center where the farmer's market was also going on. I got really quite frustrated and ended up calling the shop. They were nice enough to guide me in. I hope I wasn't to snippy, but blisters and getting lost doesn't make one happy.

Thanfully it was worth the effort. The shop was beautiful and had some really cute sock bags that are made just for the shop. they also had some great denim project bags on sale and if I hadn't just bought my Nantucket Bag, I would have gotten one of those. Their tea area was also really cute! So, my last knitted pattern for the tour was their very lovely shawl called Dreams of the Salish Sea dedicated to Deb Barnes as was their Wrapped in Roses crochet scarf. The shawl was made using Misti Alpaca Tonos Pima Silk. and the scarf used Plymouth Kudo. The shop owner also had a fantastic Spincycle tatoo which she had customized to make her own.

So the tour is over. I think I now have enough yarn to keep my hands busy for at least a year and enough patterns to go with them!