It's been a LONG time since I visited a new yarn store. I've been too busy gardening and knitting down my existing stash to go yarn crawling, but this week I took a break and visited Uncommon Threads in Los Altos, CA.
It's an easy day-trip from San Francisco and the store is located right in the center of this lovely little town.
It's a good sized store with a lovely open and airy feeling. The staff gives you room to breathe too. It's one of those stores you can just browse to your heart's content or if you want help, it will be readily offered. While I was there several "regular" customers came in for help with either knitting or an IPad in hand. They have a big table on the other side of this shelf where people can sit and get hands-on assistance and I assume where they hold their classes.
Lots of needles, notions, pattern books and accessories throughout the shop. I was tempted by the Della Q project bags but I really don't need another one.
They did have a good amount of wool-free yarn in stock (perhaps a third of the yarns were cottons, silks, acrylic blends etc) but they were not in any one particular location and none of the shelves were labelled so you had to hunt them out by looking at the actual labels on the balls or skeins of yarn.
That always makes yarn shopping a little tricky for me because I could be looking at cotton yarn on one shelf and think the shelf above or below is more of the same and pick up a skein of wool without realizing it. So I was very careful to look closely at the labels before I picked anything up.
I saw lots and lots of Rowan yarn, Tahki, Berroco, Be Sweet Bamboo, Shibui, and Habu. There were some less common (to me) labels too, like Bergere de France.
A ball of their Coton 50 came home with me in a soft denim blue color. It's a fingering weight cotton/acrylic blend. Fingering weight wool free yarns are hard to come by, so if I like the way this knits up I'll be heading back for more.
They had a pretty spring display in the window too -- I love looking at the window displays in yarn stores, don't you?
I had fun perusing the many other boutiques and shops that surround the store as well. Just down the street is a craft store, The Makery and they had Alchemy Silken Straw in their store as well as ribbon and pompoms, so it's worth a stop in there as well.
So, if you are anywhere in the vicinity of Los Altos, be sure to pull off the highway and stop in --you'll be glad you did.
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