When we began planning a road trip across America to pick up my great-grandmother’s spinning wheel, I had lofty goals of visiting local yarn stores in every state we drove through.
This would soon prove impractical, however, as our days would often start with hitting the road at 8 a.m. each morning and driving for 6+ hours to make it to our next destination, eclipsing the opening hours for most yarn stores that would have been on our route.
Most, but not all!
I was fortunate to visit three fabulous yarn stores on our Great American Road Trip:
Looking Glass Yarn & Gifts — Santa Fe, NM
The first shop I got to visit in the United States was a gorgeous, well-organized two-storey affair in New Mexico’s capital city. It’s easy to see why Looking Glass is considered one of the best craft stores in Santa Fe.
When I walked in, the lady working there pointed out each section to me, organized by fibre content and origin. I made a beeline for the hand-dyed yarn section, conveniently next to the spinning fibre. I was in awe of the selection. I picked up a skein of Cat Mountain Fiber’s fusion yarn — which combines several textures of yarn into one glorious gradient — and a braid of Malabrigo Nube to spin on my wheel.
When I told her why we were making this epic journey, the same employee encouraged us to check out the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center, an organization in historic Española, NM, dedicated to multigenerational fibre arts education, and supporting local fibre farmers and artisans. Alas, it was in the opposite direction of where we were headed on our trip, but since we are eager to return to New Mexico someday, it’s absolutely a must-do for next time!
Forbidden Fiber Co — Brighton, TN
In business for 15 years and counting, Forbidden Fiber Co is an independent yarn dyer about an hour outside Memphis, best known for sparkly yarns and in-house-dyed embroidery floss. They’re moving to a bigger space, and as such are doing a storewide sale to clear some inventory. I walked away with a cheeky enamel pin, stitch markers, a magnetic needle minder, and two skeins of yarn (one sparkly to go with the yarn I bought in New Mexico, and another to knit with on the road home).
They’d sold out of their spinning fibre recently. But when I shared my story with the owner, Leann, she went into the back and produced two braids of fibre from her own personal stash to give to me. I was completely floored and honoured by her generosity, and look forward to following her continued growth in the new storefront!
Urbana, Iowa was the exact midpoint of the St Louis-to-Minneapolis leg of our drive home. This community of around 1,500 people boasts an utterly fabulous yarn store and cafe, so it was a perfect pitstop for lunch. I wandered the colourful aisles that overflowed with beautiful yarn, choosing a lovely indie-dyed sock set and a skein of yarn from the owner’s alpaca farm. I also purchased a set of darning needles in a snazzy wood-and-metal case (I had neglected to pack a darning needle to finish the sock project I brought from home, and turns out it’s pretty hard to graft heels and toes without one).
The adjoining cafe, Jams, was a veritable mercantile of its own with local goodies abound. In addition to the lattes and baked goods (two scones and a cinnamon bun, all of which was to die for), we grabbed a jar of homemade forest fruit jam for the road.
Even though I “only” visited three stores throughout the total 13 states we drove through, I am quite pleased with my yarn haul, and loved getting to know the local fibre scene!
Our other goal of the trip was to visit all the MeowWolf art exhibitions, which I will examine in the next installment of this series.
It was not easy to leave a comment!! Holy Cow! Anyway, so much enjoyed reading of your exploits. The stores sound amazing and would be gre
such a wonderful read – I never knew things like stitch markers and magnetic needle minders existed 😳
Oh my goodness. What wonderful stores. I adore your purchases, So much fun knitting ahead.