Last weekend I joined with fellow yarnies and took part in the Great London Yarn Crawl. Organised by Yarn in the City the event has been running for 4 years now and it’s a day for crafters to take a tour of some of the wonderful haberdashery and yarn shops that London has to offer.
There were 12 teams this year, each with a planned route to visit 3 or 4 shops. I was on Team Mosaic, one of the 4 shop routes.
On Saturday morning, my friend Vero and I braved the rain and caught the train to London where we were to meet the others at a coffee shop in Angel and get acquainted over tea and cake, and receive our goodie bags full of yarny treats!
The first stop on our route was Ray Stitch, a sewing and haberdashery shop in Angel, Islington.
Full of beautiful fabrics, buttons and books…I was very tempted to buy a pattern and some fabric but I stopped myself as I know it will lead me down a whole other rabbit hole! So I settled for a selection of pretty buttons and scissor charms.
Next up was Loop. I have visited this shop before and already knew it would be where I spent most of my budget for the day…this shop is yarn heaven!
Just look at all these pretties…
Needless to say I didn’t come out of there empty handed. I bought 2 skeins of Dye for Yarn which I want to match up with some Hedgehog Fibre yarn I already have. And I got a pretty little needle measurer too 🙂
And the one thing I had been lusting after for ages….a Japanese knitting stitch book! I have been trying to find one of these for ages but they are not easy to come by. This was top of my list for the day and I was over the moon to find it!
We stepped out of Loop, back into the rain and found a pub for lunch.
Fully refreshed we carried on our journey by Bus to Stoke Newington, the home of Knit With Attitude
Part of the shop was also a gallery with interesting art prints, jewellery and gifts. If you ever find yourself in Hackney this is one shop well worth a visit, and the staff were so friendly and helpful too!
The last shop on our route was another 2 bus rides away, across to North London to Fringe.
A real treasure trove of a store, there was so much to see – and they also had a pop up event with knitwear designer Erika Knight!
As we walked into the shop we were handed gift bags by the staff containing 3 balls of vintage mohair yarn. The lady told us that one day a man came into the store with bags of yarn which belonged to his late wife. She had been a knitwear designer and made some beautiful garments that had appeared in magazines.
Just…wow!
Her husband wanted her yarn to go to people who would appreciate it, so he donated it to the shop. Isn’t that a lovely gesture? Unfortunately we don’t know the name of the designer but I’ll certainly be putting her yarn to good use at some point in the future.
And so, weary but happy we caught a train back to Moorgate where all of the teams came together to wrap up the day, show off our new purchases and have a well deserved drink! There was also a raffle to raise money to the supported charity, Refuge.
It was a brilliant day, very well organised and I met some lovely fellow knitters too. Now to get that lovely new yarn on the needles…
Until next time, happy knitting! x
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Jem that sounds like a fun day out! I wish we could have events like that here, but our LYStores of Quality are few and far between ……. I’d sigh in a sad and longing kind of way – but I just thought of how much my budget appreciates the fact I can’t do such things 🙂
It really was Pauline! All the shops we went to were so lovely, I had to be very disciplined 😉
Wish we had those kind of yarn stores here. But, we have none. All my shopping must be done on the internet. Then again, if I ever walked into such lovely stores as you have I’d probably faint.
Yep it would be easy to get quite giddy in a couple of the shops, surrounded by so much wonderful yarn and pretties… there was lots of squishing and ahhh-ing going on!
I did the Los Angeles crawl for a few years, and then worked others, and then stopped because I had too much yarn. lol But those crawls were some of the most fun weekends ever! Expensive, but fun. hehe
This was the first yarn crawl I have ever done, but it won’t be the last! I’m already saving for next year 😉
What a perfectly wonderful day! I’m quite envious of all your pretties.
It really was a lot of fun! 😄
What fun!!
What a great day out! I’ll definitely be putting these places on my to-visit list for my next London trip… Now I’d better start saving those pennies!