Colorado Yarn Shops

While in Colorado I visited 4 yarn shops:

Mew Mew's Yarn Shop - This shop was alright, but not really out of the ordinary. It may be I am just spoiled by really nice shops here in Oregon, but this shop wasn't that impressive to me. I felt like the shop was kinda disorganized. I did end up buying 2 Dream in Color patterns which I have been on the lookout for awhile. If this shop had the kits made up I might have been tempted to buy one at the time too.

Shuttles, Spindles, & Skeins - This shop would be my go-to shop if I lived in the area! It was huge and carried just about every kind of commercial yarn imaginable. Not to mention spinning, embroidery, tatting, and weaving supplies. They also had a huge classroom where many notable teachers were on their class list. The store is owned by Maggie Casey, who is a frequent contributor to Interweave publications. As you can imagine they had just about every book, magazine, and past issue of fiber related Interweave publications you could imagine. I restrained myself and only bought a copy of The Intentional Spinner by Judith MacKenzie.

Gypsy Wool - This shop would be my specialty yarn shop. Everything is handpainted, mostly by the owner. She sells a variety of spinning fibers and yarns, as well as embroidery supplies (yes, those are hand dyed too)! I had an excellent chat with the owner about everything from fibers to dyeing and back again. It was very interesting to me to have the added shop aspect to the dyeing experience. I bought from her things which I don't readily dye myself, namely organic cotton and an alpaca boucle. I definitely recommend her shop if you are looking for locally dyed souvenir yarn or beautifully dyed yarns for a reasonable price!

House of Lambspun - We had an extra day before flying out, so we decided to go on a small road trip. About an hour north of Boulder is Fort Collins. If you have read the Knitting Mysteries by Maggie Sefton this shop may sound familiar to you. The books are pretty light fluffy reading, which I think has it's place now and again. The yarn shop in the books (of the same name) was based off of this yarn shop. It was a lot of fun to visit. I really got a feel for what the book was describing. This shop is filled with nooks and crannies everywhere! Every time I thought I had seen everything I would find a new room filled with even more yarn or fiber. A good selection of it is even dyed onsite as described in Dyer Consequences.  There was also a group of knitters gathered around a table in one room chatting, getting help, and eating cookies and lemonade. I could definitely feel the homey atmosphere described in Sefton's books. I ended up with roving that is Merino/Alpaca/Silk from them. The only thing I will say about it is all of their specialty fiber is all priced the same, so you pay the same for simple superwash wool as you do for the merino/alpaca/silk, so you can guess why I made the choice I did! The yarn is Merino/Alpaca/Yak and super soft. It looks like it might be handspun, but I'm not sure. I'm thinking something nice and warm and woolly for Blair for winter. I haven't decided what, but it sure will be nice to knit up! Lastly, I found two older Dale of Norway books. I am a huge collector and prefer not to pay the high prices found on ebay, so I was thrilled to find these books to add to my collection for clearance prices!

Overall I had a very fun time in Colorado. There were a couple of other shops I would have loved to visit too. Hopefully on the next trip!