Yarn Crawl with me

The 2024 Rose City Yarn Crawl was this weekend—it’s an annual Portland event for fiber enthusiasts that spans over 4 days and 8 local yarn shops. This year, I was joined by my mom and sister, they took the train down from Olympia, WA to Portland, OR and we spent all day Thursday getting our yarn on.

We started with breakfast at Tin Shed on Alberta (I had the Eggs Benedict with Lox), they allow reservations and, while we didn’t have one and didn’t have to wait longer than 20 minutes, I’d recommend one to keep it easy.

Then, fueled with tea and breakfast, we made our first crawl stop: Close Knit. My very favorite natural hand dyer Emily of Wool & Palette had her trunk show there and I was able to score the last 2 skeins of the incredibly lovely Peacock (she has a really cool note on instagram about her process to achieve this color, the labor is so worth it, this color is incredible and I can’t wait to add it to my Portland Bridges woven series!).

Then we headed north to St. John’s to check out Weird Sisters, I grabbed two skeins of Tumalo Fiber yarn in Running Wild and Night Bazaar, and my sister picked up the Orb Weaver’s Shawl kit in emerald green, it’s going to be so gorgeous! In need of a little drink break, we grabbed cortados across the street at Wonderwood Springs.

We headed south and stopped for another drink break to grab a chai at Guilder, a sweet Princess Bride themed coffee shop—super fun side note: Carey Elwes spoke at the Schnitz on Friday, inconceivable! Then, since Josephine’s Dry Goods was on the way, we stopped in for fabric and buttons and awesome conversation about sewing.

Next on the list was Ritual Dyes, the store was filled with so much sunshine and plants and fiber people 😍 and I was able to get a skein of gorgeous undyed Italian wool and alpaca called A Stormy Blend from Lanivendole. Then we travelled further south to Starlight Knitting Society, that giant moon cutout is so iconic!

At this point, we needed a snack and a drink, so we went back north to T.C. O'Leary's for chips and beverages in the cozy pub, and, since Bolt is on the same block, we checked out more fabric (and barely made it in before closing, whew!).

Lastly, we cruised back to Close Knit to pick up the Laurel Garland kit since my mom kept thinking about it—nothing like bookending our crawl experience at Close Knit, and BONUS! The pattern designer, Seth Richardson was there!

This was my favorite crawl yet, we made it to 1/2 of the shops in person, had a really terrific time and squished ALLLLL the yarn. I’d highly recommend the crawl to any fiber lover out there, it’s a really good time!