Yarn Trippin'

The Riverside Knitting Guild hosted a yarn trip on Saturday to four Los Angeles yarn shops. The $25 charge was a good deal, considering it would have cost that much or more in gas to drive there myself, plus lunch, and I would have had to deal with traffic. This way, we all boarded the bus, visited, knitted and didn't have to worry about which freeways to take, addresses, parking, or traffic. Lunch was even included!

There were about 40 of us. They had us split in half and dropped half at one shop, half at another, and then switch. We did that again in the afternoon with two more shops. It worked pretty well for us to see the shops but not overwhelm the shops (too much) with too many people all at once.

Our first stop was in Brentwood. What a lovely place. The J. Paul Getty Museum was on a hill just above the yarn shop (a must visit museum and garden). The shops and cafes were charming...


The area was filled with fancy cars, fancy shops, and even fancy dogs...


The yarn shop was tucked into a group of little stores with a fountain, pretty tiles (on the stairs), and the day was simply gorgeous...blue skies and temps in the 70's.


Jennifer Knits is a cute little store with a really nice owner and employees. They can make custom patterns for their customers. And, they even have an upstairs area with bargains...yarns for $5 and up!


Our second stop was at "Compatto Yarn Salon" in Santa Monica.


The shop was just up the street from the ocean and was busy with classes and customers. It was filled with lots of beautifully colored yarns!


I was on the look out that day for gorgeous lace weight yarn. I found some here! They wound all 950 yards of it on an electric winder...


It's "Madeline Tosh, Tosh Lace, Hand Dyed yarn" in the color, "Baltic". Gorgeous!!!


Next, we all gathered at a park for lunch. What a beautiful day!


The third shop was "Wild Fiber", also in Santa Monica. I loved this store! It was filled with soooo many gorgeous yarns!


So many wonderful possibilities!


I bought "Punta Yarn, MeriSock, Hand Painted". It doesn't have a color name, just HP60. But, just look at all the pretty colors!


We stopped at one more shop but I won't name names because I wasn't impressed. It was mostly discount and outdated styles of yarn...acrylics, furry yarns, etc. Plus, I was shopped out by then and had spent plenty on my two fancy skeins of yarn. At that point, our bus decided to break down. As we waited for another bus to come and get us, we made good use of our time. Some of the ladies worked on projects they brought, others started new ones with their new yarns, patterns and/or needles, some relaxed and chatted, and some of us wound our new yarn by hand...that's what I did with the beautiful MeriSock yarn that I bought.

I'm excited to get started on new projects with my new yarns!