My Local Yarn Shop
I have found it! I have found the LYS of my dreams!
I love to buy yarns and knitting ‘stuff’ as my husband likes to put it and I love to buy online. So this should have been a match made in heaven, right? Well, not really. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I get immense pleasure in buying woolly goodies from the internet, but it is missing something: touch. Knitting is very tactile and not being able to touch the yarn before buying can sometimes feel a bit scary, especially if you’re buying to make a sweater or something that’s got to be even more soft than super duper soft.
In the past, I had tried a LYS which didn’t convince me. I also tried John Lewis. I love John Lewis, but it’s a bit of a trip for me at the moment, especially with the little one. I don’t really fancy 1h+ travel to get a skein or 2 of yarn. I had found this other LYS on the internet, but the website was less than enticing. I kept checking it up, though, pondering if it was worth it.
Then, one day I was doing just that, I was in for a wonderfully good surprise: they had improved their website. It now looked all sleek and trendy and lovely. It made me want to go see the shop in person. I looked it up on a map. It was oh-so closed to me! Barely 20 min walk. I waited for the weather to be nice enough. Nobody enjoys trekking in the rain while pushing a stroller. Yesterday, the weather was all nice and sunny, so off we went.
The walk was surprisingly pleasant (it’s not that often that I say that about walks in South East London) and we were in Herne Hill much faster than I expected. I found the shop in no time. It is called Sharp Works. And it is very pretty indeed!
The shop is on the tiny side, but it is full of lovelies! Plenty of Rowan and Debbie Bliss of course (OMG, Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in red! I want!). But also plenty of Noro (definitely not a fan), Araucania (got myself a lovely skein of purplish Ranco Multy), Wendy Happy, Fyberspates Scrumptious DK (this stuff is seriously sexy), Artesano and plenty more. I had set myself a tight budget, so I didn’t look / touch too much. But there is plenty in this little shop to fulfill one’s yarns cravings.
There was also a shelf with lovely books, but I wasn’t into book mode, so I didn’t look too closely. That will give me another reason to go back there (if I needed one).
The shopkeeper is quite friendly and let me browse as much as I wanted while being attentive enough to know when I needed her. She also admired my shawlette, which made me very happy and proud! Only downside, she’d never heard of Malabrigo before (or my accent is so bad she didn’t get the name?). But I’m quite happy to overlook that and go back whenever I can / feel the need.
If you’re around Herne Hill, definitely a place to check out.
[...] we headed out to meet up with the lovely TuesdayFortnite (Ravelry profile) at my favourite local yarn shop. There, my husband handed me a whole bunch of notes and told me to get whatever I wanted. I was [...]