Thursday, April 6, 2017

Vancouver Yarn Crawl II


I was so blessed to go to Canada not once but TWICE in the past four months. This has never happened, and realistically will probably never happen again and I am so SO grateful to have had this chance. Of course, while there, I got up to plenty of yarn & fibre related activities, including visiting wonderful yarn stores and attending a fibre festival with my mom. It's so much fun to hunt out these special places on my travels and I'm so glad that my mom was willing to trek around with me to each of them. 

So at long last, today I want to share with you all about the yarn-y places I was able to visit on these last two most recent trips to Canada. Obviously, this is just a small number of the amazing places there are to visit in and around my hometown, but I'm very pleased that we managed to make it to so many! I'll start with the yarn stores and then move onto broader, more "fibre arts" related places. 

Of course, I was horrible at getting any photos, so below are some shots of the yarn I walked away with from each of these spots instead...well, some of it at least, haha! I'm planning a post soon on Canadian yarn, which will talk about a bunch of these in more detail, so stay tuned for that! 



Yarn:

Valley Yarn - Surrey
This was such an amazing yarn store- and one I'd never even heard of until my friend Natasha took me there while I was visiting over Christmas. It's tiny but packed (literally) floor to ceiling with delicious yarn. Lots of Madeline Tosh (some of which came home with me!), Hedgehog Fibers, The Fiber Company, Mineville Wool Project, and various other assorted wonders. Worth stopping by if you're anywhere near the area.

88 Stitches - Walnut Grove
I was so happy to return this Spring to 88 Stitches (first wrote about this shop here). My mom and I visited on Customer Appreciation day where there were door prizes and deals galore. They've got a great selection of sock yarn as well as plenty of Canadian hand dyed (hellooo Sweet Fiber!) and even some more rustic woolly wools to choose from. 

Three Bags Full- Vancouver
Stopped by this shop quickly while on Main Street with my sister over Christmas. I'd been to this shop before (and got the yarn for my Tamborine cardigan), and while they do have quite a nice selection, it seemed to me that they've started carrying a lot of the more expensive yarns and I couldn't find anything that was in my price point that really caught my eye. (The Woolfolk yarns are simply stunning though!)

Beehive Wool Shop- Victoria
So SO happy to have made it to this lovely gem of a yarn shop on Vancouver Island. I took Caleb on the ferry with my mom and siblings for a mini road trip to Victoria. We had such fun wandering and of course one of the highlights was stopping in here (pictured above). I just spent ages pondering what of the many MANY lovely yarns was going to come home with me. They've got plenty of rustic, sheepy wool (a weakness of mine...), including all the Brooklyn Tweed. We definitely picked up some of that, as well as some Hinterland Watershed and Ancient Arts sock yarn (yay Canadian yarn!)



Fibre Arts: 

Birkeland Bros. Wool - Abbotsford 
This was such a fun little shop to wander around. It's mostly a spinning store and they had wheels & tools and, of course fibre galore. But the coolest part was the giant carding machine they had in the front of the shop (and I mean GIANT). Although we didn't see it in action, it was so cool to get a peek at it up close and to read about it's history- how it made it to the West Coast and where it all was before that. Also if you DO stop in here, make sure you go to Old Hand coffee right around the corner! 

Maiwa Textiles- Vancouver
One of my favorite spots ever and an absolute gem right in the middle of Granville Island. This is a little fibre arts shop full of natural dyes, fabric, yarn, tools and books. I stop in here every time I'm in the area and always enjoy browsing. Over Christmas I picked up some undyed yarn to maybe try my hand at natural dying- we'll see how that goes!

Fibres West Festival- Cloverdale
My mom and I were so excited to learn that there was a fibre festival while I was in town. We took Caleb for the afternoon and it was a perfect early Spring sunny day. We so enjoyed wandering through the stalls, looking at all the local Canadian wool and fibre and making our thoughtful purchases. Such a highlight of my most recent trip for sure! 

So there you have it- if you're interested, here's a post I did about my first Vancouver Yarn Crawl. And you can also read about the yarn shops I visited in Scotland here and my trip to Tolt Yarn & Wool here

4 comments:

  1. So glad you enjoyed all the yarny goodness the greater Vancouver area has to offer! Well done on getting out to Abbotsford to Birkeland Bros - I wanted to mention though that that is in fact a working carder. It's been fully restored and it runs when no one's in the shop. Once that enclosure is finished, it will run daily. Isn't that cool?

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    2. wooops! Just deleted my previous comment- but wow, that's amazing! I didn't realize it worked. Thanks for letting me know :)

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  2. So lovely that you could spend some time with family too, i live in the uk but my family are in new zealand, where i'm from. You don't realise until you have kids what a difficulty that will be building relationships across oceans, esp when you are the mum and its your mum you don't get to see often.

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