LYS Review: Stitch

The weekend of the failed trip to the Knitter's Frolic (more about that later), the Elf and I drove out to Grimsby to check out Stitch in Grimsby, Ontario, that bills itself as "A Sanctuary for Knitters, Quilters, & Needle Artists". It has a vine-ball sculpture of yarn and knitting needles out front of the cute little house the store is in. If you're looking for it, be careful - it's at the end of a dead-end street, and easy to miss if you're the one driving (luckily, Eagle-Eyes Faery was navigating).

The store is pretty small - just one little room of yarn - but they focus on the expensive specialty fibers that you can't get many other places. For example, they have the Handmaiden Sea Silk at $37 CDN/skein, and the Noro Sock Yarn at $18.95 CDN/skein. They have all of the luxury lines - Rowan, Debbie Bliss, etc. They also carry notions, including my favourite company, Clover (I just love those green and orange locking stitch markers), lampwork beads, little bags of roving for needle-felting, silk embroidery floss, and quilting material. They've got two cats there (I can't for the life of me remember the names), so if you're allergic, you might want to medicate before you go. I'm not, so I don't really know if the caution is warranted, but better safe than sorry.

Having said that the stock is small, there are two rooms of couches and comfy chairs where people can sit and knit - when Elf and I were there, they were actually doing a class on Prayer Shawls and there was a Massage Therapist doing the rounds as well. It's a very friendly, cosy little place, and the lady who was working there (I forgot to get her name - I believe she's the owner) was one of the nicest ladies I've ever met. They will wind your yarn into balls for you - the ball winder and swift are on opposite sides of a doorway, so it's kind of funny to see people try to get in and out of the room while they're winding two skeins of Sea Silk. All in all, it is a lovely little place that I would love to go back to in the future - maybe even take that Prayer Shawl class (you know I'm in it for the massage, right?).

My haul for the day was the aforementioned stitch markers, a skein of Noro Sock Yarn, and . . . . Lantern Moon Sox Stix! *dies* They are LOVELY - short, at only 5" long, and I made my first Fair Isle attempt on them this past week (more about that in another post). They make sock knitting much, MUCH easier. I have yet to try out the sock yarn, but I'll tell you what it's like when I try it. It's a single (it's not plied with anything else) and the thickness looks a little inconsistent, so I'm not sure how the socks are going to turn out. It's self-striping as well, something I normally avoid like the plague, but a boring stockinette sock every once in a while never hurt anyone.