After Lunch: Eastern Shore Yarn Crab Crawl (guest blog)

My daughter Amy wrote another guest blog post for me. So here's a little taste of what the yarn experience is like in the Maryland area! Note: Grandma got some great granddaughter pictures!!

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Some of the yarn shops in my area have decided to get together and host a yarn crawl for the month of September. It is eight (seven) different shops up the eastern side of Maryland and one in northern Delaware. You buy a special tote bag with a post card and as you visit each shop, you get the card stamped/signed. If you get the card filled by the end of the month, you get entered into a grand prize drawing. I think there may be littler drawings at each of the shops, but I’m not certain how that works. Oh, and you get 20% off of any yarn you buy when you get your card stamped.

Day 1

On Thursday last week, my friend Jean and I went and started our yarn crab-crawl. We started at the farthest shop first, a place called The Fine Needle (a house surrounded by pine trees) in Snow Hill, MD. It took us several hours to get there, but it was a lovely place with a lot of nice yarn and quilting materials.

Next we went to Cambridge, MD to go to the Fibre Café. It was a nook of yarn nestled inside an art gallery, which had some cool metal crab sculptures that Jean really liked. Abigail was asleep so we didn’t spend much time there.

The next area had our last three stops for the day. One in St. Michaels called Frivolous Fibers, and two in Easton. Frivolous Fibers had some really cute baby sweaters knit up and had a lot of neat local art in the front of the shop.

The first shop in Easton was not really a shop, but the home of a local dyer called the Sanguine Gryphon. She normally does her business online, but I’m really glad she opened her doors to us this month because her yarn is fabulous. If you get a chance to visit in September, I highly recommend it. I should have bought some yarn for my mom there. (Ed. Yes she should have!!)

The last shop was the Yarn Co. They’ve done some neat things with novelty yarns as accents in garments. I liked a top with ribbon yarn running through it, but she doesn’t have the pattern available yet. Since our visit, they’ve decided to drop out of the yarn crawl.

Day 2

This Thursday was a much more relaxed day. We had the two closest shops on our list to get to. First we went to the Yarn Shop in Chestertown, MD. I think they are going to teach needle tatting at the store so I bought some tatting supplies in hopes that I could convince my mom to teach me tatting.

The second shop was called Vulcan’s Rest in Chesapeake City, MD. It turns out that they aren’t too much farther from me than Stitches With Style so I’m sure I’ll be back again. Abigail made sure of that when she threw her ring toys somewhere in the depths of the yarn, never to be seen again. It also looks promising that I could get spinning lessons there. Vulcan’s Rest compliments SWS nicely so I’m sure I’ll never be in need of the perfect yarn.

The eighth shop is Stitches With Style, my LYS in Newark, DE. I haven’t gotten my card punched there yet, but I’m sure I’ll be there several times before the end of the month. My favorite part is the huge wall of sock yarn and it always seems like they have a new one each time I go.

We had such a great time. I hope that the shops in the area get together again next year. Oh, and how did my budget fare? Slightly worse than planned, but not too bad. I can make two pairs of socks, carry a sock-in-progress in my new paint can, learn to tat, and make a couple of toy moles.
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