This post is a long time in coming, but I’m going to take a moment to ask again for folks to submit questions for a Q&A post later this month! Seriously, ask me anything. I’m curious to hear what you might want to talk about! I have a wide variety of interests—this is not limited to knitting-related questions—and anything I don’t really know much about, I will try to make up a most entertaining answer.
Okay, so a month ago, I went to Paris with a friend for a week. I’m going to mostly talk about my experiences with yarn shopping in Paris to lend some sense of focus to this blog, but if want to see all of my photos, you can see them here.
Erin and I only made it to two yarn stores, though the Paris KnitMap lists quite a few stores. A lot of those are Monoprix, which I think is just a chain of general stores, so we didn’t really search those out. The first shop was La Droguerie, which is not too far from the Louvre.
Unfortunately the proprietors of the stores, in general, are not fans of people taking pictures inside their stores. When you first walk in, the yarn-covered walls are filled floor to ceiling with La Droguerie’s own yarn lines—no brand names here! I ended up nabbing three skeins of their fingering weight yarn. I have a colorwork project in mind, I just don’t know which colorwork project yet.
The other store we visited was L’OisiveThé, in Montmartre. I loved this little shop (unfortunately there was so much internal oohing and aahing that I forgot to even take a picture of the exterior). It’s pretty much the exact opposite of La Droguerie in that they only have brand yarns, and all yarns you can find in the U.S.—Madelinetosh, Sweet Georgia, Socktopus, and Juno Fibre Arts (that may actually be all the yarns they had in the store, I can’t remember right now). But their primary business is the delightful tea shop that serves one amazing-looking brunch on Sunday mornings. Had we known that was an option, we would have skipped our customary croissant in favor of their brunch. We did each have a cup of tea and a little sweet treat while we sat and ogled the adorableness around us. And of course, I did buy a couple skeins of yarn.
Juno Fibre Arts Buffy in Aquatic
Socktopus Sokkusu in Fontainbleu (it’s a French name, at least!)
What’s been your best souvenir yarn shopping experience?
French yarn shops. Be still my heart. I would have DIED. Good purchases all around!
Awesome!! Where did you stay? Your photos are all lovely (just totes stalked your flickr stream).
A nice study in contrasts. I don’t see any stores around here that carry “store brand” yarns.
A question for sometime – If you had to just pick one weight of yarn to use forever, what would it be? (So if you pick bulky, no more laceweight, if you pick DK then no more sock yarn….).
I have been pondering this lately for myself, just because I have nothing else to think about. 🙂
What’s your favorite comfort food and why?
I had a great time at La Droguerie in Lyon this summer. I didn’t buy any yarn, though, as I got side tracked by all the beautiful wood and shell buttons. So unique…and so dangerous.
I dropped a fortune on a bunch and then cut myself off (though it didn’t stop me from going back a couple days later…heh). I was still fairly new to knitting back then and just got overwhelmed by the lack of yardage on all those beautiful hanks. Sigh.
I’ll be in Paris next week! And I’ve already told my husband there will be yarn souveniring. Although our definitions of the concept might differ a bit…