Friday, May 04, 2007

World Tour of Yarn Shops

If you've been reading this blog you might be under the impression that we've been on a world tour of yarn shops. I assure you it's not true. But here are a few more if you haven't overdosed on yarn shop descriptions already...

Goteberg...
Strikk (Vallagatan 23) - One of the best I've seen on this trip. This place was like an Aladdin's cave. You go through a little door down some steps into 3 spacious rooms full of yarn and knitted goodies.

The first room is full of Collinette, and their own brand of handspun single ply. They have quite an extensive range under their own label (but I've found this to be the case in many Scandinavian yarn shops tho the yarns are the same, they just put their own label on) including a 100% silk, gotland wool, and linen.

They also stock Malabrigo, Araucania from Chile, and of course, Garnstudio. Lots of buttons too. The highlight is their own knitted designs. Quite modern and very clever use of yarn and notions.

I also visited another yarn shop just a street away but it's tiny and I've forgotten the name.

Lund
Sländan (Lilla Fiskaregatan 1) - Again their own line available, including a 100% mohair with similar meterage to Kid Silk Haze (but comes in hot pink, amongst other, more subtle, colours). Their line also includes a super soft baby alpaca (below) which I couldn't keep my hands off.

Small shop but chock full of the standard Scandi yarns.


Malmö
Stopped by Irmas Hus, Kalendegatan 13, but it is mainly a habedashery shop with just one shelf of yarns. Only Rowan and Drops.

Also wandered past Signe Svensson Garnaffär (Davidshallsgatan 25) but it is tiny. Some very nice shops on the same street though.

At Yllet (Jöns Filsgatan 2) there is a small line of yarns including linen and gotland wool again but it's mainly a clothing shop.

One thing worth mentioning is the artist collective shop Formargruppen (Engelbrektsgatan 8) run by 20 local artists. Lovely ceramics, textiles, glass work and jewellery. My favourite was a felted penguin by Yvonne Bävman. There's a photo of the penguins on her site here.

Copenhagen
Wilfert's (Gammel Kongevej 102) - Best shop here in my opinion. Run by Wilfert and her friendly black labridor (I think, I'm not good with dog breeds). Again their own line of yarns including Duo (100% wool) and Duo Silk (wool silk) from Jutland in Denmark, but I found the textures slightly coarse and opted for 4 balls of their Bambini (100% superfine merino).

The shop is very tastefully decorated, with chandeliers and glass cabinets brimming with buttons and notions. There is a very good collection of Rowan yarns and magazines.

I was completely taken by the no brand but luxurious 100% cashmere that they 'buy from some woman up in Jutland'.

Also visited Sommerfuglen (Vankunsten 3) and Strikkeboden (Krystalgade 16). The former is quite good and another treasure trove packed with yarn and lots of knitting books. When I walked into the latter, a woman barked at me 'What do you want?' which led me to leave at unprecedented lightning speed. You can read a pretty good review of both here.

(Front room of Sommerfuglen)

3 comments:

Birgitte said...

Hi,

I was so excited to see that you took a yarn shop tour of Scandinavia - now I know where to go and what to expect in my neighbouring countries (I'm living in Copenhagen). I'm even more pleased that you dug out the Wilfert's shop, which I didn't even know existed although I'm living here - though, I have a correction to make: the Wilfert's shop is at Gammel Kongevej 102, and not at Vandkunsten 3 (I just think you put the latter address, which is the one of Sommerfuglen, twice).

I hope you enjoyed you trip to Scandinavia :)

Best regards
Birgitte
birgittestrikker.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Hi Elaine,
Thank you for dropping by my blog. I could safely assume that you came via IK Knits KAL, right?
Anyway, I am so amazed at the yarn shops that you've had visited.
I too, visit yarn shops whenever I could.
If you are interested, there's a chain Craft Store (they are huge in Japan) selling mostly Japanese yarn. Here's the link for your reference. http://www.yuzawaya.co.jp/goods/keito.html
Unfortunately, the site is only in Japanese, but they do have shops in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Saitama, etc. If anyone needs more info, I would be more than happy to translate/help to find a shop nearby.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe you've gone to Strikk! It's one of my favourite yarn shops in Sweden. I first went there when it was part of the market on the other side of that sort of over pass near the river. They have such awesome yarn!
In any case, I wanted to let you know that I’ve tagged you for a meme on my blog - I really hope you don’t mind. I decided to choose random Secret Pals to tag as a means of meeting people outside the usual upstream/downstream. However, if you can’t stand this kind of thing, please ignore it!