I spent my last few weekends in Arizona and I took some side trips. The first was with my friend M up to Sedona. M is both a quilter AND a knitter, so when we were planning her trip, I was looking into yarn and quilt stores. And boy did we score!
We stopped at a number of quilt and yarn stores, so here are some highlights...
Our first stop was
Quiltz in Phoenix. This place was massive. Because my mother is also a quilter (M was mom's friend first) I have been to my share of quilting stores all over the country, and I have never seen one as well stocked as this one. And they had their fabric grouped well, too. A lot of stores do it by color or fabric, and they did to a certain extent, but they also grouped by theme. So if you were looking for travel fabric, that was on this shelf. Dog fabric over there. English Florals in the next room. Really a great store. We spent probably about an hour there and M doesn't think she saw everything. In fact, while we were leaving we saw an entire stand-alone that had purple floral fabric on it that she had missed. And if you knew M you'd know how shocking it is that she missed an entire rack of purple. It's unheard of.
Then we hit the road. I can't remember where all we stopped, but we were hightailing it to Prescott. My cousin is going to school there and I heard there were good yarn stores out that way, and one we were NOT. TO. MISS in Jerome.
Prescott is a fairly small town. There's a junior college and an aeronautics school and that's about it. A town of a decent size, but it's still SMALL compared to Los Angeles. Even compared to Phoenix. There was not one...not two...but THREE knitting stores in Prescott. One was literally around the corner from the other.
The first store was mainly for spinning, and I picked up some gorgeous teal roving. Really pretty with streaks of purple and gold running through. Not sure how this will spin up, but we'll see. I wish I lived closer because this is the type of place I would come to learn about wheels. They really know their stuff.
The second store was nice. I've noticed Alpaca yarns are more readily available out there than here. I bought some great pink for a scarf and hat set for my cousin, this beautiful yarn that looks like a midnight sky, and a couple of patterns.
One for the sky-like yarn.
The third store was more what I see here in L.A. A lot of space, not a lot of yarn, but what they had was really nice. And it looked like a comfortable place to sit and knit for a while. And if you needed needles, this was the place to go.
From there we were in a hurry to get to Jerome. I had heard that there was a store there that Should. Not. Be. Missed. I am so very VERY glad it wasn't.
First off, the drive from Prescott to Jerome. NOT for the faint of heart. Beautiful, but very twisting.
We were trying to get to Jerome by 5, as that's when the store closed. We made it with about 10 minutes to spare. Luckily the shop owner's hours are a bit...flexible. LOL
Begin
Shameless Plug #2...
Knit 1, Bead 2 is one of those stores you wish you lived next door to. It is friendly, the owner was helpful, and the yarns were EVERYWHERE. And the Koigu! *swoon* Oh, my, the Koigu. I have never seen so much in one place before, and that's even including the Wall O' Koigu at
Wildfiber.
I bought quite a bit of it, as you can see.
And M tried to help me out by making sure I left with a little less of it!
The thief! She's lucky she didn't lose that hand! LOLOL.
Once we left Jerome, it was clear sailing to Sedona. Found our hotel (actually timeshare) with no problems, checked in, and lugged all our belongings to the room.
And what a "room" it was!
The view from outside our front door...
Where we had our morning coffee at the Starbucks...
We did the Pink Jeep Tour (HIGHLY recommend them)...
And did A LOT of shopping. Found some turquoise for me, finally. I even found a fish! M quite easily topped me in the "who bought more" contest. She bought the timeshare! LOLOL.
...But I still have my purple Koigu!
Next up: The Grand Canyon
The Guppy
aka The Fish With Sticks
