Happy Knits - Portland

Location:        Portland, Oregon

Shop:              Happy Knits

Owner/Buyer:  Sara/Tai

Website:         http://happyknits.com/

Happy Knits is definitely a happy place. One of Portlands newest yarn shops. They've only been open for just over two years and seem to be thriving. Not only is Happy Knits one of the newer shops, they're one of the bigger shops, plus you can shop online.

Happy Knits has one of the largest and more inviting common areas I've seen in a yarn shop. The table above is HUGE, plus there's a couch and a couple of chairs you can sit in while knitting in front of the gas fireplace. Everytime I've been in this shop, there's at least one person sitting and knitting away. There was even someone there when I took this picture, but she said it wasn't a good hair day for her, so asked me to keep her out of the picture, so she's off to the right.

Notions galore plus a few other things. A great place to buy your knitting friends a gift. Plenty of tote bags to put your craftiness in, plus plenty of other notions.

There's also plenty of inspiration throughout the store, not only in samples, but there's a section where the employees put their favorite patterns for the shoppers to look at. And a great range of experience within these patterns, plenty of simple things, but a few more difficult patterns for those that like to be challanged.




Next stop:  Seattle, Washington (my hometown)


It's been awhile since my last blog, I'll try not to do that anymore. My husband and I are just getting settled into our new state of Montana. I absolutely love it here, so do my dogs, I still have at least eight more shops to talk about before I get into rebuilding my studio and making buttons in Montana. Thanks for your patience in this time of transition.

Dancing Beads - Medford, Oregon

Location: Medford, Oregon
Shop:       Dancing Beads
Owner:    Carol
Website:  www.dancingbeads.com/

Medford has 70,000 folks and only one bead shop. Carol actually closed Dancing Beads a couple of years ago, thinking she was done with the bead store. She tried a couple of other things, including writing HTML and helping with web sites, but she soon found that she really enjoyed playing with her beads and cats more. Carol felt she needed to take her "office" out of her home environment which was too distracting (all those beads, and that cat), so she went searching for an office space. She found a spot in her neighborhood in a home that had been converted to retail/office space. As she was getting a feel for the place, she says a voice popped into her head 'This is going to be my new beadshop', and she answered back 'that's funny, I didn't know I was going to open another bead shop'.

She still had a lot of stock from the store she had closed a couple years back, so she opened up another bead shop. She had a lot of her old customers come back relieved that she decided to do it again, and she's gained new customers as well.

They've got a great selection of classes, and the class size is usually limited to six people, which makes it easy to get some one-on-one with the instructor. I was impressed that for a small(ish) bead shop, they've found some great ways of displaying a lot of merchandise.

Medford is located just north of California on I-5, worth a layover if you're passing through.

Next stop: Portland, Oregon.

Middleford Yarn & Stitchery - Medford, Oregon

Location: Medford, Oregon
Shop:       Middleford Yarn & Stitchery Shoppe
Owner:    Sonja
Website: www.miyarn.com/

Medford is in southern Oregon just north of Ashland on I-5. 70,000 people live in this sunny valley. It's location between two mountain ranges, the Siskiyous and the Cascades, allows the rain that permeates the pacific northwest to bypass Medford. On average, they get 180 more days of sun  than Seattle. That's half a year. Kinda depressing when you think about it.

Sonja has a lot of things on her plate. She does custom upholstery, runs a furniture shop, has the yarn shop (which includes counted cross-stitch), plus she offers individual lessons, and all under one roof.

She's been doing upholstery for 20 years in Medford, the yarn shop came 10 years later. She says she's addicted to both hobbies. She even makes most of the samples adorning the furniture in the show room, like the bed in the middle above.

Another store with lots of inspiring samples. According to Sonja, the key to having your store samples not take over your back room is to make only things she likes and that fit her. That's smart, I think.

Her shop has a 'Stitch-In' on Thursday nights, a 'Help Time' on Wednesdays as well as the weekends as long as they're not too busy, plus they have 'Social Stitch' all day on the weekends. That's the knitting schedule, there's also things happening for the cross-stitchers, check the website if you're interested.

Location: Ashland, Oregon
Shop: The Websters
Owner: Linda
Website: http://yarnatwebsters.com/store/

In the "You-learn-something-new-every-day" category, I learned that webster is an old english term for a weaver. Merriam-Webster's dictionary says "Middle English, from Old English webbestre female weaver, from webbian to weave; akin to Old English wefan to weave".

The Websters is located next to beautiful Lithia Park. There's a nice meandering stream in the park for you to sit by and be crafty while you enjoy the day. Ashland is home to only 20,000, so there's plenty of room for you and your crafty gear at the park. There's also plenty of other shops around, all within walking distance of the park and The Websters.

This store is awesome. I was amazed at the store and it's selection. There's a huge rack of sweaters in the middle of the store.

Not one of them is for sale. They're all amazing samples of things you can make with the yarn that they carry. They also have a great selection of books and plenty of bins for you to rummage through.

Not to mention the walls, yes I said walls, of yarn.

The Websters is getting ready to celebrate their 30 year anniversary. Don't ask about an anniversary sale though, Dona's way too busy to even think about that. She's got a big store to run, plus a pretty extensive website.

Her shop's been in the same location the entire time, just not so big. They started as a small store which is now their back office. Now they have an upstairs, a back room, and an amazing giant store, with a roomy classroom.

Plus, the two gals at the front counter were all smiles and extremely helpful.

This was our last stop in Oregon, at least for the southern part of our journey. Next stop: Crescent City, California.

Location: McMinnville, Oregon

Shop:       Boersma's....

Owner:    Michelle

McMinnville lies approx. 35 miles southeast of Portland, and just happens to be the home of the famous UFO photographs that appeared in the Oregonian and subsequently LIFE magazine in 1950. There are 27,000 people in McMinnville, and I'm sure every one of them know about Boersma's. They've been in business and in the same location since 1935. They also dominate two corners of downtown.

The knitting shop only opened 6 years ago. They had no plans of ever having a knitting shop, but they admitted they needed to when they got calls on a daily basis asking if they carried knitting supplies. So instead of making room in their quilting and fabric store, they opened up an entirely new shop, just for knitters, right across the street.

This store has a lot of room, and it's full of a lot of fun stuff. There's Michelle & Kathy sitting on the comfy couch (while they check out my buttons) in the side room, which even had more stuff.

Lots of yarns, lots of samples, and a few things you don't find in every knit shop

I followed Michelle and her manager Kathy over to the quilt shop and was amazed at the selection. This place was enourmous. And this is only one of the aisles.

I also found out that this building was built in the late 20's and had the first elevator in Oregon. It was originally built for Montgomery Wards, which didn't last very long. Boersma's kept the Montgomery Ward doors on the building, and they're still in use as the main entrance.

If you can't make it in, you can check out their website:

http://www.boersmas.com/