Visiting LYS and Gathering Ads - Part 1

The past couple of weeks I’ve been visiting a few of our local yarn shops to sell ads for our fiber arts guild’s newsletter. The first shop I visited was the newest knitting shop in the LV valley, Knit Las Vegas. It’s located at 10740 S. Eastern Ave. in Henderson, NV 89052, on the corner of Eastern and Horizon Ridge.



Christine, the owner, is a friendly, vivacious woman that I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about in the future. She is a great supporter of the guild as she took out a half page ad in our newsletter for the year! She is a great advocate of crochet, although she does knit too and the shop is stocked with lots of yarns and threads to satisfy both types of crafter’s appetites.



Presently Christine is in the midst of creating garments that are a combination of crochet and knit for a forthcoming book. She had just finished a gorgeous piece that was on the mannequin in the store. Here is a sneak preview of the piece, front and rear views. The square motifs were crocheted out of Noro sock yarn and the knitted sections were done with Southwest Trading Company’s Jezebel. I found myself drooling over the various examples that Christine was showing me. Her use of crochet, combined with knit, was winning me over. It was really refreshing to see a new approach to crocheted garments that was appealing to my sense of touch. In the past crocheted fabric has always struck me as being too stiff, and drab.

Knit Las Vegas is the closest of all the shops to my house, so it wasn’t my first visit, so I had to cruise the yarn aisles. And, of course, I didn’t leave the store empty handed. There is a nice selection of Karabella yarns, Artyarns, Cascade yarns, among lots of others. I bought some Karabella Cable 5 to use as warp, they have such nice jewel tones. I also bought some Artyarn Regal Silk to knit a shawl pattern, my first.

The knitting of that shawl pattern is going pretty badly, and I think I’ll have to back off and try a simpler design. I hate to admit defeat on a pattern, that that’s the way it goes. I just don’t have the experience with shawl knitting yet, and I think I have to sit down and concentrate more. I’m too easily distracted, and it’s something you can’t do and try and watch TV at the same time. Besides the Regal Silk is too pricey to mess up with, I’d rather come back to it when I think I can handle the pattern.

We’ll have to keep Christine and her crochet/knit projects in the back of our minds and see what she comes up with next. She was working on a herringbone knitted piece that really looked like a basket weave. I like to see that piece when it’s further along.