If you know me at all, I usually don’t go to any LYSs. I’ve been to one, years and years ago. Part of the problem is they’re a bit further from me than I’d like. But with the Yarn Crawl LA going on this weekend, Rebecca and I made a plan to visit as many stores as possible. It’s a wonderful excuse for a yarn road trip, don’t you think?
Here’s the map of everywhere we went:
We live close to East LA area, so you can see that everywhere we went was a bit far for us. We went to A-D on Thursday and E-G on Friday. No pictures of Thursday, but Rebecca started taking pictures on Friday.
It was really fun checking out the different stores. But seriously, sticker shock! I’m a cheap Asian, and I don’t usually buy things, so I was a bit surprised by everything. I’m not bashing on yarn prices, more like my naivety of how the world works.
Overall experience: Fun! I think I have a good idea of which stores I like, and what I like in a store now. I spent most of the time squishing yarn and checking out prices. Not a lot of chatting with people, though I did manage to talk to two or three people throughout the whole thing.
Rebecca with a camera is like having my personal paparazzi. Haha. This picture just highlights how young I felt (and looked) being on the yarn crawl. I had culture shock. Being young (and even younger looking) and Asian made me feel like a fish out of water, since most people were Caucasian and older folks. Some store owners almost completely ignored us. Which is mostly fine for me and Rebecca, since we’re shy and awkward, but it does make me not want to come back.
Next time, I’ll talk more about the LYSs. I have positive things to share too! And I may or may not have bought yarn… =]
YuLianKnits 
I’ve been “crawling” too, and having fun! I was in a couple of stores on the same day as you, but probably not at the same time. As a caucasian-looking, older-than-you woman, I have to say that I was often just welcomed to the store and then left on my own – unless I wanted to get out quickly, *then* they wouldn’t stop talking! 😉
Did you buy any yarn? Haha. I sound pretty grumpy in this post, but there were some really good LYSs too. Maybe I was expecting too much. It’s hard to be friendly to strangers.
I bought a little something in most of the stores I went to. Nobody knows if you’re a paying customer, though, until you leave! I tried to keep the purchases small and I didn’t stay long in any one store (credit-card purchases were against my rule!). If shop owners would like to expand their business, this would be the time to make sure everybody feels welcomed; it’s not too much to expect a pleasant welcome. I found a new-to-me store that I’ll be going back to in the future because it was so welcoming. I ended up buying more there on the crawl than most other places, too.