Great expectations

Firstly, a big thanks for all the comments from the last post. I have now got over the maudlin period and am back to being my usual shouty argumentative self - hurray!

I have been knitting socks for the last few weeks and very little else - pictures will appear soon, but I've lost the thingummy doofus that links the camera to the laptop. So in the absence of pixtures I shall regale you with my thoughts on yarn shops. Yesterday I was on a training course in Beeston and so thought I should check out Yarn. This is a shop that I've read a great deal about on other blogs and in knitting magazines and it seems to be universally raved about, so my expectations were high. The shop itself was crammed with yarn and patterns and whilst it was too small to swing a cat in, you could have probably managed to whirl a guinea pig around your head without causing too much damage (to the shop at least - Mr Snuffles may well be traumatised by his impromptu fairground ride). On the face of it, there was a great deal of promise in the shop, and so I was a happy little critter.

However, I do feel that there were several areas that I felt the shop let itself down in. Firstly, not all the needles and notions are easily accessible, and you have to specifically ask for certain items as they are out of the customers reach. For shoppers like me, who enjoy picking things up, having a look and a think and then maybe putting them back again, this isn't a good thing. Secondly, the counter with the till has yarn stacked in front of it. It made it difficult to browse these if anyone was paying, and also felt as though you were being watched by the woman behind the till. Thirdly, and most crucially, the woman herself was courteous, but that was all. I didn't feel especially welcomed or as though I could ask for help or advice.

Overall, I just felt a bit let down. It's always a risk when you have your hopes raised that you may be let down, but I think my expectations were so high because of my LYS. When you're used to a shop where the kettle is always on, the owner keeps baby wipes to clean little people's sticky fingers and crayons to keep the newly cleaned fingers occupied, customers laugh and chat with each other, advice is plentiful and friendly and you're positively encouraged to squeeze and sniff yarn then most other places will pale by comparison.

I hope I just caught the lady in Yarn on a bad day, and that normally the atmosphere is far friendlier, but it did bring it home to me that I am damned lucky to have such a great LYS on my doorstep.

Oh, and a quick point - I seem to be getting more and more questions in the comments, so if you ask me anything then I'll answer you in the comments rather than in the next post :)