Way back in November when Lorena came to visit, she did a yarn crawl through Chicago. We really wanted to join her at Loopy Yarns but we had to work and couldn’t make it. After that, I sort of forgot about Loopy.

And there it was, near Dearborn Station, while we were at Printers Row Litfest. TW headed in while I took a photo and Loopt that we were there. A spinning wheel was sitting out front. A crowd of people were inside. A couple of chairs were conveniently placed where I could plop myself down in one and enjoy the people watching and look at the yarn from afar. I was tired by that point.

The people watching was excellent. The nice young guy who works there talking to the woman about sock yarn was fabulous. The old women in sweater sets. The young hipster couples. Fantastic. I love that store and I didn’t even make my way downstairs where there was a huge pile of colorful fiber just laying there.

We must go back when I’m not so darn tired so I can fondle the fiber.

We visited Knit1 when Lorena was in town over Thanksgiving and we had a lot of fun there. We also came home with the first skein of Alpaca which started a pretty serious scarf knitting project. Thank you Lorena and Knit1 chick.

The shop is a tiny little thing, and I do mean tiny. A big table takes up the bulk of the shop and the “regulars” who came in seemed surprised to see the five of us in the store.

If it wasn’t so far from home, this could be our LYS. (But they’d need to blog properly first.) Cute little place. Nice people. Pretty yarn. Fun area of town to wander around.

Another one of the first searches we made when preparing for our move north was for yarn shops in the area. There are several but we knew that not just “any” yarn shop would do. We were looking for a yarn shop that we would love the way that we loved the yarn shop in Gainesville. Tall order and we haven’t quite accomplished the task but…

Three Bags Full is an excellent yarn store.

The first time we visited it, it was in an old house near the corner of Shermer and Waukegan. It was a little dark and a little crowded but the people seemed nice enough. And most of them didn’t look to shocked when I said I don’t knit.

A few months later, they closed down that little store and moved into a strip mall around the corner from that house. I like this shop better.

It’s a little brighter and moving from one room to another doesn’t feel like I’m invading someone’s “room”. The people seem more interested in helping than they did that first time we came in. In fact, there have been moments when we didn’t think we were going to be able to leave the store because the staff was so friendly.

The yarn - pretty!

The books - cool!

The knitted samples - fabulous!

And two yarn ball winder thingies, which is good because they are constantly winding balls for people.

The only thing they don’t have are spinning wheels.