A trip to the lion brand yarn studio

Hello!
As I mentioned in my last post, I recently visited the lion brand yarn studio in New York City. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures inside the store, but you can take a virtual tour at their website here. The store was really, really lovely. Unfortunately, I was so exhausted and sweaty from the heat that I didn't get to appreciate all the yummy yarn goodness as I normally would (but this only means I'll just have to go back!). The store was great-the window display was a yarn masterpiece, and everything in the store was covered in yarn, including the outside door handle and the exposed piping inside. One wall of the studio is lined with small cubbies filled with all their yarns, as pictured on the website. In the front portion of the store they had a display with some projects they have featured on their websites. It was really cool to see the actual projects that I recognized from the photographs of some of their patterns in person! You could touch and feel everything, it was incredibly cool. Also in the front portion of the store is their sampling wall, where they have about eight large spools of yarn ready for you to sample. Here is a picture of the yarn I took to sample:

The sales folk were super friendly, walking around the studio (knitting the whole time, might I add) ready and willing to help. The man who was by the sampling station said to take as much as I wanted to sample, and he offered spare knitting needles or crochet hooks to try it out. As you can see, you could wind the yarn onto this bookmark-card. You might be able to see a ruler on the card, something I thought was a really smart touch, so you could see how many wraps-per-inch the yarn gauge was. I sampled what I believe is an LB collection yarn, but I can't recall the exact name of it. 

In the middle section of the store was a large table, where you could sit and try out the yarn samples. There were baskets already on the table with swatches of various yarns already on needles that you could pick up and knit. They also had swatch booklets of their yarns crocheted/knit up so you could see how they all looked. The studio offers private lessons, and there were several people at the table being taught to knit. 

They also had a table featuring their relatively new "LB Collection" yarns, which is not currently sold in stores. It was really cool to see them in person, including their cashmere, wool, steel wool (more later on this), angora, and mohair yarns. They had shelves in the back with books and magazines with patterns featuring their yarns, and a weaving station. They also had crocheted baskets full of their needles and other accessories, including yarn bags and tape measures (I picked up a lantern moon tape measure I'll show a picture of). They also had several computers you could browse patterns on, as well as print them out. 

Overall, the atmosphere was very friendly and really cool to see. I highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in the NYC area. 

Anyway, the important part: what i bought. lol

A lantern moon tape measure. The tape measure comes out of a tab on the right side, you may be able to see it in this picture. They also had crocheted ladybugs and a turtle, as well as a few other sheep shades, but the button that retracts the tape measure didn't work so well on some of those, so I chose this one. I've always admired the lantern moon tape measures, they are pretty adorable. It was cool to see them in person. 

This is really adorable- its a mitten keychain kit! It gives you the mitten keychain and a pattern to make a mitten to put on it out of sock yarn. I thought it was unique and I'll definitely be giving it a try. 

Just to give you a size comparison.

I bought a skein of the lion brand wool stainless steel yarn! I've been so intrigued by this concept. For those of you who don't know, the concept originally came out by the brand habu, and this is lion brand's knock-off version, essentially (for interests sake, the label says made in japan, which is where the habu yarn comes from...hmm...). Its a laceweight thread, and because of its stainless steel component, the knitted or crocheted material is pliable and sculptural. They had a few projects that used 2 spools of the yarn, but I only bought one just to experiment with. I'm not sure if I'm going to make anything out of it, but I thought it would be really fun to play around with.

Here's a better picture of the color- the colorway is called "wine", which is essentially what it is. A dark wine/burgundy/brownish color, with what looks like a metallic thread (which we know is the stainless steel) running through it. Very pretty. 

I hope you enjoyed this post and please let me know if you are planning on ever going to visit the studio, or have visited it!

-Abby