Sheffield

For Ascension weekend, I flew to jolly ol' Sheffield, England to visit a friend of mine and her family. Of course, I just had to check out what yarns were on offer, so I joined the Sheffield Knitterati Yahoo group and sent out an email asking for addresses of shops to check out and to see whether anyone might be interested in meeting up for some yarn shopping, chitchatting, and knitting. I got an immediate response from Astrid, a Dutch woman who has been living in Sheffield for the past 7 years. How funny is that! ^^ She suggested a few places and was free one of the days of my visit, so we arranged to meet up. It was a pleasant day with a very nice and friendly woman. We visited two department stores in the city center and then went to have coffee and chat. Here's a pic of me (taken by Astrid) knitting away on my Exchequered scarf while having coffee at a café--you can see Waterstones behind me... The following day, I had time, so I went to one of the dedicated yarn shops in Sheffield.

My overall impression is that each of the places has more or less the same amount of yarn available but quite different selections. Atkinsons is mostly acrylic and blends with some wool and cotton. John Lewis has quite a selection of Rowan and Debbie Bliss yarns among others and also carries some acrylic. The Wool Baa has Debbie Bliss and Noro among other brands (you can get a more complete list on the website) and also has some acrylic and blends. I felt one skein of yarn here that was amazingly soft. I looked at the label and was very shocked to find out that is was 100% acrylic! I just had to buy it for the novelty! ^^ I think it'll turn into the Alien Illusion Scarf from one of the Stitch 'n Bitch books.

Being big department stores, the atmosphere at both Atkinsons and John Lewis was not very warm, friendly or welcoming. I mean, it wasn't necessarily that the workers there were not friendly, but I guess it's better to say that it was more distant. I decided to buy something at John Lewis, but they did not have enough of the yarn of the same dye lot. So, I took the dye lots they had and asked the cashier, when she came (I had to wait a bit before someone showed up), if they had enough of any of these dye lots for me. She didn't seem annoyed that I asked, but she didn't seem very pleased to do it for me... But, that's more or less what one should expect in a department store, I guess. In contrast, The Wool Baa was quite homey, and the owner was very friendly approachable. When I asked for a business card, she gave me a pad of paper with the contact information of the shop on the bottom. How cool is that! ^^

The Wool Baa
83 Junction Road
Sheffield s11 8XA
+44 114 266 6262
thewoolbaa@btconnect.com
Tu 10:00-18:30
W-F 10:00-16:30
Sat 10:30-17:00

John Lewis
Barkers Pool
Sheffield s1 1EP
+44 114 276 8511
MTuFSat 9:00-18:00
W 9:00-20:00
Th 9:30-18:00
Sun 10:30-16:30

Atkinsons
The Moor Precinct
Sheffield
+44 114 276 8811
M-Sat 9:00-17:30