Yarncat in Spain

I love Spain, I have been there many times, have been more cities in Spain than I realised.

Places Yarncat have been visited in Spain

Click to enlarge

Yet, I keep going back. Food is tasty, meal times are weird, people are special and the weather is lovely. If you have been Spain, you should know what I mean. If you have never been Spain, what are you waiting for? You should go there as soon as possible!

Of course, for many knitters nowadays, a trip to a foreign country is not complete without a local Stitch N Bitch and yarn shopping. Yarncat won’t disappoint you, I have done that both.

Helen is the first friend I made when I moved to Paris. I met her on the second day of my Parisian life and since then, we have been good friends. She moved to Marbella on 2006 and it is my second time to go visit her. (When is she going to come visit? Helen! Are you reading this now?)

So here are some photos I took from Marbella:

Streets of Marbella

(I start to type in orange here to get a Spanish mood, hohohoho)

Orange Square: You got quite a few nice restaurant here where you can eat staring at the orange from the oranges trees around you.

Then you have this beautiful church...

...which is obviously multilingual!

Helen is living up on hill of Marbella, overlooking the sea. If you really pay attention, you can see the triangle of sea from this photo that I took on the balcony of her sitting room. Of course the socks were there too!

Here is where I had tapas, drinks and a bit of knitting before going to the beach. Man you can't go to the beach right then, look the sun! I don't want to die from skin cancer at the age of 30! (I am 28.)

La siesta! See? The street is dead, no kidding...

Before going on my trip, I have been in touch with a fellow Raveler Rachel who lives in the surrounding of Marbella area. I asked her if there is any local Stitch N Bitch and if she knows any LYS around. Turns out there is no regular local Stitch N Bitch so we decided to meet up and do our own for once!

It was a lovely lovely afternoon I have spent with Rachel. She has shown me her LYS and the limited yarn resource she could get from other places -- Chinese hardware stores...

As many of us have already talked about how knitting has linked people from different culture, different background together regardless of lifestyle, nationality, gender, etc. Meeting a complete stranger from Ravelry and turned out to be a lovely experience is yet again a proof of just that. (Rachel, if you are reading this, thank you very much again for the wonderful afternoon, gracias!)

I know I know, you have been waiting for the yarn purchase, here you have it:

The items on the right, are laceweight viscose yarn in gold, green and self-striping purple (at least I believe, I won't know how the colour change turns out right now, will I?) There is even little picture tell you how to pull the yarn out! Duh!

Surprisely, both of them are Italian. I didn't get any Spanish yarn. Too much novelty and I wasn't in the mood for merino. (Reminder: 35 degrees out there)

The 3 balls on the left are self-striping COTTON yarn. You might not understand why I am so excited about this yarn. Then go out and try to buy 100% cotton sock yarn and get back to me. Even better, you can try to find 100% cotton self-striping sock yarn, then you will understand how difficult to find them. You might ask, 'why do you need to buy 100% cotton then?' I'll go, 'ask my man!' He said his feet don't feel very good in any artificial material, so there...

Since I am desperate to know if there is a way I can get more of this yarn, better a stable source of supply of it if it turns out great, so I went to the website of this company and found out their major business seems to be spinning yarn for industrial use. If anyone of you know the contrary or know any source to buy this yarn, please leave a comment.

LYS in Marbella:
There are two places to buy yarn in Marbella-
1. Merceria Mari Carmen

Huerta Chica, 5
29601 MARBELLA (MALAGA)

It is where I got the yarn in the photo above. The gentleman in the shop is very nice. However, he is kind of old-school. Like he told me, the laceweight yarn will be too thin to make anything but crochet. When I asked him, how about lace? Then he was like, 'er...' then shrugged. He is also into selling me novelty yarn, just kept piling them on. But he is nice though.

2. Merceria Mis Labores

Av. Nabeul, 6
29601 MARBELLA (MALAGA)

I didn't successfully get into this shop since it's opening hour is from 08:30 to 14:00. But I saw from their window that they stocked Katia and some Spanish merino.

To end this entry, I have a few tips about yarn purchase in Spain.
1. Please be prepared that a lot of yarn stores are still using the "behind the counter" system, so you won't be able to touch the yarn freely.
2. They have odd opening hours, because of Siesta and stuff.
3. When you ask people direction to the yarn store in limited Spanish and showing them your knitting from your bag, they will look at you bizarrely. Don't ask me how do I know that.