So: my very dear friend got married in Santiago last week. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the wedding, which was beyond wonderful. I'll share a bit more about the trip in general soon!
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| The view from St. Christopher's Hill, Santiago |
What I wish to discuss now, however, is one very specific aspect of the trip--yarn shopping.
I suspect I'm not alone in that, when I get the opportunity to go somewhere new and exciting, I set aside a certain amount of time to find the fiber supplies in that place. Remind me to tell you sometime about the full day I spent hunting down yak wool in Northern India (I found it! But it wasn't easy).
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| Knitting themed ad at the Santiago airport. |
Of course, South America is known for producing lots of fiber--especially llama and alpaca, as well as the fleece of a rare and very soft animal known as a vicuña.
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| Mama and baby vicuñas (source) |
Well. A few years ago when I was in Bolivia, I bought some beautiful lace weight 100% alpaca yarn, with which I was quite pleased indeed (and which was significantly less expensive than it would have been in the States). I wasn't really able to find shops with a large selection of weights and blends, though. On this trip, acting on a tip from a fellow crafter at the wedding, I did quite a bit better.
Santiago, it turns out, has its very own yarn district.
And here's what I got: Three skeins of bulky, thick and thin wool; one skein of bulky mixed alpaca and wool; three balls of sport weight 100% baby alpaca; and three skeins of worsted weight alpaca and wool blend. I was also unable to resist a hairpin lace loom, and a small (20 by 20 cm) wooden peg loom (not shown). I was, needless to say, quite pleased.
I'm terrible at directions, so I won't even try. I do think I can provide enough info for somebody else to find the shops; there are probably around ten of them, and they carry a wide range of yarns, from acrylic to cashmere. Most of the yarn brands I haven't encountered in the US before, and the prices are absolutely lower than I'd expect to find where I live. So, if you're every in Santiago, here's what you do: Go to the Mercado Central (which is easy to find, and has its own metro stop). Ask around for the yarn shops, which are in a couple of blocks just off the main market. Fair warning: all the shops were closed on Sunday.
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| If you're looking for the spot, perhaps these names/addresses will help! |
And here are a couple of other resources, should you be on the hunt for yarn in Santiago:
Amusingly enough, it was in the mid 90s during this trip (Summer, of course, in South America). I could barely stand to touch the woolens once I got them back to my hotel. Now that I'm back to Winter in Portland (gray and chilly; perfect sweater weather), I am quite excited indeed to plan a project.
