The Rose City Yarn Crawl started March 1, 2012 just in time to kick off International Crochet Month! (I don’t think that had anything to do with the date decision, regardless it’s still super cool!) A group of us from Washington State decided last week to head on down after hearing rumors that many of the yarn stores in Portland, Oregon just don’t think there is enough of an interest in crochet to carry patterns and tools for us.
Now, before we get mad at the yarn stores let me tell you a little secret. These are poor misguided souls who are fed non-sense by some people who don’t understand what messaging is! Here let me give you a free marketing lesson:
Messaging is just what it sounds like; your message to the market place. Take the CLF, what do I talk about? Crochet, people who crochet, people who design crochet garments and goods and write patterns and books, I talk about crochet stitches and crochet hooks, and yes, I talk about yarn. So, guess who feels welcome here? Crochet lovers.
When I sold my designer art yarns, I also targeted crocheters because that is what I do best, I crochet. So, guess who bought my yarn? Crochet lovers. Guess who thought it was too expensive? You’re correct, not crochet lovers. Crochet lovers thought it was great to have yarn that was proven in crochet and were willing to buy it.
So, these poor yarn stores have been fed a line of BS that crocheters don’t like Local Yarn Stores, that there is no interest, that all we do is buy cheap yarn, and we use more yarn ( I really don’t see a down side to that, do you?)…blah, blah, blah… So guess what? They don’t message to us! There are a few in the Portland area who are trying and we are going to THANK THEM! We will list them here after the crawl.
So, if you are in the Portland Metro Area this weekend hit the yarn crawl! We begin the official CLF crawl on Saturday morning in downtown PDX.
View Driving directions to Urban Fiber Arts, Northwest 11th Avenue, Portland, OR in a larger map
Several of my Crochet Pro’s are coming, as are my teen age cro-super heros! That’s right, I have teen crochet super heros!
We are proving the following:
WE LOVE YARN
WE LOVE HOOKS
WE SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESS
WE ARE COOL!
How are we doing that, by being the classy cool kids on the block.
Rest assured, we’ll give reviews once we’re done with the tour, we shall let you know which store in the Portland Metro area was the most crochet friendly!
