After a period of losing local yarn shops, San Francisco got a new shop over the long weekend! Woo! Firebird Yarns…right on Haight Street…a great location for tourists and locals, alike. I can’t wait to see how things develop there. I hope the shop continues to grow and sticks around for long time.
It hit a lot of current trends…indie dyers, gradient yarns, mini skeins, speckles galore! All things I like. The indie variety was impressive…Loft Twenty Two, Houndstooth Fiber Arts, Hula Hut Yarn, Mad Science Yarns (great color names here–tesla coil, genetically modified berries, perfect mad science names!).
And now, here’s my plea to those indie dyers…please, please, please expand your offerings beyond superwash. There is a market for non-superwash yarns, especially considering how many of those superwash yarns are labeled ‘hand wash cold, lay flat to dry’. That’s not how superwash works.
With that in mind, the shop did have one special yarn, non-superwash, sheep raised in Texas, milled out in the Sacramento Valley. It’s a great color too, so I had to buy a skein. It’s a bulky single ply with a bit of thick and thin happening. No idea what I’ll do with it, but I’m sure it’ll be good! It’s a nice soft yarn!
Of course, I can’t resist a good speckle so I picked up a skein of Hula Hut Yarn too.
I’ve got a good collection of green yarns now, this could be my next cast on! Perhaps at the end of the week, after my job interview. I’ve got 48 hours left to prepare…so it’s all work until then! I’d say ‘wish me luck’ but this is definitely the type of situation where you make your own luck. I’m feeling good about my presentation but I’ve still got lots of fine tuning to do. What I really need is two days of distraction free focus. (that might be where the luck comes in!) I’ll keep you posted! :)
FogKnits 
Good luck on being distraction free:)
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That is so exciting. Haight is an ideal location for a yarn store. It would fit in so nicely with the boutique/ local store scene. Wish I still lived in SF so I could visit.
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Yeah, the potential of this place is so exciting! It’s hard to start a new brick and mortar in SF, but the location is ideal! Perfect to capture the tourist shopper and from my experience with the other SF shops, I know they rely heavily on the tourists, who are typically going out of their to shop. I think yarn tourists are going to love Firebird!
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I agree that those items are my desires too when visiting yarn shops…doing a local yarn crawl this month…been to 6 shops so far and only three carried any indie dyed, local dyers, mini skeins, etc….most were your stereotypical big box acrylic yarns…sad…
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It’s tough to carry all the specialty stuff and the basics. Fortunately, in this area, there are big box stores so we can have more boutique shops too. Firebird is definitely a must-see for knitting tourists in San Francisco now!
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Very true!
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