The Crawl.....!

It was a ROARING success, this latest multi-shop crawl.   We organized it over a mere two weeks' time, at the instigation of the people at Labor of Love in Romeo.  Three of us were 'urban' establishments (our Artisan Knitworks, of course, and then City Knits Mt. Clemens and Crafty Lady Trio in Macomb, MI).  What a splendid troupe were we!!!  Everyone was smiling.   I took our client Jean Engerson around for the entire 6-shop tour this past Friday, and both of us were thrilled half to death with the rush of urban and rural landscapes, the splendid sunshine for most of the trip, the crisp autumn atmosphere.

And the people!  Everyone was having a spectacular time.  In some respects, the mood seemed even more festive than during our Halloween crawl.  I arrived at the last stop in Romeo too late to take pictures -- it was only 5:30, but the sun is vanishing at a remarkably early moment these days, so no possibility of snapshots.  But we managed to get home before night was very far advanced.  All in all,  a marvelous day.

Two shops bear special notice.  They are mostly unfamiliar to Metro Detroit artisans, and so I urge all of you to take a road trip, first to Sweet Pea in St. Clair, then to Knitters' Hideaway in Armada.


Here is what the Sweet Pea shop looks like on River Drive in St. Clair -- and here is also what the river drive looked like from the car (and from the St Clair Inn's dining room, where Jean and I had lunch):

 Once inside the darling Sweet Pea, which had some wonderfully unusual yarns, we found NATHAN and his mummy.  Here is the young lad with his amazing handcrafted hat, with Penny, owner of the shop, on the right, and mummy on the left...!

....and then we got to Knitters' Hideaway, which is just the cutest thing.   Isabell and her husband have carved a darling shop out of the second floor of their shed on the farm -- which has horses as well as a vintage Sinclair gas pump. 

All in all, this was just a marvelous, marvelous event, a warming moment for new friendships, and perhaps a prelude to a much longer process by which the walls come tumbling down, one by one, beween all of the fiber-related enterprises in Metro Detroit.       svb