A Verb for Keeping Warm

A Verb for Keeping Warm is the name of a popular yarn shop in Oakland that gets mentioned alot on blogs,  podcasts and by local designers and I have been wanting to make a trip there to check it out.

                                                                              

Last Sunday they invited their fans to stop by for tea and to meet Clara Parkes of Knitter's Review
and that was motivation enough for me.  It really is a great shop - they carry fabric as well as yarn - and all of it is attractively displayed with lots of room to wander around and a nice area for classes.

                                                                                 

                                                                                     

 

 

They hand dye alot of their own yarns and also teach classes on hand dyeing:

   

                                                                             

   It's a very trendy shop; Julie Weisenberger of Cocoknits teaches classes there on a regular basis and there were lots of patterns from the latest group of popular designers, like Stephen West.  Here's a couple of ladies wearing their Stephen West Daybreak shawl:

Then it was time for Clara  Parkes:

She talked about attending Mills College in Oakland and graduating with  degrees in French and Art History and then getting into the tech industry for a company located just south of San Francisco.  She starting spending her lunch hour at a yarn shop near there and an hour became an hour and a half  or more (with numerous parking meter tickets to show for it) and her knitting career began.  Eventually she moved to a beautiful coastal area in Maine and is now living almost every knitter's dream.  Sigh!

Clara has just published a book called, The Knitter's Book of Socks 

                                                                       

                                                                          

  and there were lots of fans there for the book signing:

   
Some of the socks from her book:

This week marks the one year anniversary for A Verb for Keeping Warm and they are having some great sales and a booksigning by Ysolda Teague this Saturday.  A good reason to get over there!