Fall Yarn Crawl! Knittin' the Rails 2013

It's time for another yarn crawl! Like I need new yarn, uh huh. But I need yarnophile company and a day out of town, and I'm up for a train ride, so let's go!

Here we are at the Amtrak station in Salem, waiting for the train. Six of us aboard, and one more to meet us in Portland.

The train pulls in, hooray!

And we're aboard! Fortunately it's not too crowded for this trip.

In Portland, we saw the Morrison Bridge going up. Not sure what for -- we didn't see any large ships in the vicinity.

First stop - Pearl Fiber Arts! They were having their annual stash sale where people bring in destash yarn, bagged and priced, and other folks come flocking in for bargains. Alas, I didn't get a picture inside -- too busy digging through baskets and bins to see what I might want to come home with. I ended up finding two skeins of Noro -- sock yarn for $2 and lace for $5.

We boarded the bus and went over the river to the east side, and hit Twisted for shopping and Rose and Thistle pub (directly next door) for lunch, the only place I know of to get Scotch eggs now that Nelscott Cafe on the coast stopped making them.

Twisted's famous wall o' sock yarn! Lots of local dyers here, and hard-to-find brands.

At the Rose and Thistle, Claire shows off her mad crochet skilz as she went to work on making a better handle for her shopping bag. She made out like a bandit -- a whole bag of acrylic for crafting for only $1, and another bag of odds-and-ends with some sparkly stuff for $2. The half-pint across the table is Jasper, whose mom met us in Portland. He was a handful, talking nonstop, but pretty good the whole trip. He had all seven of us playing "auntie" to keep him entertained.

We took the bus back across the river and back to the Pearl District, where we hit up Powell's Books. Alas, no pictures there, though the bins of Malabrigo as an end cap for the knitting book aisle would have been a worthy shot. From Powell's we walked to the Tea Zone to get some loose-leaf tea, though we were all too full from lunch to sit down for a snack, and just took away a few goodies for the ride home.

From there it was off to Dublin Bay for one last look at the yarny goodness. It's such a lovely shop, it was too bad we were so tired and near the end of our spending money.

Jasper hangs out with mom and some of the others. I won't say he "relaxes" because I think he goes from spring-loaded to unconscious with nothing much in between. Hey, he's four, so it's to be expected.

My loot at the end of the day! A heat-activated disappearing Tardis mug and a book of tea cozy patterns from Powell's, some black currant tea from Tea Zone, the two skeins of Noro from Pearl Fiber Arts, a skein of Madelinetosh lace and some Rainbow elastic from Twisted, and a skein of Three Irish Girls sock yarn from Dublin Bay.

Don't worry, there's still plenty of yarn left in Portland even after we were done.