Oodles Yarn and Bead Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

I knew there had to be a yarn shop in Santa Fe, since it's a very artistic city. Sure enough, we checked into our hotel Sunday night and I found a flyer for Oodles Yarn and Bead Gallery!

So, my husband gets to the hotel room and there's the flyer, in the middle of the floor, right in front of the door. Gee, how did that get there? Tolerant man that he is, he immediately agrees to take me there, Tuesday morning, on our way out of town.

Oodles is small, but they have good stuff! The front two-thirds of the room is given over to a sitting area and tons of fiber. When we stopped in, a good bit of the floor was also given over to yarn...there was a sale. :)

And, to my husband's delight, there was also a guy there, knitting away on the sofa. So my husband chatted with him (and sometimes the owner), leaving me to shop. The gentleman, who's a friend of the owner's, was funny and nice, as well as a skilled knitter. Very cool; glad my husband got to see a man knitting! (Though he enjoys listening to David Reidy's Sticks & String podcast, he's never actually met a male knitter! Not that he will ever start knitting...)

I found some Classic Elite Bam Boo yarn (on sale) in a bright blue; it may be China Blue, but I'm not sure. It's my first bamboo yarn! I also bought a skein of something else, but I can't remember what. Typical...

In the back, there's a big table with beads, and more beads on the left wall. The back and right walls had more yarn. I bought some pretty glass beads for my magic yarn ball swap partner, Kel. (We're doing our first mwb swap at Craft Wonderland, and I have to mail it out as soon as I get home.)

The owner was very nice. She was helpful, but she wasn't pushy. (I don't like pushy. Southerners usually equate "pushy" with "rude.") She was knowledgeable, so I could tell she knew what she was doing. The finished samples around the shop were proof!

One cool thing about Oodles: there's lots of handpainted yarn! There's lots of high-quality fiber, but she has a good selection of novelty fibers, too, if you're in the mood for something a little frivolous. I'll definitely be back if I return to Santa Fe.