An American in Paris

O.k., I’m sure Gershwin didn’t think about a South American when he wrote that piece, but…it works for us also.

After Handarbeit we went to Paris to do some field trip research, we did not have many expectations after what we learned in Cologne, but it did not hurt that the research was going to be in Paris.

What a wonderful city! We stayed at Antonio’s cousin apartment, in St. Germain, a few blocks from the Ile de la Cite and well, within walking distance of mostly every major tourist attraction downtown in Paris.
It was amazing just to walk around the neighborhoods. I walked basically most of the city center, “working” as we walked from yarn shop to yarn shop.

We visited several yarn shops, but only one was similar to the yarn shops we are used to, and not even that, they did have many yarns, but it was an over the counter yarn shop mostly.

They are yarn sections in the big galleries, and some brands even have yarn shops (quite a few shops actually) around the country that sell their yarn exclusively. So there are Phildar yarn shops and Bouton D’Or Yarn yarn shops selling only those yarns.

The first one we visited was Le Bon Marche, a VERY upscale department store close to where we were staying. It is an amazing place, several stories tall, but made in the 19th century.
The yarn section is in the last floor of the store, and it was surprising. It is one of the two stores we saw that has yarn from several suppliers, it is actually very well stocked, but what was surprising was the store set up.
This is not an over the counter yarn store but they didn’t display the yarn in any flashy way, each brand had its “wall” and there was nothing out of site or eye catching, everything was very discreet, and even though it was full of people, it was amazingly silent.





Next day we went to visit Le Comptoir, a very small yarn shop or Mercerie. It has many different brands for an European store, we saw some other South American brands but of course, I can’t say names here!
It is an over the counter shop packed with yarns both in balls and cones, very nicely set, in a very warmth way.

This is me at the front.


After this one I went to visit La Droguerie, right besides Les Halles and St. Stephen church, all the yarn they had was made by or for them, they had a lot of different types of yarn though. It was a wonderful neighborhood to visit, but then, one of the most remarkable things about the trip is that all the shops we went were worth the visit, either for the shop or for the location.

My last visit was to Galleries Lafayette, where they have a big yarn section that has Phildar exclusively. It’s pretty big though.



Ah, and we got to see the Olympic Flame running besides the Sein, of course, I did not do anything to extinguish it, those French cops looked pretty mean, but there were some guys besides me shouting like crazy against it.



Well, as expected, Paris was great,fantastic, just to walk around from store to store was amazing, it’s such a wonderful place to walk and visit that I think we will have to make another field trip there very soon!