LYS: Purlesence, Sunnyvale, CA

Purlesence

I went to Sunnyvale, CA, over the Christmas holiday for a work lunch and I, of course, had to sneak in a yarn store visit. This is Purlesence, which was a little hard to find because it was in this strip mall, which is not very Bay Area and I was lost in a sea of strip mallness. (The Bay Area does have strip malls, but they are not, I think, native to our land.) Anyway, the people in the store were nice and helpful, and it seriously was like the land of holy grail sock yarns. I always read on the internet about Socks That Rock and Dream in Color, etc., but they’re not commonly available here in New York. This store had every cult-y sock yarn you can imagine:

Purlescence

This is their rack of Lorna’s Laces and Colinette, and in the back you can see their Dream in Color. The stock is quite amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I didn’t buy any of it, because I was too overwhelmed with choices. (I did buy one skein of Rowan Cocoon, which I will show knitted up shortly.) They also have a big space in the middle for people to sit, knit, and chat.  It’s not the most stylish of stores (I still love Purl, here in New York, and Loop, in Philadelphia, best, for their color and style), but it had a really deep inventory of hard-to-find yarn. Definitely worth visiting. (For those of you who are car-challenged, like me, you can walk to it from the CalTrain stop.)

Purlesence

Website: purlescenceyarns.com
Address: 586 South Murphy Ave
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Phone: (408) 735-YARN (9276)

Posted in Uncategorized, Yarn Stores at February 13th, 2009. Trackback URI: trackback

One Response to “LYS: Purlesence, Sunnyvale, CA”

  1. February 13th, 2009 at 10:19 pm #Mall Ratt

    As you point out, malls and shopping centers of various sorts are much more common in SoCal. But as this brief outline reveals:

    http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/soc/shoppingcenter.html

    the first “shopping center,” in the modern sense of the term, was Country Club Plaza, in the suburbs of Kansas City–then, as now, a progressive area with forward-thinking residents.