Get Ready to Tour! The Puget Sound LYS Tour 2025.
Keeley Richardson
Founder and Chief Fiber Officer
May in the Puget Sound region can only mean one thing for fiber lovers – The LYS Tour, and with one week to go, it’s time to get planning!
It’s hard to believe that this fabulous event could improve in any way, but this year the LYS Tour is bigger and better than ever! New participating stores brings the grand total up to twenty five shops to visit over five days from May 14th to 18th. Whether you are planning to visit all twenty five, or just a few, there are patterns galore to gather, skeins of sumptuous yarn to squish and opportunities to connect with our wonderful crafting community.
I caught up with this year’s tour president, Bre Havel, of Sea Bre’s Yarn in Coupeville, Whidbey island, to find out what’s not to be missed this year.
“So much of our tour stays the same from year to year, but there’s always a little bit of newness to the process. This year we have four new yarn shops on the tour! Every shop always boasts two new patterns. New sponsors mean we have some new additions to our daily prize bags. And we were able to offer more opportunities to win Grand Prizes with more winners at each level.” Bre explains.
The four new stores are The Yarn Outfitter in Arlington, The Knitters Studio in Bellevue, Yarn Dragon In Pike Place and Strikke in Bothell. The addition of new stores means extra planning could be useful, and the helpful tour organizers have created a rather lovely map that divides the participating stores into groups with suggested stores to visit each day.
You can find the map in the tour brochure. If you haven’t been able to pick one up from your LYS, all the information is available to print online. Making the LYS Tour Website the first part of your planning process is a great idea.
Bre has great advice for yarn tourers;
“Take the time to figure out where the shops are located and plan your route (if you need to take the PT Townsend/Coupeville ferry – reservations are helpful). Get your passport stamped, collect your free patterns, and don’t forget to enter the Daily Prize Drawing at every shop you visit. And most importantly, enjoy the shop you’re at. Look around, see what it has to offer. I love that no two local yarn shops are the same and that you can enjoy a different energy and selection every place you go.”
There are fantastic opportunities to win prizes in the daily drawings this year. In addition to each shop having it’s own daily prize totes bursting with fiber loveliness, there are very special grand drawing prizes that you can enter if you visit multiple shops:
• Visit 8 Shops to be entered in the drawing for 1 of 8 $100 gift certificate
• Visit 16 Shops and be entered in the drawing for 1 of 4 $250 gift certificates
• Visit all 25 Shops to be entered in the drawing for 1 of 3 $500 gift certificates.
Any report about what’s new on the yarn tour must include a shout out for the new tote bags and project pouches – seriously how beautiful is this year’s design? “Puget Wound”, was the winning submission from artist Kyle Muir. It was chosen from a huge number of entries to the annual competition for official tour artwork. Kyle’s intention was to “depict a calm, peaceful slice of Puget Sound life amongst the trees, water, and mountains.’ You will see this charming image that perfectly evokes our beautiful region all across the Puget Sound next weekend. If you haven’t got your tote yet, do check in with your local LYS, they may still have some available.
Finally, Sea Bre’s Yarn has been involved in the Puget Sound LYS Tour for many years now and I was curious to find out what Bre most enjoys about the event;
“As a shop owner the highlight of Tour is the “tourists”. Looking back my main memories are of all the happy people. Whether they are a first time visitor to the shop or repeat visitors I’ve seen during tour over the past couple years, they are what make the long days of tour and the work that we put into this event worth it. Yarn customers are the best customers.”
Here at The Woolpack we couldn’t agree more. See you on tour!
