Field Report From Oslo: Shopping for yarn in Norway

My darling husband is traveling for business and along the way (as a special treat for me) he agreed to do a guest blog post about craft shops he ran into.

Instead of spending time taking photos of the city, he visited several shops I wish I could have visited too.

Enjoy his post below - Thanks Honey for doing this, it is so kind of you.
- Marisa

Jamie's guest blog post:

This is the Quilt Otaku field agent reporting from Oslo, Norway.

Knitting is a popular pastime here, so I have been dispatched to see how easy it is to visit the local shops. It turns out it isn’t hard at all as long as you know the right word to search for.

If you happen to be at the CC Vest shopping center in Lysaker just three train stops west of Oslo Central Station, be sure to check out the Ariadne Garn shop. It is nestled snugly underneath the escalator on the bottom floor, and while it is the smallest shop that I visited it is full of colorful yarn and needles.

Just north of the Vigeland Sculpture Park and Oslo City Museum is the Tjorven Garn shop. They have a large selection of yarn of various kinds, from sport marino to eskimo. They also have a small selection of new and used books for sale hidden on the back side of their cutting table.

I hoped to visit Sofies Garn to the north of the Royal Palace, but when I went by they were closed and had a note posted that probably explained why... in Norwegian of course!

The largest shop by far was the Huslfliden which filled much of the bottom floor of the GlasMagasinet shopping center. They had the most floor space though their yarn collection was perhaps on par with Tjorven. They did have a spinning wheel on display, and while they were the only shop I visited with wool it was entirely Australian imports. Their book and pattern selection was the best, so if that is your goal then perhaps Husliden should be your first stop.

One final note: it seems custom in Norway to provide pattern magazines free of charge, but only along with the purchase of 2 or more balls of yarn. If you are traveling and hope to bring some patterns home, be sure to leave some space for yarn too.

Stay tuned for a field report from London in a few days.