When I was in California, I shopped a couple of local yarn shops.

One was Purlescence. They had spinning wheels on the floor! and full size floor looms! And great drop spindles! I was looking for local yarn (another story about that later) and they have their own line of yarn, that they process and dye on site. It's called "Purl up and Dye" - a great name. I got a couple of skeins in bright pink - enough to make a pair of socks - PLUS. I also got a pretty heave drop spindle. The down side of the store is that there are "New Age" signals (but I've shopped such stores that have been fine) and the biggest detractor to the experience was that the operator/manager was not all that friendly. Phil wanted to see a spinning wheel in action and they were having a spinning class in the back. They were taking a break, and rather than just letting us know that it was a private area, she was pretty rude, and physically put her body in between us and the class. It would have been easy to let us watch the instructor for a minute. What was interesting was that when I as there by myself earlier, I didn't have that experience. Perhaps I was there on a mission (shopping for yarn, not wheels) or maybe the presence of an alpha male upset the balance of their universe.

The other store was Green Planet Yarn. I pre-judge the store by the name, thinking that this one would be the "New Age" store. Wrong! They had a wonderful selection of non-animal, sustainable and third world yarn. I picked up a couple of different yarns, one made out of sugar cane, the other out of cotton and wood fiber, in beautiful, soft color. The sales women went out of their way to talk about how to care for the yarn, how to combine skeins to get a consistent color (the yarns were make suing local and ancient dying techniques) - which is not a big deal when making socks.

Short story, if I'm in CA and want a spinning wheel, spindle or class, Purlescence is the only party in town. For local and specialty yarn, Green Planet is the planet I'll be choosing.