If you're ever in Minneapolis...

...stop by Crafty Planet. I happened upon this store while doing some vintage clothing shopping in Northeast Minneapolis. The vintage place, Rewind, was not yet open, so can anyone think of a better way to kill time than in a fabric store?

The store had a cute little facade with a retro spaceship sign informing us that they were open. The first thing I noticed when I walked in was this giant red wooden robot. His belly opened up to display a bunch of wonderful craft books, one of which was Sewing Green by Betz White, which I already own. The store is painted in this wonderful hue of cornflower blue and there are white and blue shelves along the length of its walls. It is not a really big store, but it uses its space well.

They stock a lot of yarn and accessories for knitters. I do not personally knit, but if I did I think I would start here. I was more interested in the other crafts in the store. They had an impressive display of Sublime Stitching kits and I'm not talking about just five little kits, because I seriously think they featured the entire line. Moving on I found a display of crewel embroidery kits by Wool & Hoop, a company based out of Marfa, TX. I was in Marfa last year for a wedding, so I picked up one of their greeting card kits to make the couple's one year anniversary card.

Have I talked about their fabric line yet? They had so many wonderful fabrics. And not your boring, country-time-lemonade fabrics that so many other stores seem to carry. They had great animals, robots, pin-ups, stripes & dots, and Japanese imports. Oh yeah, and they had a lot of Amy Butler. They have an online store, so you can get a better idea if you browse that.

They also had a nice selection of ribbons, a significant number of books for sale, and a really nice looking space for classes. And if you have a kid, they even had a little rugrat-friendly section to distract them while you shop. They feature a weekly Friday night sewing workshop from 6pm to 9pm and they also had a bunch of classes for beginners (be you sewer slut, knitter, or embroiderer).

They had a number of patterns from Amy Butler and some other smaller designers. I picked up a wallet pattern by JennaLou, a local Minnesota designer. Speaking of locals: did you know that KwikSew is headquartered in Minneapolis? Crafty Planet had a small display of KwikSew patterns and I just happened to glance down at the label and discovered this nifty little fact. Though there were some KwikSew patterns, they did not seem to have any of the big pattern books sitting around.

Even the Boyfriend, who becomes an immediate narcoleptic whenever he enters a fabric store, was impressed. I found him pulling out bolts of fabric to show me! You know that if it can hold his interest, then Crafty Planet is in a league of its own! This place was hip and fun. It was not your usual, generic fabric store. This was not the sort of place where old-lady salespeople scoff at the idea of using woven gingham to line an apron.