Tomorrow and Sunday is the Columbus Craft Crawl.  Fifteen locations around Columbus are participating and highlighting their special craft.  And, while the list of participants looks intriguing, I will not be participating.  Why mention it at all if I won’t be doing it?

First, the Columbus Craft Crawl sounds like lots of fun.  Each location has a special hands-on craft that can be done in a short amount of time.  You can collect a stamp at each location.  There will be sales and demonstrations.  If you collect five stamps, you can enter a craft basket give-away.

Second, the Columbus Craft Crawl features a diverse menu of crafts.  There are pottery studios, art schools, yarn shops, and the Ohio Craft Museum (more on that next week).  I focus on textile crafts, but it is good to know that other kinds of craft shops are surviving in the area.

Third, I want to support local, independently owned shops.  When I saw the advertising for the Columbus Craft Crawl, there were several yarn shops on the list that I hadn’t even heard of.  Sew to Speak, a craft shop that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, was one I discovered because of the list of locations.  If we don’t visit and support these shops, they will disappear.  I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to buy fabric or yarn online.  I want to see it and touch it.

Which leads me to why I won’t be participating in the Columbus Craft Crawl.  When I go to these places, I buy stuff.  Not because I don’t have any impulse control, but because I want to support them.  I go with specific things in mind that I want to purchase.  I don’t always find them, but I can usually find something else I want.  This could get expensive if I was doing it all in one day.  I prefer to spread out my visits so that I have a project in mind and can justify spending the money.

I will be visiting more of the shops on the list of the Colubus Craft Crawl.  The websites are the first places I go so I know what to expect.  For instance, I went to The Sewing Hive website and found out it is a sewing school, not a fabric store.  While I support sewing lessons, I’m a pretty good seamstress and don’t need them myself.  Dye Mad Yarns has a political agenda which I probably agree with, but feel uncomfortable with them displaying prominently on their website.

I probably won’t visit the pottery places, such as Bareclay Studio.  Pottery is a great craft, but I don’t need another hobby!  Some of the places in the crawl have interesting names and I can’t tell what they are about.  I will definitely be visiting (and writing about) the Craft Racoon.  Yarnbyrds is a yarn truck that goes to various events.  They also have a storefront that is only open on Wednesday afternoons.  You can be sure that I will let you know what I find out about the places on the list.

I love checking out new places to shop, especially places that feed my textile craft addiction.  Have you been to any of the places on the Columbus Craft Crawl list?  What did you think?  What is your favorite craft store, wherever you are located?