The rise of e-commerce has not spared even the knitting community. This means that if local yarn retailers want to remain relevant and competitive, they need to do more than just fill their stores with yarns. They need to create an online presence, update their website, and promote a community of knitters offline.
From commercial yarns to hand-dyed international yarns, the online knitting community thrived in social online platforms such as Ravelry and Instagram as well as in indie dyers’ websites, big yarn retail websites, and other online yarn stores. With just a few clicks, you can easily get popular yarns from overseas.
A good number of indie yarn dyers and online wool sellers also offer special small-batch or hand-dyed yarns via online shops something local yarn retailers can hardly match. So if you’re itching to find your next set of yarn and pattern, check out these online yarn stores.
FYI, thanks to AI imagery software, we’re able to create very specific fashion and hairstyle examples to illustrate the points being made. In some cases, imagery is exaggerated to hammer home the point.
Online Yarn Stores
1. Fabulous Yarn
Search easily by the brand of yarn, type of fiber, or weight on this thorough source for all things yarn and knitting related. Look for knitting extras like great bags for all your knitting needs, a range of needles in various materials like wood or metal as well as their custom Zen needles, and even spinning wheels on Fabulous Yarn for all things yarn and knitting related.
2. Love Knitting
Find books and videos about knitting, varieties of yarns in all fibers and colors from many different brands, as well as patterns, tools, and a helpful blog full of knitting info on Love Knitting. Deals include free shipping over $60 on select yarns and 20 percent off orders of $100 or more.
3. Knit Picks
Enjoy search options to easily find yarn in the color, weight, or fiber you need for a project, or just browse this online yarn store for a thorough selection of knitting accessories like books and videos, needles, and tools to help with your knitting projects. Offering free shipping in the US on orders over $50 and monthly sales deals, Knit Picks has all you need for creating knit perfection.
4. Yarnspirations
With links to selected boutiques specializing in knitting-related goods, this yarn store features patterns divided out by knitting, crochet, and craft projects. Selections of yarns are focused on products from their partner boutiques, including Patons, Lily Sugar N’ Cream, Caron, Bernat, and others, leading some to find the breadth of selections here more limited than other yarn stores online. The Yarnspirations website promises free shipping on orders over $60, a 45-day return policy, and a quality guarantee of satisfaction.
5. Webs: America’s Yarn Store
Featuring detailed menus of yarns sorted by fiber, brand, weight, and type, as well as menus, focused on patterns and kits, knitting, weaving, spinning, crochet, this yarn store online provides a lot of helpful search options to narrow your hunt for just the right yarns, needles, tools or patterns. Also included on America’s Yarn Store is a menu called “Learning Center” that features listings of classes and events (at the physical location in Massachusetts, USA), as well as videos, books, and a “Learn to Knit Kit” to help new knitters get started right.
6. Noble Knits
Advertising their daily yarn sales, easy returns, and free shipping on orders over $40, Noble Knits boasts of 18 years of history serving the knitting community online. The community is one of the features of the website, offering an opportunity to join a group to get knitting tips, techniques, and news from experts as well as tutorials, virtual knit-along with others in the community, and free pattersns.
7. Darn Good Yarn
This yarn store on the web features a simple website that is easy to navigate. Offering a variety of yarns and supplies for knitting that you would expect from a yarn store, they also sell clothes and accessories like jewelry, purses and bags, scarves, and more. Darn Good Yarn‘s unique feature is the $10 yarn club, a monthly subscription that gets you a skein of premium yarn, a knit or crochet pattern, and a mystery gift.
8. Apple Yarns
A local yarn store for over a decade in upstate Washington, Apple Yarns launched its online presence in 2010. With specific sections for yarns, needles, patterns, and notions, the store features a wide selection of discounted yarns, colorfully displayed in sample photos, scrolling across the lower portions of the webpage. They also proudly tout the “knitted knockers” program, which matches post-mastectomy breast cancer survivors who have not had reconstructive surgery with knitters who create comfortable prosthetics.
9. Herrshners
A craft store with more than a century of history, Herrshners online yarn selection is diverse and broad. With selections categorized into searchable lists of more than 20 brands, including their own store label, eight yarn weights, and five categories for fiber content, and even five pricing categories, the website is simple and uncluttered to allow an easy search for just the right items for your project.
10. Knitting Warehouse
Both knitting and crocheting get an equal emphasis on Knitting Warehouse, with menus detailing materials and tools unique to each craft. They also feature a wide range of specialized tools for the crafts, an extensive menu of books on the topic, and a section of free patterns that crafty types will enjoy. Calling themselves “The Discount Yarn & Notions Warehouse” they boast of prices up to 50% off, appealing to bargain hunters.
11. Twisted Yarn Shop
With an attractive, colorful, and simple webpage, Twisted Yarn Shop offers information and accessories for knitting. Searchable by weight, fiber, color, texture, and brand, they offer a range of yarns for all projects. The tools menu features sections of needles, notions, patterns, and bags to supplement your knitting crafts. Their blog updates knitters on tips and techniques as well as news and information from the store.
12. Mad Knitters Yarn
With special emphasis on their preferred brands, the online presence of Mad Knitters Yarn is the original store, with a storefront located in Nevada a new addition in 2018. Aiming to fill a void in the market for high-quality yarns that they couldn’t find easily elsewhere, this yarn store online is simple to navigate and search by type of fiber, weight, or color, as well as sections for patterns and tools to supplement your yarn shopping.
13. Smiley’s Yarns
With an 80-year history in the yarn business, Smiley’s Yarns has now moved from a storefront to a warehouse location in support of online sales only. Far from the most user-friendly and attractive webpage in the industry, the terms of sales may put many shoppers off, including a minimum $50 order, a shipping charge of $12.95 on every order, and no returns. What they promise is low prices and wide selection, which some knitters may find to be just right for their needs.
14. Must Love Yarn
Operated by three women who are passionate about knitting, Must Love Yarn features a podcast that crafters and knitters can follow to get information and yarn chat. Among many menu items in the shop, is a unique category for animal-free (vegan) fibers.
15. Churchmouse Yarns
Billing itself as a “yarn and tea shop,” Churchmouse Yarns features a wide selection of fibers, weights, brands, and colors of yarns, along with notions, tools for knitting, books, and other accessories related to knitting (as well as a section on teas).
16. Biscotte Yarns
While perhaps offering less range of brands and types of yarns, Biscotte Yarns specializes in their own hand-dyed yarns. Featuring knitting kits, unique patterns, and the Mystery Bimonthly Sock Club, a subscription service that gets you a skein of yarn and a pattern to knit a “mystery pair of socks” every other month for , this is a bit of a specialty site.
17. JoAnn
In the “needle-arts” section of the craft megastore’s webpage is a complete yarn source online. JoAnn features 21 brands and options to search by price, type, color, weight, or more, the options are diverse for shopping for all things knitting-related on this site.
18. Paradise Fibers
With a bright, colorful, and well-organized homepage and simple menu selections, Paradise Fibers is a source for dozens of different brands of yarns in all fibers and weights, as well as accessories, tools, and hand-crafted spinning wheels, which are one of the site’s featured items. From their storefront location in Washington state for over twenty years, Paradise offers everything you need for knitting, crocheting, spinning, felting, and weaving.
19. The Yarn Company
With exclusive yarns, color, and design kits, The Yarn Company is the online version of a New York institution in the world of yarn with decades of experience in the industry. On the website, you’ll find unique features like “artist of the week, ” a section for jewelry, and signature needles.
20. Island Yarn Company
Offering worldwide shipping, and free shipping in the US on orders over $75, this yarn store features a range of unique pattern kits as well as an extensive supply of yarns in all weights. Island Yarn Company features a range of their own hand-dyed yarns along with all the top brands.
21. Purl Soho
From its attractive front page to its searchable options of yarns and fabrics, Purl Soho brings the best of a craft boutique to the web. An entire section is devoted to free patterns for crafters to knit, sew, crochet, embroider, or weave a new masterpiece.
22. Michaels
From the craft, the superstore is an online yarn source that is easy to search for many types of yarns, needles and hooks, and other tools and accessories for yarn working projects. With yarns categorized in groups including Basic, For Kids, and Baby and Specialty, users can search and shop the wide selections of yarns with ease in Micheals.
23. Amazon
The famous Internet superstore offers a very thorough section devoted exclusively to yarns for knitting and crochet, as well as tools, needles, and other accessories. Amazon is divided into searchable categories to allow shoppers to select from one of 11 fiber types, seven weights, and more than 50 yarn brands, this is possibly the most complete yarn store available anywhere.
24. Northwest Yarns
Possibly one of the most unique yarn stores online, Northwest Yarns offers unusual opportunities for knitters in the upstate Washington area to join a knitting cruise or to be married in their own wedding chapel by one of their two “ordained ministers.” For shoppers around the world looking for yarn and supplies, they have you covered as well, with a wide range of brands, fibers, weights, and colors of yarns and fibers.
25. Knot Another Hat
Featuring one of the cleverest of many knitting-related store names, Knot Another Hat provides a wide range of yarns and accessories for all of the fiber arts. A family-owned business with a storefront in Oregon and a worldwide presence on the web, this store offers a diverse range of yarns for knitting, weaving, crochet, stitching, and spinning.
26. Unraveled
Offering selections of yarns from more than 20 brands, Unraveled also features a wide variety of needles, notions, and accessories for fiber artists worldwide. With special emphasis on helpful tools like yarn ball winders, yarn bowls in many materials, and swifts, this yarn store also features classes for those in the local area as well as books, information, and inspiration for all knitters.
27. Ice Yarns
Offering a wide choice of their brand of yarns in all colors, weights, and fibers, Ice Yarns is a bit more of a specialty shop for yarn, as it does not offer selections of other brands of yarn. They do offer accessories like needles and tools in addition to their yarns.
28. Eat Sleep Knit
From the bright colorful homepage, shoppers can select from categories of yarn, needles, notions, and patterns in Eat Sleep Knit. Offering selections from nearly 30 different brands, there is certain to be the yarn you need for any project available on Eat Sleep Knit.
29. Yarn Connection Shop
Boasting outstanding customer service, including yarn samples so you can try before you buy, Yarn Connection Shop has a wide range of yarns and accessories. They promise special gifts to reward loyal customers and claim to provide 100 percent customer satisfaction with their products.
30. Crafty Housewife Yarns
With their somewhat sexist name, this yarn shop claims to be a “boldly traditional” online yarn store. Crafty Housewife Yarns offer handspun yarns, spinning fibers, and yarns by their featured artist among many other products for knitters and other fiber artists.
31. Knits and Pearls
With a clever and memorable name for knitters Knits and Pearls is an online source for yarns of all types, as well as needles, notions, kits, and patterns. They offer fibers for all sorts of projects, from crochet to weaving and the accessories and information to help you know what to do with it all.