Yarn addict that I am, I decided to map out a few of the Twin Cities yarn stores. I didn't choose all of them for a variety of reasons:
- After a few selections, I got the hang of it and didn't feel I needed to keep practicing.
- We really do have a lot of yarn stores around here. I heard once that the Twin Cities have the highest number of yarn stores per capita, although I have no easy way to verify that.
- May 20 is coming. Cannot spend all May perfecting this map.
View Twin Cities Yarn Shops in a larger map
Although pretty simple, there were a few tricks to putting this map together. 3 Kittens Needle Arts recently moved to a shopping center that literally isn't on Google Maps: not only is the shopping center itself not there, but none of the streets leading to it are there either. Google Maps had the proper street address, but unable to find a Main Street in Mendota Heights, they plunked the placemarker down on Main Street in St. Paul. I sense some irony in the fact that I had to look the address up on Mapquest (which did have all the streets in question) to figure out where to stick the placemarker in Google.
Another problem came up when I tried to place Knit'n From the Heart. Any other yarn store I looked up, Google showed me a map; when I looked Knit'n From the Heart up, I kept getting driving directions instead. Eventually I figured it out: the word "from" was throwing it. It was trying to tell me how to get to Knit'n from The Heart. (The solution was to search the store name as a phrase in quotation marks).
I could see uses for this in a public or academic library. But it takes a while to create one of these maps, so while it would be nice to produce one on demand, it'd make more sense to have a few choice ones ready and waiting for patrons.
