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I think what caught me more by surprise when I visited Lana’s El Gato Negro wasn’t the vast selection of yarns on offer, or the fact that you can buy yarn here by the kilo. Nope… the queue outside the door before the store opening caught me completely off guard and made me feel like I was queuing for a sold out Justin Bieber concert rather than to indulge my yarn habit…

A might not speak to me again after this. I promised I wouldn’t come home with any more yarn, and here I am, 3 hanks of El Gato Negro’s own Cuzco yarn neatly wrapped up in a bag ready to transport back to the UK: well you should always get souvenir yarn, right?

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Lana’s El Gato Negro is located at: Calle de la Sal, 2, 28012 Madrid, Spain.

Be careful- Google maps will sometimes point you to a different address around the corner and you don’t want to spend 15 minutes gawking around the Plaza Major. (Like I did)

Well, you do, but not on yarny pusuits!

Lana’s El Gato Negro also closes during the siesta hours so don’t come between 14:00-16:30 expecting service, in fact, you’ll be greeted with the shutters. Spaniards take napping seriously don’t you know?

This place is not like any yarn store I’ve seen in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter… shelves are lined floor-to-ceiling with hanks and hanks of yarn that you purchase by weight. Prices are in kilograms and the clerks will gladly cut down to size for you.

But I hope your Spanish is better than mine. Being in Spain, English is few and far between, and luckily the ladies were patient enough with me as I not only forgot to take a ticket (delicatessen-style) to reserve my place in the queue, but were also cool with my sign-language pointing to exactly what I wanted.

I do know that El Gato Negro means “Black Cat” so I’m amongst cat loving people who also love yarn and that’s all I really need to know!

Most of the brands stocked here are Lana’s El Gato Negro are own brands in any colour and weight you can imagine. But you’ll find little else, choices of hooks and needles was very limited in comparison to the vast array of yarn. I made sure to buy 3 hanks so I could practise my knitting skills- I’m going to “attempt” the Elementary Tee by Ashleigh Kiser- as I knew if I ran out of yarn for this project- it would be very difficult for me to get more. Although they do ship internationally if you can navigate the Spanish website!

I wanted to get started this week while I’m away, as I’ve had to frog the project I brought with me and have ran out of yarn, but unfortunately knitting needles were limited in selection and a hefty price for what they were considering I had some at home. That being said, yarn was reasonably priced here and a lot of it was on sale.

But heed my warning: have a project in mind, because you could honestly fall in love with everything here and spend a small fortune (as I was tempted to), and because it’s shop-by-weight it’s good to have an idea of how much you’ll need. I’m glad I had my pattern with me (Thank you Ravelry!)

These hanks of Cuzco are going to be the basis of my first knitting project of the New Year. I’ll be working on the Elementary Tee by Sewrella once all my Christmas gifting is out of the way!

Where are some of your favourite Local Yarn Stores (LYS)? I’d love to check them out! Or maybe you’d like to write an article on the blog? Drop me an email!