A Short Trip to Spring, TX

One of my favorite columns in Interweave Crochet magazine is where a crocheter talks about their town and the places that are crochet friendly.  I thought I would try my hand at this.

Originally, I am from Houston, Texas, and I often go there to visit family.  Recently, I spent a day in Spring, Texas, a Houston suburb, with my grandmother and sister.

We started the day in Old Town Spring.  Old Town Spring has a lot of wonderful little shops and restaurants.  It is very quaint, and they have taken turn of the century houses and old town buildings and restored them into museums, art galleries, gift shops and restaurants.  It is a fun place to just walk around, and there are several places with shade and benches so you can sit and knit or crochet while you people watch.  Of course, in the heat of the summer it may be too hot, but spring has great weather to be outside.

We started at a tea & aromatherapy shop.  It had a good selection of tea as well as teapots.  I just couldn't figure out how to get a teapot home on an airplane without it getting broken.

We had lunch at Ellen's Cafe.  The food was delicious, and the iced tea was good too.  They had a very nice area to have lunch outside under an umbrella.  We didn't feel rushed and it was just a great place to have a leisurely lunch.

Afterwards, we walked around town.  I picked up some Bluebonnet seeds -- Do you think they'll grow in Ohio?  When we got tired, we headed back to the car for a trip to a yarn shop.  There is a yarn shop called Twisted Yarns on Spring Cypress, just outside of Old Town Spring, but we'd been there before and we wanted to try something new.  Twisted Yarns has a nice selection of yarns with a sophisticated cottage feel.

So we drove over to The Hen House, which is down Louetta Road towards Klein High School.  It doesn't look like much from the outside, but you just have to go inside!  It has a down home feel and it is HUGE.  It has both quilting and yarn supplies.  There is space for classes, and there is a wonderful seating area where anyone would feel welcome to sit a spell and do their hand work.

I think there is a balance in any shop between being helpful and available to customers without making them feel constantly watched.  I definitely felt that the Hen House got that balance right.  There were people around to help, but if you didn't need any help, you could browse comfortably.

That pretty much sums up our day.  We headed back to grandma's for a home cooked meal of pork tenderloin & cherry cheesecake for dessert.  What a great day!