Seattle's Yarn Dragon is a feast of color and craft
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Hanks for looking. Photo: Courtesy of Jonathan Berner/Yarn Dragon
Touching the merchandise isn't just allowed at Yarn Dragon in Pioneer Square. It's kind of the point.
Why it matters: As brick-and-mortar yarn and fabric stores disappear around Seattle, Yarn Dragon is betting there's still something the internet can't replicate: seeing the colors, feeling the fibers and maybe even watching the yarn being dyed.
State of play: Owner Jonathan Berner moved his dyeing operation into the Pioneer Square space in January 2025 and opened the factory store to the public that June.
- The shop's walls are packed with hand-dyed skeins in saturated colors from golds to blues, greens, pinks and purples, with yarn ranging from $27.99 to $48.99.
- Also on the racks are hats, socks, gloves and mitts knitted on site with Berner's yarn.
- Blues are the perennial bestseller, Berner tells Axios, while greens — naturally — do especially well in the Pacific Northwest.
Zoom in: The shop doubles as Yarn Dragon's production space, and customers can peek through the shop windows to see where the dyeing happens.
- The dyeing is sporadic, so there's no guarantee you'll catch it in action, but Berner is happy to give tours and customers can call ahead to see what's happening that day.
- "You can watch us through the windows doing everything," he says.
The backstory: Jonathan started knitting in 2008 and fell hard for what he calls its combination of "engineering and history" — plus the fidget-spinner satisfaction of keeping his hands busy.
- He sold his first yarn to a shop in January 2014. By June of that year, he'd left his "grown-up job" and has supported himself with yarn ever since.
- Today, Yarn Dragon has two Seattle shops — the other is at Pike Place Market — a three-person staff and nearly 400,000 followers on social media, he says.
- Its bestseller is Silkpaca, a 70% alpaca, 30% silk blend custom-spun in Peru and dyed at the shop.
The bottom line: "I don't know that yarn will ever make me a truly wealthy man," Jonathan says, "but I have enough, and I have a wonderfully gratifying career surrounded by wonderful, beautiful people."