In the summer of 2006, Sonia & Orly (mother and daughter) opened the doors of The Gourmet Yarn Shop, a brick and mortar yarn shop in Raanana, Israel. What began as Orly's dream to open a neighborhood shop soon turned into one of Israel's leading yarn shops, carrying imported well known international brand yarns,  books, needles, accessories, everything under one roof.

The Gourmet Yarn Shop has hosted special events and workshops with world famous knitwear deisgners and teachers from the industry. STEPHEN WEST from Holland, MELISSA LEAPMAN from the US, and FAINA GOBERSTEIN from the US are some top names that have taught at the shop. If you're interested in our special events, we encourage you to sign up to our newsletter.

Once a year, The Gourmet Yarn Shop organizes a knitting tour to a different country, with the focal point being knitting techniques and wool. These trips include workshops by local designers, visits to wool mills, traveling, siteseeing and a look at the lives of local knitwear artists. We have organized travels to the Aran Isles in Ireland with Carol Feller teaching us cable knitting techniques,  to Iceland to practice yokes and steeking with Helene Magnusson, and to Shetland in Scotland with master knitter Hazel Tindall teaching us colorwork. We flew to Estonia to learn Estonian lace knitting at the Estonian Lace Center, to Norway to learn embroidery on knits with the famous Sidsel Hoivik,  and to Denmark for some amazing workshops including Ziggurats with Asa Tricosa. Our next trip will be to Sweden and Finland to learn all about Swedish Knitting traditions and a workshop with Veera Valimaki in Finland.

During all the Covid lockdowns here in Israel, Orly fulfilled another dream. The book "Vests for Toddlers" Issue #1 was printed. Today she is working on Issue #2.

This January of 2026, we closed the physical store in Raanana, and are focusing on updating our online site, continuing  importing new yarns and looking for new destinations for our knitting trips.

A new page was added to the site for events and trips,

Welcome to our new and updated site. Come on in, we hope you like it. Let us know if we can be of help.

Happy Knitting, Orly