How to Buy Yarn in Spanish, aka The English-Spanish Crochet Dictionary

If you're visiting Spain, or if you haven't polished your hooking linguistic skills quite yet, you're going to need some specialized vocabulary. I learned this the hard way, when I asked for thread instead of yarn, holes instead of hooks, and didn't even know where to begin with acrylic, cotton, wool, and viscose.

After a few months, and lots of patient shopkeepers, my "Spanish Hooker Parlance" has improved. Since you might not be able to spend months traipsing around Spanish-speaking cities to different yarn shops, I thought I'd create this handy awesome English-Spanish Crochet Dictionary! Even if you print it and take it with you on your quest for Spanish yarns and do the me-point-you-understand gorilla game with the clerk, it will help you much more than the hope that shopkeepers will speak English. Trust me, they don't. I have yet to encounter a shopkeeper with a working knowledge of English, despite having shopped for yarns for almost a year.

Here are a few quick phrases that will be useful:

• May I see... - Puedo ver...
• How much does it cost? - Cuánto cuesta?
• Do you have any... - Tiene...
• May I pay with a credit card... - Puedo pagar con una tarjeta?

• crochet - ganchillo
• hooks - aguja (also the word for needles, specify by saying "aguja de ganchillo")
• yarn - lana
  

Check out the full dictionary (lots of supplies, types of yarns and colors!) with pronunciation guide in Google Docs:


 English - Spanish Crochet Dictionary in Google Docs