Having had a sad, sad experience last summer I returned to Lakeside this summer after I was back in Wisconsin. I drove their with a hope that it was a fluke when I visited a year ago. That the wall o'Cascade might be back. That the great couches and sales bins would return. That it would have life again!
I was let down. It's even more picked over and empty-seeming than it was a year ago. The sales clerk was very polite and he showed me where certain "new" yarns were. I browsed. I thought "wow - that boat sure does do well to fill a pathetically empty shop" and I left. I can't imagine a reason to return much. They seem to no longer have the vast selection of needles they used to carry. The different yarns they had that were hard to come by elsewhere are gone. Now it's just a sad, more open, version of The Knitting Tree. Clearly when it changed hands it just went to hell.
It's really too bad, because this store was once quite great.